11/5/99

Could there be another Urson?

    It was not mere curiosity that compelled Harold Starkowitz to seek long-lost relatives, it was a lifelong, gnawing need in his soul.
    On his first visit from South Africa, he went to Beit Hatefutsoth and seived the computer files. Nothing. Ten years later, he and his family moved here. A few months ago, in this newspaper's Internet column, he read about a geneology site. It had millions of names ... but not the one he was looking for.  
    As wide-ranging and disparate as the Jewish world is, the Net is even more so. Where to start? How?
    Harold sat at his computer and selected a people-search program. He began in the most likely place: United States / New York State / New York City. He typed in the family name: Urson.
    Nothing.
    Chicago.
    Nothing.
    San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami.
    Nothing.
    Here, there and everywhere.
    Nothing, nothing at all, anywhere in the world.
    It's a highly unusual name, especially in Lithuania, where the family originated, which made his search profoundly frustrating.
    Driven, he spent uncountable hours -- evenings, weekends, in the middle of the night -- searching.
    One day, his daughter suggested a slightly different approach. He started all over again: United States / New York State. No city.
    On the screen, he read: "Result of search: 1."
    He stared in shock.
    "Urson."
    Urson!
    Can't be, he thought. Must be! Maybe....
    And it was.
    Shoshana Urson, of Elmwood Avenue in Rochester, New York, soon received a letter from Harold Starkowitz of Ra'anana, Israel. She called her husband Zvi, who was in Toronto. He was having a bad day, and he was irritable when he took the call. Excitedly, she read him the letter, and did his mood change in a hurry.
    Their initial correspondences were cautious; neither Zvi nor Harold wanted to jump to conclusions, in case they were wrong. Details emerged, hopes increased, until finally, Harold says, "I knew."

SITTING WITH the Ursons and Starkowitzes the afternoon following Holocaust Memorial Day -- a few days after they first met -- I felt charged by the electricity of their emotions. Zvi, a round, florid, effervescent man of 50, was sparkly-eyed and jovial; Harold, 47, sensitive and warm with a soft South African temperament, was teary-eyed, often too choked up to speak. Their wives glowed with excitement.
    At times, Harold's walrus mustache quivered. He was overwhelmed, and could not continue. His wife Hilary explains: "He loves history. He finds this so intense because this is his own history."
    The two families were strangers less and less by every moment they spent together.
    Both Zvi and Harold had always thought they knew all the Ursons in existence. Now, suddenly, each one discovered another side of a family that had lost all contact in 1953. "This was the first meeting between the two sides of the family since 1912," Harold says.
    Two of the three Urson brothers emigrated to South Africa, including Harold's grandfather in 1912. Harold's uncle remained in contact with the third brother in Lithuania, but that ended in '53 when Stalin began his anti-Jewish purges.
    "The Jews had to destroy all documentation, all letters from foreign countries, especially the West," Zvi explains. "Otherwise you could be classed as a spy. So they burned everything that had to do with South Africa -- letters, photographs -- they left no trace. By the time Stalin died, my father had forgotten his brother's address.
    "My father in Vilnius told me: 'We lost the family, and that's it.' I accepted what he said. You know," he shrugs, "[the Jews] lost six million, we lost maybe 20."
    Zvi and Shoshana left Vilnius in 1971, and lived in Israel until they moved to North America in 1990. His mother is still here, and a brother and sister -- Harold's long-lost relatives.

HAROLD WROTE the letter to Rochester. He worded it cautiously, restrained. At that point, he could only hope.
    "I got a letter from Israel," relates Shoshana in a strong Lithuanian accent, "and I wondered, what could this be? I opened it and read: 'there is a one-in-a-million possibility that we are relatives ...' "
    Bursting with excitement, she called Zvi. She laughs. "He shouted, 'What! What! What!'"
    "I had goosebumps," Zvi says, wide-eyed from the memory. "First I thought, it canג€™t be, we lost everybody."
    By fax, phone, mail and email, Harold and Zvi began comparing the scraps of knowledge they had of their pasts.
    It all fell into place.
    Harold continues: "As we got deeper into this, I said I've got a brother and his name is so-and-so; my grandfather is so-and-so. It clicked. Zvi looks very similar to my brother.
    "There were too many coincidences. It seems we were named after the same man: my Yiddish name is Hirsch, and so is his. I had heard that the Urson brother who stayed in Vilnius had six sons. I asked Zvi how many uncles he had. He responded, 'my father was one of six brothers.' That's when we were sure."
    Absolutely elated, they arranged to meet -- in August. It was the earliest opportune time for both Zvi, who works in property management, and Harold, a supermarket manager.
    But Zvi and Shoshana couldn't wait. On the spur of the moment, they flew to Israel and called Harold. "We're here."
    On the way to Harold's home for their first encounter -- the first physical connection between the two sides of the family in 87 years --  Zvi wondered: how should we behave? He laughs merrily at the quandary, gesturing animatedly. "Just a handshake? It's not nice, he's family. A hug? But I don't know him, maybe he wouldn't like that. It's not as if we hadn't seen each other in 20 years. We're strangers."
    "We opened the door," says Hilary, "and it was the most amazing thing -- to see these people, to know they're family!" 
    "Harold cried. I cried," says Zvi. "We all cried, and we hugged, and we kissed."