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Family Melamed and Marks from Linkuva


Family Melamed and Marks from Linkuva
By Dorothy Landau

My mother, Gittel Rifkah, daughter of Frieda Melamed, nee Marks, left Linkova in about 1905 for Sunderland, England. I remember my mother and her sister speaking of their friends Itzak and Freda Kapuler who they left in Linkuva. Your pictures have moved me very much and I am so grateful to you for giving me them.

My mother had one brother Ben Zion and two sisters Rachel and Sarah. Both her sisters followed her to England. My mother stayed with her mother�s sister in Sunderland (name Muscat). She was the wife of the Rev. Muscat, who was a chazan. There she met her husband who had come from Baranowitz in Russia. He also was a chazan. He had followed an uncle to London and had adopted the name which his uncle had taken, hence from Swoyatisky he became Barnett. As I understand it, I come from a long line of rabbis.

They moved to Belfast with their infant son, in about 1908, where the following eight children were born. I was the seventh, of a family of five boys and three girls, of whom only the three �girls� remain. The eldest daughter, who is 92, lives in Rish-le-Zion close to Telaviv. My mother�s two sisters, Rachel and Sarah eventually came to live in Belfast as well, and it was with my Aunt Rachel that I heard my mother speak of her friends Itzak Kapuler and Frieda Kapuler, who are in the wedding photograph on this website. They spoke in Yiddish and I was not able to understand everything they were saying, but Yiddish was and is dear to me, because it was a link to all the people I never met.

It always saddened me to think that my mother never saw her mother again once she left Linkova, and that my grandmother never knew any of us. I know little about my grandfather because I think it is possible he died before my mother left. My grandmother�s brother settled in S.Africa many years ago (I think in Benoni. He was a furrier.

I was married in 1944 to an American serving with the American army, and subsequently lived in Chicago for over 10 years, at which time my husband returned to Belfast where he was a fashion agent. My husband died in 1990. My name then was Kaufman. I remarried later and my name is now: Dorothy Landau

Dorothy Landau, March 2002

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[Table of Contents] [Background - Journey to Linkova] [The Journey to Linkuva] [Photograph Gallery - Linkuva, Lithuania] [Maps of Lithuania] [Blumsohn tree] [Linkuva Directory] [Linkuva and Holocaust Resources] [Audio testimony - Murder in Linkuva]


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