KUSINITZ FAMILY HOME PAGE


        To learn about the Kusinitz family, follow the many links on this page. You should of course look at the announcement of the 2005 Kusinitz Family Reunion,the group picture, from the 2001 reunion in Newport, RI(90 people were there), and the pictures from the 2003 reunion in Los Angeles.  Some members of our family have a presence on the internet. Go to
Kusinitz Family Notes for information.

      OK, so tell me about the Kusinitz family.

     Let's start with a place. The Kusinitz family came from Dokshitz. There is documentary evidence of the family's presence in Dokshitz as early as 1820. The family probably arrived in Dokshitz before this, but our paper trail does not go back any further,  yet. Where is Dokshitz? This question can only be answered when qualified by the word when.  After the Kingdom of Poland was partitioned in the 18th century, it became part of Russia. Most of our ancestors who immigrated to the United States left after the abortive Russian Revolution of 1905.  This era featured widespread pogroms that  included the area of Dokshitz.  It was inevitable that our ancestors would  leave the small town in which they lived as people moved toward larger cities, and they chose to move an ocean's breadth away from the turbulent and inhospitable early twentieth-century Russia. During WWI, Germany occupied Dokshitz. At the end of WWI, it was caught up in the post-war turmoil in eastern Europe, eventually becoming part of The Republic of Poland  in 1920 after the Russo-Polish war in that year. Between the  World Wars it was part of Poland. At least one family left in 1921, after calm was reestablished. Dokshitz was part of the Soviet Union after the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939. After the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany on June 22, 1941, it was part of the territories occupied and decimated by Nazi Germany.  After the Germans retreated in 1944, it again became part of the Soviet Union. Since the demise of the USSR, it is now in Belarus. . Jewishgen.org  hosts the Dokshitz Shetlink Page. Visit it to learn more.

     Of course not all members of the family left Eastern Europe.  A horrible fate awaited most of those who remained.  After the Germans invaded, the Jews were terrorized.  They were herded into densely-populated  Ghettos, and when the Einsatzgroup(killing units) got around to it, they were marched to a pit at the edge of town, and shot.  This happened in Dokshitz in May, 1941. About 95% of the Jewish residents were killed.  There may have been one survivor from our family, however contact has been lost. You may read about the holocaust in Dokshitz and about life between the world wars in the  Dokshitz-Parafianov Yizkor Book. Be prepared to weep. Look at the  list of names of the victims at the end of the book.  If you are a Kusinitz family member, many of them are your relatives.

     The Kusinitz family followed landsmen(other people from the same town) and family members to various destinations in the United States.  These included Waterbury, Connecticut, Eastern Connecticut, Brooklyn,NY, Newport, Rhode Island, Cleveland, Ohio, and Memphis, Tennessee.  An entire branch of the family moved from Waterbury to Los Angeles starting in the 1920s, and finishing in the 1940s. Other branches remained in Waterbury.   The largest concentrations of family members are scattered in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Greater Cleveland, Greater Los Angeles, Virgina Beach, and Southern Florida.

     The family name is variously spelled as Kusinitz or Kusnitz.  It has also been changed to Katz or Kaye.  Several branches in the United States have the family name Shapiro, thanks to marriages before leaving Dokshitz.  Many family members, of course, have other surnames acquired as they marry and remarry through the generations.

    Our family is all descended from Avrom Kusinitz, who was probably born in the 1780s or 90s.  Kusinitz is a very common surname in Dokshitz, and was also found scattered through the Jewish area of Poland and Russia, including the Ukraine.  It is likely that many of these families originated in Dokshitz.  Other families that immigrated to the United States, from Dokshitz and other areas, are unrelated, as far as is known to the Avrom Kusinitz family.  There are also numerous Kusinitz families in Israel.  Some are from the Dokshitz area.  Although no relationship has been established with these families, undoubtedly some of these families are related to the Avrom Kusinitz family.

     Many members of our family have a public presence on the Internet.  Please go to the page for Kusinitz Family Notes, where you may find links to their sites and other information about them.

If you have any comments or suggestions about this web site please contact me. The entire site has been prepared by Aaron Israel Ginsburg, and is copyrighted(isn't everything?)