My paternal grandmother always told us that her mother, Rivka GRUBER, née FEINGOLD, was killed during World War One as a member of the medical corps. I assume with the Austrian army as they lived in Galicia, although, I’m not sure exactly which town Rivka lived in. My grandmother was born in a town called Delatyn and when she immigrated to New York around New Years 1907/08, she listed Lemberg as her residence. She was 17, so I assume she lived with her mother but not positive. Apparently, my grandmother went back to Galicia and then came back to the US in July of 1912 and then listed Delatyn as her last residence and her mother the closest relative from where she came. 

 

I have done extensive searches to try to find more info on Rivka but have come up empty. Would anyone have any ideas, suggestions, advice, etc. as to where I might find medical corps service, death, burial, etc. records for her? Anything? I haven’t even ever found any birth or marriage records for her.

 

Thank you,

Steve Buzil

MODERATOR NOTE Please reply privately with family information

researching:

BUZILA and KILYAN from present day Moldova 

GRUBER and FEINGOLD from present day Ukraine

SEIDLER/ZEIDLER, GROSSBARD, BERLIN, WICZYNSKY, PTAKEWICZ, GOODMAN, DOBROSZKA and BROWN/BRAUN from present day Poland.

PORTNOY, GERSHON and OFSAIOF/OVSAIOVICH from present day Lithuania

MNUSHKIN and KOLVARACHIK from present day Belarus

EISENSTEIN and ZALIO from present day Romania

 

Hi Steve,

Can you share a link to the manifests?

My guess is that we may want to look at the second town in both cases, because Lemberg was a city and also a region.

Please pardon me if I’m repeating what you already know, but there are several gotchas with names of towns in American records of aliens, which apply here. 

1. A village may have been recorded as “near Larger City.” (In Polish, for example, you have “ad Dziewin” which means “near Dziewin.”)
2. Districts were named for their largest cities in many cases. (Lemberg, Kiev, Grodno, etc.)
3. Even besides this, various languages have their own names and spellings. For Galician towns this may be German, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Yiddish and I’m sure others. 

3. Each government had the opportunity to rename a location, and many have. (Famously: Constantinople, Istanbul.) 
4. For most situations, the change would have been the language used to refer to a city  

5. On top of languages, borders, changing, there are factors such as and accents, memory which might influence the location on record. 

6. Finally, we have to contend with handwriting of officials. 

So your ancestor was from a town in Lemberg, for example, it could be recorded in Polish records as “bear Lwow” Austrian records as Lemberg, Russian Empire or Ukrainian records as L’viv’ska, etc. 

My advise is this:
1. Determine which government was ruling the Lemberg area around the time your grandmother was there. It may have changed, so check for this and If that’s the case, you need to do the later steps twice. 
2. Look at JewishGen Gazeteer for names similar to “Delatyn” that are within that area. 
3. You can search on JewishGen, JRI-etc for those towns and/or names. 

4. On FamilySearch, do a keyword search of un-indexed records for the name of the town in the language of the governing power you’ve identified in step 1.

There are other options for research methods at step 4, but this should give you a start. 

Moshe Berman,
Florida/NY

Hi Karen,
When Visas were established in the U.S. starting in the early 1920s, many of the screening exams at the U.S. Immigration ports such as Ellis Island were taken over by the U.S. Consulates abroad.  The immigrant(s) may have filled out a "Declaration of Alien About To Depart For The United States".  They may have had to show an "Affidavit In Support Of Application For Visa" filled out by some person in the United States that was notarized that they swore they could maintain the person once they arrived in the U.S.  The consulate was also responsible for giving a literacy test to the potential immigrant that they had to pass unless they were going to a close relative (mother, father, etc.) already in U.S.  After the 1924 quotas, the number of immigrants allowed entry from southern and eastern Europe were drastically reduced.  The consulate was also responsible for the medical exam.  I'm not sure how extensive that was.  I have in my files as part of the visa documents and passport of one immigrant the result of a physical exam. I'm attaching it to my post as it's the only one I've ever seen.  As you will see, the concern was with infectious diseases, not physical ailments. But that's only a sample of one.  So there were a number of hurdles for immigrants to get Visas.  The U.S. did not welcome immigrants with open arms during this period of time from certain areas of the world.  
Joel Weintraub
Dana Point, CA

VM91508

In Russian:

1007 : Лейба Модрисович Маверман : 39

         : Его сын Мендель                       : 10 (возможно)

         : Лейбы родственник Шая           : 

         : Срулевич Ангре                         :  22

Translated into English:

1007  : Leiba Modrisovich Maverman         : 39

          : His son Mendel                                 : 10 (possibly)

          : Leiba's relative of Shya                     :

          : Srulevich Angre                                 : 22

VM91507