THE STORY OF THE CIRLIN GINZBURG FAMILY

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        The Cirlin-Ginzburg family came from Parafianov, which is 12 km from Dokshitz. Parafianov is where the railroad station was, and it was the smaller of the two towns.  It is quite possible that our ancestors moved at some point from  Dokshitz to Parafianov. 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.  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. 

            Sometime in the mid 19th century, a male Cirlin and his wife had at least two children...The first child had at least one child, and his child, Haya Cirlin, married Rafel Ginzburg.  Rafel and Haya had five children.  The three male children of Rafel and Haya immigrated either just before or after WWI.  Israel ended up in Newport, RI to join his wife's Dvorshe Kusinitz's three siblings ( Newport was virtually a transplanted Dokshitz),  Raymond ended up in Brooklyn, NY, and Menachem Mendel ended up in Cuba.  Ester and Pesia stayed in Parafianov. Ester married Aron Levitan. You can read about them in the Yizkor book. Our uncle Aron was hung the day the Germans arrived in June, 1941. Pesia Ginzburg married Rafel Markman. Of their seven children, one, Shmuel Markman, survived the Holocaust   and made his way to Israel.  In the Dokshitz-Parafianov Yizkor book Shmuel wrote "I want to write the names of my brothers and sisters and their families here, perhaps someone of them survived."He went on to list seventy of our relatives. He undoubtedly knew then that they did not survive. He also submitted their names to Yad Vashem, which is attempting to compile as many names of our martyrs as possible.

     The second known child of that original Cirlin was named Avraham Anshel Cirlin. Avraham Anshel had two known children. The older child, Ester Cirlin, married Samuel Gejdenson. One of their children, Shlomo, survived the holocaust and made his way to the USA after the war. Shlomo was the sole survivor from this branch and has named four more lost family members by submitting pages of testimony to Yad Vashem. His son, Sam Gejdenson, was a United States congressman from Connecticut for 19 years during the 1980s and 90s, and was ranking member of the House Foreign Relations Committee. Sam was able to visit Dokshitz in the 1990s and thank the people who hid his father.


      A horrible fate awaited most of those who remained in Dokshitz and Parafianov.  After the Germans invaded in June, 1941, the Jews were terrorized, .  They were herded into densely-populated  Ghettos, with inadequate food, and when the Einsatz group (killing squads) got around to it, they were marched to a pit at the edge of town (in the case of Dokshitz), or marched out into the forest in Parafianov and shot.  This happened in Parafianov Dokshitz in May, 1941. About 95% of the Jewish residents were killed.   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 (scroll down to page 347) of the victims at the end of the book.   Many of them are your relatives.

     Jewishgen.org  hosts the Dokshitz Shetlink Page. Visit it to learn more about life in these towns. At Jewishgen.org you may look for other people researching family members and or towns of origin. There is an easy registration process. If you search, always use the "sounds like" option, because there is no correct way to spell names of people or places.

     You may also wish to visit Yad Vashem's Pages of Testimony. When you get there just type in "Parafianova" in the location field. Leave the other fields blank, and you will get a list  with 103 names, many of whom are our members of our lost family. I would also like to share with you a memorial tribute I composed for the shtetlach of my father, and his sisters.  Contact me with thoughts, memories, and suggestions.