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By Root 1150 0

Klausner, my first cousin, who was born the year before me and was murdered together with his parents, David and Malka, by Germans in Vilna when he was three, and also after my father Yehuda Arieh Klausner, who in turn was named after his grandfather Yehuda Leib Klausner from the village of Olkieniki in Lithuania, the son of Rav Ezekiel, the son of Rav Kadish, the son of Rav Gedaliah Klausner-Olkienicki, a descendant of Rabbi Abraham Klausner the author of the Sefer Haminhagim ("Book of Customs"), who lived in Vienna in the late fourteenth century. My brother David was named after Uncle David, my father's brother, the one who was murdered by Germans in Vilna. Three of my grandchildren bear the name of one of their grandparents (Maccabi Salzberger, Lote Salzberger, Riva Zucker-man). And so it goes.

At the time the Klausners settled in Odessa, in 1885, their eldest son, my great-uncle Joseph, was an infant prodigy of eleven, compulsively hard-working, a lover of Hebrew and thirsty for knowledge. He seemed to take after his cousins, the sharp-minded Klausners of Trakai, rather than his ancestors the farmers and carters from Olkieniki. His uncle, the Epicurean, Voltairian Menahem Braz, declared that little Joseph was destined for great things and supported his studies. His brother Alexander Ziskind, on the other hand, who was only four years old or so when they moved to Odessa, was a somewhat unruly and emotional child, who soon displayed an affinity with his father and grandfather, the rustic Klausners. He was not drawn to studying, and from an early age displayed a fondness for staying out of doors for extended periods, observing people's behavior, sniffing and feeling the world, being alone in the meadows and woods, and dreaming dreams. His liveliness, generosity, and kindness endeared him to all whom he met. He was universally known as Zusia or Zissel. And that was Grandpa Alexander.

There was also their younger brother, my great-uncle Bezalel, and three sisters, Sofia, Anna, and Daria, none of whom ever made it to Israel. So far as I have been able to ascertain, after the Russian Revolution Sofia was a literature teacher and later the headmistress of a school in Leningrad. Anna died before World War II, while Daria, or Dvora, and her husband Misha attempted to escape to Palestine after the Revolution but "got stuck" in Kiev because Daria was pregnant.*

Despite the help of their prosperous uncle Menahem and of other Odessa relations on the Braz side of the family, the Klausners fell on hard times soon after arriving in the city. The carter, Yehuda Leib, a strong, patient man who enjoyed life and loved joking, faded away after having to invest what was left of his savings in the purchase of a small, airless grocery shop from which he and his family eked out a precarious living. He longed for the open plains, the forests, the snowfields, his horse and cart, the inns and the river that he had left behind in Lithuania. After a few years he fell ill and soon died in his mean little shop when he was only fifty-seven. His widow, Rasha-Keila, for whose sake they had come all that way, lived on for twenty-five years after his death. She eventually died in the Bukharian Quarter of Jerusalem in 1928.

*Daria's daughter, Yvetta Radovskaya, a woman in her eighties, still corresponds with me. Aunt Yvetta, my father's cousin, left St. Petersburg after the collapse of the Soviet Union and settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Her only child, Marina, who was about my age, died in St. Petersburg in the prime of life. Nikita, Marina's only son, who is my children's generation, went to America with his grandmother but changed his mind after a short while and returned to Russia or Ukraine, where he married and now works as a country vet. His daughters are the same generation as my grandchildren.

While great-uncle Joseph was pursuing his brilliant student career in Odessa and later in Heidelberg, Grandpa Alexander left school at fifteen and turned his hand to a variety of petty trading ventures, buying something here and selling something there,