There was an impressive amount of food amassed on Vladimir and Irina Prikupets’ tiny kitchen table, and it just kept coming. Meat and potato pierogies, salted fish, blintzes with caviar, borscht — “Ukrainian borscht,” Irina said pointedly — alongside beef stew, bread, salad and half-empty bottles of wine.
But despite the spread, there was more talking going on — loud banter, in both Russian and English — than eating. And who could blame them? When cousins who haven’t seen each other in 70 years get together, there’s some catching up to do.
“It’s been very exciting, very emotional,” said Vladimir in a thick accent, with a smile that makes his eyes crinkle shut. Settled in the kitchen of his home in San Francisco’s Richmond district, he was seated next to his first cousin, Willy Dinovetsky, who’d arrived the day before, April 10, from Rutherfordton, N.C.
Dinovetsky, man whose English isn’t quite as good as his older cousin’s, agreed with a smile and a nod. Prior to their meeting at SFO, the two hadn’t seen each other since 1941, when they were 9 and 7 years old, when both their families fled Odessa at the outset of World War II. Both families had tried for years to locate the other, to no avail.
Now 79 and 77, the cousins technically have Vladimir’s wife, Irina, to thank for their reunion. In November of last year, the retired nurse was reading a Russian-language health magazine when a letter to the editor jumped out at her.
“I saw it was signed by Willy Dinovetsky,” she explained, “and that is a very unusual name.” Irina, who has been married to Vladimir for 53 years, was certain she’d heard the name before — and she’d often heard her late mother-in-law talk about her dream of finding her nephew.
“I took the magazine to [Vladimir], and I said, ‘Does this mean anything to you?’” Irina recalled. “And he said ‘Well, yes, that’s my cousin!’” After phone calls to the magazine and then to an information directory in North Carolina, the Prikupetses were able to track down Dinovetsky’s adult son, Alex, in Rutherfordton; Alex gave them his father’s number.
After looking for each other for 70 years, it only took a few days to connect on the phone.
“This one was crying on this end, that one was crying on the other end … and I’m the one who did this!” Irina said happily, before serving dessert.
Flanked by Vladimir’s brother, David, and Willy’s son, Alex, both cousins appeared to still be in shock. They had developed an easy camaraderie over the past five months from speaking on the phone every few days, but catching up on 70 years of family history is a daunting task.
“Each time you talk, you tell a little bit more,” said Vladimir, who immigrated to San Francisco in 1975 with his wife and daughter to continue his work as a civil engineer. He also developed his skills as a photographer, and contributed to Russian newspapers.
As for his cousin’s life after Odessa? Willy’s family moved around following the war, he said: Kazakhstan, Georgia, Azerbaijan. He joined the Russian Army in his 20s and became a major, retired after 27 years, and spent time in Israel before deciding to follow his only son to the States in 2000. “I wanted to be with family,” he said.
One passion both cousins share: Preserving and passing on the history of Russian Jews, and how they were persecuted. Vladimir has traveled extensively, carrying torches for four different Olympic games — Los Angeles in 1984, Salt Lake City in 2002, Athens in 2004 and Beijing in 2008 — all in the name of standing against anti-Semitism.
His torch from 1984, for which he paid $3,000 so he could keep it, bears three small plaques: one in memory of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, one for the Israeli athletes killed in the 1972 Munich Olympics and another for Jews living in the Soviet Union.
Willy said he’s been shocked by how little many U.S. Jews know about their heritage. “No one knows Hebrew, they don’t know Russia, they don’t know the history,” he said, shaking his head.
If these two cousins have anything to do with it, their grandchildren will certainly know their family history. This first visit was a short one; Willy was due to return to North Carolina on April 12. But there are plans for the Prikupetses to head east to visit the Dinovetskys and meet Willy’s grandson, as he spent time with the Prikupets’ only granddaughter.
The cousins know they’ve missed out on a lot, but they’re both in good health, and ready to make up for lost time.
“It is family,” Vladimir said simply. “It is the most important thing.”