Be inspired by three new stories recently published on JewishGen’s Success! Stories webpage. You can access these accounts from the “About Us” button on the website or by following this link: http://www.jewishgen.org/jewishgen/testimonials/

From Cluj To The Rest Of The World:

The Fate Of The Five Jakab Siblings

by Reinier Heinsman

“He enjoyed the little things, such as going for a walk in the park of Antwerp to admire his favorite tree, a weeping willow. Ferdinand was also a writer, who especially liked to write Hungarian poems. In September 1942, he was deported from Belgium to Auschwitz.” 

Yad Vashem Page of Testimony: 

An Opportunity Lost

 by Richard L. Baum

“... on a whim, I entered my mother’s surname into the Yad Vashem search engine. Sitting in front of my monitor, I was expecting a null result when I was stunned to see two Pages of Testimony “pop up.” Someone had survived. A survivor!”

Doppelgangers, DNA, and Doubts

by Jeremy Frankel

“With a deep sigh and the realization I had to clear my family name, I embarked on a sleuthing expedition of my own. There was little to go on other than the birth mother recalling that the birth father had the name Harris Koenigsberg.”

Thank you to the above authors for sharing their stories, including our Webmaster and Associate Editor, Richard L. Baum. We encourage you to submit your own success stories to us at success@....

Nancy Siegel (San Francisco/CA/USA)

Editor and Director of Communications 

JewishGen.org

A number of members of the Herman and Johanna FEUERLICHT family reportedly arrived at the Port of New York on 1 Sep 1891.  Along with Herman und Johanna, daughters Irene and Bertha and sons Albert and Sydney Julius were also in the group of arrivals.

I’ve not been able to find a ship’s manifest for this event.  I have taken the date & port of arrival from naturalization documents for the two sons along with index cards of those naturalization documents.  They were from the Košice / Kassa Region of Austria-Hungary, now Slovakia.

I have reviewed familysearch dot org and also ancestry dot com.

In reference to this family, I have also found the Feuerlicht name transcribed as follows: Firelicht, Faierlikt, Fajerlicht, Feurlicht.  I am sure there are other interpretations.

Can anyone assist me in locating a ship’s manifest?  I do not know their port of departure.  

Alex Magocsi

York Maine / Hamburg Germany

Researching, currently:

 FEUERLICHT & GREIF, Slovakia

 GROSZ, Nyirbator Hungary
MODERATOR NOTE: Please reply privately with family information

One has to make a distinction when referring to Romania since it was different for areas which became part of  modern Romania in 1918 — Transylvania, Banat, Maramures, Bucovina all part of Austria Hungary —  or Bessarabia - part of Russia. For the Old Kingdom, the most relevant is Moldova since most Ashkenazi Jews living in Wallachia (Bucuresti) , may have originally arrived from  Moldova.  The vast majority of the Jews came to Moldova in early mid 1800 from former Poland lands, primarily Galicia (then Austria), Podolia (then Russia), Bukovina and Bessarabia. As such, they must have had already surnames from the country of origin. While surnames were required in Moldova/Romania since 1860s, since Jews were not  citizens, those laws were practically not enforced. Therefore I see a phenomenon where the original surnames may not have been used by all, possibly, most Jews. Instead there are many occupational names (Romanian) and patronymics (X sin Y). There is a variability of names found in civil records, e.g. a tailor may be referred as “Croitoru” and later as “Nadler” and who knows what the original Ashkenazi name was. A money changer may have been named (a turkish origin name)  “Zarafu” and his children became “Vecsler”. For Jews which kept their Austrian or Russian received names, A Beider reference books are the best resource. But is may be unknowable, whether someone’s surname in the 20th century reflect an earlier surname or one acquired later.

Luc Radu
Great Neck, NY

http://www.jewishgen.org/viewmate/viewmateview.asp?key=VM82113