Dear Selma,

I appreciate your conundrum, and understand your desire here. That said, if the JewishGen database entries match the source documents from which they are based (e.g. birth registers), but your original family documents do not match that, then whether you personally agree or not, no correction would be possible, nor would it be appropriate. There are extremely solid reasons for this that are widely held by professional archivists and others whose job it is to make historical records available.

I'm sorry you don't seem to agree, but such opinions do not really come into play for JewishGen or any other repository of historical records, whose primary job is to make accessible accurate copies of those records. (It might be interesting for JewishGen to allow tagging and commentary alongside individual entries, but that is a significant challenge to implement, and would be absolutely daunting to administer.)

The challenge and puzzle and delight of genealogy is to stitch some kind of "whole" from primary and other sources that don't always perfectly accord. If your goal is to have a public dataset that reflects your own reconciliation of those sources, then there are lots of places, including publishing your own tree on MyHeritage, or even on the JewishGen-hosted FamilyTree of the Jewish People. https://www.jewishgen.org/gedcom/ If your goal is to deem your reconciliation the one true representation of those families, then perhaps WikiTree or Geni is for you.
 
If your goal is to get the JewishGen databases to match your own valid documents while causing them to no longer match the documents upon with those databases are based, I can only encourage you to re-read all the responses to your original query, and work your way toward understanding why such a correction would, and should, be rejected.

Peter Cherna

Tom,

There is a tree on Geni that claims this family's original surname was LANDAU (changed to LANDON.)
https://www.geni.com/people/Kirk-Landon/6000000012400747403

I suppose that you can research that further to see if it is true or not.

The tree shows Alfred, Jenny and son Kirk.

Regards,

Sherri Bobish

Here are Links to the Full Sized Documents so you can zoom in:

https://ibb.co/sjqxxbc
https://ibb.co/DzLZ3T5
https://ibb.co/v4x4HG3
https://ibb.co/GcPVqLw
https://ibb.co/QFykC6Z
https://ibb.co/kGZrgXB

Sophia

I had a similar situation. Searching had come up empty. I decided that the only way to find them was to scan (as in look quickly) at every arrival manifest image. I had the month and year, it wouldn't be too bad. I started at the end of the month and mercifully found them on the 26th. My four Yaffe's showed up as four Preiskel's. The confirmation was the unindexed note that their final destination was New Haven, with Esther's brother named.
They were in the Hamburg manifest too. But without the New Haven clue, I wouldn't have recognized them.

I don't know if that helped. I will tell you that you'll be incredibly satisfied when you find them :)

Phil Karlin

I received some documents from Bialystok, Poland that I am trying to ascertain whether they are correct to my family.  Would anyone be willing to translate these for me, especially the first document.

Thank you very much.

Sophia

For:
Philip Sperber
Chaim Sperber
Halina Horowicz Sperber
Henry Sperber
Irka Sperber
Nathan Sperber
Ingeborg Sperber
David Sperber
Rosa Sperber

Searched for by:
Hannah Sperber

Jeannette Eugenie Lichtenstein was born in Vienna on 16 Aug 1871. When she was 18, she married Julius Elbogen (born 27 Jul 1858 in Prague CZ) in the Stadttempel Wien on 20 May 1890. Julius was 32 years old. They had either 3 or 4 children: Margarete (b 1891), Elsa (b 1892), Hans (b 1894) and possibly Karl (b 1897). 

 

At some point before he died on 18 Jun 1921, Jeannette and Julius divorced and she re-married Alfred Landon, a Canadian whom, I believe, she met in Vienna. They immigrated to Canada where their only child Kirk Alfred Landon was born in Toronto on 20 Oct 1897.

 

I cannot find any death information about Jeannette (Jenny) Landon. She and her husband, Alfred, may have moved to the U.S. from Canada. I can find no information about her husband Alfred Landon. Also confusing is the possible presence of a fourth child from the first marriage, Karl Elbogen. In my files, he was born on 20 Oct 1897 the same day as his step brother Kirk Alfred Landon was born so there must be an error here.

 

My questions: 1) Any information about divorce/re-marriage residence and death information for Jeannette Lichtenstein Elbogen Landon. 2) Any information about her second husband, Alfred Landon, and 3) Any information about the possible 4^th child of the Lichtenstein-Elbogen union, Karl.

Thank you,
Tom Flanders

Please send me the photos.  I was born and brought up in NYC. Thank you.

Sheldon Clare

clare15905@...

Thanks for that quotation and information, Mr. Hershman -- concerning antisemitism in the 1940s (although the fact remains that my grandfather had 2 brothers (1 of whom I met decades later -- after I was born in 1961) who never changed their family name) in he United States.

I didn't mention earlier a quite-interesting book by a researcher named Kirsten Fermaglich (published in 2018) about (mostly) American Jews and name changing in the 20th century (as I seem to recall from the book, there may well have been a peak in the interwar years or in the 1940s; there was a decline in my lifetime) -- largely based on research into court records in New York City entitled A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America.

(The book does tell of continuing employment and college-admissions discrimination in the 1940s -- before things changed for the better in this country.)

Ethan W. Kent
New York City.

The Yizkor-Books-In-Print Project of JewishGen is proud to announce
the publication of its102nd title, Wierzbnik-Starachowitz; a Memorial Book

Original Yizkor Book in Yiddish and Hebew edited by: Mark Schutzman
Wierzbnik-Starachowitz Societies in Israel and the Diaspora, Published
in Tel Aviv, 1973
Layout: Jonathan Wind
Cover Design: Nina Schwartz
Name Indexing: Bena Shklyanoy
Hard Cover, 11 inches by 8.5 Inches, 676 pages with illustrations and
photographs.

List price: $65.95, available from JewishGen for $37
For more information go to:
https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/ybip/YBIP_Wierzbnik.html

Alternate names:
Wierzbnik [Pol], Vierzhbinik [Yid], Vyerzhbnik [Rus],
Wierzbnik-Starachowice [Pol, 1939-1952], Starachowice, Starakhovits,
Strachovitza, Verzhbnik, Wierzbnik Starachow, Verzhbnik Starakhov,
Vyerzbnik, Vyerzhbanik

Wierzbnik, Poland is located at 51°03' N, 21°05' E, 25 miles S of
Radom, 24 miles NE of Kielce, 11 miles SW of Ilza. Since 1952,
Wierzbnik is part of Starachowice

Nearby Jewish Communities:
Wachock 3 miles WNW
Bodzentyn 9 miles SW
Skarzysko-Kamienna 9 miles WNW
Ilza 11 miles NE
Suchedniow 11 miles W
Kunow 11 miles SE
Wasniow 12 miles SSE
Nowa Slupia 13 miles S
Wierzbica 14 miles N
Jastrzab 15 miles NNW
Krajno 15 miles SW
Ostrowiec Swietokrzyski 16 miles ESE
Szydlowiec 16 miles NW
Sienno 17 miles E
Denkow 17 miles ESE
Lagow 18 miles S
Skaryszew 20 miles NNE
Daleszyce 20 miles SW

Researchers and descendants of the town will want to have this book.

The Yizkor-Books-In-Print Project now has more than 100 titles
available. To see all the books, go to:
http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/ybip.html

We hope you find this of interest for you and your family in
discovering the history of your ancestors. This would make a birthday
gift for a loved one.

Joel Alpert, Coordinator of the Yizkor-Books-In-Print Project-

One such page for genealogy resources is Cyndi's List.
https://www.cyndislist.com/us/

Regards,

Sherri Bobish

I find this decision to be incorrect. We had a family member, Lea Bondi Jaray, who owned an art gallery in Vienna in 1938. She and her husband decided to leave for London and bought tickets to take a train to Calais, then London. A Nazi collaborator came to her gallery and looked over her paintings. He said, “You do want to be able to get on your train tomorrow, right? I really like this piece by Egon Schiele - a portrait called “Wally”. I’m sure you would like to give it to me.” He offered her a couple of Marks for it and walked out with it under his arm. Long story short, after the war, the picture ended up in the Belvedere Art Museum in Vienna. Mrs. Jaray came from England numerous times to try and reclaim her painting to no avail. She died and eventually the painting came with an exhibit to MOMA. At the urging of the Issac-Bondi family, Senator Domenico of NY had the painting seized by the US Customs agency as looted art, and the family began a law suit. Eventually, at the family’s request the painting was returned to the Belvedere Museum upon the payment of $19 million to the family. There is a plaque beneath the painting indicating this. As I recall, the legal argument was the threat of being unable to emigrate unless the painting was sold to the Nazi for a few sou. 

The issue around the Spanish Museum painting sounds very similar. This family’s lawyers should look into the Bondi-Jaray case, decided in New York State. 

Kate Haas

Cheri,

There is a town in Slovakia that was called Marienthal in German. 
Known today as Marianka.
However, this town is a 5 hour drive away from Bardejov.

Regards,

Sherri Bobish

The JewishGen database indexes do not match / reflect two of my original family documents.  How can I contact the database department about this?  
Selma Sheridan
Oswego NY

A question please?  Is there any validity is suggesting that the original thief, the Nazi government and their official who extorted the painting from the owner, can be held responsible for the value of the painting and reimburse the current owner having the painting revert to the original owner?

pweston@...

I doubt this will help you, but my father in law was Herbert Robert Reich and was born in Chicago. His father who immigrated from Vienna was Max Reibschied, and changed his name to Reich after arriving in the US. When we went looking for relatives in Europe, we found that almost all the Reibschieds died at Auschwitz.

Ted Epand