Lest It Be Forgotten After I Am Gone: Prologue - 2
Raymon Benedyk traces his family roots back to the 'shtetl' of Topola near the city of Lodz in Poland.
Our story begins nearly two hundred years ago, probably sometime in the 1830's, when there is reputed to have been a Herschel Benedyk born who, probably in the late 1850's, married a Bluma Mindel. This family lived in the 'shtetl' of Topola near the city of Lodz in Poland, and made a living from their orchard and by trading horses. One of their children was my grandfather Abram, born about 1861. Nothing is really known about this family, and their very existence is only a vague item of knowledge now dragged from the recesses of someone's memory, to be brought to light in this chronicle as a starting point upon which to begin our story.
Of the seven sons and three daughters of my paternal grandparents Abram Benedykt and Sara Rifka Klajn, my father and his brothers ended up with their surname being spelt in English in at least four different ways, no doubt by the immigration officers they each encountered in their travels, i.e. Benedyk, Benedykt, Benedick and Benedik and, in this work, it might be found being spelt in any of these ways, besides a few others, by extended family. I apologise for any confusion this might cause in your reading of this account, but would ask that you be patient and aware of the depths I have gone to, to find correct dates and names of individuals to ensure correct identification of each of them, and their relationship with
each other, and record it for any of my family willing to study and retain it for our future.
My grandmother Sara Rivka Klajn born 1867, and Abram Benedykt married in 1882 when she was 15 or 16 years of age. In the 1880's they moved to the nearby small town of Leczyca. Between 1884 and 1904 she had ten surviving children as follows: Bluma-Mindel the eldest born in 1884, followed in order by Hillel 1885, Herschel 1886, Moshe Chaim 1888, Aaron 1896, Sima 1897, Zelig 1897, Alje (Albert, my father) 1899, Chana-Lea 1902 and Josef the youngest born in 1904. When I say my father was born in 1899, there is no certainty of the exact date, since apparently the arrangement of the day was that the local Registrar of births, marriages and deaths would come out from his office in the city two or three times a year to visit the towns and villages in his area, note the names of those whose circumstances had changed since his previous visit and, when he was back in his office, to record them as having happened on that day!
To highlight the unreliability of their birth records, my father and his London based brothers always suggested that Zelig and Sima might have been twins, because their records incongruously showed that they were born five months apart! Also, it was quite common practice at the time for there to be a delay in registering the birth of a son in the hope that the next child, if also a son, could be registered as a twin of the first so that one of the two could avoid being conscripted into the Russian army which, at the time, was for a period of fifteen years.
To be continued.
