Excerpt From My Upcoming Book: It Began In the Toponymical City of Dunilavičy

I don’t know how I didn’t know other than that I wasn’t told that I’m Jewish—let alone the whole backstory behind why we passed for gentiles. What I do know is that I should’ve known when someone asked me if I am—that is, if I am related to Kirk Douglas. I honestly remembered that “Danilovich” was a patronymic in his case, and I told the person that “Danilovich” is a patronymic in his case and not related to “Daniłowicz” in my paternal family’s case.

Then I relooked at the Wikipedia entry—“Demsky” wasn’t his birth surname after all, as I found out. After that, I saw the family resemblance—and the “Czarnecki buttchin” turned out to be the Danilovich-dimpled chin, I figured out. Then after that, I read about how Kirk Douglas raped Natalie Wood—and I should’ve known that I’m related to Kirk Douglas even if I’d only read about that.

Leave to the Daniloviches to wreak havoc on the world—and my own side of the family had and has done plenty of that—and each other—and even many (if not most) of us that try to be good aren’t innocent of having wreaked some havoc. We also have havoc wreaked on us by others besides each other—as I say, “If you’re a Danilovich, you either are trouble, attract trouble, or [have a case of] both[instances —that is, that you both are trouble and attract trouble].” (By the way, I used to say “crazy” instead of “trouble”, but then I considered how “crazy” is ableist language.)

Meanwhile, as I’ve also said, there’s something in that Danilovich water—and it all (apparently, anyway) began in Dunilavičy, Belarus (Duniłowicze, Białorus), to where I’ve traced it back (thus, why I say “apparently”: it could be Daniłowicze in what is now Podlaskie, Poland or another Daniłowicze or Dunilavičy).

Using JewishGen and Google Maps as well as other sources (including YadVashem, since I ended up finding—for example—a record for an Esther Chernetzki from Chausy—the birth city of Herschel “Harry” Danilovich), I’ve traced my Danilovich/Daniłowicz from Dunilavičy to Podlaskie, Poland’s Lipsk nad Bierbzą as such—this is, for all intents and purposes, a very-rough tracing, by the way. Also by the way, keep factors such as the following (and I think that you can tell that I’ve researched all of this and also figured out quite a bit):

1.    There was no traveling outside of the Russian Pale and back to it without permission to be outside of the Russian Pale in the first place.

2.    Per JewishGen, Lipsk shifted from being in Borisov Uyezd in Minsk Gubernia to Augustów Uyezd in Suwałki Gubernia by 1900.

3.    The shift from being openly Jewish to being Anusim seems to have come from Abram “Wojciech” and Marianna Kruszyńska Daniłowicz when a son named Mendel died in Filipów in 1841. Their daughter who was the mother of my paternal grandfather’s paternal grandfather was baptized as “Katarzyna” in 1843.

4.    In Wigry its subordinate parish, no way was “prenuptial agreement” going to mean anything but “ketubah”. Also in Wigry and its subordinate parish, parents didn’t “neglect” baptizing any child for four years!

5.    The Daniloviches, Chernetzkis, etc. (e.g., Kruszyńskis, Andrulewiczes, and Margiewiczes) all either somehow heard of each otherand/or were otherwise connected prior to ending up in what is now Podlaskie Voivodeship.

6.    Related to the aforementioned: branches of the Daniloviches, etc. also ended up together in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania—in other words, Great-Granddad Czarnecki’s closer sides of his parents’ families that immigrated to Pennsylvania stuck together.

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The next few screenshots are from JewishGen. As I’ve said when I’ve written about my family history other times, they—despite what they claim—cannot copyright the information itself, although they can indeed copyright the database technology that they use for the JewishGen databases. Besides, that information was known and/or discoverable long before they were founded—let alone before I was born!

[Not previewed here]

As for the rest of my Danilovich side’s story, that can be read elsewhere. So can the story of Kirk Douglas’ side.

PS As I’ve said, I wish that Lana Wood would name Kirk Douglas before he dies—and I wish that she would name Kirk Douglas before it’s too late for her to name her sister’s rapist!