I just had an experience that relates directly to the question of the
family >from Bialystok and/or Griby - Grybai.

I was excited to discover the Hamburg Passenger Lists are now online for
the years 1890-93, and anxiously began searching for my great aunt and
uncle. I found them both listed under my aunt's surname, with the
surname terribly mispelled, by searching by first name. So her surname
LISSITZKY became "LITICZISKY." My uncle's last name, SHOLOMOVICH became
a first name "SCHAMOSCHIN." In addition, my uncle's daughter became Lene
(she was known as Dora).
As crazy as this sounds, searching by first name made the search
relatively easy after trying so many alternative surname spellings.

However, when I looked at the town of origin, I was surprised to see the
word "Geborin". Now I know that these relatives were also from
Bialystok, and I thought at first maybe it was some German town they
were staying in prior to boarding the ship. But after talking with my
82 year old mother, we have decided that in addition to mutilating the
surnames, the German officer misunderstood my relatives say "Grodno
Gubernia" and transliterated Gubernia into Geborin. I wonder if this is
how "Grybai" also appeared?

So, I think that the ship's manifests are somewhat unreliable on this
point. However, they were surprisingly accurate on the ages that my
relatives supplied, more so than they led us to believe in later years.

Victoria Reed
San Francisco

Searching for:
LISSITZKY Grodno and Minsk Gurbernias
REISS Lemberg, Zloczow, Zolkiew
NIEMAND Galicia
FISH Galica
ROSENBERG and SOLOMON, Lynn, Mass.
RABINOWITZ Bialystok