{"id":95092,"date":"2016-10-07T16:08:03","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T23:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/?p=95092"},"modified":"2016-10-07T16:08:03","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T23:08:03","slug":"first-cousins-reunited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/first-cousins-reunited-95092.html","title":{"rendered":"First Cousins Reunited"},"content":{"rendered":"

We love hearing stories of families reunited through Geni. Recently, Eli Rabinowitz finally found\u00a0his first cousin Zara Smushkovich<\/a> after being separated\u00a0for over 35 years! The discovery was made thanks to the help of a friendly person on Facebook\u00a0who found the family tree on Geni.<\/p>\n

\"First<\/a><\/p>\n

Zara’s father, David, and Eli’s mother, Rachel<\/em><\/p>\n

Zara’s father, David Zeldin, and Eli’s mother, Rachel, were siblings. During World War II, David had joined the Soviet Army. His children, Mendel and Zara, spent the years during the war with their mother, Esther, in a refugee camp near Tashkent, Uzbekistan.<\/p>\n

\"First<\/a><\/p>\n

Family photo in Israel taken in the late 1970s<\/em><\/p>\n

Eli had first met his cousin Zara in 1975 on Kibbutz Tzora in Israel. Known to the family as Sofka, Zara had arrived with her family in 1973 from Riga, Latvia. A few years later, Zara and her family left Israel for Canada and the family lost touch.<\/p>\n

Over the past several\u00a0years, Eli had found and connected with many extended Zeldin family members, but none knew the whereabouts of Zara and her family, nor did they remember her surname.<\/p>\n

\"First<\/a><\/p>\n

Joint Soviet passport for Zara and her daughter<\/i><\/p>\n

It wasn’t until he wrote to the Latvian Archives that he was finally able to find a clue. At the suggestion of a friend, he reached out to the Personnel Archives, which held files of families living abroad, and uncovered documents for the Zeldin family. The archives\u00a0were able to send Eli a 1973 joint Soviet passport for Zara and her daughter, Alla Khelem. He had a friend translate her surname, which was written in cyrillic script.\u00a0The surname was SMUSHKOVICH, and it was\u00a0the key to finding the\u00a0answers he was looking for.<\/p>\n

\"First<\/a><\/p>\n

The Geni profile for Zara’s husband Meir Smushkovich<\/em><\/p>\n

Eli\u00a0posted his discovery online to\u00a0Facebook and JewishGen hoping someone would be able to help\u00a0locate\u00a0his first cousin. Within an hour, he received the link to the Geni profile for Zara’s late husband, Meir Shmushkovich<\/a> on Facebook. It turns out Zara’s grandson, Alon, had added the family tree on Geni back in 2009. Coincidentally, Eli had joined\u00a0Geni in 2007. Soon he was emailed Zara’s phone number in Toronto\u00a0and after being separated for over 35 years, Eli finally spoke to his long lost cousin on the phone!<\/p>\n

\"First<\/a><\/p>\n

Skype chat with Alon<\/em><\/p>\n

Eli\u00a0is now also in contact with Alon and their family trees on Geni are finally connected!<\/p>\n

Congratulations to Eli and his family on this exciting discovery! Read Eli’s blog post<\/a>\u00a0for the full details about\u00a0his journey to find his cousin Zara.<\/p>\n

All photos courtesy of Eli Rabinowitz<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We love hearing stories of families reunited through Geni. Recently, Eli Rabinowitz finally found\u00a0his first cousin Zara Smushkovich after being separated\u00a0for over 35 years! The discovery was made thanks to the help of a friendly person on Facebook\u00a0who found the family tree on Geni. Zara’s father, David, and Eli’s mother, Rachel Zara’s father, David Zeldin, and Eli’s mother, Rachel, were siblings. During World War II, David had joined the Soviet Army. His children, Mendel and… Read the full story<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":95146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[261,6652,6653,6559],"class_list":["post-95092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-geni","tag-reunion","tag-success-story","tag-user-story"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95092"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95092"}],"version-history":[{"count":43,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95181,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95092\/revisions\/95181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.geni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}