Jewish
Genealogy
Bears Fruit
Detroiter
and family
descendants
from Belarus
are reunited
in Israel
after 40
years.
SCHELLY TALALAY DARDASHTI
Jerusalem Post
R
uth (Yendick) Vosko, 78, of Farmington and her airline
pilot son, Mark Vosko, 50, of Henderson, NV, arrived in
Israel March 2 to meet the Beersheva family with whom
all contact had been broken since 1938. The excitement
on both sides was enormous.
With my column in the Jerusalem Post, I was among those that
,made it happen.
One of the most wonderful aspects to Jewish genealogy is the
opportunity to help reunite families who have been separated for
decades.
This family's reunion can be traced to the power of the Internet:
networking of individual genealogists in Tel Aviv, Detroit, San Diego
and Atlanta (to name a few); and connections between Jewish
genealogical societies around the world, including Tel Aviv, Michigan
and Beersheva. Working together and through the Web site
JewishGen, we connected the two families in only two weeks.
In mid January, I received a phone call and letter from Beersheva
resident Oleg Pronin, who had emigrated from Mogilev, Belarus,
about 10 years ago. He contacted me on the suggestion of his former
Mogilev neighbor Aleksandra Talalay of Karmiel, who happens to be
my cousin.
While visiting Aleksandra, Pronin related a story his late mother
had told him adding that he wanted to find his relatives in Detroit, if
possible. She suggested he contact me.
Oleg's mother, Ita Samuelovich Pronin, was the daughter of Shmuel
Davidovich Induch, the son of Aron Moshe (sometimes known as
Hillel Moshe) Induch. ha's aunt Zlate Peshe was the daughter of Aron
(or H&J) Moshe, and her siblings were Joseph, Shmuel, Shayna
Freidl and Chaya Sora. The family had originally lived in Chaussy, a
small town in Mogilev, Belarus.
Ita, who died in 1984, told her son that her aunt Zlate Peshe had
emigrated from Chaussy to America in 1924 to join an older brother,
Girsh (Joe Yendick). Zlate was very beautiful and had won a beauty
competition. Eventually, she married a Mr. Pinsky, "the richest man
in Detroit who owned an automobile business," according to Pronin's
mother. Until 1938, Zlate lived in happiness and they were blessed
with three daughters. That year, a terrible tragedy occurred. Mr.
Pinsky and his driver were killed in an automobile acci-
dent and Zlate suffered leg injuries. After recovering,
she married again. When World War II began, Oleg
Pronin said all contact was ended with the family in
America.
Pronin said to me, "I want to know what happened
to Zlate and her family. I want very much to find her.
Please help me."
He made an offer I couldn't refuse as a researcher and
also as a fellow Mogilev descendant.
,
Finding Pinskers
Now, this Brooklyn-born girl knows little about .
Detroit. So I turned to the JewishGen discussion group
and posted a message with the subject "Detroit expert-
ise required."
Within a day or so, I had received multiple answers,
even before I could search Internet resources available
to me from Tel Aviv.
Marc Manson, who was then president of the
Farmington Hills-based Jewish Genealogical Society of
Michigan, offered his encyclopedic knowledge of
March 3 at the Paradise Negev Hotel in Beersheva, Israel:
Svetlana Pronin, Mark Vosko, Ruth Vosko, Oleg Pronin,
Schell), Talalay Dardashti and Irina 'Ira" Pronin.
7/26
2002
42