Meir Yehuda Feldman

Meir Yehuda Feldman

• The Drohitchin memorial text expands his family considerably: his parents were Michael Feldman and Heska; his wife, Chaya Feiga, was the daughter of Yaakov Hersh and Pesha Kaminetsky. The couple had children including Leiba, Bashka, Yosef, Avraham Mordechai, Heska, and Esther Beila. (JewishGen, pp. 223–224; JewishGen, pp. 410–411)

• He emigrated to the United States in 1892, living for four years in St. Joseph, Missouri, where he helped establish the Sha’arei Shalom synagogue. He later returned to Drohitchin. (JewishGen, pp. 223–224)

• From 1897 until 1914, he leased and managed the Smolnik Estate, owned by Count Kontorov. The Czarist authorities forced the family to leave the estate in 1914 under residential restrictions. (JewishGen, pp. 223–224)

• The evidence is inconsistent on his final fate. One account says that Meir Yehuda and Chaya Feiga “died with their family” in Drohitchin; another wartime testimony places Meir Yudel among Jews outside the ghetto shortly before the town’s destruction. Neither passage supplies a precise death date or transport. (JewishGen, p. 223; JewishGen, p. 306)

Children and descendants

• Heska Feldman, later Heska Match, emigrated to the United States in 1922, married Shmuel Match in Chicago in 1930, and had three children: Sarah Leah, Yisrael Ezra, and Morry. (JewishGen, p. 410)

• Esther Beila Feldman was born in 1889, married David Friedman in 1907, emigrated with her family, and died in St. Joseph, Missouri, on September 25, 1954. (JewishGen, p. 410)

• Avraham Mordechai Feldman, born in Drohitchin in 1883, arrived in the United States in 1904 and died in Denver on April 2, 1956. His widow was Roza, née Baskov; they had three children. (JewishGen, p. 411)

• Leiba Feldman, identified as Meir Yudel’s son, was later held in a wartime labor camp. (JewishGen, p. 302)

Grassman family and Khomsk Lane

• The connected Grassman names are clarified: Gedaliah Grassman died in Drohitchin in 1942; his sons included Yirmiyahu, deported by the Bolsheviks to Russia and later living in New York, Chaim Leib Herman, who lived in New York, and Zelig, who perished in Drohitchin. The “Grassman wall” stood beside Khomsk Alley. (JewishGen, p. 223)

• I found no separate archival matches for Jacob Hirsch, Fieshe, or the exact street spelling “Khamsker Lane” in the searched JewishGen, Yad Vashem, USHMM, and Arolsen interfaces; “Khomsk Alley” is the corroborated variant.