The good Sarah for good memory from Matilda

Hi – after many years searching I've been unable to find information on my Maternal Grandfathers side of the family (ironically the side I was closest too).

My GGF, Samuel WIEDERKEHR b. 1870/80's was in the Polish Army and either died, ran off, or simply disappeared in1915, during WW1. His wife Henia WIEDERKEHR (nee WOLF) b. 1880's raised their 4 boys in Rawa Ruska where her family was from.

My Great Uncles all died during the war:

-       ELI, b. ~1901 in Dziewięcierz, d. 1940’s

-       HERSCH b. 1904 in Dziewięcierz, d. 1942

-       PSACHJE, b.1911, d. 1945

My GF MARKUS, b. 1914, d. 1994, had always said he was born in Rawa Ruska, but he may not have know another location

I’m trying to figure out how I can find anymore information on GGF and his parents. Thanks in advance for your help!

Aaron Sandorffy asandorffy@...
TOWNS: Rawa Ruska, Dziewięcierz

Hi Joel.  I'm going to assume your ancestor came through Ellis Island in your post.  You might be making an assumption and depriving yourself of some passenger information on the manifest. You needed to do one more step after finding them on the Hamburg list (and the name of their ship and when they left that port and where they were going).  Did the "park service team" actually look at the manifest of that ship?  If you were told it was "missing" pages, there is another explanation for "missing" information on Ellis Island manifests...  When the ship manifests were filmed in 1943 or 1944 from Ellis Island, the Immigration Service estimated that about 5 percent of the sheets were torn or crumpled or otherwise damaged.  Most of the damage was to the lower left hand side where the pages were turned.  The lower left side would include the name column, but the rest of the line could still be intact, and have a lot more information than what the Hamburg list would show.  It is true the Hamburg list does not show you the page/line number on the U.S. manifest so you would have to search through the ship manifest pointed to by the Hamburg list.  If your ship came into the U.S. from 1906 on, the names of all the passengers and their page/line numbers can often be found on the Ship Book indexes, which will point you to a ripped nameless part of a page.  Also the WPA cards might also have passenger information including ship name, and page/line numbers for a passenger. From a small sample I've found that most manifest damage happened after WWII started when there was a rush to citizenship and pressure on the ship manifests for citizenship searches.  The WPA cards done just before the filming years often have much more information than the actual filmed manifest with their degraded pages.
Joel Weintraub
Dana Point, CA

I have combed and indexed a number of records from Posen region, Prussia and stillbirths or deaths within minutes or hours of birth were registered as such, usually without given name; although I have seen given names for stillbirths.

Forget rules, be creative.

Happy hunting,

Nicole Heymans, near Brussels, Belgium

Hi Mark,

I discovered about 17 years ago when attempting to make sense of my mother's 1942/1943 diary, entirely in shorthand, totally unrecognizable at first although I had learned shorthand at school, that there are at least as many shorthand systems as languages and probably many more.

It would help others to help you if you could provide a suggestion as to the probable language of the shorthand writer. It looks German to me but I have absolutely no knowledge of English shorthand.

Happy hunting,

Nicole Heymans, near Brussels, Belgium

I would appreciate any information about the following people:

Ilona GRUNBERGER ( born in Szeged in 1920) and lived in the Kazinczy street  28 in Budapest in 1945-46
Tibor GRUNBERGER ( born in Szeged in 1923) and lived in the Kazinczy street 28 in Budapest in 1945-46.
Judit FRSCH ( FRISS) lived in Budapest in 1944 in the Hegedűs Gyula street 15.
Alfred MARION: lived and died in Paris. Any relatives from him?
Imre LUKACS: lived in Paris after 1945. Any relatives from him?

Thanks


Andres Carciente
Budapest
andrescarciente@...