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Part One: The Foundations of the Volftsun Family 15 Inna tells us that there was a street in Gorodok that her grandmother paid to have paved. Even today, Gorodok has an Inda Rycya street. The Brandes Family The Brandes Family The Brandes family was renowned throughout Europe for the scholarship and devotion of the generations of rabbis it had produced. Unfortunately, not much has survived to tell us more about the personal lives of these individuals who were so celebrated and respected in their time. Hava's paternal grandfather, Rabbi Mendel Brandes, was regarded as one of the most well-known rabbis in Eastern Europe. Mendel served as the rabbi for the first wooden synagogue in the shtetl and then inspired and initiated the construction of a new synagogue built out of stone. He became a chief rabbi in 1836 at the age of 25. Aer the revolution, the Bolsheviks destroyed the beautiful stone building, and the surviving old wooden synagogue was converted into a storage facility. Mendel married Raisel in 1832, when he was 21 and she was 20. Four years later, the couple gave birth to a son, Israel Brandes. Iosif Israel Volsun is named in memory of Iosif Volsun, his paternal grandfather, and Israel Brandes, his maternal grandfather. Such are the connections that span generations and define the Volsun clan. We don't know much about the early life of Israel Brandes, but in 1867 he married Mariam Brandes, who lived to the age of 81, which was quite a long lifespan in those days. Because he was only four years old when she died, Iosif has just a few direct memories of his grandmother Mariam. "I remember her as a very nice, warm, and religious woman," he says. Israel Brandes died in 1907 at age 71. Israel and Mariam raised seven children in Gorodok: Shmuel, Riva, Benesh, Yakov (Yankel), Fishel, Faiga, and Hava, the youngest, born in 1891. Her namesake is Eve, the first woman in the world. Shlomo and Hava's relationship started in Hava's infancy. There was but one house between the Volsun and Brandes families. Their fathers were iends, and their mothers gossiped and visited. Both families were respected members of the Jewish community. At the time Hava was born, Shlomo was 13 years old. Few husbands have a memory of the birth of their future brides. As he watched and possibly held the infant Hava, was he aware that he was holding more than a neighbor's baby? That he was holding the mother of the next generation of the Volsun family? As Shlomo went about his business, he could not help Above: Hava Volsun in the ont, and Mura Kegelman (Hava's niece, Iosif 's cousin) in Graiding, Ukraine, 1918.

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