Hello,

Could you tell me if there will be any information related to Markiewicz, Gopen or Hop(p)en and Dziergacz (Dergatch) families in the Memorial Book of the Sventsian Region, please. Please feel free to contact me. Thank you very much by advance.
Patrice Markiewicz from Issy-les-Moulineaux in France. Email: patrice.markiewicz@....
  

You may discover there were a number of survivors who did this. The mother of a McGill University friend in Montreal managed to pry up the cattle car floor boards with others and escaped that way.  Her husband's obituary notice gives her maiden name as Faye Reuben.  I believe she is still alive and must be in her 90s.

Dear folks,

I recently learned of a very important book of records for my research. The book holds records for the town Podkamien in Galicia, this book is apparently held in the fond 154 of the Przemysl State Archive. Interestingly, this exact fond is currently part of Gesher Galicia identification project (see here), however the particular book I need isn’t actually part of the project (they’re only working on the “70” series of the fond). 

More interesting is that if you go on the Polish State Archive website index for the Przemysl archive (https://szukajwarchiwach.pl/56/) there’s no mention of fond 154. There’s a fond 153 and 155 respectfully but fond 154 seems to be off limits by the archive. Any reason for that?

Gesher Galicia do have an index to all the books in the fond, it can be viewed here: https://www.geshergalicia.org/inventories/fond-154/. The book I need is series 37 file 2 (Births 1841-1875).

Would any of you know what to do in such a scenario? Must I contact the archive directly and request a scan of the book, or hire a researcher to do it for me? How do I convince them that such a fond exists when it’s non existent on their public website?

Has anyone already obtained a copy of book in this fond? Or maybe even the book I’m looking for?

I would appreciate any advice or help which would bring me closer to breaking through my family brick wall!

Sincerely,

Moses Jefferson 
London, UK

I am trying to date a document which shows Fritz and Anna Heim of Vienna living in Gartenstrasse 93. All the details of Fritz and Anna are correct, her maiden name, and their dates of birth. I have been informed by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that the records were listed as originally recorded between 1942-1945 and the document is part of the Lviv Oblast Archive (Accession number 1992.A.0069.RG-31.003M ). My difficulty is that all the other evidence I have shows that Fritz Heim was deported from Vienna to Nisko on the 27th October 1939 and didn't return. His wife Anna Heim nee Schiffmuller was born in Lvov on the 1st November 1896, she was deported from Pillersdorfgasse 3/3 Vienna 2 on the 27th April 1942 to Izbica. Other documents say she was sent to Wlodawa on the 27th April 1942. My research has also shown that as the camp at Nisko wasn't complete, some of the deported men were told to return home. I was wondering if Fritz Heim went to his wife's birthplace as Lvov and Nisko are quite near one another, and Anna joined him there in 1939. But if that is the case, how could she have been transported from Vienna in 1942? How easy would it have been to travel from Lvov back to Vienna from 1939 onwards? Thanks for any thoughts/help anyone can give. Diane

The Hebrew name on the tombstone is Sinai Yoel. Some would not print Yoel with its last letter Lamed 
since the end of the name of Yoel contains the letters of a name of G-d.

For memory to my dear sister Rachel Leah this is my son Yitzchok who is turning 17 years old till 120 years old (here the handwriting turns sloppy and I can't decipher the rest of the text) signed your brother Avraham 

It is Yiddish but very difficult to read because of some characters associated with numbers. Seems to be sent to a sister Ruchl Leah. The son Itzhak is 17 years old.

Angel Kosfiszer
Richardson, Texas

Hi Erika,
     To answer your questions:

1) If the records were on two different microfilms, then there were two sets of records.  In addition to the record set that is kept in the local archive, copies were usually (though not always) sent to regional and state archives.  This is true of pre and post 1895 records.

2) re the midwife:  The name of the midwife is important information if you are the descendant of that person.  :-)  But for the rest of us, it just creates too many "hits".  Usually in a town, the same one or two midwives attended all the births.  Their careers could last 20 years or more.  And the midwife's name is recorded on every entry.  So you could get literally hundreds of record hits for "Hani Weisz" if she were the midwife.  Which complicates a person's search enormously as now you have to weed out all these false positives.

Julia's answer is excellent and very complete.  As a transcriber, the only things I can add are:

1) though most transcriptions are based on familysearch microfilms, not all are, so you may come across records for which you cannot access the originals.  This is generally due to one of two factors--the individual archive may have agreed to let the records be photographed on condition that the images not be made public, or familysearch and the archive agreed to let the images be made public for a limited amount of time, then the images have to be withdrawn (this happens quite a bit with Slovakian records)

2) finding the right image: unfortunately, there is not always consistency in how the records are organized for transcription.  Sometimes the record number is based on the page number and sometimes it is based on the image number.  So keep that in mind when searching for the record.

3) capturing information: especially in the very early days of transcribing, there was an emphasis on indexing as opposed to transcribing so we could get records online quickly.  So we were often told to just capture the essential information (name/date) and leave out everything else.  Over time, as people became more experienced or as native Hungarian speakers started transcribing, we started capturing more information and placing it in the comments section.  Now, especially for some projects where the image is not or will not be accessible, there is an emphasis on capturing all the information on the record (including in some cases the midwife and address).  So what information is captured depends on a) when the image was transcribed, b) the experience and language skills of the transcriber and c) the requirements of the project itself.

The only revision lists on the web site linked to the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania are the 1765 lists previously identified. If there are any later ones, I have not found them.

That takes us to the revision lists from 1795 - 1858. Familysearch now has microfilms available for view of the 1795 - 1834 revision lists. Technically speaking, they have covered F515/15/ 1 - 588.
There are many more in the wings however, I don't know if the 1850/51 and 1858 revision lists were filmed. Beyond 1858, there were family lists included in F515 which also may have been filmed however, the LitvakSIG may know more about this.

If you go looking for the 1795 - 1834 Jewish community RLs at Familysearch, they are NOT under the title "Jewish records", but under "Taxation". See below.

Joel

My great grandfather was Jacob Resnikov. He came from somewhere  in Belarus or Ukraine.
As a young man he came to Odessa where he met and married my GGM, Slawa Tsatskin.
I know nothing of his family but I haven't found any Resnikovs in Odessa.
This doesn't help you but it expands on the knowledge of the name.

Thankyou for this useful tip. People can of course check the 1939 Register for further information which is already on Find My Past. 

Jill Whitehead, Surrey, UK

Elias. I agree. I’ll stick with Ancestry. But.... i have a distant cousin who adds unverified people to her tree even on Ancestry and I’ve mistakenly added some if it. Only to find that dates are wrong and two siblings can’t be 40 yrs apart etc. 
Geni has helped me with my religious relatives. 

I have uploaded the 31,900 records of Florence MARMOR's burial
records of the New York Mokkom Sholom, Bayside and Acacia cemeteries
to
https://archive.org/details/mokom-sholom-bayside-acacia-burials-florence-marmor-records

David Lewin
London

Dear Genners,

I am extremely reluctant to add my two cents to the plethora of emails on the topic of immigrants’ names (be it first, last, or both) being “changed” at a US port of entry, but I would like to offer this story. At last year's genealogy conference, I bought a copy of Michael Krasny's book on humor. As some may will recall he was the banquet speaker. Amongst the many stories he told (in the book) was one about a Cleveland childhood schoolfriend who told Michael that her grandfather's name had been changed at Ellis Island.

Hmm, I thought. There was sufficient information to do some research, and to show that no, the name had not been changed from "pfennig" to Venig (he thought the immigration officer was asking how much money he had). The name in the manifest was actually Wenig. It probably made a nice story to “explain” to his granddaughter the slightly unusual last name she had inherited, especially as he may well have told the story with a bit of an accent.

Sweltering in place in northern California


Jeremy G Frankel
ex-Edgware, Middlesex, England
now Sacramento, California, USA

Searching for:
FRANKEL/FRENKEL/FRENKIEL: Gombin, Poland; London, England
GOLDRATH/GOLD: Praszka, Poland; London, England
KOENIGSBERG: Vilkaviskis, Lithuania; London, England; NY, USA
LEVY (later LEADER): Kalisz, Poland; London, England
PINKUS, Poland; London, England
PRINCZ/PRINCE: Krakow, Poland; London, England; NY, USA

Shalom Joel,

This is fascinating.  I have had no success finding my MAIPER family prior to 1840.  They were living in Rumshishok (Rumsiskes) and it seems like they just fell out of the sky.  There are no other MAIPERS anywhere.  So either my ancestor Avraham Naftali ben Lipman MAIPER came alone from somewhere else and left any extended family behind, or he was beamed down by aliens.  We have two versions of a well known family legend.  One says a French Jewish officer arrived with Napoleon and decided to stay.  The other says a French soldier got separated from his unit, approached a stately elder in Rumshishok and said "Excusez moi Mon Pere."  Later when Jews were forced to take surnames this stately elder chose MONPERE and it was corrupted to MAIPER.  The only thing we know for a fact is that MAIPER is not a typical Russian or Jewish name.  All native Russian speakers who have seen the name in original Russian language documents say it sounds French or Portuguese.  I recently found a Jewish family from Eastern France and Holland with the surname MAISONPIERRE.  This might fill in a lot of holes, validate family lore and enable further connections, if I could prove a link.  However, Alexander Beider does not believe either MONPERE or MAISONPIERRE linguistically connect to MAIPER.

So, I am back to looking for MAIPER or patronymics in and around Rumshishok pre 1840.  I looked at the original Polish documents via your link.  Amazing!  Has anyone put together a list of surnames and/or town names associated with these documents?  Does anything else exist for Rumshishok prior to 1840 that you are aware of?  

Benzi Saydman
Lake Forest, CA

MAYPER (MAIPER), MELTSNER, RAPHAEL, AUG, WERNER, SATINSKY, MARCUS, NEWMAN, RADOFF, NUROCK, NEVIAZSHSKY, SIEGEL, GORDON, BLOCH, IDELSON, BACH, KRULL, LEVIN, BEKER, ZUBACH, ROMM
Rumskiskes, Telsiai, Plunge, Philadelphia, NYC

This is fascinating.  I have had no success finding my MAIPER family prior to 1840 in Rumshishok.  There are no MAIPERS

Jackie wrote:

Her paternal grandfather states on his Declaration of Intention that he came from KOMIDAT (UNGAR). Hungary.

Any chance of a link or image? Declarations are generally handwritten... Also, what's the date on this Declaration? Is it before or after the first world war?

_Comitat_ is used in German for "county", and there was a county named Ung with a city named Ungvár in it, which many people found confusing.

Julia Szent-Györgyi
. /\ /\
.>*.*<

On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 06:39 PM, Nicole Heymans wrote:

I hadn't previously come across this meaning of "notions". In the UK these items are "haberdashery".

"England and America are two great nations separated by a common language". (G.B. Shaw).

 

Nicole Heymans

Le sam. 27 juin 2020 à 19:25, Laurie Sosna <lsmacgeek@...> a écrit :

Notions has a very special meaning for me.

 

In the early 1990s, I was a videographer for the Holocaust Oral History Project in San Francisco..

One day, a man arrived for his interview, accompanied by his wife. She sat off to the side quietly as we interviewed her husband. 

 

After his interview was over, he said that we should interview his wife, she was a survivor too.
She said that she wasn’t in a concentration camp, it wasn’t a very interesting story. We explained that every story mattered. I used the example of a George Seurat painting: Every dot of paint contributed the detail and nuance of the final image. She agreed to talk to us.

 

She was born in 1930 in Poland. Her family was deported to what she called a gulag, possibly in Russia. She remembers it was always cold, they were always hungry, supplies were hard to come by. But they could write letters. Her mother wrote to anyone she could think of, asking for help. One day, a package arrived from America. On the box was written the word “Notions.” The guards let it pass through, as it wasn’t worth anything to them. It was filled with needles, thread, buttons, zippers, elastic, snaps and hooks. She said that box saved their lives. It allowed them repair their clothes. A hook or a piece of elastic could keep your coat or sleeve closed against the cold.  And they could barter: trade a needle and thread for food.

 

As she told us the story, I flashed on a cupboard in our kitchen when I was little. On a shelf was my mother’s sewing kit, filled with spools of thread, needles, hooks, snaps.
Next to the kit was a glass jar filled with buttons, saved from worn out clothes. We used those buttons to play driedel, the sparkly ones from coats were worth more than the simple shirt buttons. 

And then I realized she was born the same year as my mother.

 

No other survivor story affected me as profoundly as hers. It connected something from my life to something from hers.
Every time I sew on a button or stitch up a loose hem, there she is.

Laurie Sosna
San Francisco

 

 

 On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 06:39 PM, Nicole Heymans wrote:

I hadn't previously come across this meaning of "notions". In the UK these items are "haberdashery".

"England and America are two great nations separated by a common language". (G.B. Shaw).

 

Nicole Heymans

Le sam. 27 juin 2020 à 19:25, Laurie Sosna <lsmacgeek@...> a écrit :

Notions has a very special meaning for me.

 

In the early 1990s, I was a videographer for the Holocaust Oral History Project in San Francisco..

One day, a man arrived for his interview, accompanied by his wife. She sat off to the side quietly as we interviewed her husband. 

 

After his interview was over, he said that we should interview his wife, she was a survivor too.
She said that she wasn’t in a concentration camp, it wasn’t a very interesting story. We explained that every story mattered. I used the example of a George Seurat painting: Every dot of paint contributed the detail and nuance of the final image. She agreed to talk to us.

 

She was born in 1930 in Poland. Her family was deported to what she called a gulag, possibly in Russia. She remembers it was always cold, they were always hungry, supplies were hard to come by. But they could write letters. Her mother wrote to anyone she could think of, asking for help. One day, a package arrived from America. On the box was written the word “Notions.” The guards let it pass through, as it wasn’t worth anything to them. It was filled with needles, thread, buttons, zippers, elastic, snaps and hooks. She said that box saved their lives. It allowed them repair their clothes. A hook or a piece of elastic could keep your coat or sleeve closed against the cold.  And they could barter: trade a needle and thread for food.

 

As she told us the story, I flashed on a cupboard in our kitchen when I was little. On a shelf was my mother’s sewing kit, filled with spools of thread, needles, hooks, snaps.
Next to the kit was a glass jar filled with buttons, saved from worn out clothes. We used those buttons to play driedel, the sparkly ones from coats were worth more than the simple shirt buttons. 

And then I realized she was born the same year as my mother.

 

No other survivor story affected me as profoundly as hers. It connected something from my life to something from hers.
Every time I sew on a button or stitch up a loose hem, there she is.

Laurie Sosna
San Francisco

 

 

 On Sat, Jun 27, 2020 at 06:39 PM, Nicole Heymans wrote:

I hadn't previously come across this meaning of "notions". In the UK these items are "haberdashery".

"England and America are two great nations separated by a common language". (G.B. Shaw).

 

Nicole Heymans

Le sam. 27 juin 2020 à 19:25, Laurie Sosna <lsmacgeek@...> a écrit :

Notions has a very special meaning for me.

 

In the early 1990s, I was a videographer for the Holocaust Oral History Project in San Francisco..

One day, a man arrived for his interview, accompanied by his wife. She sat off to the side quietly as we interviewed her husband. 

 

After his interview was over, he said that we should interview his wife, she was a survivor too.
She said that she wasn’t in a concentration camp, it wasn’t a very interesting story. We explained that every story mattered. I used the example of a George Seurat painting: Every dot of paint contributed the detail and nuance of the final image. She agreed to talk to us.

 

She was born in 1930 in Poland. Her family was deported to what she called a gulag, possibly in Russia. She remembers it was always cold, they were always hungry, supplies were hard to come by. But they could write letters. Her mother wrote to anyone she could think of, asking for help. One day, a package arrived from America. On the box was written the word “Notions.” The guards let it pass through, as it wasn’t worth anything to them. It was filled with needles, thread, buttons, zippers, elastic, snaps and hooks. She said that box saved their lives. It allowed them repair their clothes. A hook or a piece of elastic could keep your coat or sleeve closed against the cold.  And they could barter: trade a needle and thread for food.

 

As she told us the story, I flashed on a cupboard in our kitchen when I was little. On a shelf was my mother’s sewing kit, filled with spools of thread, needles, hooks, snaps.
Next to the kit was a glass jar filled with buttons, saved from worn out clothes. We used those buttons to play driedel, the sparkly ones from coats were worth more than the simple shirt buttons. 

And then I realized she was born the same year as my mother.

 

No other survivor story affected me as profoundly as hers. It connected something from my life to something from hers.
Every time I sew on a button or stitch up a loose hem, there she is.

Laurie Sosna
San Francisco

 

 

Here haberdashery was generally for men’s hats and ties and small accessories 
 
--
Deanna M. Levinsky, Long Island, NY