Documented Life     Ancestors - Troper and Hochstein Genealogies

Ancestors of Miles Hochstein (Great Great Grandmother)

Doba Leshansky
of Timkovichi


Doba was a very reserved, almost silent, religious Jewish woman of Timkovich, reports Dorothy Leshan


Wife of Avram Yitzchak Leshansky

Mother of Leizer Leshansky one older son Rafal, and two daughters, Fage Riva (a seamstress by trade) and a second daughter whose married name became Shulkin

Grandmother of Ida Leshan and many others.

Doba may be a form of the name "Devora" or Debra

Dorothy Leshan told me two stories that she was told by her parents about her grandmother Doba, her father's mother, who lived and died in Timkovich, and whom she never met.

Story One

Doba was a very reserved, almost silent, religious Jewish woman of Timkovich, the wife of Avram Yitzchak Leshansky.

One day a terrible rumor swept through the shtetle of Timkovich: men were coming to rampage through town and make a pogrom.

Hard experience led the people to know that they would do terrible damage, and would kidnap children, and worse.

The townspeople quickly prepared to flee the town for the relative safety of the surrounding land and forests

Doba was told to run, but she had bread in the oven, and it was just getting started. So she calmly put the children on a wagon and the children fled with everyone else in the town.

Soon the town was completely emptied and quiet. Doba finished baking, looked out the door, and saw no one coming.

She cleaned her house and put a soup on the fire to cook.

She looked outside and still no horsemen and no pogrom.

Eventually she sat outside her front door knitting, the only person left in the whole town.

The feared pogrom never came.

Finally, near sunset the Jews came back to town, tired and hungry from a day spent hiding in the woods. They found Doba sitting outside her house calmly knitting.

Doba's family was the only one that had a clean house to come home to and a hot dinner to eat.

~

Story Two

The area around Timkovich was noted for growing flax. Dorothy Leshan recalls that her Grandma (Doba) made beautiful hand-woven cloth.

~

These stories were told to me on November 20, 2001 by Dorothy Leshan, Doba's granddaughter (b. 1905), who learned them from her Mamma and Papa, Sarah and Leizer Leshansky.