Goldstein, Battalen, Challov & Ronen Family Histories

Category: Terespol

  • The OTHER other Sol Goldstein (not the gangster, not my grandfather…)

    THIS Sol was one of the few Goldsztern family members to survive the Shoah.  My grandfather Sol told me that his brother Yudel Moshe’s son Sol had immigrated to Palestine in about 1936 and that he later came to the US.   My cousins Sharon Suckman Kimelstein, Lorraine Eisner Fitelson and Maxine Eisner Pollack remembered hearing […]

  • Surprise!  Uncle Shimon Goldstein Hands Us a Mystery

    From knowing next to nothing about this branch of the family, details – one  rather astonishing – are now being discovered. To remind you, Uncle Shimon is the older brother of my grandfather Sol Goldstein.  Their parents were Berl Fayvel Goldsztern and Yocheved Rozenzumen.  Along with Sol, he and his brother Meyer were the only […]

  • Surviving the Holocaust:  Before, During and After

    The gates of memory opened for Pnina Goldsztern Shaufer (Perla) when I first spoke with her in October 2019, flooding her with memories and details of her young life in Poland.  Based on conversations with her and her brother Shraga (Fayvel), I have pieced together this story of their family’s life in Poland before World […]

  • Finding the Surviving Goldstein’s

    Finding Goldstein cousins who survived the Holocaust is the highlight and most gratifying success of my genealogical research.  Here’s how it happened: Clue Number 1:  Grandpa Sol Goldstein had told me that the family name in Poland was “Goldshtern” (Goldsztern in Polish).  The name was written as “Goldstein” on his brother Shimon’s ship manifest in […]

  • The Goldsztern’s & Brisk (Brest) in World War II

    Before the start of World War ll on September 1, 1939, Brest and Terespol were both part of Poland.  Terespol is on the west side of the Bug River and Brest is on the east side, so members of the Goldsztern family moved easily between Terespol and Brest (Brisk); the two entities had been closely […]

  • Earliest Generations of Goldstein’s

    More information! Earlier this year I hired a genealogical researcher in Poland named Tadeusz Przystojecki; I had gone about as far as I could using the Internet. Tadeusz has provided a lot of information taken from the Polish State Archives and from local Polish archives (anything under 100 years old stays in local archives). I’ve […]

  • The Goldstein-Rozensumen (Ben-Dov) Reunion in the Motor City

    Cousins of the Goldstein and Ben-Dov branches of the Rozensumen family met, for the first time in more than 100 years, on April 25 in Detroit, during Passover.   As a reminder, ROZENSUMEN was the maiden name of Sol Goldstein’s mother, Yachet (aka Yocheved/Yetta).  Yosi Ben-Dov, who had found me through MyHeritage is the head of […]

  • The Goldstein’s of Terespol

    Because my family left New York when my mother was pregnant with me, in late summer 1951, I didn’t get to know my grandparents well.  We made more-or-less annual treks back to Brooklyn, usually for Passover, sometimes in the summer.  Those were twelve-hour car trips which we did in one day, stopping at a roadside […]