Many years ago my father found an old family photo in a box filled with other family memorabilia. This was the only family photo left of the Kobrinas family from the time they lived in Lithuania. In the photo are Itzik and Chava Kobrinas, and their kids - Chaimas and Leonas (Arie) Kobrinas. In the center of the photo, next to Chava, there is a young woman, possibly in her late teens. As this was the only photo left of the Kobrinas family, my father placed it in the family album that he put together, never wondering who the mystery young woman in the center of the photo was.

When my father showed me the photo, my first question was: “who is the woman next to your grandmother?” My father had no idea. Could it be a friend or maybe a family member? He never even noticed this young woman before.

The question of who the mystery young woman in the photo was came up again after receiving documents from the Lithuanian archives in 2014. In these documents the name Tzipa Kobrinas was mentioned indicating that she was a member of the Kobrinas family, born in 1907, and was the sister of Itsik Kobrinas.

We never knew Itsik had a sister. Could this be the young woman in the photo?

Kobrinas family portrait, 1920s. Who is the mystery woman?

Further research through the Jewish Gen website revealed that Chava also had a sister. Her name was Tsiva Porudominskaite (Porudominsky) born in 1905 in Vilinius.

This would mean that as the family photo was taken in the mid 1920s, the mystery woman in the photo should have been 17 or 19 years old and it could either be Tzipa or Tsiva, respectively.

More clues for the potential existence of additional family members were found in the other box. One of them was the announcement of Chava’s death in 1948 in Israel at the age of 55. In the announcement it mentioned: “With big sorrow we announce the death of our mother, our grandmother and our sister Mrs Chava Kobrin” signed by the mourning family in the country and abroad. Based on this information, it became clearer that Chava had siblings and family members outside Israel.

The death announcement of Chava Kobrin found in the other box.

Could it be possible that there were family members we did not know about? .

We kept looking for more clues and discovered two letters from William and Celia Hirsch addressed to Arie Kobrin in Palestine. Both letters were written in Yiddish in 1946 and sent from 225 Herzl Street, Brooklyn, NY. These letters were sent while Chaimas was serving in the British Jewish Brigade in Naples, Italy.

One of the letters from Hirsch addressed to Arie (Leonas) Kobrinas in 1946 found in the other box.

At the beginning we totally disregarded these letters, as we did not think they had any significance to our story. We never heard of these people before, perhaps they were friends of Leonas and his wife Mina at the time? As they were written in Yiddish we put them aside for later.

After translating the letters with the help of Rabbi Zalman from Chabad Basel, we were surprised to discover how extremely significant these letters were in helping us solve part of the missing story.

Rabbi Zalman from Chabad Basel translating the letters from Yiddish.

The first letter mentioned the following:

“Dear Lova (Arie) and wife, I am writing this letter especially with regard to Muniker and Helzen. I got in touch with the Brooklyn Red Cross, the Joint and the Central Synagogue. They told me that I cannot send personal packages to the camp. You must send them via the Central Synagogue, and then each package is distributed among all the Jews in the camp. Maybe in the future it would be possible, but currently personal packages can not be sent. Lova, could you send a letter to Fima in Naples and ask him if there is a better way to transfer packages. We thank you very much, no news, waiting for an answer.”

Clearly William knew that Chaimas was in Naples and that he was nicknamed “Fima”. Only very close family members called him by this name (means Chaim in Russian). Who were they trying to send packages to? Did they have family left in Europe that they were trying to find?

In the second letter William wrote:

“Dear Lova and Mina. We feel great and we hope that you also feel good. It has been a long time since we heard from you. Why? I sent you a telegram and I was surprised not to receive an answer. I would like you to write to me and tell me what is happening. How is your mother doing as she is also not writing to us? Celia will also write a few words. She has a cold. I conclude my letter by wishing you all the best.”

Celia added in the same letter:

“Dear Lova and wife. I received your letter. Your photo gave me a lot of satisfaction. You and your wife look wonderful together. Lova, I am happy you are living together and I hope that it will always be good for you. I wish we were all together. Please do what my husband asked you to do. Your wife does not want to hear about America. If she would come she would say that there is no place like America. I would like to visit Palestine.”

Clearly, William and Celia Hirsch knew the Kobrinas family very well, and they were interested to know how Chava was doing. But how were they related to our family?

At this stage my father recalled another photo that he had never payed attention to earlier. It was a black & white photo of two young guys. One of them was sitting on a tree trunk and the other was standing beside him. As we looked at the back of the photo we identified the handwriting of Chaimas who wrote: “my cousin from Brooklyn with a friend, 1955”.

A cousin in Brooklyn? Who could this be?

Could the boys in this picture be related to “the family abroad” mentioned on the death announcement of Chava? Was this cousin related to the Hirsch family that wrote the letters to Leonas (Arie) Kobrinas in 1946 from Brooklyn?

It felt like we were collecting many new clues to an unsolved family puzzle. We had a family photo with a mystery woman, a photo with two unknown young guys - one of which was “the cousin” from Brooklyn, two letters from the Hirsch family from Brooklyn and the death announcement of Chava mentioning “our sister” and “the family abroad”.

We had many unanswered questions to try and solve.

Could Celia be the sister of Chava; is she the missing Tziva Porudominsky? Is she the young lady in the family photo, or was it Ziva Kobrinas? If Tziva is actually Celia, how did she end up in the USA? Who was the cousin in the photo? Was he her son? Was it possible that Chaimas had two aunts which we knew nothing about, or is this the same person - Tzipa and Tsiva? Was one of them Celia Hirsch?

All these pieces of information collected from two boxes, the Lithuanian archives and the Jewish Gen website increased our curiosity to find out more about the Kobrinas and the Porudominsky families. Our next goal was to try and find out who these unknown family members were and where they were located.

The search continues…

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