Mt. Airy writer finds Marc Chagall family connection

by Stacia Friedman
Posted 5/28/21

My family tree was erased by history.

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Mt. Airy writer finds Marc Chagall family connection

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Every episode of “Finding Your Roots,” PBS’ genealogical safari hosted by historian Henry Louis Gates, Jr., presents a celebrity with his/her family tree. As much as I enjoy the program, I know that Henry Gates and his staff of researchers could never piece together my own ancestry. Why? Because my family tree was erased by history.

My great-grandparents were part of the mass migration of Eastern European Jews to Philadelphia from 1895 to 1920. Whatever they left behind — loved ones, houses, cemeteries, historic records — was systematically destroyed, first by the Nazis, then by Stalin, leaving no trace of once-vibrant Jewish communities. Whenever I asked my grandmother where she came from, she blinked back tears, changed the subject and offered me a “nosh.”

Ancestry.com, the sponsor of “Finding Your Roots,” can create family trees going back centuries for celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and Jimmy Kimmel, but they could never help me. Or so I thought until I received an unexpected call from my cousin Lynne.

“Do you have any idea where our great grandparents, Rabbi Isaac and Stacia Friedman, are buried?” Lynne asked. 

A wave of guilt swept over me. Several years ago, I had attempted to locate their graves to no avail. Misplacing documents was one thing, but misplacing our family patriarch and the woman for whom I was named was inexcusable. I volunteered to “call around.”

My calls and emails to Philadelphia Jewish cemeteries yielded nothing. That is when I decided to take advantage of Ancestry’s free 14-day trial. To get started, I entered whatever information I had regarding the names and dates of death of my parents, grandparents and great grandparents. Within 24 hours, I didn’t find the missing graves, but I located Mitch, a second cousin in Naples, Florida, who had already taken a deep dive into genealogy and was willing to share.

At first, neither of us recalled meeting before. But within minutes, we were sharing memories of family gatherings we had both attended as children before our lives took us in different directions.

To my amazement, Mitch had researched my great grandmother’s maiden name and the name of Rabbi Friedman’s mother. Peeling back time just one generation may not impress viewers of “Finding Your Roots,” but it dazzled me. And, yes, he knew where our great-grandparents were buried. He found their death certificates on Ancestry. Then he dropped a genealogical bombshell.

“Did you know about Marc Chagall and our great aunt Hanka?” Mitch asked. I had always known that the Russian/French Chagall, born Moishe Shagal, one of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, was from Vitebsk, the same Belarus hometown as my Friedman ancestors.

As much as I admired his nostalgic paintings of airborne lovers and dancing cows, I knew that life in Vitebsk for Jews had a darker side. However, it never occurred to me that the connection between Chagall and my family was more than circumstantial. After all, I come from the same hometown as Kevin Bacon. So what?

As for my great aunt Hanka, I only knew what her brother, my grandfather, had told me. That when their father, the rabbi, caught her reading “Anna Karenina,” a beginner’s guide to adultery, he broke an umbrella over her head. Hanka was so irate that she ran off to America, and the rest of the clan followed. I always loved this story because it means I share the blood line of a woman who valued literature and personal freedom over blind obedience. It also means that I owed my existence as an American, in part to Tolstoy.

“Our great-aunt Hanka and Chagall were friends,” said Mitch. “They were the same age and hung out in the same cafes. In 1906, when they were both 19, they had the same dream. To get out of town before it was too late. Hanka came to America, and Chagall went first to Moscow, then to Paris.”

This sounded like wishful thinking. However, Mitch didn’t get the story from conjecture. He got it from his mom, Hanka’s niece. In my imagination, I hoped it was more than just friendship between Chagall and Hanka. But if reading Tolstoy resulted in a whack on the head, I shudder to think what punishment Rabbi Friedman would have issued had he caught his young daughter smooching an impoverished artist.

The next day, Mitch emailed me photos of Isaac and Stacia’s graves and their locations along with copies of their death certificates. Just one problem. When I called the cemeteries written on the certificates, they didn’t have any graves that matched their names. Oy!

I tried another search engine, FindAGrave.com. Bingo! I found them. But at opposite ends of the city. Rabbi Isaac Friedman was buried in Jenkintown and his wife in Collingdale. Had their 60-year marriage with five children been so contentious that they wanted to spend eternity apart?

Meanwhile, Mitch sent me a treasured family photo that I thought I would never see again. It was taken in 1910, four years after they arrived in America. They are attired in stiff Victorian garb with startled expressions, as if still in transit from Vitebsk to Philadelphia.

Mt. Airy resident Stacia Friedman is an author and freelance writer for area publications and websites.