Cousins Find Each Other After Their Families Were Separated for 100 Years

In 1924, my grandfather Aaron, a respected musician and piano tuner, faced a difficult crossroads. His sister, Shaina, lost her family during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution and chose to leave their devastated homeland for Qingdao, China. Aaron and his family were living in Moscow, where they settled after leaving Elisavetgrad (Kropyvnytskyi), Ukraine, following the communist revolution and anti-Jewish riots that occurred there. Life in the early 1920s was difficult. Driven by the same sense of urgency and distress, Aaron, and his wife Katerina, followed Aaron’s sister from Moscow to China.

Alex Schneider

The journey to China was arduous and included long journeys by train and ship. Aaron and Katerina feared their young children would not withstand the journey’s hardships. Therefore, my grandfather decided to split the transition into two stages: in the first stage, Aaron would take their two older children with him — 7-year-old Mina and 5-year-old Rem, my father. In the meantime, Katerina and the younger children — 3-year-old Simon and the baby Fania — would remain in Moscow. The plan was that after Aaron settled in China, the rest of the family would join.

This plan went awry with the establishment of Stalin’s rule and his decision to separate the Soviet Union from the outside world. Katerina and the children could not leave Moscow, and communication between the parts of the family dwindled over several years until it was cut off completely, leaving Aaron and the two elder children alone in China and Katerina and the younger siblings without their father in Moscow.

For the rest of their lives, my father and his sister did not know what happened to their mother and younger siblings. The separation was extremely painful and affected them deeply. They grew up without a mother. Their father was busy trying to survive and support a family in a foreign land, and their aunt, who had no children, tried to care for the siblings as best she could.

Moving on from China

After the communist revolution in the late 1940s and early 1950s, many Jews were forced to leave China. Mina and her husband, Mark, were assisted by the Jewish Agency and settled in Israel. My father, Rem, spent several years in India before following his sister to Israel, where he met and married my mother, Ruth. My grandfather Aaron moved to a nursing home in Vevey, Switzerland, on the shores of Lake Geneva.

My father’s life experiences made him a better and more sensitive, involved, and caring parent. Together with my mother, who lost her father when she was 10 years old, and with the help of my maternal grandmother, Hana — who also served as a surrogate mother for my father — raised me and my younger sister Avital with lots of love and attention.

The separation from their mother and younger siblings deeply affected the souls of Mina and Rem. The mystery of the family separation, which lasted for over a century, became an integral part of their life story. For the rest of their lives, they tried to share this story with the next generation, hoping and believing that one day it would be resolved.

Solving the mystery

My journey to solve this family mystery began when I tried to locate the relatives of my grandmother, Hana Olitsky née Landau, who remained in Odessa after she and her husband’s family immigrated to Israel in 1924. Roey, my youngest son, also caught the genealogy bug, and we began to work together on researching our family. For the past 15 years, we have been able to build and expand the family tree on MyHeritage.

Recently, I decided to search for my father’s younger brother, Simon (Semen), who was born in Elisavetgrad in 1920 and was 3 years old when my father left for China. I didn’t find anything of note in my search. Still, a week later, MyHeritage sent me an email with a new search result: they had found a record in the Soviet Army memorial site documenting soldiers killed in World War II, with details that matched my search.

The MyHeritage finding was the critical key to finding the rest of the family. We found the details of his mother (my grandmother), who reported his death, and we located her grave.

The grave of Katerina Schneider Ravsky, the missing grandmother in Moscow

Connecting with a long-lost cousin

The file led to a series of breakthroughs that culminated in finding contact details for Michael Kogan, the son of my father’s sister, Fania (later called Francesca).

I called him. “Hello, this is Alex Schneider from Israel. Does the name Schneider mean anything to you?”

“Yes,” he answered, “Schneider is my grandmother’s maiden name. When she married my grandfather, her last name was Schneider.”

“No,” I corrected him. Schneider was not her maiden name but the last name of her first husband.”

“I didn’t know she had a first husband,” he said.

“And did you know she had other children?” I asked.

“No, but I don’t know much, and I’m guessing that my 71-year-old sister knows more than me,” he said, adding that he had just returned from a visit to Israel two weeks prior. “I will visit my sister tomorrow, and we will call you,” he promised. The next day, I spoke to his sister, Miriam. She had visited Israel several times without knowing she had any family here.

Piecing together the details

Miriam told me that when her mother was 16 years old, her mother — our grandmother Katerina — called her and revealed that Israel Ravsky, the man who had raised her as a daughter from a young age, was not her father. Katerina explained that they had registered Fania under Israel’s name because this gave them certain rights, as he was a required worker. Israel raised Fania and later her daughter Miriam, even buying her a piano. Miriam had been sure that he was her biological grandfather. Still, when she turned 17, her mother told her she was a Schneider: “Ravsky is not your biological grandfather,” she said to Miriam. “And we do not know anything about your biological grandfather, Aaron Schneider.”

Thanks to the link made by MyHeritage, the mystery was finally solved by piecing together details and identifying family ties that had been forgotten over time. My cousin Miriam sent us many family photos, many of which we’d never seen before, including pictures of my grandmother and childhood photos of my uncle Simon.

The mission was completed: we found our grandmother, my father’s brother and sister, and her descendants. The family reunification 100 years after the separation caused great excitement on both sides: with Francesca’s children, who found a family they didn’t know existed, and with us, my cousins and my sister. We’ve made sure to keep in touch to this day.

Many thanks to Alex for sharing this incredible story with us! If you’ve also made an amazing discovery through MyHeritage, we’d love to hear about it. Please share it with us via this form or email us at stories@myheritage.com.