I’ve used The Together Plan too and was very happy with the service Artur Livshyts and his team provided. We were supposed to have travelled to Belarus with them on a customised tour in July but for obvious reasons it was postponed.

Richard Gilbert
Hertfordshire, England

Hello,

I wonder if anyone has some historical knowledge how the early conscription of Jews to the Austrian (Habsburg) army might have been executed.

First some background: In 1788 a war broke out between the Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire (also known as the Astro-Turkish War), the ruling Emperor at the time was Joseph II son of the vicious Empress Maria Theresa. On February the 18th, Joseph II ordered (against the advice of his war cabinet) that his Jewish subjects in Galicia be conscripted to the military to assist in the new waging war. Only in June the same year did the decree apply for all of Joseph’s provinces (Lower Austria, Vienna, Bohemia, and part of Moravia). The Jews at the time were deeply saddened by the evil decree and petitioned against it, but failed in all attempts. However it is my understanding that many Jewish communities (and individuals) found some loophole in the system to avoid the draft either by paying for a substitute (mercenaries) or through bribes or taxes, but nevertheless many poor and unlucky boys were drafted, and fought bravely among the gentiles in the following wars including the Napoleonic wars, and those that followed.

However in my research I cannot find much literature written on this topic, which applies directly to the Jewish community. I seems that the early Josephine period isn’t documented as well as the later period (Franz Joseph’s reign and the First World War).

My key takeaway questions are as follows;

- from what age did the conscription apply?
- was service in the Austrian army a lifetime job?
- where would the newly recruited soldiers have been take to? (either a regional base or to the capital of Galicia - Lviv/Lemberg at that time).
- how where the exemption-permits negotiated? (were they privately ordained, or each community had to provide a percentage of their population, etc.)

I’m aware there are many stories (some even legendary!) out there in regard to this topic, but I’m looking for more reliable sources or perhaps evidential documentation.

Kind regards,
--
Moses Jefferson
Genealogist & Researcher of Jewish History
London, UK

Miriam also gave me a backdoor tour when Steve Morse was putting it together.  I love the fact that there are pics of shtetls.  This brings our ancestral homes to life for us. I'm also pleased that it's a work in progress and look forward to new updates! Miriam has worked tirelessly over the years to bring us information from our shtetls and I am happy to see that this new platform will reach so many people.  A great tool in our resources box.

Jackye Sullins

A supposed distant relative of mine was a well known Rabbi in
Novarodok in the 19th cent. His family name is unknown to me (if he
actually had one) and reportedly the son adopted his father-in-law's
family name HOROWITZ which considered a prominent Rabbinical lineage.

Yoni Ben-Ari, Jerusalem

My grandfather changed his name to his wife's maiden name after he
arrived in America. His name was Chrzan difficult to pronounce and
when someone asked him to spell it he gave his wife's name instead,
Silberstein. So they kept her name, and when his brothers arrived they
took that name too. My father's uncles on both sides had the same last
name, including two Benjamins.
--
Paul Silverstone
West Vancouver, BC

see: www.paulsilverstone.com

Thanks for all the responses, here and privately, to my question.  With this help, this is now my reading of the inscription:

Thank you so much everyone, I really appreciated your help and sorry for the delay in replying.

I have my Aunt and Uncle and a few cousins on Ancestry and 4 cousins - the lowest of these known ones is 109cm  and 8 segments, anything below this and it feels like a needle in a haystack. I have colour coded, cross ref and looked at the long segments on GEDmatch, but I have very little information and it appears to be very mathsy and guesswork. I have managed to find my G grandmothers maiden name from an English record and her birth records from Slovakian church records with her mothers name which would be my GG grandmothers (I am 99.9% sure of the latter), which gives me another generation of names hopefully to work with - HALASA.

It has become a quest and the older I get the more frustrated I get, I'm gathering everyone must feel this way?

Thank you again I will try and sift through the bits here I haven't done. I did go to Rootstech, (it's FREE online conference if anyone is interested in Feb), but when they started doing the maths, it all got so deep I got lost! I am no master at any of it.

Have a relaxed Boxing evening
Mandy Molava
Researching: MOLAVA - Brest + WEXLER & HALASA Slovakia/Krakow

Jeff,

I assume that you've seen the record of the marriage of Nathan Nathanson & Eva Goldenberg
in the Ancestry database U.S., Consular Reports of Marriages, 1910-1949.  There are two pages with a lot of information.

Regards,

Sherri Bobish




U.S., Consular Reports of Marriages, 191b0-1949

I believe that when a man married into a prominent family for example a famous rabbinical family, the husband if he was a rabbi, would take on the father-in-laws surname so that he could continue the dynasty.
Herman Salmenson

Family lore has my ggfather (Przeworski) taking his wife's surname (Roth) due to the children being teased being called 'Sewer'.  (NYC, about 1900)
John Segedy, NH

Hi Lee, 

I'd like to add another detail which is important when reading Yiddish in general and transliteration of names (persons or places) in Yiddish. 

The letter aleph renders in many cases the voyel o. So you read Koshkin in English and the Yiddish transliteration is Koshkin as well, and not Kashkin. 

Best regards  

Laurent Kassel 
Moreshet, Israel 

--

It doubt if this is the reason in this instance, but I know two men (unrelated), who in the last century took their wife's name at marriage because they were in business partnership with the wife's father and it was of benefit to have the same name, for financial and inheritance reasons. Both were in U.K.
Christine Hills  Dublin, Ireland (Previously London, England)

One reason I can think of for the husband to take his wife's last name in the UK is because Fletcher may have made it easier when dealing with other people or the authorities, compared to the foreign Lazarus. Considering common intolerance to strangers/immigrants/Jews, using a less "foreign" name might have helped.
In my family I have the opposite reason for choosing a wife's last name.  I have a cousin in Israel who's last name was originally Cohen. He adopted his wife's last name so he could have a less common name and less confusion when dealing with officials.  His first name is pretty common Israeli name and Cohen is the most common last name for Jews in Israel. Think of being named John Smith and having to explain to the police each time that you are not the John Smith they are looking for.

Dan Efrat
Cherry Hill, NJ, USA (originally from Israel)

My great-grandmother, Esther Schwartz (married name Litt) was from there. Her parents were Isaac & Lena (born Polack). I'd also be interested in any resources. 

Both are abbreviations of:
- our teacher, the Rabbi מורנו הרב
- ritual slaughterer and inspector שוחט ובודק

Valentin Lupu
ISRAEL

If anyone is researching Surnames Rzezak, Pakentreger, Iglicka/Iglicki from Lodz or Zdunska Wola, Poland  #names #poland # rabbi Shlomo (Szlama) Iglicki of Lodz (most of whom died in the Holocaust or experienced the horrible conditions on the run, later in Siberian river logging camp, and diseases and losses after taking a boat to Russian work farms, maybe we can compare research.

This has been a very powerful undertaking in the discoveries made of details left out by my husband's mom and dad in telling portions of their Holocaust survival and immigration by Marine Perch to NY in 1946.  I just know we have relatives out there, but do not have names and locations.
--
Sharon E. Siegel 
Port Jervis, NY USA