The story of Max Brown is mysterious and contradictory from the very start. His date of birth was always known to be January 1, 1895, and this is also the date written down in the 1982 notes. We can be sure that January 1 is simply a made up date for someone who doesn’t know their date of birth. However, Adela insists Max said he was born in 1893. If Max and Becky were married in 1922, and she was sixteen at the time, and there was a thirteen year difference between them as Max also claimed, then in fact he was most likely born in 1893.

What we do now know for sure, is that Max was born in the town of Oprischeny (as it is written in German, or Opriseni, in Romanian, and or Opryseny in Ukrainian), in the region of Sereth (Siret), in the province of Bukovina, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (see map page). Today, Bukovina is divided between Ukraine and Romania, and the town of Oprischeny sits exactly on the modern border. Although we have always been told he came from Romania, the town actually sits today on the Ukrainian side of the border. However, at the time Max lived there, the town was made up almost entirely of ethnic Romanians. Max, in fact never lived in Romania. Bukovina was not taken over by Romania until WWI, a few years after Max left. Amazingly, the town sat on the extreme eastern portion of the Austrian Empire, only about 4 kilometers from the border (at that time) with Romania. The Jews who lived on the other side of the border, in Romania or Russia, were in a completely different world.

The name Oprischeny probably derives from opryszki, which means bandits, or in Ukranian, fortified military bastion. Oprischeny is first mentioned in 1428 as present from Bojer Brill to the Moldovita monastery. In 1774, 22 families lived there. In 1869 243 houses with 1,300 people were registered. In 1890 1,602 people, mainly Romanian farmers, lived there. According to a 1930 census, the town of Oprischeny is listed as having 1,801 people. Max recalled it as being a town of about 2,000 people when he left in 1910. This further helped to verify this was the right village. According to Max there were only five Jewish families living in the town.

Alternate spellings of the village are: Opriszeny, Opriszeni, Oprischenj, Opresan, Opreschen, Opreschany, Oprischany. In Ruthenian it is called Pancir. Interestingly, the “Opr” in Oprischeny means oak tree according to one source, but I have not be able to confirm this claim. There was an old story which now may hold water, that Max moved to Oakville because that was the name of his birthplace.

The nearest village to them, less than a mile away, was an entirely German speaking one, probably a former Tartar colony, called Tereblecea. It too had a few Jewish families. The closest town with any significant Jewish population was the town of Terescheni (Taraseni), which was about 5 kilometers away. The town probably had a few hundred Jews living there out of a population of 1,200. The nearest town of any significance was Sereth (Siret), the regional market town, which had a population of 7,800, of which 3,200 were Jews. The town of Sereth was about 10 kilometers away. The capital, and only city in Bukovina, was Czernowitz. The city had a population in 1910 of 85,000, of which about a third were Jews. The town was only about 25 kilometers (16 miles) away. It is interesting because although he lived in a tiny village (not even a shtetl), with almost no Jews, the city of Czernowitz was only a few hours ride by horse and buggy or train, and he we can only imagine the family went there on occasion. At the time, Czernowitz was a very modern, progressive city, very “Austrian” in its culture, architecture and fashion. Locals referred to it as “Little Vienna” (see pictures). While Oprischeny and Czernowitz are today in the Ukraine, Sereth is located in Romania.