Zvi Buchmann was the son of Yitzhak and Chopa Esther. He married Rivka Stein. Their eight children (Noah, Mendel Leibel, Hanna-Rocha, Brina, Meyer, Aaron, Fruma and Dov Bereh) seem to have been born around Klykoliai, a small town in north-western Lithuania near the Latvian border. The records don't fully agree: some say Klykoliai, some Riga, some Mitau. The borders didn't agree either. Within a single childhood the same corner of the map was Russian, then Lithuanian, then Latvian.
A century and a half on, four of the eight branches are documented in any depth. The other four are still mostly blank.
The eight
The four that are well documented got that way by accident, not design: each had someone keeping notes. Noah's descendants reached the United States. Meyer's went to Britain and the United States, and became Bookmans in Manchester and Memphis. Aaron's also settled in the United States. Dov Bereh's, the largest branch by far, scattered across Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Israel, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.
The other four — Mendel Leibel, Hanna-Rocha, Brina and Fruma — are mostly absent from the record. Some left no descendants. Some left descendants whose links to the family haven't been traced yet. Filling those gaps is one of the things this site is for.
Various branches of the family left Lithuania and settled across Norway, Denmark, Britain, the United States, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. Their activities in their new countries were notable, from participation in the original Montana Land Rush to a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth.
The leaving
The departures came in waves. Late nineteenth century, before the First World War: Trondheim around 1888, Copenhagen in the 1890s, then London, Manchester, New York and Boston. Between the wars, Sydney and Auckland. After the Second World War: Rotterdam in 1947, Kfar Saba in the early fifties, Provence in the sixties.
What strikes me is how rarely the reason is written down. There's no single "we left because." People left separately, over four generations, each for reasons that mostly went unrecorded. What's left is the geography: Buchmanns in Trondheim, a branch in Kfar Saba, Buchmans in Massachusetts, Bookmans in Manchester, Levins in Rotterdam — cousins who all trace back to Zvi and Rivka, and most of whom have never met.
The reunions
The first modern reunion was in 1999, in Denmark. They've kept happening, roughly every five years, in a different country each time: 2004 in Auckland, 2009 in Boston, 2014 in Trondheim, 2019 in Jerusalem, and 2024 in Rotterdam, the sixth.
Part of what this site is for is keeping the years between reunions from going quiet — photographs, write-ups, a tree that updates as it learns. Something to hold an oral tradition steady.
What this site will and won't do
We're starting small, on purpose. The first version is the story you're reading, the eight branches, and a way to write to us. The family tree, the photo archive, the calendar, the per-person profile pages all come later. They only work if curators keep them alive.
Day one isn't exhaustive. The goal is to be honest about what's known, careful about what's private, and patient about the rest.