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Adrian Korsner and Glenn Easton

It’s all relative: A riddle of roots

Connected by more than DNA, long-lost cousins share their love of Israel

 

Adrian Korsner of Barnet, North London and Glenn Easton of Chevy Chase, Maryland share more than DNA. In June, they will visit Jerusalem as delegates from their communities, representing the Mercaz (Conservative/Masorti) slate to the World Zionist Organization Congress.

 

Glenn, 47, grew up hearing about mysterious English cousins and Adrian, 62, had heard about distant American cousins, but neither knew much about the other. Independently, each man became a serious family historian and genealogy hobbyist, but their research only recently re-connected the branches of the family. They finally met in 2005.

 

Glenn’s great-great-grandfather was Zeidel Kirzner (later Joseph Kershner), born September 10, 1881, while Adrian’s grandfather was Yakov Kirzner (later Jacob Korsner), born Jankel Gersh Korzner on February 6, 1883. The sons of Gitel were born in Pilove/Pilyava, near Kamenitz Podolsk (Vinnitsa), Bessarabia, Russia,

 

Ten years ago, Adrian entered information in the JewishGen Family Finder www.jewishgen.org/jgff/ for the Korsner family of Zhitomir.

 

In the early 1990s, Adrian had attempted to track down the elusive cousins, even visiting Philadelphia and Washington, DC to try and find them. His late father Lewis remembered the American uncle’s address and that he was a bagel baker, but not his name.

 

Eventually, Adrian found the family in the 1920 U.S. Federal Census, but the trail went cold. He had a telegram, sent to his parents on their wedding, from Sylvia and Al Kershner. This was a major clue when he found a Kershner baker family with Al, Kate and Rose (“the same names as my dad’s sisters”).

 

Although Glenn had the resources of Joseph’s daughter, his great-grandmother Sonia, she knew little about the English cousins. In July 2003, Glenn found Adrian’s JewishGen Family Finder entry.

 

“Since some of my Kershner lived in Zhitomir, I wrote to Adrian,” he says. “I don’t usually write to such listings, particularly when there’s no email address for an easy response. But, for some reason, I decided to mail him a letter with a copy of my family tree.”

 

Adrian read Glenn’s letter and tree, saw similar first names and towns. He didn’t see an immediate connection, but sent his tree to Glenn, who was shocked to see his recently deceased grandmother’s name at the bottom of one of Adrian’s branches. She had left a photo album of people unknown to Glenn or his mother – some had “London” on the back – while from London, Adrian called to say he also had unknown photos, known only as the “American cousins.” The men scanned and exchanged photos via email.

 

As photographs from London filled his screen, Glenn saw his great-grandmother Sonia/Shirley Kershner, grandparents Robert Schultz and Pearl Schwartz Schultz, mother Maxine Schultz Easton as a baby, and great-great-grandfather Joseph Kershner. When Adrian opened the American photos, he saw his father, Lewis Joseph Korsner, as a child and his grandparents, Jacob and Etka/Etta Korsner.

 

The cousins had found each other, but there is more to the story.

 

Brothers, fathers: Immigration

 

Gitel (known later as Katie, although she died in Pilove), and the family may have originated in Kursenai, Lithuania, a village of 841 souls, just west of Siauliai (Shavli in Yiddish). There’s a puzzle as to the identity of Gitel’s husband or husbands: Avraham Leib Kirzner or Yakov Yitzhak Kirzner – or both.

 

According to memorial stones, Zeidel/Joseph’s father was Yakov Yitzhak, while Yakov/Jankel/Jacob’s father was Avraham Leib – possibly named for Gitel’s late husband.

 

Glenn’s great-grandmother Sonia (Joseph’s daughter) told him that her grandfather Abraham died young and her grandmother Gitel worked as a cook or maid in the home of a rich Zhitomir family; she could have remarried, perhaps to a cousin with the same surname.

 

In 1904, brothers Zeidel/Joseph and Yakov/Jacob flee their Pilyava home to avoid army conscription, which frightened their ill mother Gitel. Zeidel’s wife and family stayed to care for her.

 

In any case, the brothers decide to go to America where they have an uncle, a bagel baker in Philadelphia. They board a ship that stops in England, and they plan to take another to the City of Brotherly Love.

 

On the voyage to England or soon after their arrival, Yakov is robbed, losing the funds for his ticket to America. Their uncle is waiting for them, so Yakov tells Zeidel to take the scheduled ship from Liverpool; he’ll stay behind, find a job to earn money for his ticket and join him later.

 

Zeidel arrives in Philadelphia (SS Merion, December 14, 1904). On the manifest, his name is spelled Kirzner, and it looks like he is going to someone (difficult to read) identified as his father.

 

Soon after his arrival in England, Yakov finds a job, but also falls in love with Etka Rabinowitz from Bod Gass (Bath Street), Plunge, Lithuania. They marry August 5, 1906, at the East London United Synagogue and their first child is born in 1907.

 

Now a tailor known as Jacob Korsner, he and his wife remain in London and have children and grandchildren. They live on Linthorpe Road in Stamford Hill, are members of Egerton Road Synagogue and, in 1931, Jacob becomes a British citizen. He dies in 1955, Etka 18 months later; both are buried in Edmonton Cemetery.

 

Zeidel, now Joseph Kershner, begins work as a Philadelphia bagel baker. His wife Bessie and children, Sonia/Shirley and Abraham/Albert, leave Russia via Bremen, Germany and arrive in Philadelphia (SS Haverford, March 22, 1906). Bessie later dies in childbirth; Joseph marries twice more, eventually having nine children and grandchildren.

 

Although the brothers never see each other again, they keep in touch until the 1950s, writing letters and sending photos – contact is eventually lost and no one knows why.

 

Adrian says that Jacob asked his daughter Rose to “write to my brother,” and she did so, even after her father died. “We didn’t know who she wrote to,” says Adrian, as Rose died in 1978, before he began his quest. Unfortunately, her husband threw out the letters which would have been crucial clues. “The last address we had for Joseph was 2608 N. Stanley St., Philadelphia.”

 

Occasionally, someone in each family would mention the “other” cousins, but the third generation knew nothing of the two brothers.

 

Quest, questions: Some answers

 

As Glenn began researching his family tree in high school, it became a passionate hobby.

 

His great-grandmother was still alive, and was a great primary source, although many of her memories were incorrect. She recalled coming through Ellis Island, but two decades later, using Internet resources, he discovered she had landed in Philadelphia!

 

Before becoming a history major in college, Glenn had attended a mid-1970s workshop led by Jewish genealogy pioneer Arthur Kurzweil, where he discovered the excitement and inspiration of “mishpachology.”

 

While studying his history, Glenn had nagging questions which encouraged continuing his quest. “I was not aware of any relative who had been involved in, escaped from, or was killed in the Holocaust,” says Glenn. “Perhaps I felt a sense of guilt about this as I studied the horrors of this dark period of Jewish history. Unfortunately, I later found family lost in the Holocaust.”

 

Adrian regrets that he hasn’t yet been able to discover information about the family before they left Ukraine and Lithuania. “We have no known family from the old countries and this seems impossible,” he says. ”There are some interesting mysteries to be sorted out like the father with two names. But I guess we will never know.”

 

Glenn wondered whether he was the only member of his family interested in Jewish life, Jewish practice, Jewish study and the State of Israel. A fourth-generation American, he says his family was “more likely to have a Christmas tree than Shabbat candles.”

 

Although his parents sent him to a Conservative synagogue’s afternoon religious school, “I had no family members with whom to share my Jewish observance, my love of Israel and my involvement in the Conservative/Masorti movement. Remarkably, I found such a landsman in my cousin Adrian.”

 

Glenn is the executive director of Adas Israel, a Conservative congregation with some 1,600 households in Washington, DC, and president of the North American Association of Synagogue Executives, the umbrella organization for Conservative congregation administrators, He is one of 145 American delegates from the Mercaz (Conservative/Masorti) slate to the WZO Congress.

 

Adrian, an active member of both the UK Masorti movement and the London Jewish community, will also be a Mercaz delegate representing his country. “It seems incredible that Glenn and I should both have a great love for Israel and independently found our way to Mercaz, the Conservative Zionist organization.”

 

Technically, adds Glenn, “Adrian and I are second cousins twice removed, but realistically, we could be brothers sharing the same family tree, heritage, passions, personal practices, peoplehood and love of Israel.” Adrian and his family have traveled to meet the American cousins, also attending the bat mitzvah of Glenn’s daughter.

 

Have you entered your family names and locations in the JewishGen Family Finder? Someone somewhere is looking for you right now. Go to www.jewishgen.org/JGFF.

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.09.06, 20:21
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