Harvey, son of Gussie (Harry and Sarah Nesses's oldest daughter) and Jerry
Smolinsky, had his Bar Mitzvah and affair at the Jewish Community Centre of
Bensonhurst in 1954.
Seated at this table are, from l. to r., Isidor (Izzy) Oshinsky and his wife
Monia, Saul Fenster and his wife Pearl Stubin (nee Szczupakiewicz), and
Frieda (nee Sobel) and Harry Oshinsky.
Standing in back, from l. to r., Morton Stubin (ne Motel
Szczupakiewicz) and his wife Edith (nee Rytolc), and Sam Ocean (ne Osinski)
and his wife Eva (nee Lakin).
Izzy, Harry and Sam were three of the children of
Eliezer Litman Osinski, who came from one of the shtetls surrounding
Sniadowo, in the Lomza area of Russian Poland. Litman had immigrated
to the United States leaving behind his children (who later emigrated), but went back
to Poland cir 1915 to bring back his second wife who had also remained in
Poland. However, they both passed away there. She passed away in 1919;
he in 1921, one or both as a consequence of the flu pandemic. His second
wife, Eta Chana nee Gniazdowicz, was a sibling to the mother of Motel and
Perel Szczupakiewicz, Srulke Gniazdowicz (my ggfather), and was the mother
of four children. His first wife Dwejra Klausewitch (Klossewicz) had passed
away in Poland at an early age, and he subsequently remarried Eta Chana cir
1889. Together, Litman and his first wife had two children who also
immigrated to the United States.
When my grandfather, nee Avraham Chona (Harry) Gniazdowicz
emigrated from Russian Poland in 1906, he did so with Sam Ocean (then
Schleime Osinski). They were both teenagers at the time. According to the
ship manifest, both immigrated with the surname "Oschensky."
All of them at one time lived in Brooklyn, New York, though
when they arrived at Ellis Island, they were to meet their "father" Licman
Oschensky, who, like many other Jews at the time, was living in a tenement
on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
THE GNIAZDOWICZ COUSINS
at a Bar Mitzvah
affair
August 1965
Seated, l. to r.,
Saul Fenster, the wife of Sam Ocean, who is seated to her left, and Rose Morgenstern, oldest daughter of Jake and Zlate Cohen. Standing, l. to r.,
Pearl Fenster (she and Morton Stubin are siblings, and children of
Juszk Szczupakiewicz and Itka Gniazdowicz), Harry Ness (Chona Jankiel, son
of Avram Ick Gniazdowicz and Szjena Loba (Lava?) of the Gniazdowo shtetl, near Sniadowo), Lou
Morgenstern (Rose's husband), and Morton Stubin (nee Motel Szczupakiewicz,
from Ostrow Mazowiecka, and later Czyzew).
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