Josek and Rifka (nee Frank) Mondry…descendants
I recently made a (re)discovery and it sheds a little light on one of our mysteries, though it doesn’t totally resolve it. Ryfka Frank is at the center of the mystery. The Bolnick family into which she married is incredibly well documented thanks to Rick Bolnick.
The Frank family is less documented, at least in our circle, though Rick Horwitz has made some progress. Ryfka had several siblings, but as far as I am aware, the only family who reunited in the US were Ryfka’s granddaughter Annette (Lessman) Locketz, and her descendants, with the descendants of Ryfka’s much younger sister Hannah Frank. Hannah settled in Denver and married Manuel Singer. They had three children. Samual, Dorothy and Simon. In the 1970’s Simon made contact with Annette because his daughter Rene (nee Segal) Ohsman was living in Mankato. The Ohsman and the Locketz families became very close after that.
There have been a few other “Franks” in Minneapolis that could have been relatives, but the connections are not known. Rick Horwitz recalls a Jeff Frank who lived on Basswood who Rick’s mother said was related.
Ryfka Frank was married at least once before Hyman Bolnick and those details are not totally clear. I revisited this because both my father Michael Locketz and I matched on 23&me with Helena Packer. She reached out to my dad in 2023 and he gave me her contact info. I never did anything with it and currently I am in the process of deleting 23&me (they went bankrupt and are probably being sold off...if you are on it you should consider getting off it...but download your raw dna file first.). In clearing out my “to do list” on 23, I came across Helena again and sent her a message.
Helena is listed on the Bolnick tree and Rick Bolnick recalls being in tough with Helena’s father, Harry Packer, who likely gave him the information to include on the tree. According to the chart below, Rifka Frank...Hyman's wife was married first to Yosef Mondra (who in the records available online, appears to have been Yosek Mondry in the Polish).
This is a snapshot of a corner of a chart which is from the great work of Rick Bolnick. (We are not sure if she was commonly referred to as Bertha. That oral tradition is lost. I have only seen her name written. My grandmother Annette, simply referred to her as “my grandmother. ”
Here, Ryfka’s marriage to Josek can be verified in the records. I have not seen the hand written document myself, but it is indexed below.
This index of the records, shows that Josek Mondry and Ryfka Frank married in 1881. It also includes reference to his death record. He died in 1886, five years after they married.
So, Josek and Ryfka were married for five years.
To the right of their box on the Bolnick chart above, it appears to indicate that Josek was married previously to Ryfka…to a woman named Hinder. Hinder appears to have married again after Josek to Herschl Flax. There are several Flax families listed from Plock in the family finder of JewishGen.org, but none of the researchers have logged in for more than ten years which to me means they cannot be reached. I have only made a general search, but that trail seems to be cold. There are many Flax families listed, but I was focussed on Plock because it seems to be where they lived at least for awhile.
Rick Bolnick notes from when he gathered the information in the early 1990s for the tree, that in pencil, he wrote that Hinder and Herschel lived in England and that they had a son Joseh Flax who was married. There is someone named Flax in the Jewish Gen Database in England but he doesn’t appear to be active. There is no notation as to where he got this information.
There is a child associated with them, listed above as Rachel Leah (Mondra) Pokorsky. It says there that she was “adopted by Josef” which, if correct, could mean that Ryfka had been married before Josek. (Someone told Rick Bolnick that Rachel Leah Pokorsky had been adopted by Yosef Mondra, suggesting that someone else was her father. ) From her birth record, we know that Ryfka was born on April 11, 1862. (same birthday as her daughter Sara in 1891 and her Great-Great Granddaughter Jessica in 1971). That would make Ryfka roughly 19 when she married Josek in 1881. She certainly could have been married beforehand…I’ve seen younger brides in our trees. In talking with Helena, she recalled that maybe the biological father of Rachel Leah Mondry was someone named Grossman. That we may never discover, but it must be through Ryfka that the Hyman Bolnick descendants are related to the Pokorksy/Packers. On the 23&me scale, with Helena, I share 1.07% DNA, Michael Locketz shares 1.90%, Rick H shares 1.54%. These are not large amounts of shared DNA, but it enough to tip the scale and show that the relation is through Ryfka in my nonprofessional opinion.
IF Rykfa had been married previously to Josek, Rachel Leah (nee Mondra) Pokorsky would have been born before 1881. If Josek was her father, 1886 would be the latest she could have been born. Ryfka’s first child with Hyman was Alex in 1889. Even if she was born as early as 1888 when Ryfka was 16, she likely would have grown up in the same home when at the least the first few of the Bolnick children were young children.
A few years ago, I posted a photo in these pages and was not sure who it was. It is the oldest dated photo of all the photos in my collection of “Bolnick” photos. I showed it to Helena and after a minute of looking at it, she declared, “that’s my grandmother!” (Rachel Leah (Mondra) Pokorsky)
The front of this post card says, “For the good memories - to the beloved Parents - Plock, 2/4 1902”. According to Helena Packer, this is Rachel Leah (Mondry) Pokorsky, but the man is not her husband, Rafal.
The back says “Respectfully” and then “Ch. Bulnick in Mlawa.” Perhaps this is how they addressed it? Presumably Rachel Leah was sending a photo to her Aunt/adopted mother Ryfka and Hyman in Mlawa where they were living in 1902.
It is a mystery as to how this little part of the family fits together, but in the records, there are clues.
Below is Ryfka’s birth record.
The Birth was registered in Mława 6th May 1862 at 11 a.m. The Father - Mosiek Frank , is a trader from Mława , 26 years old. Riwka was born 11th April 1862 at 2 p.m. Her Mother - Ruchla née Warzyawski , 20 years old. Witnesses- Zelman Nikorzki 40 and Abram Bajlowicz , 48 , both shammes from Mława .
Above in the birth announcement, four lines from the bottom of the main paragraph (2nd and 3rd words), you might be able to make out Rifka’s mother’s name, “Ruchla.” This is a diminutive or pet name for Rachel or Ruchel.
Above is the birth record index, for Ryfka’s mother, and she is listed as Ruchla. Born in 1833. I was not able to find the actual document to double check her name. But, below is the marriage certification for Ruchla and Mosiek Frank.
Here in Mosiek Frank and Ruchla Warszawska’s marriage documentation, eleven lines down, the last two words, her name is listed as Ruchla Laja, circled above in red. They were married in 1854.
I have not seen documentary proof…but several people have Ruchla Laja Warszawski on their trees as having died in 1881. If that is case, then she died the year that Ryfka and Josek married and my initial hypothesis was that Rifka and Josek had this child together and named her Rachel Leah Mondry after Ryfka’s recently deceased mother Ruchla Laja (nee Warzsawski) Frank. There is no way to prove it without finding her birth record which is certainly possible. Perhaps romanticized on my part, but I find it thrilling when I come across a naming convention like that. That is a lost custom today.
Even more thrilling is when pieces of a puzzle continue to appear, which in the year of this writing, is happening all the time as genealogy is becoming pretty mainstream and that is spurring a rapid increase in online resources and thus digitized records. Since I began writing this I've now found that the woman Josek Monday was married to before Ryfka (b1862) was Ryfka’s older sister Sura Golda Frank (b1860)! Here is the listing of their marriage which states their prenuptial agreement was made on May 17, 1880.
Sura Golda died in 1881
This is the index refernce to Sura Golda (nee Frank) Mondray’s death.
Josek married Ryfka, Sura Golda's younger sister in 1881, the same year that Sura Golda died as seen above. I imagine you only remarried so quickly, to a sister nonetheless, if there were children that needed care. According to testimony I saw in Yad Vashem from a cousin of Rachel Leah Mondry Pokorsky, named Sara Uzdin, in 1956, https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/14711962, Rachel Leah Mondry Pokorsky was born in 1880. (The birth year is incorrect in the cataloged translation...you can see it was a misreading of the actual document). Of course, who knows if Sara Uzdin really knew that with accuracy, or her connection to the family and the people she was describing, but if Rachel Leah was born in 1880…to Sura Golda (Frank)…the same year that Ruchel Laja (nee Warszawska) Frank died, the mother of sisters Sura Golda and Ryfka, it is logical that Rachel Leah was born to Sura Golda, named for her grandmother Ruchel Laja and ultimately adopted and raised by her aunt Ryfka at least until her father Josek died five years later.
This still does leave some open questions. It is most likely that whoever was telling Rick Bolnick who was who in this corner of the tree, they simply confused who was adopted by who. In other words, Rachel Leah (Mondry) Pokorsky was adopted by Ryfka, NOT Josek. Perhaps Rachel Leah was already old enough to have been out of the house in the earliest photos of the children Ryfka would have with Hyman Bolnick. And by 1914 when they emigrated, she would have been 33 years old…married to Rafal Pokorsky…perhaps living in Plonsk…and she stayed behind.
Two other interesting discoveries:
1. On the topic of divorce, Ryfka and Sura Golda, among other siblings, appear to have had a sister named Blima Frank (b1874) who married Szmul Woldenberg in 1893 and they were divorced in 1896. He remarried and had several children. She does not appear to have done the same. Perhaps she was not able to have children so he divorced her? He died in Auschwitz.
2. The patriarch Mosiek Frank, after Ruchel Laja, mother of Ryfka and the others, died in 1881...he remarried a woman named Etka who was 30 years his junior (he was 62, she was 32). They were married in 1882, had a daughter named Chaia Fayga, and both she and Etka died in 1885.
The 1880s were tragic years for the Frank Family.
Rifka and Hyman Bolnick would ultimately emigrate to the United States. Their sons Alex, Ted and Sol went first (each traveled seperately) and were waiting for them in Minneapolis where Bolnick family had already become established. Rifka and Hyman traveled with Sura (Sara) and arrived to Boston aboard the Arcadia, having departed from Hamburg on March 20th, 1914. It was a long voyage and they arrived on Sara’s 23rd birthday, April 11, 1914 (the birthday she shared with her grandmother Ruchla Laja Warzsawski (1833) and her future great granddaughter Jessica (1971).
The Ship manifest listing Chaim, Rivka and Sura…third column below.
Towards the end, at the top of this slice, it says something about his eye….maybe “right eye blind”? It was his left eye, but interesting to see they noted that on the manifest. Below is the alien registration form for Rifka. It was filed in 1918. See line 18. It seems she hadn’t had contact with the family still in Europe…including her daughter Rachel Leah. Ryfka and Hyman got to the US just months before the start of WWI. Communication through the war was impacted I imagine. Who knows how many letters never made it out of Europe.
I am still interested in learning more about Rachel Leah (Mondry) Pokorsky, but here is what I learned in a delightful zoom call my father and I shared with Helena. Helena said that Rachel Leah had come from a well off family. That tracks, as it is believed that the Frank family was well off. Helena had heard that Rachel Leah was from Plonsk which is about 50km from Plock named in the photo above. A birth record would verify this.
Of those listed on that subset of the (Rick Bolnick) chart above, Rachel Leah, Rafal and their descendants, all but Harry and Monya perished in the Holocaust. Harry and Monya came to the US in 1948 and settled in Chicago. Ryfka died in 1940 (during the Passover Seder) and Hyman died in 1948. Helena remembers knowing some Bolnicks as a child…perhaps Ellie and Marylin as she recalled that her father, Harry, worked for Sol Bolnick in the dry cleaning business.
