Moshe Fogel
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Moshe Fogel was born in Slavuta around 1840, the son of Joseph Fogel and the grandson of Israel Fogel. Using the generational average of 30 years, it traces the family to the 1780s.
When Moshe grew up, his family were farming wheat in Slavuta, most likely as tenant farmers. By then, the family was also manufacturing paper. The Shapiro publishing company in Slavuta that produced a famous Talmud was probably a customer as the Fogels were the only ones making paper in Slavuta in the middle of the nineteenth century. Moshe became both a wheat farmer and a paper maker. |
Moshe's wife Bracha
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Moshe married Bracha. Unfortunately, neither her surname before she was married nor father’s name have been found. However, Moshe and Bracha were married around 1865 and began having children shortly after that.
Shabotai (Shepsel) Fogel was born around 1866, the oldest. He married Brocha bat Yehoshe Fragmanyk, left farming and focused on making paper like his father. Shabotai’s and Yenta’s son Israel Fogel was born in 1898, left Slavuta for Palestine in 1920 and married Paula there. They raised two daughters, Talma and Chaiuta who presented them with 15 grandchildren. Shabbotai died in 1916 during the typhus epidemic that swept Volhynia that year. Shabotai’s son Chaim who was born in 1885 followed him into the paper business. Chaim and his wife Hana had one son and one grandson. |
Shabotai’s and Yenta’s son Avraham was born in 1901 and left Slavuta in 1921. Avraham was a violinist who studied at the music institute in Pryluky and then at the University of Kiev and left in the midst of the Pogroms in 1919 and 1920. He was captured by the border guards when he was crossing into Hungary. He was released and allowed to continue on after he was forced to give a concert for the captain of the guards. Arriving in Palestine, Avraham became a violinist with the Jerusalem Philharmonic from 1922 until 1928 when he left for Nancy, France to get a university degree in business administration. Upon his return to Palestine, he began working for the government managing the citrus industry and became the head of that department when the State of Israel was declared in 1948. In 1952 the Israeli government sent Avraham to Boston to M.I.T. for additional training in government management. There is a full page listing in the Israel Encyclopedia about Avraham Fogel.
Avraham married Batya bat Rafael Kohn. They had three children. Their five grandchildren and one great grandchild, all of whom are Israeli Sabras.
Shabotai’s and Yenta’s son Benjamin Fogel was born in 1905, married Yenta Fridman and was an economist when he was murdered in the Holocaust in Kiev in 1942.
Avraham married Batya bat Rafael Kohn. They had three children. Their five grandchildren and one great grandchild, all of whom are Israeli Sabras.
Shabotai’s and Yenta’s son Benjamin Fogel was born in 1905, married Yenta Fridman and was an economist when he was murdered in the Holocaust in Kiev in 1942.
David Laifer
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Hershel and Cherna Fogel had seven sons. One died as a toddler of diphtheria, but the rest survived and the family left Ukraine in late July, 1909.Moshe and Bracha’s son Hershel Fogel was born around 1868 and married Cherna Laifer in Myripol in 1886. Cherna’s father David Laifer was a miller and a kerosene dealer. David Laifer had a Romanov silent partner who protected the kerosene business from the pogroms and gave the young couple an elaborate pair of Russian coin silver candlesticks as a wedding present that have been passed down through the family to Hershel’s grandson, Harris. Hershel was a bright student considered to have a bright future as a scholar and after they married, Hershel and Cherna moved in with her father David Laifer and his wife Bella (Steinberg) who would support the couple while Hershel continued his studies of Torah and Talmud.
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Faigel Family. 1911
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Hershel and Cherna Fogel had seven sons. One died as a toddler of diphtheria, but the rest survived and the family left Ukraine in late July, 1909.
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IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA
Sailing from Antwerp on the S.S. Mount Royal in August, they arrived in Montreal on September 2, 1909 listed as Feigel in the ship manifest as well as in the border crossing report the next day as they traveled by train through Newport Vermont to Boston and then on to Lawrence MA. In April 1910, the U.S. Census listed them living in Methuen, MA, the older boys working in the textile mills and the name now spelled Faigel.
Moshe and Bracha’s son Aaron Fogel was born around 1875, immigrated to Nebraska in 1914 to homestead a wheat farm, but left for New Jersey a few years later. He married Fannie Goldberg who was from Kiev and they had five sons and three daughters, all of whom can be found the U.S. Census data between 1920 and 1940, along with grandchildren and great grandchildren.
By 1930 Aaron and Fannie lived in Des Moines, Iowa where Aaron was a junk dealer.
Moshe and Bracha’s son Meir Fogel was born around 1875 and married Chaya Gochberg. They had a daughter Elizabeth, but Meir died when Elizabeth was a teenager. Chaya had cousins in Philadelphia so she and Elizabeth travelled there, arriving in 1920. Elizabeth attended university and became a pharmacist. Elizabeth married Samuel Gordon, also a pharmacist and together they operated a drug store and pharmacy in Philadelphia. They had one son and two grandsons.
Moshe and Bracha’s youngest son Joseph was born in 1880. He married Sarah and they moved to Union City, New Jersey where they had nine children. Census records fail to note his occupation.
Moshe and Bracha’s son Aaron Fogel was born around 1875, immigrated to Nebraska in 1914 to homestead a wheat farm, but left for New Jersey a few years later. He married Fannie Goldberg who was from Kiev and they had five sons and three daughters, all of whom can be found the U.S. Census data between 1920 and 1940, along with grandchildren and great grandchildren.
By 1930 Aaron and Fannie lived in Des Moines, Iowa where Aaron was a junk dealer.
Moshe and Bracha’s son Meir Fogel was born around 1875 and married Chaya Gochberg. They had a daughter Elizabeth, but Meir died when Elizabeth was a teenager. Chaya had cousins in Philadelphia so she and Elizabeth travelled there, arriving in 1920. Elizabeth attended university and became a pharmacist. Elizabeth married Samuel Gordon, also a pharmacist and together they operated a drug store and pharmacy in Philadelphia. They had one son and two grandsons.
Moshe and Bracha’s youngest son Joseph was born in 1880. He married Sarah and they moved to Union City, New Jersey where they had nine children. Census records fail to note his occupation.
Moshe and Bracha had a daughter Sarah. She married a man named Sirota and moved to Palestine where she became a jeweler. Tracking data are not available right now because of the lack of information in Palestinian era records and the commonality of the surname Sirota..
Moshe Fogel was an ardent Zionist all his life. After Bracha died, Moshe immigrated to Jerusalem and then to join the religious community in Sfat where he died and was buried in 1924.
Shabotai Fogel stayed in the paper manufacturing business. A report of businesses in Slavuta in 1932 stated that the Fogel paper factory employed 75 workers, half of them Jews. The Soviets arrived that year bringing communism to the community and collectivizing all the businesses and farms. The record indicates that the family was well off at the time, owning one of the half dozen houses in Slavuta made of stone and with wooden floors (unlike the rest of houses in the town made of wood and with clay floors).
There are no records of the Fogel family in Slavuta after that. However the family believes that any members still there when the Nazis arrived in late winter 1940 and not already shot then were herded into the Ghetto there in May and annihilated with the rest of the ghetto that August.
Cherna Faigel had several cousins who left Volhynia between 1900 and 1910 and settled in Massachusetts and Michigan. One of her cousins visited Slavuta and the other towns near there including Polonne, Shepetivka, Ostrog, Ostropol and Myripol in 1973. When he returned he said that the family no longer existed there. There was a small remnant Jewish community in Slavuta, but it was so poor that he left his suitcases and almost all the money in his wallet with them when he returned to America.
In the nineteenth and the beginning of twentieth centuries Slavuta was a summer resort, considered a healthy place to spend the season away from the cities and the illnesses there. There were forests and lakes in the area that attracted the guests.
The railroad passed through Polonne, just a few miles away from Slavuta, running between Kiev to the east and taking Jews fleeing the Pogroms west to Antwerp and Hamburg on their way to Europe and the ships taking them to England, Ireland and the Americas.
The Fogel family lived in Slavuta and nearby small towns for more than one hundred fifty years, from the end of the eighteenth century until the middle of the twentieth when those who had not left around 1900 and their families were massacred in the Holocaust.
