My name is Errol Leon Berman and I am a physician residing in Livingston, New Jersey and am answering "Kipnis" because my parents were first cousins and both were born in Naroditch and came to the America and Cuba from Antwerp, Belgium, I think, before the ershte molchomeh (first war)because my Zayde Dovid Berman sent them money from America to run away from the bandits in Russia, i.e., Naroditch. A whole famile of Berman's,with their matriarch, Leychik Berman(wife of Dovid Berman) as well as Shusterman's (my mother's father and sister) and Katzes(my father's eldest sister widowed with two children) and my dad's four brothers, Morris(Uncle Moishe who never married), Uncle Louie (Lazar), and Uncle Hymie. They were running away from the bandits in Naroditch. My father's widowed sister, Sarah (Chaye Sorah)had been married to David Katz, who passed away from the 1917 flu epidemic and she came with his
sister Beyle and her daughters Fannie and Shayndel and son Alex. My grandfather, Yankle Shusterman (my mother's father, who had also lost his wife during the flu epidemic of 1917) was arrested in Warsaw for making false passports. My mother's sister Sarah Shusterman visited him in the jail. Apparently Fannie was also in jail there to and she and my Aunt Sarah became life long friends. Aunt Sarah died only two years ago in her early nineties. She told me this previous part of the story from the events in Warsaw. My mother Esther Shusterman Berman and my Aunt Sarah Shusterman
eventually ended up in Havana with their father Yankle Shusterman. Yankle had been coerced into marrying Chaye Sorah Katz, who also had two children, Fay and Joe because his wife, who also passed away in the great flu pandemic of 1917 was the sister of Leychik Berman, and she made them marry for the sake of the four children.Complicated isn't it.Immogration closed and that portion of the family had to go to Havana and ten or eleven years later did they come to America after my grandmother Leychik sent my father,Chatzkel, to Cuba to marry his Cousin Esther Shusterman so the family could come to America(Katz and Shusterman)around the time of the great American Depression.My Dad's brother were coerced into sending gelt (money) to Cuba to support them by their mother Leychik. This fact was replayed during my childhood many times by Uncle Lazar, Uncle Moishe, and Uncle Hymie Bermans.
My dad, Hatskel Berman ran to meet landsleit from Naroditch who came to Miami Beach in 1968 from Chicago, where I learned there was a Naroditch Shul and Cemetery Society.