When I began my family history research, I know of six children born to my great grandparents in Zambrow: the eldest, my grandfather (Zaidy), his brother, Shmulke, and four sisters: Chanche (Chana), Paicha (Puah), Chaya Sara (Adele) and Hinde. I grew up near my grandfather and aunt Adele and knew of Shmulke, of all whom came to the United States before World War II. The other three siblings perished in the Holocaust.

My mother had mentioned that there were other children who did not live to adulthood. Through my research of the Wierzbowicz family using JRI-Poland (Jewish Records Indexing-Poland), I learned the name of one of these children, Chanche’s twin brother Kelman, born in 1903, who died sixteen months later. (See https://rootsjourney.blog//2018/02/searching-for-chanche-chana.html?m=0) JRI-Poland is a website that has indexed and provides scans of thousands of birth, death and marriage records from Poland from the 19th and 20th centuries. (http://jri-poland.org)

To my knowledge, no one in my family knew about Kelman. My Zaidy would have been the only person to have met him. He was three or four years old when Kelman was born (he himself was unsure whether he was born in 1899 or 1900), but I don’t believe he ever spoke about Kelman’s birth or death. Neither my mother nor my aunt ever mentioned the names of any of the siblings that died young.

That is not surprising. Child mortality was a common occurrence in prewar Eastern Europe, so the fact that other children were born who died before the age of five was not unusual. It is possible that my great grandparents mentioned to their surviving children that some of their siblings had died young, but I assume this was not given prominent weight in the family history. It was probably taken as a fact of life and not something to be mourned prominently. I wonder, though, whether they observed Kelman’s date of death as an annual yahrzeit, commemorated by the lighting of a memorial candle and the saying of kaddish in shul (synagogue).

In researching my family, I came across another record that I could not explain. When I entered my great grandfather’s last name, Wierzbowicz, it produced a result that showed the birth of Chanche and Kelman in 1903, as well as the birth of Chaya Sara (Adele) in 1912. For some reason, records either do not exist or have not yet been indexed of births in 1900, 1902, 1905-1907, 1911 and 1913, which explains why there is no record of my grandfather’s, Shmulke’s or Paicha’s births.

But it does show the birth of a child in 1908 that I had never heard of, David. (The letter “B” stands for “Birth”.)

Clicking on “View Image” revealed the following document, written in Russian Cyrillic script, as were the documents from the area in Poland controlled by Russia before World War I:

Mystified at finding a record of a child I had never heard of, I thought, perhaps, that he was born to a different family with the same, albeit uncommon, name of Wierzbowicz. However, as with the other children, the record lists his father as Chona, my great grandfather’s first name (Elchanan in Hebrew).

Just to make sure, I posted the birth record on Viewmate, part of the JewishGen website where researchers can post documents for translation. (https://www.jewishgen.org/ViewMate/) Within a few days, someone had translated the document. To verify the translation, I gave the document to a friend of mine who is a native Russian speaker. The translated document reads as follows:

In the place in the town of Zambrow on September 1/September 14, 1908, at 9:00 A.M., appeared in person a Jew Chona Abramowicz (son of Abram) Wierzbowicz, trader of 35 years, a resident of Zambrow, in the presence of witnesses, residents of Zambrow, sextons Israel Zybelman, 70 years, and Boruch Soliarz, 57 years, presented us a male new-born baby declaring that he was born in Zambrow on August 25/September 7, of the current year, from his lawful wife Szenjna (Sheyna) nee Kon, 32 years. The baby on circumcision was given the name David. The registration record was made and was read to us (by the clerk) to the applying and the witnesses, and was signed by us and witnesses, except for the applying because of him being illiterate.  

(In this context, being illiterate meant being unable to read or write Russian. The alternate dates is a result of the 13 days difference between the Gregorian calendar used in the West and the Julian calendar used in Russia.)

And so, sure enough, through the magic of the Internet, I had discovered another child born to my great grandparents of whom I had never heard.

Another record from JRI-Poland tells the next part of the story of David:

This records shows that, in 1926, 18 years after David was born, he died. (The letter “D” stands for “Death”.)

(The actual document that records his death has not yet been uploaded to JRI-Poland.)

My grandfather, who left Zambrow in 1920, must have personally known David for 12 years. My great aunt Adele, who was born in 1912 and left Zambrow in the late 1930s, would have known David from the time he was four years old. And yet, to my knowledge, neither ever mentioned him. Adele gave an extended oral history interview in which she listed each of her siblings in the order of their birth, yet she didn’t mention David. Neither my mother mother nor my aunt, both of whom spoke to me about family history, ever mentioned a child named David. Moreover, there are a number of family photographs from the 1920s of the children, and David does not appear in any of them.

This was not a case of infant mortality. David was 18 years old when he died. Presumably he celebrated a Bar Mitzvah in September, 1921, and attended his sister Chanche’s wedding in 1923. He was part of the Wierzbowicz family. Every one of his siblings knew him. Had I uncovered some kind of family secret that the Internet had unexpectedly revealed? What could have been the secret? Why the silence?

I can only conjecture as to the reasons for the cover-up. Perhaps he was born with Downs Syndrome. People with Down’s Syndrome have a shorter life span. In 1983, in the United States, the average life span of a Down’s Syndrome was 25 years. (https://www.globaldownsyndrome.org/about-down-syndrome/facts-about-down-syndrome/). (It is now up to 60 years.) It was undoubtedly lower than 25 years in the first quarter of the Twentieth Century in Poland.

Or perhaps he was born with one of the genetic disorders that are relatively common in Ashkenzi (European) Jews. The five most common, in order of probability of occurrence, are Gaucher Disease, Cystic Fibrosis, Tay-Sachs, Familial Dysautonomia, and Spinal Muscular Atrophy. (https://www.gaucherdisease.org/blog/5-common-ashkenazi-genetic-diseases/) All of these would result in physical abnormalities as well as shortened life span, although Tay-Sachs would generally result in death before the age of 5. David must have appeared healthy enough, at least, to have been circumcised eight days after his birth, as Jewish law permits a child to remain uncircumcised if the procedure would create a risk to the child’s health.

In any event, it seems likely that the reason he died young nor never mentioned or photographed was that he was afflicted with some medical condition that affected his appearance and health. If David were an otherwise healthy child who had died suddenly or as a result of an accident or illness, photographs of him would have existed and he would have been spoken of by his surviving siblings. His death would have passed down as a family tragedy instead of, what I surmise to have been, a family shame.

Shame is a powerful emotion, especially in traditional societies in which group dynamics outweigh those of individuality. (See https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/minority-report/201406/asian-shame-and-honor) “Parents of children born with a disability often suffer feelings of inappropriate guilt and shame.” (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01408408) A child who was nonconforming in terms of behavior or appearance would be a family “shanda,” a Yiddish word that denotes a strong sense of shame or disgrace. This shame would have led to David being ostracized from the family. A code of silence would have enveloped his existence. He would not be seen in family or public settings nor considered part of the family unit. This shame would account for his erasure from the family history.

Of course, these speculations can never be verified one way or the other. What I do know, however, is that, whatever the circumstances of David’s life and his death, his memory was not forgotten.

David had a sister named Paiche. While I do not know the exact year of her birth, I know she was born after Chanche, who was born in 1903. My best estimate is that she was born around 1905-1907, that is, one to three years before David’s birth. Of all the siblings, Paiche was the closest in age to David. They grew up together. Paiche may well have been the sibling with whom David was closest.

David died in 1926, and this event must have had an impact on Paiche. Paiche married Shimon Rosenberg in 1931. Soon thereafter they had a son. They named him David.

David may not have considered part of the family in life, but Paiche made sure he was not forgotten in death. Paiche kept his memory alive.

This is the last photograph I have of my Zambrow family, on the eve of the Nazi invasion of Poland, and it shows Paiche and David, along with her mother and sister Hinde:

One last note. In 1995, my own son was born. We named him Yosef after my grandfather. And we gave him the middle name of David, after Paiche’s son. I didn’t know then why Paiche had named her son David. But now I know now that my son is the third generation of Davids. The memory of two Davids, David son of Shimon and Paiche as well as David, son of Chona and Sheindl Wierzbowicz, continues to live.