She walked into the restaurant wearing the broad face of my maternal grandfather, the smile of my great-aunt and the nose of a much-loved second cousin — all long deceased. Her English was minimal but her love was boundless.
Frida Alperovich, who celebrated her 93rd birthday in August, is my mother’s first cousin. After working for years as a surgeon in Russia, she moved with her daughter and granddaughters to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn in 1993.
But she and my mother never met. And we, the next generation, had no idea this branch of the family existed. Frida did know she had relatives in America but had no idea how to find them.
My brother, Ken Bravo, found Frida. It’s an incredible story, familiar not only to Jews but to all groups affected by the horrors of war or the vagaries of name changes or the heartbreak of family quarrels.
Finding Frida was the happy byproduct of a search for another relative. Here’s what we knew, thanks to Ken’s genealogy expertise:
My grandfather, Raphael Mebel (known to us as Frank Mable) had come to the United States from Borisov (currently known as Barysaw) in Belarus in 1905. Soon one brother joined him, and in 1910 they brought over his mother and two younger siblings.
We knew there was an older brother, Avram, who stayed behind with his wife, Sofia and young children. They had urged my grandfather to look up Sofia’s sister Nadia in America — and indeed, Frank found Nadia, who dumped her current boyfriend and married him.
After the war the family tried to find Avram and Sofia, with no luck. The assumption was they and all of their family members had been killed.
My brother set out to find any descendants. Through a long and complicated process, involving skill, persistence and sheer luck, he found their granddaughter and her son Lev in St. Petersburg, Russia, and began a series of emails.
Lev mentioned a cousin Frida who had moved to the U.S.
“Who’s Frida?” my brother asked.
“The daughter of Lesha,” Lev replied.
It turned out there was another sibling who stayed behind in Borisov. Lesha was 16 and eloped with Chaim in 1910 on the day before my great-grandmother left with the other children.
According to Frida, my great-grandmother broke ties with Lesha and did not speak of her again. Since the family over here all lived together, we assume the rest of them also refrained from speaking of Lesha.
Chaim and Lesha did marry and had five children, four girls and a boy, just like my mother’s family. Frida was the youngest sister.
In 1941 she was in medical school in Moscow. Lesha came to visit and help take home Frida’s things. She bought Frida a ticket for a few days later and left for Borisov.
They never saw each other again.
What we learned is that the Nazis entered Borisov and killed all the Jews. I heard this from my brother after he first found Frida and was haunted by the thought of her getting this news right after she’d seen her mother.
I pictured her in a medical school classroom or hallway, horrified as she read some kind of news bulletin or received word from a friend.
But as I sat with Frida in a hotel room in New Jersey, I realized how little I understood of that time.
Frida and her three sisters, who were all outside Borisov when the war started, lost communication with the town. There were no newspaper stories, no phone calls, no news of any kind.
In 1944, Frida’s sister went to Borisov as a member of the Russian army. She found out about the massacre from neighbors.
“People lied,” Frida’s daughter told us. “They said 200 Jews died that day. It was thousands.”
Nazi forces used the radio to tell all the Jews to come outside and they would be safe; those who stayed inside would be shot. In fact, soldiers herded all the Jews together and hurled them into giant pits. Most were buried alive.
The neighbor said that Chaim resisted and was shot in his garden. Lesha and their son Elia, Frida’s younger brother, were among those massacred that day, along with Avram and Sofia and three of their four children.
We listened and wept for those we lost, and rejoiced for those we found.
In 1925 the family in St. Louis sent to relatives in Borisov a photo of themselves — my grandparents and great-grandmother, my mother and her siblings, her two uncles and aunt and the aunt’s husband and two small children.
That photo survived with relatives in St. Petersburg and wound up in the hands of another cousin now living in Israel, who labeled it “mishpocha,” what Jews call extended family, and sent it to Ken. Frida and we all saw it for the first day the day of our reunion.
Frida told Ken she had had two wishes: to go to Israel, and to find her relatives in the States. Two years before Ken found her, Frida’s granddaughter Lesha took her to Israel.
And now she has found the rest of her family.
Mishpocha, greatly reduced, now expanded.
Ellen Bravo of Milwaukee directs Family Values @ Work, a network of coalitions in 21 states working for paid sick days and paid family leave policies. She is the former director of 9to5.
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