I. Introduction

Our speculation about how the Argentina branch fits into the larger Klionsky tree is a bit complex one.

It starts with Osher/Oskar Klionsky(1861-1943).  Osher/Oskar moved to Argentina in around 1929 from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania,  with 9 adult kids (b. 1888 - 1908) and their families.  

As of now we were not able to find a solid connection between Osher and other Klionskys/Clionskys in the United States, although we do know they came from the same place – Borisov area, near Minsk, Belarus.

We know that Osher/Oskar's father was Leizer. 

II. Where the name [Osher] came from

The only prior generation appearance of the name Osher is as the father in law of Girsha Klionsky. The record below was found  in the Czarist Russia Census of 1858,  re-published on jewishgen.org in 2018 from the state archives of Minsk, Belarus.

Girsha's wife was Sora (Yiddish modification of Sarah) bat Osher, which would explain how the name Osher came into a Klionsky family   
 
Pic. 1 Census of 1858, Czarist Russia; published on jewishgen.org. (Click on the picture to enlarge)

 
Disclaimer: we recognize that this isn't the only way a Klionsky man could be named Osher; it could even be somewhat random and not a reflection of any deceased relative, or a reflection of some other Osher who doesn't otherwise appear in any of the available records.

III. Comparing first names of Osher/Oskar Klionsky family (Argentina) with Clionskys of Harrisburg, Penn, USA

Generally speaking, [Chaim Osher] is an uncommon name combination, and finding in several generations makes it reasonably likely that the younger ones are direct descendants of the older one.

1. Khaim Klionsky(1820-1890s) of Borisov Area, Czarist Russia
Girsha & Sora had a son named Khaim (Khaim is Russian transliteration of the name Chaim) as seen on Pic.2 below.

We suspect that he was actually the Khaim-Osher who is the paterfamilias of the Klionsky clan that is now Canada-based with surnames modified to Klions, Kay and Klians..... and our current thinking is also that this same Khaim is the gggf of our klionsky.org webmaster Daniel Klionsky of San Francisco.


Pic. 2 Census of 1858, Russia; published on jewishgen.org. (Click on the picture to enlarge)

 
2. Herman [Chaim-Osher] Clionsky (1897 - 1954) of Harrisburg, Penn, USA
Besides the Khaim from above, we know that Chaim-Osher was also the Hebrew name of  the only son of Wolf/Wulf Clionsky(1867-1931) and we believe he was named (at least the Osher part) after his ggm's father.  


Pic. 3 the place of Herman [Chaim-Osher] Clionsky on the family tree. (Click on the picture to enlarge)

Let’s keep this in mind as we review some other names in the Clionsky ancestral line, relative to Wulf Clionsky:

3. Compilation of the common names between two branches.

Firstly, from the records on our site we can come up with this table below of common names between Wulf Clionsky & Osher/Oskar Klionsky of Argentina.

 
Pic. 4 Compilation of the common names between two Klionsky branches 

Now let’s consider this - among the 9 sibs of Tuvia (Klionsky, Tobias [Efraim Tuvia] (1888 - 1958) of Borisov-Vilno-Buenos Aires), we find Mina, Sora and Man, and his father was Osher/Oskar. 
 
His other sibs include Leizer/Lazaro and Eliahu/Elias and Israel..all of which occur repeatedly among other known Klionsky men born before 1910.  So, of Osher/Oskar ‘s 10 children at least 6 (these 5, plus Tuvia) have names with identified familial origins.

This sort of correspondence between names in your family and the family of the previously known Tuvia is pretty strong evidence of a close relationship between the Argentinian Klionskys and others.


IV. Guessing the exact relationship

What we wrote (above) addresses a possible connection between Clionskys and Argentina clan, but doesn't get into the critical detail of the exact relationship.  

A key point of that speculation is that Osher/Oskar was most likely a direct descendant of the Girsha Klionsky and his wife Sora bat Osher (see pic. 1, we only have that record that is relevant) We see here, that Sora was born ~1803. Since we know that Osher/Oskar was born 1861 and that Osher/Oskar 's father was Leizer, so our best guesses are that Leizer was a son or grandson of Sora and Girsha.

Let’s assume that Leizer was a son of Sora and Girsha, that would make him a brother of Matt’s great-great-grandfather Zalman Mordecai (let’s call him ZM) Klionsky.  
Given that Osher/Oskar was born in 1861, his father was probably born before 1840, and that's distinctly reasonable if Leizer's mother was born in 1803.  We already know that ZM had brothers (Yisroel Yitzhak, Gershon, Note, and Khaim).  It isn't hard to imagine that Leizer was another… 

However, here is the a problem:  we've found Russian Archives record evidence of all the others, but none for any named Leizer son of Girsha.  And, there's also no family history of such a person.

For the other possibility, that Leizer was a grandson of Sora and Girsha, timing gets a bit tight but isn't impossible.  If they had a son by 1820, he could have fathered Leizer by about 1837 and Leizer would have been barely old enough by 1861 to be Osher's father.

Czarist census records identify several Leizer Klionsky men born in the right time-frame to perhaps be Osher's father, but  none of these Leizers are sons of Girsha/Sora.   

    - One was born about 1829, son of Tevel.  (Not the right guy unless Sora was a grandmother at age 26...)
    - One was born in 1836, son of Khaim...but grandson of Ar'ya (Could work if Sora was a grandma at 33)
    - One was born in 1833, son of Rubin ...but grandson of Leizer (Sora would be a grandma at 30)
    
Of these, it seems that the middle Leizer, son of Khaim and born in 1836 is the most reasonable possibility, especially since we already know that Girsha and Sora had a son named Khaim born in 1819...but this leaves us with the problem that this Leizer appears in the records as son of Khaim and grandson of Ar'ya (NOT of Girsha).   

We are open to speculation that Girsha was the same person as Ar'ya, but this seems unlikely since Ar'ya means 'lion' while Girsha means 'deer'; perhaps there was a person named Girsha Ar'ya (or the other way round) who appears with different names in different records...that would solve our problem.

So that's it.  Best guess is that our common ancestry began with a man named Girsha Ar'ya or Ar'ya Girsha as shown below Pic.5

Pic 5: The suggested place of Klionskys of Argentina branch on the common family tree