Part Seven Of My Stage32 Submission

Glossy Page 3

I didn't scan the original one in well at all. Nonetheless, the picture is of Andy and Julia Fosko Rusnak in the 1940s.

Wedding Day in Westmoreland County, June 29, 1905

Mary Theresa Trudniak at her wedding on May 10, 1934. 

Pop-Pop and Grandma (nee Joan Adele Gaydos) Czarnecki on their son Greg's first wedding day.

Uncle Gary with grandmas Mary Trudniak Czarnecki and Mary Rusnak Gaydos at Dad's first wedding, July 22, 1989.

Part Six of My Stage32 Submission

Also known as glossy-page Part Two

Incidentally, Dad had a broken collarbone from a fall from a highchair. 

Left to right: Pop-Pop (John "Jack" Gregory Czarnecki), Granduncle James "Jim" Julian Czarnecki, Great-Grandma (nee Mary Theresa Trudniak) Czarnecki, Aunt Mary, Great-Granddad and Dad, and Granduncle Francis Anthony "Red" Czarnecki (1920-1985). This is from Easter 1963. By the way, I'll explain where the names came from later--they're all family or otherwise-significant names--and you can guess where Granduncle Jim's middle name came from.

"Doesn't seem too upset at his [Grandfather Czarnecki]". Dad understandably did not like his granddad Anthony Czarnecki--who became like his mother, Alexandria Alice Andrulewicz Czarnecki. To scan in the picture and leave out that certain part of the caption means that Dad must still (so to speak) have a raw nerve hit about who his granddad really was and how he committed suicide.

Dad's baptism in 1960. This is the first picture that I ever saw of Great-Granddad Anthony Czarnecki and was taken aback by how much he looked like Pop-Pop.

Great-Granddad Anthony Czarnecki with Dad at Christmas in the 1960s. As Crypto Jews, they did not celebrate Hanukkah.

Goals For the 2012-2013 (And My Final Undegraduate) School Year

Year goals (effective August 30, 2012):

1)      Have one treat per day (Milkshakes, brownies, semester-opening treats, etc. count as treats. Smaller things for special occasions—e.g., mini candies for Halloween, Hanukkah, Christmas, and other holidays—do not.).

2)      Don’t overeat or overindulge. If and in case of overindulging, have plenty of water, oatmeal, coffee, and/or gum on hand and extra water, etc. as necessary.

3)      Eat kosher or mostly kosher (healthy included in kosher).

4)      Go to bed at 12:30-2:00 AM every night, and wake up at 9:30 AM-12:30 PM every day.

5)      Shower at least once a week.

6)      Don’t overspend (including overspending in donating) debit or UMBC card money.

a)      Check debit and UMBC card accounts frequently

b)      When possible, use meal plans for Dining Hall meals.

c)      When eating at Outtakes for lunch, take water bottle and granola or Clif bar—buy sandwich or salad and yogurt.

d)      When at Late Night, get coffee at minimum; salad, sandwich, or and other healthy food for snack and/or meal at maximum.

7)      Study hours per day at maximum, every other day at minimum (depending on classes per day, etc.):

a)      Poli 301-02: 1 hour, 40 minutes

b)      Poli 206-01: 5 hours

c)      Poli 320-01: 2 ½ hours

d)      Biol 106-01: 2 ½ hours

8)      Read Parsha and/or Haftarah at least every other day if not every day.

9)      Write in Prayer Journal at least every other day if not every day.

10)   Shower at least once if not twice a week.

11)  Watch only “The O’Reilly Factor” at 8:00 (Monday-Friday) as TV watching and “Geraldo at Large” at 10:00 (Saturdays) except for special occasions (e.g., little or no TV during finals, and watch more on Election Night or during breaking news events that merit more coverage)

12)  Attend UMBC Hillel Shabbatot and other events, and Students For Israel events when possible.

13)  Don’t procrastinate.

14)  Call Mom every day.

15)  Make more—or at least closer—friends.

16)  Pay attention in class.

17)  Don’t spend unnecessary amounts of time on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

18)  Do some stretches at least every other if not every day.

19)  Brush teeth at least every other if not every day.

20)  Write verse or Biblical insight in planner every week in weekly notes.

21)  Go to church at least every other if not every week.

Can I trust you all to pray for and encourage me to make my best efforts to abide by these goals which I set for myself? A lot of these goals are hard to abide by with my Cereral Palsy, OCD/Anxiety/Depression/mild ADD/possible Aspeberger's, propensity to eat out of boredom, emotion, etc.; and the energy taken out of me from dealing with my C.P., etc. among other issues with which I deal.

Part Five Of My Stage32 Submission

Also known as that part (or at least one of the parts) where I insert various documents, pictures, etc. into the book on laminated or glossy sheets of paper.

Andy and Julia Rusnak with their first two daughters (and first two surviving children)

Julia Fosko Rusnak and five of her six surviving daughters

Michael Gaydos, Jr. with wife Marysia "Mary" Elizabeth Rusnak Gaydos and grandchildren Mary and Greg.

Part Four of My Stage32 Submission

Since I do watch my Feedjit stats, and someone asked (maybe one of the Wojnars, though they'd be in Miami as far as I know), I'll answer a question:

    

Vero Beach, Florida arrived from google.com on "The Nicole Factor" by searching for is gaydos a jewish name.

21:13:08 -- 1 hour 43 mins ago

Yes, "Gaydos" can be a Jewish name--look on JewishGen, Yad Vashem, etc.. In our case, Mihal Gajdosz was a Jew--his parents were Anusim (or at least he was the Anusi son of) Jan and Maria Anna Homova Gajdosz, and his brothers were Gyorgy and Paul. He also plays into Great-Grandma Gaydos' games, by the way--anyone who followed my original Stage32 writer-qualifier submission can see how I was trying to tie him, his wife (my great-great-grandma), and his daughter-in-law into current events (e.g., "Hate In the Heartland").

In other words, that "Geraldo At Large" special gave me an idea of what my great-great-grandparents faced back then--and thus why they played the kinds of games that they played. However, he (Mihal Gajdosz) didn't until he got involved with Katarina Szuanna Uszinskyova--a maven at game playing (By the way, if there is a feminine form of "maven", I can't find it or figure it out at present--you can see what my Anusi relatives, including the Gajdoszes, didn't pass on to me.).

To clarify, Great-Great-Granddad Gajdosz (later "Gajdos" and "Gaydos") was honest on his records (at least as far as an Anusi can or will be honest, as far as I recall) until he married Katherine Susan Ushinsky ("Keyde Usziansky"). Then came the Census records, etc. with wrong information regarding names, birthdates, etc.--and no attempt to correct them.

As far as what they faced (e.g., the Don Blacks of back then), they played the games that they played to avoid their day's Don Blacks. As I stated, Great-Great-Granddad Gaydos was for a time honest at least as far as an Anusi can or will be honest--and that means that he didn't openly state that he was a Jew.

As I also stated, Katherine Susan Ushinsky Gaydos was the maven who influenced his further dishonesty. As I explained, they played the games that they played to avoid their day's Don Blacks--and she did her gameplaying particularly craftily. In fact, I could not find her Ellis Island record for a long time because of this--but in fact, she had a Philadelphia port record, and (from Ancestry.com itself), this is what it looks like  (and thus also explains why she stated that her mom was born "Anna Hazlinsky"):

Name:	Maria Uscianski [Katarina Maria Uscianski]
Arrival Date:	9 May 1894
Age:	18 Years
Estimated Birth Year:	abt 1876
Gender:	Female
Port of Departure:	Liverpool, England
Ship Name:	Indiana
Port of Arrival:	Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Friend's Name:	Marion Hazlinski
Last Residence:	Taros
Microfilm Roll Number:	T840_20

By the way, guess who put "Katarina Maria" as the correction until I saw the 1940 Census record and immediately connected "S." to that she had a daughter named Susan?

Name:	Catherine S Gaydos
Age:	67
Estimated Birth Year:	abt 1873
Gender:	Female
Race:	White
Birthplace:	Czechoslovakia
Marital Status:	Widowed
Relation to Head of House:	Head
Home in 1940:	Roaringcreek, Columbia, Pennsylvania View Map
House Number:	383
Farm:	Yes
Inferred Residence in 1935:	Roaringcreek, Columbia, Pennsylvania
Residence in 1935:	Same Place
Citizenship:	Naturalized
Sheet Number:	10B
Number of Household in Order of Visitation:	99
Neighbors:	View others on page
Household Members:	Name Age Catherine S Gaydos 67 Andrew J Gaydos 33

By the way, Ancestry.com took "Saros" in fancy writing as "Taros"--I can't blame Great-Great-Grandma for that. Go see the original images if you need to see them--I have nothing to hide; I just don't feel like saving the images onto my computer when Ancestry.com could allow me to copy and paste the image of the records.

Also by the way, this ties into why Michael Gaydos, Jr. (Great-Granddad Gaydos) married game-player Mary Rusnak Gaydos. You hopefully see why he now married her--although he, bravely enough during the cold war, admitted "We're Russian." Hang on to his "We're Russian." admission, because that implied stand for Soviet (and other) Jews is going to be important. 

Part Three Of My Stage32 Writer's Submission

For a lack of better termage and since someone in Brooklyn searched, I'll get one of the sensitive chapters (maybe the most-sensitive chapter) over with.

   

Brooklyn, New York arrived from google.com on "The Nicole Factor: Why the Non-Anusi Rusnaks Reached Out To the Anusi Ones" by searching for mary rusnak gaydos.

I did not find out that Great-Grandma Gaydos was a kapo until much later. I watch my Feeedjit (for Blogger) stats, by the way--so if you are who I think you are (i.e., Ally Shumack or one of the other Rusnaks in New York) and you haven't been following what I've been writing, you're in for a surprise about your cousin, or your grandaunt (if you're my great-grandaunt Agnes Rusnak Shumack's granddaughter or grandson), or whoever she (that is, Great-Grandma Gaydos) is to you--that is, in relation to you.

By the way, I may be jumping back and forth here, but this all connects--and will help you understand why my grandma Joan Czarnecki (nee Gaydos) married Jack Czarnecki. To begin, who else would marry a Crypto Jew but a Crypto Jew (with few exceptions, though--might I add--Anusim did stick together and still stick together)? Who else, also, would marry a Crypto Jew who was good at hiding secrets? I'll obviously get back to Great-Granddad Czarnecki and the Czarneckis in a minute, by the way.

Meanwhile and anyway, I'd give Dr. MaryAnn Gaydos (Grandma's surviving-oldest sister at present) credit for making up such a clever story if the situation for which it was made up wasn't as serious as it was. I have to begin with Dr. Gaydos' story because it'll show you how full of secrets and (for a lack of better termage) crap my family is.

Dr. Gaydos claimed that after the war (according to Kevin, though I've recalled during the war), relatives wrote to Great-Grandma Gaydos asking for money. Great-Grandma Gaydos, according to her daughter, then stopped writing. She, however (and as Kevin reminded me that Dr. Gaydos had stated), sent food.

To make the true story short, records on YadVashem.org (which I found while searching to see if any relatives were mentioned or noted on Yad Vashem's website)--so to speak--poke holes right in Dr. Gaydos' story. Now, is it traumatic for a 10-12-year-child to deal with her mother being a kapo? Yes. Does that excuse the cover-up for her mother years later? No, it does not.

The story (as I figured out on my own and through contacting a relative-in-law's grandnephew) is this: Great-Grandma Gaydos had Non-Messianic Jewish relatives in Kosice, Slovakia (then part of Hungary and then Czechoslovakia) who reached out to their Anusi relative as a final resort--after all, they realized that they had stayed in Europe for far too long and should have made (but regrettably did not make) aliyah or another type of exit from Europe (which, long story short, Tibor Geza Rusznyak eventually did--and after he survived the Holocaust, and by coming to Ohio and understandably never contacting our side of the family for the rest of his life).

They, like all other Orthodox P'rushi ("Rabbinate") Jews, were done with the Gyorgy Rusznak ("Gyorgy Kvetkovits"--in other words, Great-Great-Granddad Rusnak's paternal granddad)'s side of the family--with shiva having been sat for him (that is, Gyorgy "Gyorgy Kvetkovits" Rusznak) years ago. However, since Talmud Bavli states that one may break a mitzvah to save a life, they obviously broke the shiva-set boundary to save their own lives and their families' lives by reaching out to an Anusi relative.

What was at least one smuggled dollar to get Vilmosz Rusznak, Zoli Grinfeld (Vilmosz's brother in law), and their families out of Europe? What was reaching out to Jewish relatives as a (supposedly-) Jesus-believing Jew? What was helping family and exposing one's self as a Jew?

To Great-Grandma Gaydos, it was everything--and she stopped writing to Vilmosz, Zoli, and the rest of the family in Kosice--and that's how she became a kapo. By the way, I now understand the remark that Mom told me that Grandma had once made to her during a conversation about sponsoring needy children--that is, "You keep your money in your own country."

If you think that what Great-Grandma Gaydos did to Vilmosz, Zoli, and their families hit then-10-to-12-year-old MaryAnn, just imagine how it hit then 6-to-8-year-old Joan--and it must continue to hit the self-proclaimed Czechslovakian-American Catholic years later. By the way, Claims Conference Records on JewishGen.org indicate that Vilmosz survived after all. However, neither such evidence nor any other evidence indicates that Zoli and his family did--in fact, the evidences indicates the contrary. Also by the way, one of the Rusznak-Grinfeld children (Sandor) was MaryAnn's age at the time that he was murdered (The other child, Miklosz, was only 10.).

I Have a Choice About My Jewishness, And...

I can, at my age and in my current circumstances, no longer use ignorance as an excuse. To be fair to myself and even others, I acknowledge that I was once at ages at which, and in circumstances in which, I was not even influenced--let alone provoked--to ask whether or not I'm Jewish. But now that I'm old enough and in other circumstances, I have a few choices regarding my Jewishness--none of which include ignorance or unknowing of my Jewishness, or fumigation of my DNA. Among the choices are:

1. Denying that I'm Jewish. I can easily fall back on the cockamamie Fosko-Rusnak story that we're Czechoslovakian Byzantine Catholics, and the Czarnecki story that we're Polish-Lithuanian Roman Catholics who descended from lone immigrant Anthony Czarniecki and his great-whatever-granddad Stefan Czarniecki.
2. Otherwise going Anusit (Crypto Jewish).
3. Denying that Jewishness is an ethnic identity. Why not fall back on the excuse that Jewishness is a religious identity as opposed to an ethnic one?
4. Pretending that because I believe in Jesus (Yeshua), I'm no longer an ethnic Jew--I somehow became an ethnic gentile by believing in the Jewish Messiah.
5. Pretending that because my mom is (as far as I know) a gentile, I am not ethnically Jewish, anyway--in other words, denying that my Jewish dad had any part in my creation.
6. Becoming a Self-Hating Jew.
7. Actually using ignorance as an excuse (although, as I said, I really can't at my age and in my circumstances--besides, people would see right through my supposed ignorance).
8. Not caring that I'm Jewish, anyway--using the "There is neither Jew nor gentile...", "We're all one in Christ.", "What does it matter?" interpretation of Galatians 3:28 that my mom uses.
9. Converting ("returning" or becoming a "gerah tzedekah" in the case of converting) to Non-Messianic Judaism (depending how one would view my conversion).
10. Proudly identifying as a Patrilineal and Messianic Jew (Jewish Christian).

I choose Choice #10: "Proudly identifying as a Patrilineal and Messianic Jew (Jewish Christian)." I'll break down why I didn't choose the other reasons later.