ABRAHAM POLLAK (ISRAEL)
Abraham Pollak never had children, and he felt sorry to give his money to strangers. So he died all by himself, without any instructions. And what now? Now we are looking for relatives. In Israel, it was believed that Abraham was originally from Kyiv, but no one can prove that now. Archives from that period have been preserved, but there is no such name in them – Abraham Pollak.
What is known about Abraham is that his father was named Naum Pollak. About Naum Pollak we know that he was a temperamental man, because he conceived his son Abraham 18 years after his son Meneshek. It is unlikely that Meneshek outlived Abraham, but perhaps he, being older and more experienced, managed to continue his line? In any case, now any of the Pollaks living in Ukraine can claim some inheritance if they prove that Abraham and Meneshek are their relatives.
JOSEPH HILERT (GILERT)
The thrifty German Joseph (with a surname starting with an unclear letter) accumulated a considerable fortune during his honest life. But what's the use? No wife, no children, no sisters, no brothers... In Nova Volyn, where Joseph was born in 1891, no one remembers him or his relatives. They say ethnic Germans lived there before the war, but where they went is unclear. Whether the Soviet authorities deported them to "northern sanatoriums," or the Germans took them home to Germany, or they left on their own... In any case, there is not a single Gilert or Hilert in Ukraine now. Complete apocalypse.
All that remains is a tiny probability that Joseph had a sister who got married and changed her surname, and the sister, for example, had a daughter – or even two, and they also changed their surnames to sweet-sounding Slavic ones. Or maybe someone remembers Grandpa Hilert-Gilert, huh, girls? The money will be lost...
JOSEF BALZER
Just don't tell me you played with Josef Balzer in the same sandbox as children. Josef's father Julius, born in 1876, first relocated his surname from Mukachevo to the States and only there had offspring. His mother, a Pole by birthplace, might have been against the move, but later agreed: after all, life in America seems more reliable, you have to think about grandchildren, their well-being, not about the happiness of the homeland. Meanwhile, there were no grandchildren. Well, Josef Balzer couldn't father anyone, even though conditions were good and medicine was top-notch. The surname is lost! And not only in the States, but in Ukraine they can't find a single Balzer to hand over Josef's "savings." Maybe some plague befell the Balzers?
MARIA (MARY) SLADKOVA (SOLODOVNIKOVA)
Mary's heirs are being sought throughout the former Soviet Union, but what can you do? Mary, in our language – Maria, born in 1923, a native of the USA, died last year without a will, the last of the Solodovnikov family, which also included father Pyotr, mother Stella (Estelle), and children Olga and Konstantin.
The father of the family, Karinta Pyotr Solodovnikov (in America, did they start writing his name in the Spanish style – Karinta Pyotr?), was born in 1889. On February 15, 1911, Pyotr Solodovnikov-Karitka, a "Cossack-foreigner," was issued a passport with a seal for unimpeded travel abroad. He took his wife Estelle, née Kobelevskaya, by the arm and at the age of 30 departed abroad.
Where he went is known for sure – where else could one earn so much – but where the Solodovnikovs came from is unclear. There is a version that they grew homesick in the distant lands while living in the Bryansk region, in a village called either Tsurupino or Tsuripovo, Mglin district. For the Cossack Pyotr, it should be understood, whether Tsurupino or Tsuripovo – it's all the same swamp, and now the lawyers have a problem: where to look for relatives? And the relatives could use the money: whether in Tsurupino or Tsuripovo, life hasn't gotten much better since 1911...
ALEXANDRA (BARBARA) KAMINSKA
Smart people always have a difficult character. Whoever doesn't believe it, let them read about Alexandra Kaminska.
Alexandra, a US citizen since 1996 and deceased since 1998, was born, as she told her American acquaintances, on May 5, 1917 in Poland, in Brzezaly (apparently, this is Berezan near Lviv). Her father was Adolf Josef Kaminski, son of Mikhail Kaminski and Paulina Olszewska (Orzewska). Her mother was Aniela Bronowski, daughter of Jan Bronowski and Barbara Chochel (Wochel). Alexandra also had a brother, a man with an unhappy fate: he committed suicide after learning of the death of his wife and children in a concentration camp. Alexandra never married in America, had no children, so we have to look for cousins, and that's not so easy.
The fact is that when Alexandra Kaminska came to America to start a new life, she decided to make herself ten years younger. Judging by the fact that her personal life did not work out, she failed to deceive the picky American men. But the lawyers were at a loss until they found at Lviv University, where Mrs. Kaminska taught, her autobiography and a marriage certificate with a certain Ivanitsky, with whom she, not getting along, soon separated. So, in the autobiography, Alexandra writes in her own hand that she was born in 1907, and the following year her father, a railway worker by profession, died. Alexandra finished school in Rzeszow (Poland), then studied German and French, first at Krakow University, and from 1925 to 1930 at Lviv University, from which she graduated with a master's degree in philology. From 1927 to 1934 she taught at a school in Rzeszow, then in Ternopil, in Stryi, and was chief accountant at Voienstroy in Lviv. "Under the Germans" she worked as a clerk, then returned to pedagogy: she was a school principal in the Lviv suburb of Vynnyky. The principal lived in Lviv at 16 Lisna Street. From 1945 to 1946, Alexandra Kaminska taught German at Lviv University, from where she left due to moving to Poland with a good reference. Well, we know where she was going...
Alexandra spoke French and German well, and was, apparently, an ambitious woman. And we tell about her in such detail because the ambitious woman most likely lied to the Americans not only about her date of birth, but also about some other circumstances. For example, no documentary evidence was found of her parents' marriage, nor of her father's death. The confusion arising from this greatly hinders the search for heirs and delays the solemn moment of their reunion with the American aunt's savings.
"Zagranitsa" No. 4, 1999.