At 18:41 13/06/2020, judith.cannon4@... wrote:

On my grandfather Louis Witkin's death certificate, his father's
name is Yitzchak, but I can't find Yitzchak anywhere in the
archives. Any suggestions for how that name may have been listed?
Thanks/
--
Judy Cannon
judith.cannon4@...
_._,_._,_

Yitzchak is the Hebrew (Ivrit) for Isaac. Does that help??

David Lewin
London

At 12:47 13/06/2020, Steven I Usdansky via groups.jewishgen.org wrote:

In my family, one grandson of Chaim-Moshe was named that, two were
named Moshe-Chaim. The reason for the reversal of the names remains a mystery.
_._,_._,_

Had one of the Moshe-Chaim's died before the other was born?

David Lewin
London

At 09:33 13/06/2020, jlevy2008@... wrote:

Hello everyone from the sweltering heat of Dubai,

Thank you all for your replies and interest.

I just wanted to clarify that I am asking about the likelihood of a
man swapping his given name and his family name.

The 1812 marriage recorded in the register of London's Great
Synagogue indicates that the groom's given name was Hyam in English
and Chayim in Hebrew. His English family name was apparently MOSES.

Is it likely that that he later chose to call himself Moses (given
name) HYAM (family name) for civil purposes, i.e. change his family name?

Were the family names used by the Jews of early 19th England fixed
or was there a degree of fluidity?

Justin Levy
_._,_._,_

Are you certain that the reversed names apply to the same individual
and not to different generations in that family?


A string of two names was used before they invented family
names. XY was simply X, the son of Y

Jews also often named a newborn after a deceased grandparent. So XY
could be read as X son of Y. Mostly that was the name of a
grandfather - but not always, of course. That would be too
simple. Giving the child the same personal name as the father became
a "modern" copying of the gentiles.

In Germany Jews did not take on family names until 1812 -
1834. There are a couple of such databases at Jewishgen of name
adoptions which I created some years back for the 1812 and 183427
West Prussia and Posen provinces. At that time the Jews were granted
citizenship in those territories and one condition was that they
adopt family names as had been practiced by their non-Jewish host
territories for generations.

David Lewin
London

The question is not clear. 
   If you are looking for names Yitzkhak might use in a country where English is not the language spoken, I have seen Icek, Izaak, Aizik and Itsko.
   If you are looking at English language possibilities, Isaac is the direct translation, but I have seen Isadore, Irving, Irwin, all of which begin with the same sound. Though I have never seen it, Zach is another sound-alike.

Herbert Lazerow

An idea I had to possibly suggest which chassidus your family followed would be to look for names given in honor of deceased Rebbes. Although it's not a very reliable method, if you find relatives' names that are in common with Rebbes from either Ger or Radomsk that could suggest your family named after the chassidus they were members of. This would be if you don't know of another reason they would have picked the name (ie. there is no obvious relative they were named after).
You can find the names of the Rebbes from both Ger and Radomsk chassidus on Wikipedia and then check if the dates make sense that any relatives with names in common could have been named after the death of the Rabbi in question.
I like Steve Bloom's suggestion about maybe being a Radomsker chassid. It seems after WWI the chassidus moved to Sosnowiec which is even closer to Krakow than Radomsko is.
Good luck!

Shavua Tov,

I am wondering whether you are aware that you can post images of gravestones using the wonderful ViewMate feature of jewishgen.  Doing so make it easy to reply, and easier for helpers to see other replies -- and to respond to them -- in a more organized and efficient manner.

Here is my reading of the entire stone, which will repeat much of what was already written, but will also be a bit different.

I will bold the actual text of the stone, to help it stand out from my remarks.
===============================================

[The top of the stone has the word "HaLevi", meaning that the deceased was a Levite.  Levites trace their ancestry back, son to father, to Levi, one of the 12 sons of Jacob.  Levites had specific functions in the Temple services, still have special status today, and assist the Priests (Cohanim) when they prepare to bless the congregation.]

Here lies

a dear and honored man

the learned one

[who died at a] young age, our teacher the rabbi [I beg to differ with the person who responded that the abbreviation that appears, which represents the Hebrew words "Moreinu HaRav", usually does not indicate that the person was a rabbi.  On the contrary:  this abbreviation means exactly that:  he was a rabbi.  Unfortunately, this abbreviation occasionally appears when it should not.  The excellence of the rest of the text on this stone makes me feel strongly that he was indeed a rabbi.  It does not necessarily mean that he had a pulpit and led a congregation, but it definitely means that he had received rabbinical ordination].

SHMARYAHU [I see that others have read it as Shmaryah.  Both of these are valid names.  However, there is an apostrophe on the stone after the last letter, which usually indicates an abbreviation, meaning that at least one letter has been omitted.]

son of Menachem Aryeh [here, too, the middle name is not spelled out; there is an apostrophe to indicate the missing last letter], may his light shine [in other words, the father was still alive].

Rivnik/Ribnik, died on the second day of the holiday of Pesach [Passover]

[rather than give the date of death using the standard month+day, it is here given in terms of the holiday upon which he died.  The calendar date of the 2nd day of Passover is always the 16th day of the month of Nisan]

of the year [5]688 [I am reading the year differently from others; zooming in on the date indicates clearly that the last digit is an 8, rather than a 5]

according to the small count [in other words, the thousands digit -- the  '5' -- does not appear in the year, but is understood]

[The 2nd day of Passover of the year 5688 began at sunset on April 5th, 1928, and ended at sunset on the 6th.]

May his soul be bound up in the bond of life.
--
Fredel Fruhman
Brooklyn, New York, USA

Holocaust:

• Hungarian Women Transport List From Auschwitz to Buchenwald, October 14, 1944 - This list included 200 Hungarian women sent late in the war from Auschwitz to Buchenwald.
• Karlsruhe, Germany Survivors - This list includes 111 Jews in Karlsruhe, Germany 1946, submitted by the World Jewish Congress, New York. This is one of a large number of lists developed/collected in the years immediately after the end of WWII in attempts to facilitate possible family support and reunions.
• Polish Jewish Survivors: Lubeck - This list includes 146 records of Polish refugees who were in Germany after the War, and sought to establish/restore contacts with relatives/friends around the world, particularly in (then) Palestine, the United States and Argentina.
• Riga Transport Survivors - This list includes 168 Jews who survived Riga deportations, were sent back to Germany, then, after the war, to Sweden
• Holocaust Survivors Located in Venice - June 30, 1945 - At the end of WWII, survivors had to register in the towns where they were located. This list includes 118 non-Italian survivors located in Venice. The survivors came from various countries, primarily Austria, Poland and Yugoslavia.
• Sered, Slovakia Deportations - 1944 - While most deportations of Slovak Jews occurred in earlier years, there was a final wave of arrests and deportations in 1944. Jews were collected in and deported from the concentration camp in Sered, Slovakia. They were deported initially to Auschwitz, and, when this became impossible, to various camps in Germany. This list includes 888 deportees from Szered.
• Stutthof Survivors - This list includes 300 Jewish women who arrived from Stutthof in Buchenwald November 3, 1944.
• Bardejov, Slovakia Deportees - This list contains 2,468 Jewish names from city of Bardejov, taken from registration sheets of the Jews of Bardejov (also spelled Bardiov), in Slovakia. This forced registration was done by the Slovak government before their deportation to concentration camps in Poland.Images are available.
• Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (RvD) Card File - The Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland (RvD) was established in 1939 in Berlin with the task of registering all Jews resident in Germany, regardless of national origin or citizenship.  Thus, it included many Jews born outside Germany, particularly Poland, and even the United States. This list now has 31,143 records.
• Selected Lists from the Boston Jewish Advocate - This collection is made up of 1,840 records from three separate lists that appeared in 1944 in the Boston Jewish Advocate, originally published in Boston, MA.
• Klooga, Estonia Forced Labor Camp Prisoners July, 1944 - Revised introduction, and updated database to include links to specific images.

Latin America:

• JCA: Candidates for Colonization - In the late 1880’s the Baron Maurice Hirsch founded the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), with the goal of rescuing the eastern European Jews from their difficult situation. To this end, JCA bought lands mainly in Argentina, and in the late 1880’s, started transferring entire families to agricultural colonies in Argentina, as well as a few other countries including Brazil, Canada, and the USA. Those families were the ancestors of hundreds of thousands of Jews living today around the world. This collection currently has 5,885 records.

Ukraine:

• Revision Lists. 4,167 records have been added. In total, this collection now has 63,590 records.
• List of Jews from Litin. This is a new collection, with 185 records.
• Vital Records. 950 records have been added. In total, this collection now has more than 81,000 records.

Personally I don't trust metadata. I name the file to reflect contents: Date in YYYY-MM-DD followed by the names of people in the picture or a descriptive word or two. If I don't know the year, I'll put my best guess followed by "ca" for circa, e.g. 1956 ca. I can search in Windows file explorer easily. And it's fully transportable between programs and platforms. A file name is a file name.

To comment on adding text to the front of the picture, I'd say it's a matter of the purpose of the file. On the rare occasion I've done it, I've kept a clean copy of the picture as well. Storage is cheap! You can buy a 2TB external drive for $65. Don't worry about duplicates.

I know this list is usually used to ask for help or announce new programs or resources.  But I've just had a such a remarkable experience where a rapid series of coincidences resulted in an unexpected find and wanted to share it.

I'm not that familiar with JewishGen's resources and haven't made much use of them.  For that reason, I took their introduction class earlier this week.  I do have an account and I'm registered with Family Finder as a researcher for two branches of my family tree.  I haven't had much luck locating other's searching my families – there being only one other, who passed away in 2002.  During last week's class I was rechecking these entries and made a note of his name to follow up in case there was a tree remaining on Ancestry. 

I also learned that it was possible to search Family Finder by location without a family name.  When I tried that, I browsed the resulting list and noticed an unusual family name that happened to belong to my old high school friend David.  I sent David a note, telling him about my discovery and asking if his family had come from Suchowola.  He responded that, yes, they had ... and, in fact, two other high school classmates, Debbie and Kerry, also had family from that town.   Sadly, Debbie had died last April, but Kerry and David had both done research into Suchowola and Kerry had toured the town with a video camera a few years back.  In my high school days, not only was I not interested in my family history, but our family connection to Suchowola wasn't discovered until I i was in graduate school, when I taped my grandfather recounting his family's story.  Still it was a bit of a blow to realize now, 50 years after-the-fact, that I'd missed the opportunity to connect with my school friends over shared family history, especially now that one had passed away.

That same day, I followed up the lead using the name of researcher who'd passed away.  He was the husband of one of my father's cousins, and it turned out that their youngest daughter had recently launched a family tree on Ancestry using her father's notes.  I sent her a message explaining our relationship and asking if we could exchange information.  Our grandfathers were brothers, two of eight children, who dispersed between Memphis, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and the next generation was even more far-flung.  The cousin I contacted was part of the Pittsburgh branch, none of whom I'd ever met.   I received a very enthusiastic answer from her and her two older sisters and we've shared each others trees and begun to exchange notes about more opaque parts of our family trees.  The following morning I received a long note from one of the older sisters who had more firsthand experience of the family.  Among  the memories she shared, such as having dinner with my grandfather and visiting with family in Israel, she mentioned that our cousin Debbie had died in April.  Yes, the same Debbie from my high school class, the same one whose connection to Suchowola I'd learned of the only day before, was my second cousin.  Debbie was the granddaughter of my grandfather's youngest sister Freda.  And I had no idea until these two threads same together, coincidentally, within a period of 24 hours.  

You may be asking, "What the hell is wrong with this family?  How could cousins living in the same town and going to the same school not know they were related?"  Well. I'm asking that same question.  For reasons I've yet to uncover, I never met my grandfather's sister Freda or any of her family.  In fact, I met only one of my grandfather's siblings, and then only once and only by accident, even though it would have been quite possible.  And I haven't met anyone from the following generations.  My genealogical research didn't help.   I'd reached as far as Debbie's mother, that she had married and had two daughters, but not filled in their names.  (Ancestry still can't locate any vital records for Debbie, even after I manually entered her name into the record.). But it wasn't just me.  When I first heard about the classmates connected to Suchowola (before the more surprising revelation), I sent a note to two of my older first cousins with David, Kerry, and Debbie's names, asking if they were aware of any family connection.  None.  It's one of the most baffling and frustrating aspects of my family's story, that the connections turned out to be so fragile: that my grandfather would constantly recite the family tree – "my brother..."  "my sister's kids ..." – but never brought us together;  that I could go to school for four years with a cousin and never know we were related.  Here I am poring over Polish records from the 19th century looking for links to people I can never know, and yet I have living family, some quite nearby, I may never know.  

Lee Jaffe
JAFFE - Suchowola
STEINSAPIR - SAPIR - STEIN - Bialystok
JOROFF - KOSHKIN - Shchors/Snovks
SCHWARTZ - Perth Amboy

I have never found an answer for which viewpoint is used to determine a connection to a cousin. I recently discovered the great-granddaughter of my great-great-grandfather. From my standpoint I would think she would be my 3rd cousin, once removed. However, Ancestry says she is my 2nd cousin, once removed (up a generation). That seems to be from her viewpoint. I then checked the great-granddaughter of my grandfather. This time Ancestry looked at it from my viewpoint, and labeled her my 1st cousin, once removed. (down a generation). Can someone clarify, as I have always wondered. Thanks.

Carl Kaplan
Kaplan, Edelsen (Minsk)
Steinberg (Lviv)
Hoffert, Bienenstock (Kolbuzowa)

Hi Tammy, 

There is just one correction from the excellent translation by Joseph Ash.
The name of the father of the deceased person is Menachem Arieh. Arieh is a middle name and not an abbreviation of "land of Israel" 

Best regards  
Laurent Kassel 
Moreshet, Israel 

This is a very sad cemetery in an urban neighborhood. 
Many graves are in bad condition. Stones have fallen down or been pushed over. It’s quite expensive to fix those stones as I found out. 

 

Based on the death certificate of her eldest son David Blistein, I have long assumed that one of my great grandmothers was named Esther Resnick (Blistein) .  Recently I had an old Yiddish letter translated. It  was written to my grandfather in either 1953 or 1959  from his cousin Nathan Resnick in the Bronx.  Using the names of Nathan's wife and daughter in the letter, we were able to trace his brother and sister, also in New York and learn from manifests and death certificates, that their father's name was Abram Resnick, or Resnik or Reznik and that the family came from Pohost.  Since both my grandparents came from the Slutsk area, this was no surprise but we would very much like to find some evidence that Abram Reznik was a sibling of  Esther Resnick who died in childbirth in 1890.  Any Resnicks from Pohost out there?

These are two possibilities.  I haven't read them myself so I can't say how useful they might be.
--
Bob Friedman
Brooklyn, NY