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The Kukla family consists of the nine sons of MORDECHAI KUKLA, and a much smaller number of descendants from his three brothers. I believe that I have become the greatest Kukla expert in the world, because I understand how each of us is related. As the Kukla family spread out into the world, the spelling of the name changed to COOKLIN - COOKLER - KUKLER - CUCKLE - KUKILL - COOPER - KUKLYA - KUKLIN - COOK - COOKLYN - KUKLE - and of course KUKLA itself. and of course from the women who married, their names changed to KALINA - SMERIN - BOBROFF - CASPER - RICHMAN - RABINOWITZ - COHEN - EVANS - JESNER - LOWE - LAPINSKY - LUKEMAN - VOSK - GOSS - BOSS - CRAMER - KHOURY - DUDLEY - NISSEN - SHINE - NAISTETER - MENDELOWITZ - LEOPOLD - BROD - BROZGOL - DINER - DAVIS - ROTHSCHILD - KATZ - TOKER - XERXENEVSKY - PENCHARZ - ALTSHULER - NATHANSON - VINEGRAD - and so many more. But all of those names are TRUE Kukla descendants from those original nine brothers. Every single Kukla from Latvia who is Jewish is connected to either those nine sons of MORDECHAI (that’s 90%) or Mordechai’s three brothers GETZEL, ELIASCH, or ZALMAN, but MORDECHAI’s descendants by about 1880 made up for almost half the residents of the stettel of RECHYTSA (now called REZEKNE). And so originally, twenty years ago, back in 1996, after a long period of very intense research, we held an amazing Cooklin Family Reunion party, on the 21st July 1996, which was a special event held for all the descendants of Hatzkel Cooklin. Four hundred people came to the Roof Gardens in Kensington, from all over the world, and it even made the BBC evening news. At that time, despite our best efforts, we had no evidence of who Hatzkel’s brothers and sisters might have been. Without the old records from Latvia which are now accessible on the internet, especially the amazing work of a lady, Christine Usdon, now deceased, we were simply fumbling in the dark, so we couldn’t really trace past Hatzkel. Now, it’s twenty years later, and we are so much older and wiser. Hatzkel’s father Mordechai Kukla had ten children - nine boys and just one single girl, Rochel-Khaya, who never married and sadly died childless at only 45 years old. From ALL NINE of these boys, Hirsch, Elikim, Abram, Lazer, Yehuda, Berka, Josel, Azrael, and of course Hatzkel himself, we have now miraculously traced a couple of thousand living descendants of the sons of MORDECHAI, himself the son of ABA KUKLA. Given the Nazis attempt at genocide, to wipe the Jewish race off the face of this planet, this survival of relatives from the nine different branches is a major miracle, and while we mourn the cousins whose bright burning candles were snuffed out forever during the Shoah, we must surely celebrate the survival of the living descendants from each and every branch of our spectacular family. I can knowledgeably attest to the fact that some descendants from six out of our nine branches were slaughtered mercilessly. I actually cried, while looking in abject horror, at more than two hundred Kukla names, listed from the town of Rechytsa, preserved and documented on the Yad Veshem website, all exterminated forever, including any future offspring they would have created. Mercilessly eradicated forever, and crushed out of our family. And yet Hatzkel himself has, to this date, eight hundred descendants, who all managed to avoid the Holocaust altogether, which is a major miracle and a triumph for the Jewish race. Conversely, it does seem that plenty of his brother Hirsch’s descendants were wiped out, including his son Idel Kukla, at eighty four years old, but thankfully, many other descendants of Hirsch were safe in America, much of these due to Hirsch’s grandson, Isay Kukla emigrating to New York, in 1905. The stories of Abram’s descendants fleeing from Latvia in 1941 are told by his great grandson Tewel Kukla, on a priceless video recorded some years before his death by his nephews. But despite finding so many survivors from all these wonderful family lines, one son, Josel, is a complete enigma because he was a tailor to the Tsar in St. Petersburg, and had nine children, just like his brother Hatzkel. The fact we have still to this date only located ten living descendants from him, the immediate family of Girsh Kuklya, and one cousin in Riga, must remain the greatest unsolved mystery of the Kukla family. I utterly REFUSE to believe that every other descendant of these nine children of Josel, fell victim to the Nazis - surely SOME must have survived. But if so, WHERE are they ??? And so the search goes on. And will never end. But for this priceless documentary there had to come a point when we stopped looking to bring it to completion. My researcher in New York, Rachel Silverman, found out that the earliest Kukla was Aba Kukla, the first one after the Tsar gave the Jews surnames - every Jewish Latvian Kukla comes from Aba Kukla - we estimate he lived from approximately 1770 to 1830. Mordechai lived from 1794 to 1860 roughly. His nine sons were born between 1821 and 1845.
Every single one of our family in Latvia was born with the name KUKLA, but as they moved out into the world, the name became spelt differently. On my side, which happens to be by far the biggest branch, with over 800 descendants of HATZKEL KUKLA, they all arrived in England between 1896 and 1905, including HATZKEL himself. Nothing was left behind in Latvia except the graves of HATZKEL’s wife SARAH and one child MIKHEIL who died at three years old. In England we all became called COOKLIN. HIRSCH’s descendants also became KUKLIN or in some cases COOKLER Many of ABRAM’s branch also became COOKLIN. BERKA’s descendants became COOKLYN with a “Y”. So now in 2016, there are more KUKLA descendants called COOKLIN than any other variation of the name. That is why I called my documentary “THE COOKLINS ANTHOLOGY”. But it is the entire story of the KUKLA family. It really should have been called “THE KUKLA ANTHOLOGY” but it is too late to change it now. But we all share a rare opportunity that very few other Jewish families ever get. Spanning a complete set of eight generations, we have managed to trace every single solitary descendant of our own wonderful branch of the Cooklln family, the descendants of Hatzkel Cooklin. But it doesn’t stop there. The new game plan became obvious - we now absolutely HAD to trace the descendants of Hatzkel’s eight brothers, Berka, Hirsch, Azrael, Elikim, Josel, Lazer, Yehuda, and Abram.