>>211444622Brooks was born Melvin James Kaminsky (Yiddish: מעלװין זשאַמעס קאַמינסקי)[3] on a tenement kitchen table on June 28, 1926, in Brownsville, Brooklyn,[4] to Kate (née Brookman; Yiddish: קייט ברוקמאַן קאַמינסקי) and Max Kaminsky (Yiddish: מאַקס קאַמינסקי),[5] and grew up in Williamsburg. His father's family were German Jews from Danzig (Gdańsk, Poland). His mother was a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant from Kyiv, in the Pale of Settlement of the Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine).[6][7][8][9]