
Yetta Barudin, birthname Etka Etseeva (b. 1886 in Disna, Lithuania), with her youngest son, Samuel, and his three sons in New York, c. 1930. David’s father, Howard Bernard Barudin, standing to the right.
By Tasha Ackerman
“I’ve always delved into the imaginative sense of the story, while always holding to the truth within the story,” says David Barudin, reflecting on himself as a writer and his journey into his family’s past. He approached his archival research into his great-grandfather, Berka Menakhemovich, with a writer’s perspective, driven by a passion for storytelling and a commitment to the truth. After reading his award-winning short story, “Berka Menakhemovich,” I found a new sense of inspiration regarding what heritage stories can look like, a text rooted both in historical fact and the wonder held amongst a family through generations. I had the pleasure of speaking with writer David Barudin as he shared about both his great-grandfather’s story and his journey to unearth it.
Berka Menakhemovich was born in 1855 in Disna, then part of Lithuania but now part of modern-day Belarus. His family was registered as “petty-bourgeoise,” a social class positioned between peasants and nobles. However, the reality for Jews living in this class in the Pale of Settlement would not correctly fit this label, as Jews faced restrictions regarding; the freedom of movement and also freedom of opportunities such as property ownership. . His family rented and operated a grain mill, where Berka likely worked with his father, Menakhem and uncle Iosel as soon as he was old enough.

Berka’s mill ruins on the Usyska River, leased by 30-year-old Berka in 1885, on the Aynalykovka estate owned by Baron Von Rosen, a Russian nobleman. The water mill was located six miles from the village of Mishnevichi and 10 miles from Gorodok. Photo by professor and Jewish heritage archivist Dr. Dmitry Shirochin; visit his website “Jewish Roots” at https://forum.j-roots.info/.
Berka married Etka Etseeva and they had nine children, though their firstborn, Aron, passed away during childhood. David’s grandfather, Samuel, was the youngest and was born in 1898. Berka continued his profession in the milling industry working as a mill mechanic, utilising the skills taught and inherited from his father. In 1906 when Berka and the family immigrated to the United States. Berka, Etka, and seven of the eight children boarded the Cedric travelling from Liverpool to New York- a voyage that took eight days which they rode as third-class passengers.
Upon arrival in New York, Berka was treated for a hernia, so his family remained for three days in Ellis Island where they were fed and slept on proper mattresses, perhaps for their first time. In Ellis Island, their names were Americanized, his grandfather, eight years old at the time, became Samuel from Ovsey-Shmuel, and Berka became Bernard. David reflects how even without written or spoken testimony, he understands how his ancestors emigrated for the same reason that people immigrate today: for a better life. It is not lost on him that three generations later, his life and opportunities are inherited through the actions of his ancestors.
Life for Berka would have been difficult once arriving in New York. They settled in the Lower East Side, a neighbourhood that adapted through waves of immigration through the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bernard worked as a seltzer water maker, where he would have been working in damp and dangerous conditions. The demand for seltzer water was especially high during this era as the city’s public drinking water was polluted. In addition to the difficult working conditions, Berka’s family lived in an area with overcrowded buildings, where proper sanitation was often unattainable and disease spread easily. Berka “Bernard” passed away from Tuberculosis in 1907, less than a year after he had arrived in the United States.

Lower East Side in the early 1900s. By Credited to the Brown Brothers – The New York Times photo archive, via their online store, here., Public Domain, , https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2923795

Yetta Barudin, birthname Etka Etseeva (b. 1886 in Disna, Lithuania), with her youngest son, Samuel, and his three sons in New York, c. 1930. David’s father, Howard Bernard Barudin, standing to the right.

Samuel Barudin, David’s grandfather, emigrated to New York City in 1906 at age eight with his parents Berka “Bernard” and Etka “Yetta” Etseeva. Photographed at his lake house in northwest New Jersey.
Learning the details of Berka’s life taught David about the story that has been woven into his DNA. He views Berka’s death as a tragedy. Yet, he sees the experience of his ancestors as a story of success through tragedy and can make sense of his own life experiences through the frame of the tenacity of his ancestors. David’s mother passed away when she was just 32 years old. He describes his mother as an amazing, wonderful, and beautiful person and explains how her death was a tragedy. Yet, when his father remarried two years after her death, David was able to appreciate the addition of his stepmother into their lives and recognise the ways in which his family’s life was enriched as a result of this tragedy. Their stepmother was a concert violinist who exposed him to art and culture in New York, and her qualities added a new richness to his life.
After learning Berka’s story, David could draw connections to Berka’s family after his passing and understand how his grandfather’s older siblings had to step up in the absence of their father. They eventually moved to Washington Heights, New York and established a parking garage business. The parking garage business remained in the family, and his father eventually went into the parking garage business, so one of the garages ended up being named after David and his sister. David can attribute qualities his father possessed such as inner intelligence, drive, and focus on his family to the drive and work his ancestors had needed in order to persevere in a new land despite adversity.
As David learned more of the details of his ancestors and of Berka, he understood how the story connected his past to his present. He explained, “I think there’s a truth that dwells in all of us that goes back to these people.” David attributes his sense of tenacity as a trait that he inherited from Berka. He grew an appreciation for the tenacity Berka needed to possess in order to first live a challenging life as a mill mechanic, and then to emigrate with a family to a new land, suffering from a hernia nonetheless, and in the end be faced with challenges of life as an immigrant in America that ultimately took his life. David acknowledges that because of the choices Berka made, he has been able to live a life where he hasn’t been forced to make such challenging decisions. The life that he and his relatives live in America was made possible because of those who preceded them.

Hyatt Barudin (b. 2013 in Roanoke, Virginia) with his maternal grandfather, David Barudin (b. 1947 in New York City). Pictured on his grandfather’s shoulders and, by proxy, on those of blessed memory who preceded them.
David Barudin’s quest into his family heritage began with the question: who was his great-grandfather? The quest to discover his history led him to not only uncover unknown family history but also inspired his short story, “Berka Menakhemovich” which won first place in the Virginia Writers Club 2022 Golden Nib contest. Long-time writer, David’s first book, Alternate Routes, is a fictional telling of his journey driving across America, coming of age while living an unconventional lifestyle. Now, at the other end of his career, after retirement, David’s writing brought him on a journey to the past.
Through research and collaboration, David was not only able to answer his initial question, who was Chaim, but was also able to craft a story that in the process not only taught him about his ancestors but helped him understand his personal story. David’s approach to researching his family history stemmed not just from a curiosity about his heritage, but truly as a writer interested in a story. However, this project was not easy, and one that he could not have completed alone. In addition to what he learned about his heritage through the archival records that he uncovered about Berka and his family, the research process itself proved to be arduous and demanding.
David’s endeavour into his family heritage began with a family tree hand-drawn by a distant cousin in 1979, which listed Chaim Barudin at the top. He saw himself among the many descendants and thought of how Chaim’s decision to move his family to America has impacted so many people. David set a goal to track down his grave so that he could visit to say Kaddish. David explained, “I knew that if I could find that grave then I would have had the story.” Yet, when starting this journey, he knew very little about Chaim, just that he operated a grain mill in Vitebsk, now part of Belarus, and that his family immigrated to the United States in 1906 when his grandfather, Samuel was eight years old.
As David started his research, he quickly ran into more dead ends than answers, which encouraged him to ask new questions and seek new avenues. David looked into online databases with millions of records without much success. Even when he physically visited Ellis Island looking for any evidence that his great-grandfather had passed through, he could not find written records from the time period that listed Chaim’s name. However, as David sat on the benches in Ellis Island, New York’s new immigrant processing centre where most of the estimated three million Eastern European Jews passed through between 1880-1924, David could understand what life would have been like for these new immigrants, anxiously waiting to speak with immigration clerks and eating their first balanced meal after the long passage from Europe to America.
In a 1910 US Census record, David located his great-grandmother and his grandfather, Samuel at age 10, but Chaim was not listed with the rest of the family members. The mystery around Chaim’s identity fueled more questions for David, not knowing whether he had in fact emigrated with his family, or what explanation there could be for his absence in the records. For David, the initial curiosity got him started on this journey, but the more he looked for Chaim, he continued to come up empty-handed, the whole mystery surrounding who Chaim was drove his research forward.
After watching the “Who Do You Think You Are” Docuseries episode featuring Lisa Kudrow’s search into her family history, David discovered a new lead. Kudrow also has Bardudins on her family tree and so David reached out to some of the researchers listed in the episode’s credits. This led him to connect with The Together Plan’s Jewish Heritage Expert and founder of The Jewish Resistance Museum in Novodrok, Belarus Tamara Vershitskaya. While Vitebsk was out of her region, she helped connect him with Dmitry Shirochin with whom David continued the research process.
Dmitry was able to locate Chaim’s propiska, or place of birth, as Disna, Belarus, which had differed from David’s understanding that he had lived in Vitebsk. Jews in the Russian Empire before 1917 were required to be registered to their propiska. Oftentimes this complicates archive searches from this region because relatives may search for ancestors based on where they knew that they lived rather than where they were born. Dmitry located an 1850 census which listed Menakhem Berka Bar’udin, Chaim’s father, and an addition to the census showed that Berka Menakhemovich was born in 1855.
David had only known of his great-grandfather under the name of Chaim, so thus would have never looked for him under another name. After finding this record, Dmitry was able to clarify the confusion of names between Chaim and Berka, explaining that Khaim-Berka was a common pairing of names at the time. David could see how the names told a story. Khaim-Berka Menakhemovich was the son of Menakhem Berkovich, the name signifying that Berka is the son of Menakhem. Thus, he could look back further, and given his father’s name, Menakhem Berkovich, son of Berka, it becomes clear that Khaim-Berka would have been named after his grandfather.
Now with the correct name and location, and the spirit of a true storyteller, David began piecing together who Berka was. The more he discovered, the more he could understand how Berka’s stories were woven into his DNA three generations later. He wrote “Berka Menackhemovich” a fictional short story reflective of David’s archival search and the magic of discovering his heritage. He researched the context in which Berka lived, helping him understand the landscapes in which Berka resided, from Disna, the Cedric ship that carried them across the Atlantic Ocean, and New York City at the turn of the century.
In the end, David was able to say Kaddish at Berka’s grave, but similarly to the rest of his search for Berka, it did not come without complication. On the headstone, his name is misspelt as “Bernhard Barunden” and as “Barodin” in the cemetery records. As with the rest of his search, he could not have finally found Berka without a little luck and help from an expert. After searching for the grave unsuccessfully at the Mt. Zion Cemetary in Maspeth, NY, David asked a groundskeeper who had been working late for help. The groundskeeper found the faint inscription of Berka’s name on the stone, which had been eroded by weather over time.

Bernard’s headstone (Mt Zion Cemetery, Maspeth, NY) with his name misspelt “Bernhard Barunden.”
The challenges that David faced were not uncommon, and David hopes that by sharing his story, he encourages others to persevere when researching their own heritage. He explains: “I hope it helps other people to know that you might start a family history, but you’re going to learn a lot more about the context of what heritage really means.” It takes tenacity to tackle the archives. Oftentimes family memory and stories differ from archival records, as birth locations do not match living locations, names were often changed and low literacy rates led to variations in spellings. Especially when engaging in archival research in Belarus, collaboration becomes key to help with the process of navigating the physical archive locations, translating the documents, and having experts to contextualize records to better understand the stories that accompany them. David learned not just who his ancestors were, but also a deeper understanding of what his heritage means.
By sharing Berka’s story through a piece of fiction, his story transcends historical facts and tells both the personal and collective story. “Berka Menakhemovich” is a tribute to David’s great-grandfather, but also shows what we are able to notice and appreciate in our current lives through archival research. David is pleased to share his story with The Together Plan, explaining: “It’s very gratifying that Berka’s spirit has come home and his name and memory will be more widely known through The Together Plan”
Click here to read ‘People Around the Corner and Other Strangers: Berka Menakhemovich’ by David Barudin
As a writer, David really inspires me. Oftentimes when writing historical content and digging into the archives, I find myself looking backwards and making connections to the present. We allow the past to help us understand our lives today. Yet, when speaking to David and reading his texts, I began to think about the future, and thinking about how my traits, beliefs, and actions are not just influenced by my past but will also have an impact on future generations. That perhaps, over one hundred years from now, my great-granddaughter will be looking back at the decisions I made today. It reminded me why we document these stories and how we write them not just for ourselves but for a collective understanding. These stories teach us both about where we came from and equally where we are going.
At The Together Plan we run an Archive search service to help people look for ancestral records in the Belarus archives. For more information please click here
If you have a family story you would like to share with us please get in touch: [email protected]