From: Karen Kirshner

Thank you for the work you did on the Chidekel page of Sharkovschina (and should include Skuntiki next door) It’s my maternal grandmother’s paternal line and I believe the two Tarbot School Teachers who were Chidekel were my Grandmother’s family only because she said her family were always teachers, on her mother’s line (rabbis).

I could find my Great Uncle Meyer Chidekel with his wife Chana and two children in Yad Vashem, but do not know if he had any more children and there is a question of him owning a Tea House business or being a teacher, and there is his wife’s maiden name I don’t know and it would help to know because I have done Family Tree DNA testing and it would help clarify connections. I had my cousin David Chidakel’s Y DNA tested too. He was the grandson of my Great Grandfaher Itzyk Chidekel’s brother’s son. The brother of my Great Grandfather was also David. Sheila Lev Tov is David’s sister. Josie (Chidekel) Barnett, whose Grandmother was my Grandmother Liba/Lily’s second cousin, married to her third cousin. Cousins kept marrying….Josie was the source of the contact with David and Sheila after I found out the brother lived int he same shtetl My GGrandfather settled, Suntiki. I know the Levin line of his future father-in-law was there as well. Do you have any information about my Great Aunt Brochka (Chidekel) who I believed was married to Aaron Mirkin? They had children and she may have had a grandchild or more.when her home with the children and her elderly mother (Masha Levin Chidekel) were inside when the Nazis invaded “Poland” ca. Sept. 1941. They were in Skuntiki or should have been there. Meyer was listed as being in Nowy Powost, maybe a name for the area?  I have seen no records ever mentioning my Grandmother’s sister Brochka. Do you have any information about her and her children and if she was definitely married to Aaron Mirkin? I have a photo of the two of them on a postcard, which was done for couples and families. I know she was married with children and I do think I recall my grandmother telling me he was her husband.  Also my Great Aunt Raycha (Chidekel) married to my Great Uncle Khona Berman  had children all supposed to have been murdered in Sharkovschinna, and I found them listed at one point, but would like any additional Berman info. you may have. I believe from the DNA testing of my maternal Uncle and matches he has had with many Epsteins, not Bermans, that my Bermans were once Epsteins. Epstein and Gurevichs where two lines of one family. My Grandmother  Liba (Chidekel) Berman was in fact a cousin of Yitzhak Gurevich who survived the war in the Russian Army and lived in Vilnius afterwards as a black market businessman, and brought his second family (first killed) to NY in the late 1970s, just missing my grandmother as she died May 14, 1975, so I had to rely on what he told me without English. I knew of the cousins and an Aunt in Vilnius, and his stories meshed with mine. Then there is the connection to the Denmark Chidekels.. My grandmother told me of an aunt and cousins there. She had family in Denmark and I thought elsewhere, besides many in Argentina. How could I find the family in Denmark now?

I am very interested in knowing when the Berman of Ludhki, which was Shepsel who married Bashya (Perelman) living with Israel Berman as head of household and the name I was told was his father’s , when was he a Berman? Was the name always Berman or did Shepsel take Israel’s surname as a rescued yeshiva boy (as he was in Yeshiva there) and may have been one of the kidnapped five boys who were saved by the  wealthiest men of the town, who paid the ransom. Was his name really Epstein or another name, as one DNA match suggested?  Are there any records available now that go back before  1860s where I could see birth w family names for that town, and then they moved to Sharkschinna where they managed an orchard and were murdered by two workers who came at Sabbath night to rob them and killed two grandchildren staying over for the weekend, last name Sher.  I would like to know more of that, since my Grandmother said the men were caught. Maybe it was documented and available in translation?  The Epstein or Berman question is big and would explain why we match with those who are related to Epsteins vs. Bermans from previous generations via DNA.

I have many more questions, of course. My cousin Marie Farber, whose husband is my mother’s definite DNA relation and is the nephew of one of Yitzhak Gurevich’s children, has sent me the Chidekel information you had posted.
You have amazingly vast knowledge and I have been helped by your input before.Karen Kirshner