(As I Continue To Research and Write, By the Way)

 A few people in a certain Facebook group thought that jesting about a flooded gravesite was perfectly appropriate. This is what I wrote in response: 

One Caveat About My New Book: I’m Not Glorifying The Real-Life Unseemliness In It

In a recent Facebook comment, I replied to someone:

“70 and 20 (as unseemly as it is) is nowhere close to any child being exploited by any adult. But go on 🙄: Julia Fosko was exploited at 18; Rosalia “Rosina” Korsch beginning at 14 at most (Samuel Munka was born in about 1848, and Rosina had Paul in about 1876); and Anna Munka about 12-14 (Michael Nagy Trudnak was about 24-26. 26-to 27-year-old Paul married about-20-year-old Anna Blasicsak, and Michael’s parents would’ve been horrified that their son married a girl instead of a woman. Michael’s own parents, the common-law spouses Maria Nagy and Mihály Trudnyak, were 31 and 28 when their oldest child, Aranka, was born; and Mária married off Aranka to an adult when Aranka was an adult. If Mihály Trudnyak were around in New Jersey in 1900-1902, Michael Trudnak would not have touched Anna Munka until she was at least 20.). 

“There were also cases in my family that were borderline (e.g., One of my great-grandfather’s cousins was 19 when she married one of my great-granduncles, whom was 27. What didn’t help is that she gave her age as 21 on the marriage license, even though she wasn’t turning 20 until the February after her wedding. Almost as unhelpful: on her own marriage-license application, my great-grandmother who was the sister of that great-granduncle claimed to be 21 when she was still 20.). 

“I’ve heard the excuses. I’ve seen the excuses. I’ve also seen the exceptions, and some of the victimizers’ parents were among the exceptions (Mihály Trudnyak brought his 15-year-old son to Pennsylvania in 1891, and so that the younger Mihály could avoid conscription. Michael Trudnak was in New Jersey near or with Anna Munka’s siblings Paul and Helen by 1900. In 1900, Michael and Anna lived under the name “Poornak”. In 1902, both Paul Munka and Anna Munka married.). 

“Either way that you (literally and figuratively) do the math, “Back in the day” is a poor and an unpleasant excuse, especially when quite a few people bucked certain trends (Two more examples: the older Mihály’s parents were married in, respectively, their 40s and 20s. Mária’s parents were born in 1822 and 1821; and while their own parents should’ve waited to marry them off, they at least married a teenager to a teenager. Mária’s oldest sibling was born in 1838.).”

The real-life inspiration for part of the book is as you thought and worse. The 1900 Census discusses an Anna and a Michael “Poornak”; and Michael was born “illegitimate” to Mária Nagy and Mihály Trudnyak. I get that both of my Trudnak great-great-grandparents needed to hide being Jewish, and that the Nagy-Trudnyak themselves cohabitated outside of legally-recognized marriage. In no universe does that justify a 20s-year-old man exploiting a child, especially when he had examples of adults whom married (including common-law married) other adults. Anna Blasicsak, by the way, was born in 1882 (per her gravestone).

 

In Memory of A Daughter Whom Still Holds A Family of Her Father Together

As Reilly and I go “night nights”, I think about the woman on the left (my uncle’s right side). The photo was taken on July 22, 1989, just before her 76th secular birthday. My parents’ marriage didn’t last, perhaps to her relief in some ways. Had I known that, that would’ve helped. What I do know is that she did what multiple women before her (even her in-law mother, with whom she had differences) did; and what’s lasted well beyond my parents’ marriage and divorce (and also beyond my dad’s second marriage and divorce) is that even though our family is still recovering from a lot of brokenness, she held our family together as much as she could do so.

That she held our family together still makes an impact, especially as I’m writing just past what was her father’s 150th secular birthday (June 7, 2026). The more that I think about it, the more that I realize that her impact was part of why I got into genealogy, for instance. I knew that I wanted to find out if I’m Jewish, and I could’ve been content with knowing that her husband was. Her part of my family history therefore contributed to my wanting to find out what I didn’t even expect that I would find out. I thus came to additionally find out, for example, that she treated me and her grandson with disabilities as human beings and as family members because she knew what being mistreated both within and outside of the family was. She knew the heart of a stranger because our ancestors had been strangers in all of the world, including in Ancient Egypt and in 19th-Century-CE Budapest. She felt the generational effects and the personal effects that the generational effects affected. 

She wasn’t a daughter of “Michael and Anna Monka Trudnak”, but of hidden Jews Mihály Nagy Trudnyak (the only and “illegitimate” son of Mihály Trudnyak and Mária Nagy) and Anna Munková (the surviving daughter Anna of Sámuel and Rosalia Korschová Munka). Only later would “Michael Trudnak” be Anna’s husband and their daughter’s father, as Mihály‘s own parents refused to marry in any church even as the Austrohungarian authorities kept persecuting and pestering them; whereas  Anna would pass for her previously-baptized sister, and be sent from Újpest to join Budapest-born Mihály Trudnyak in the United States. After a few older daughters came before her, the “daughter of ‘Michael and Anna Monka Trudnak’” would perfectly acceptably get the name of her younger paternal aunt (Mária Nagy, b. 1842 CE) as well as a maternal grandaunt (Mária Korschová Saxová, b. in the 1860s CE). Both were presumably alive by then, although neither name honoree (as far as I know) received the honor of meeting her namesake (Given, as I later found out, that Jews in the Hungarys originally used minhag Sefardi, Michael and Anna presented no conflict in their  use of a secular name for “Miriam”. As they were also Ashkenazi Jewish, they also named her for both of his grandmothers—the maternal one of whom certainly did not get the honor of meeting her name honoree, as she died before her daughter Aloysia Nagy Libich died in 1901.). 

Bu the way, I don’t exactly know what she’d think of Reilly Rosalita being partially a namesake of her maternal grandmother and of her sister Rosalie (Rosalia Munková’s double name honoree as well as Rosalia Duday Nagy’s name honoree). I can only hope that she’d understand and take it in good humor (which she probably would) when she’d be told that Reilly helps to hold me together on an individual level. 

יהי הזיכרון של מרים בת מיכאל וחנה לברכה.

 

All That the Trump Administration Is Doing Is Streamlining Religious Discrimination (Originally a Facebook Comment)

If the Trump Administration really cared about streamlined categorizations as well as the Constitution, they could’ve easily implemented a system of categorization such as: 

1) Judaism, Traditional/Non-Messianic:

    a) Rabbinic

        i) Orthodox

        ii) Conservative/Masorti

        iii) Reform/Liberal/Progressive

        iv) Other 

     b) Karaite

     c) Samaritan 

     d) Other

2) Judaism, Messianic / Christianity 

     (Scores of movements or denominations)

3) Islam

    a) Shi’a/Twelve Fold

    b) Sunni

    c) Sufi

    d) Other

4) Native American/Indigenous American

    (Scores of religions, movements, and denominations)

5) Indigenous Religions Other Than Indigenous American

   (Scores of religions, movements, and denominations—e.g., Slavic Neopaganism, African Traditional Religions, Māori Traditional Religion)

6) Asian and Indian Religions

    a) Confucianism 

    b) Buddhism

    c) Hinduism 

    d) Sikhism

    e) Taoism

    f) Jainism

    g) Other

7) New Age/Wiccan/Classified Outside Of Traditional Indigenous Religions and Neopaganism

   (e.g., Jedi and New Age Mysticism)

8) Agnosticism, Deism, or Ethical Culturalism (Adlerism [in reference to Felix Adler])

9) No particular religious or philosophical affiliation or classification 

10) Atheist/Secularist/Antireligious

11) Other

12) Unknown or Undisclosed (Contact next of kin if possible.). 

Forms, dogtags, etc. could easily read, e.g., “1aiii [Reform Jewish]”, “2…[e.g., 2a for Messianic Judaism/Jewish Christianity as a movement or denomination]”, “3c [Sufi Islam]”, and “4…[e.g., 4aiii For Western Cherokee/Navajo Nation/Four States/Diné Indigenous Religion].”

    

“For These Things, I Weep”—And My Blood Could Boil!

If blood could literally boil due to anger, my blood would be boiling. My paternal grandfather’s youngest paternal uncle, my particularly-tragically- and agonizingly-murdered great-granduncle Bernard Stanley (בנימין ‏שמריה הלוי בן יהודה ואסנת) Czarnecki never got a real chance to live. Born in 1920 to hidden-Jewish parents, Great-Granduncle Bernie received an ignominious “Thanks” from a government which already caused his parents and his brother Tony to keep hiding being Jewish: a “botched shrapnel-removal operation” due to Schizophrenia and PTSD in a 25-year-old WW2 veteran (How could that possibility have even occurred to Granduncle Tony, born in 1946 and being just under 17.5 years old on the secular calendar when his uncle died? Nobody told him, “Uncle Bernie had a lobotomy.” The death certificate began to show me for the first time what really happened, although Granduncle Tony got the answer from Great-Granduncle Bernie himself when he saw him again in 2014.).

The (per the 1950 Census) “mentally ill” Bernie Czarnecki would go on to die in the Lebanon, Pennsylvania Veteran’s Home and Hospital due to a coronary occlusion due to Schizophrenia on July 16, 1963. 

“‘It’s a shame what Jankie and Susi did to Bernie.’”

No kidding! Those two kapos exploited him into signing off his Social Security benefits to them when the benefits were supposed to go to their widowed sister, Alexandria Julia (who changed her secular and Hebrew names to honor her father after both of her parents died). Great-Grandaunt Alexandria took care of her brother even after her husband died, and she had a paternally-orphaned son whom she raised alone. Of course, from what I gather, nobody at the funeral home mentioned that the sister of a veteran whom shouldered much of the burden for everybody was exploited, too. 

At least Great-Granduncle Bernie is with his sisters (including אסנת יהודית בת יהודה הלוי ואסנת שרה בת יוסף הכהן, ז״ל) as well as nephews, nieces, and other relatives whom did appreciate his sacrifice, and away from Antisemites and bogdim. He’s also away from having to live every day dying a long and slow death because of what was done to him.

My Translation Of “There Is A Redeemer” (With Slight Changes)

יש גואל—

ישוע הבן של עצמו אל, 

שה אלוהים האהוב, המשיח,

והאחד הקודש.

תודה רבה, אבי

לתרה לנו את בנך יחיד

והשאיר רוחך עד

העבודה בכדור הארץ זאת שלמה.

ישוע גואלי,

הדבר שהוא מרומם למעלה השם,  

שה אלוהים האהוב, המשיח,

ותקווה שהרגה לחוטאים.

ֶ

תודה רבה, אבי

לתרה לנו את בנך יחיד

והשאיר רוחך עד

העבודה בכדור הארץ זאת שלמה.

כשאני אעומד בכבוד,

אראה את פניימו, 

ושם לנצח אעבדה למֶלכִי 

  במקום הקודש הזה.

תודה רבה, אבי

לתרה לנו את בנך יחיד

והשאיר רוחך עד

העבודה בכדור הארץ זאת שלמה.

There is a Redeemer— Jesus, God’s own Son, Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, Holy One.

Thank you, O my Father, 

For giving us your only Son And leaving your Spirit ‘til

Jesus, my Redeemer, the Word that is exalted above the name, the beloved Lamb of God, the Messiah, and the hope that was slain for sinners. Thank you, O my Father, 

For giving us your only Son And leaving your Spirit ‘til

The work on Earth is done.

When I stand in glory, I will see his face;

And there I’ll serve my King forever In that holy place.

[Melody Steiner Green wrote the original lyrics. I used Google, Milon, and Pe’alim to check my translation, look up words that I did not remember, and get the correct words to keep the context of the original lyrics.]

More Reflection On My Family And the Russian Part of the Holocaust

I still think about the fact that at least three of my cousins (including Witold Andrulewicz) risked their lives at Augustów knowing that they would probably never get the recognition that they deserved. Just a few years before, another one of our relatives (Aleksander the son of Jerzy and Wiktoria Staskielówna Andrulewicz of Bosse) was betrayed by maternal cousins (whom changed their name to “Shackel”) in Chicago (They knew exactly why he tried to hide that we’re Jewish, and their outing of him got him persecuted by the Chicago Railroad Board. “44–JEW” clearly read in the “Payroll” section of his employment card, and his employment was connected directly to his naturalization).

Witold and the two other cousins who I have in mind (Franciszek and Janina) died during the Augustów “Roundup” (which was really the mass kidnapping and murder by the Soviets at Augustów), and Franciszek and Janina (both from Bosse) lost their own parents during the German Part of the Holocaust. Franciszek and Janina also followed in the footsteps of their parents, Wincenty and Marianna Sawicka Andrulewicz, both of whom were part of the Resistance whom fought against the Nazis. Part of the reason that I get angry about Holocaust denial regarding the Russian part of the Holocaust is because the Stalinists were as intent on Antisemitic ethnocide as the Nazis were; and entire lines of my family were unjustly and unfairly cut off (Neither Franciszek nor Janina had the opportunity to have families of their own, and Witold was murdered right where he grew up in Posejanka.)

While Poland also possesses flaws regarding its treatment of the Jewish community in Poland, none of Poland’s flaws stopped my cousins from risking their lives to stop the Stalinists from continuing the Russian part of the Holocaust—and my cousins were acutely aware that Poles as well as fellow Jews of ours were under the same threat from the Stalinists that the Nazis perpetrated.  As one of our other cousins (Binyamin “Bolesław” Andrulewicz) put it in a letter to one of his brothers, “the Russian front” was as “horrible [of a] storm” as “Germany[, which, as he sardonically put it,] hosted [them] well for five years, so that [they] could not walk”.

Bolesław and his side of the family needed to hide on their own farm (in Orlinek) just to avoid the Nazis, and five of our other relatives are known to have died fighting against both the Germans and the Russians—and Bolesław made a point to distinguish us from “Poles” and “the Poles” without blaming them for the Antisemitism that Germany and Russia brought into פולין (“פה לין”), which means “here, dwell” in English.