| _ORIGIN |
Judith Sharoff writes in July 2025: Based on recollections of family and records in Ancestry.com, we are able to trace the Wilensky family (my family) back to a town in Belarus translated in English as Rechytsa. Founded sometime in the 12th century, it was located on the Rechytsa River and gave access to northern Ukraine and its capital Kiev. Over the years, it became known for furniture-making. Today, it has a population of 65,000 but in its heyday, the population may have been as large as 200,000, of which 50% may have been Jewish. At one point, it was home to Grand Rabbi Schneerson and his Hasidic disciples, although they represented only a portion of the Jews there. Some of the Jews were more active as Socialists and even Bolsheviks.
Somewhere around 1880, Fraya Shatin married Jacob Wilensky and started to raise a family. The names, however, are English translations and the original names may in fact vary. By 1910-1915, they had several children including Moe, Fred, Helen, Hatty and Lillian (English translations, of course). The husband Jacob went off to America and eventually the wife and family went to join him. They apparently met up again in Montreal where Judy's mother, Dorothy, the last-born of the family, was born in 1917. Most of the family moved on to New York in succeeding years, although a few remained in Canada. [1] |
