Joseph Grinberg and his family

This is the family of my maternal grandmother, Grunya Grinberg. The picture was taken in Jurbarkas in 1928 on the occasion of the visit of Grandmother's brother Gary. Grandmother's house is in the background. Gary is in the second row on the right. Gary's wife and her sister, whose names I can’t remember, are next to him.  Uncle Joseph Grinberg is to the right in the top row. I don’t know the rest. The photograph was developed in the photo salon Levinas.

My family comes from the small town of Jurbarkas 200 kilometers away from Vilnius. My maternal grandpa, Morduchai Grinberg, was born in Jurbarkas in 1864. Morduchai was involved in commerce. He was neither rich nor poor. His wife, Grunya, was also born in Jurbarkas. She died at a rather young age from some sort of a disease in 1905. She died and six children became orphans. Grandpa didn’t remarry, though he was a rather young man. He didn’t want his children to be brought up by a stepmother. Morduchai and Grunya had three sons and three daughters.

My mother’s middle brother Joseph, born in 1890, worked in the store with Grandpa Morduchai. He had an accident and became disabled: one of Joseph’s legs was shorter than the other. In 1920 Joseph got married. His wife, Zhenya, was from Riga. In the 1930s Granddad was ill, and Joseph managed the business. He ran the store. Joseph, his wife and their small child were exiled with Grandpa Morduchai on 14th June 1941. Joseph was the only one of the family who survived. Zhenya and Robert died on their way to exile. Joseph was sentenced to eight years in camps for having been a member of the Shaulist Council. It was a kind of a military and sports organization. Joseph was charged with counterrevolutionary Fascist activity because he regularly paid a membership fee to the organization. Having gone through this ordeal Joseph came back to Lithuania in the post-war period, then he immigrated to Israel, where he died in the 1970s.