Nuremberg and Prague

Nuremberg - the trip
My flight from Israel to Zurich was at 4:50 AM Wednesday and as is my wont, I was very early. Check-in was quick and I figured to get some sleep before boarding. Unfortunately there was a very loud woman going around asking everyone in the gate area "Are you going to Chicago?" and following up with "Then where are you going?" She really wanted my answer and woke me to make sure she got it.

And since I was already awake I was given a three-page survey asking what I thought of the airport. Answer: Not bad, but they need plugs at the gates so we can keep our computers charged. That was not even on their list of choices, which mostly had to do with food options.

On the plane, I was next to a woman with a crying baby, but I slept through most of that.

I had to go through passport control in Zurich, where a rather nasty clerk informed me that my toes were over the edge of the yellow "wait here" line and that I mustn't do it next time. I assured him that I will do what I can to make sure there is no "next time."

The flight to Nuremberg was on a propellor plane with seventy-six seats, all taken. It was snowing and we had a delay so the plane could be de-iced. I slept through that flight as well and awoke on the ground in Germany. On an earlier trip, I had a plane change in Munich, but this is the first time was actually going there.

Nuremberg - the family
As I explained here and here, the Nuremberg visited was added when I learned that I had a second cousin living there. A granddaughter of my maternal grandmother's older sister, whom we knew nothing about until three months ago.

Israel David and daughter Alta

Inna's granddaughter Yuliya (my second cousin twice removed) met me outside baggage claim and her father Viktor was outside with the car. We picked up Inna and went to Viktor and Anna's home where we got straight into pictures, relationships and generally getting to know one another. Anna - who is a physician, as was Inna before she retired - joined us when she finished work.

They have been in Nuremberg for seventeen years but the talk was all in Russian. I was pleased that was the case - German would have made me very uncomfortable. I was surprised to learn that all of them had been in Israel at least once and Yuliya participated in the Birthright program. Yuliya, whose English is quite good, did the translating as Inna and Viktor do not speak English. Anna speaks a bit.

Yuliya, Anna, Israel, Inna. Viktor is the one with the camera.

I showed them the 1929 letter from our great-grandfather Israel David Rosenbloom's second wife Yenta, reporting to Uncle Hymen in the US that Alta Kaplan (Inna's grandmother) had two grandaughters, each from one of her sons. One was definitely Boris' daughter Dusa, who lives in Moscow, but the other was unclear. Only when I suggested that perhaps a child had died did Inna say that she had an older sister Evgenia who died at age four.

Inna was also vaguely aware that her grandparents Alta and Ber Kaplan were cousins. I had suggested that myself a few weeks ago based on the DNA matches of Inna's first cousin Lydia whom I met in Columbus three months ago. Inna herself gave me a DNA sample and I expect that her matches with the eleven American second cousins will strengthen that theory.(Their tradition is that Alta's husband is Bor=Boruch while ours is that his name is Ber=Berl. Since he had a son Boris/Boruch, I prefer our tradition.)

The grave of the Resnikovs

Viktor - who has his own genealogy interest, including a tree on MyHeritage - seems to have the same information that I have regarding the Resnikov step-cousins. That would be Yenta's daughter Sonia, from her first husband, and Sonia's husband and two children. the four are buried together and it appears that the two children were not married and had no children of their own. What we have to determine is whether we have the same information independently or if there may be some copying of errors.

Uncle Hymen (our grandmothers' brother) said forty years ago that Yenta had a son whom he called Jack Bandis and that they had been in contact years before. Inna had never heard of him. Someone in the Moscow family may know something, but I am not optomistic.

One of Inna's first cousins, David, lived in Israel and died a dozen years ago. I have been trying to locate his family. It turns out that after David's wife died, he married another woman from Russia and SHE is still living. Inna gave me her phone number and will call after I get back to Jerusalem.

Uncle Hymen (center) visits Alta's family before going to the US (1914)

Alta Rosenbloom Kaplan lived to age 93

Inna also told me that the half sister Mera Goldin, the daughter of Israel David and Yenta, had a son and two daughters, all of whom still live in Moscow. She thinks. I will talk to Katya in Moscow about making contact with them.

Inna says that she does not know the family history, but her older sister Maria does. The problem is that Maria, who lives in Moscow, is not well and what she knows is, for all practical purposes, lost.

Not all relatives are interested in finding new cousins, even close ones. Inna says that her brother in Indianapolis is one of those who is not. So I was pleased and grateful to meet this particular group. And they were happy that I made the effort to come.

Later in the day, the five of us went into the center of town and walked around on the stone streets for two hours. Much of the city was levelled by American bombing and rebuilt after the war. The Jewish sites were not, though there are memorials.

Thursday Viktor delivered me to the bus station and waved me off.

Prague
The bus ride to Prague was three and a half hours and uneventful. The WiFi was reasonable and there was electricity for the computer. The seat next to me was empty.

All for one and one for all

Where we are staying

My cousin Linda arrived in Prague earlier in the day and met me at the station. We walked to the Airbnb apartment about twenty minutes away. The apartment is a fifteen minute walk from the Jewish Quarter and we walked over to eat. After supper at the King Solomon restaurant, we were joined by Cousin Cyndi, who arrived in the evening. (I had met Cyndi before.  We are fifth cousins.)

Friday morning, I went to Chabad for services but skipped the three hour walking tour of the Jewish Quarter. I wasn't too tired, just not in the mood. I am not much of a tourist. Between the stone streets and sidewalks and the strange requirement to remove your shoes at the door of the apartment, my feet hurt.

Cyndi and Linda took the tour and were out nearly seven hours.

Friday evenig the three of us went to Chabad for services and supper. there was a big crowd which included a large group of American girls on a school trip that began in Poland. The food food was plentiful and there was lots of singing, though it was Chabad-type rather than traditional Shabbat fare. The rabbi kept asking me if I was actually prepared with the Torah reading for the morning; I assured him that everything would be fine.

Morning services were scheduled for the decadent hour of ten o'clock and the rabbi and I were the only ones there on time. His wife is the granddaughter of a prominent rabbi whom I knew in my Chicago days. They have been stationed in Prague for many years. My reading was as advertised and it provided an opening for conversation with others in the congregation. It was largely Israeli and the rabbi spoke in Hebrew. I was not planning on staying for lunch, but the rabbi insisted.

Today - Sunday - we pick up the rental car and head for Zilina in Trencin Couty Slovakia. Zilina will be our headquarters for the next four days. There are two Zelinka cousins in Prague - Milan whom we may see this morning and Lydia who is in Zilina until Tuesday and we hope to catch her there.

Going Where Nana's Recent Ancestors Lived

My father's mother, Margaret/Miriam Rosenzweig, was born in Allegheny Pennsylvania - what is now Pittsburgh's North Side - in 1903. Her father, Moritz/Moshe Rosenzweig, arrived in the US first and her mother, Regina/Rivka, followed in 1902. With her came the five older children: Elvira (Aunt Ella) age 16, Siegfried (Uncle Fred) age 14, Sigmund age 11, Gyula (Uncle Julie) age 9 and Ilona (Aunt Helen) age 6. They were all born in Budapest.

In the 1910 census,  Moritz, Regina and their mothers and fathers are all listed as having been born in "(Hun) Magyar."

The first European document I ever ordered

But they came from two different areas. Moritz' father's Rosenzweigs and his mother's Zelinkas were from Trencin County in what is now northwest Slovakia. Both families were in Trencin County since at least the 1700s, in several towns.

Nana's grandparents are buried in Vag Bestercze. I want to visit them. This is the hundredth year since my great-great-grandfather died at ninety-six, but we do not have a date.

Moritz' wife Regina Bauer was born in Kunszentmiklos, south of Budapest, in 1870. I actually remember her. She used to give me M&Ms. I discussed her family at some length, here and here. There is a large set of Bauers who lived in Kunszentmiklos and who previously lived in Apostag. Regina's mother Feige Stern is from Kalocsa, a bit further south.

Nana's maternal grandparents and at least one uncle are in Kunszentmiklos and visiting them is particularly important. I'll explain why after I've been there.

So a year or so ago, I decided I was going and I asked my first cousin Linda to come with. Our fifth cousin Cyndi - on the Zelinka side - decided to join us and all of a sudden it's time to go. We are meeting Thursday in Prague.

But before that, on the way, I am going to Germany, a country I never expected to set foot in. As I reported here three short months ago, we just found the entire family of my maternal grandmother's older sister. The one who stayed behind in Moscow. ("We found" means my friend and colleague Galit Aviv Sisto in New Jersey, whose first language is Russian.) One of my newfound second cousins lives in Nuremberg, three and a half hours by bus from Prague. So I am starting there, with my second cousin Inna, her daughter and son-in-law Anna and Viktor, and their daughter Julia who is the only English-speaker among them. Julia's brother Ilya may or may not be able to come down from Frankfort, where he is studying. I have a DNA kit with me and of course photographs.

The idea of going to Germany is horrifying. But I have to swallow this frog. 

I hope to report on all of this as we go along. In the meantime, here is the plan.

Wednesday - Nuremberg
Thursday - bus to Prague
We may meet a Zelinka relative who lives in Prague. I am reading the Torah on Shabbat.
Sunday - pick up the rental car and head for Zilina, Slovakia, our headquarters for four days.
Thursday - Budapest. Three family graves in the city with Karesz Vandor, but mostly being tourists.

Gittel bat Meir and Leah 5661-5704, May G-d Avenge Her Blood

Gittel / Gusta Pickholz

Tarnopol 30 June 1901 - Auschwitz December 1943

We do not know her place in the family structure

Only that she was one of at least 602 Pikholz descendants and spouses 

murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis 

and their colllaborators from the other nations of Europe.

And that she was the only known daughter of

Maier Pickholz, born in Koziare? about 1872 

and died in Vienna 12 December 1916, 17-18 Kislev 5677

and  his wife

Laura (Lea bat Shemaryahu and Sara Rivka) Spiegelglas, 

born in Tarnopol about 1883

and died in Vienna 5 May 1919, 5-6 Iyyar 5679.

Memorial plaque at Beit Lohamei Haghettaot

The following correspondence was found in the files of the Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem
by Linda and Israel Pickholtz.
Translation from German of the first by Maurine McClellan.
Translation from German of the second by Eleanor Bien.
With assistance from Christoph Libisch.  

   

Gusta's letter was mailed in an envelope addressed simply "Sochnut Jerusalemme Palestina."
("Sochnut" means agency and refers to the Jewish Agency, which handles immigration to this day.)

Salerna, 20 December 1938

  Dear Sir,
 
In my great need, permit me to urgently request the sending of a entry certificate.
 
I was born in Tarnopol, Poland on June 30, 1901, naturalized Italian and was until now a teacher in the Italian city of Satiz. The decress against Jews has declared me homeless and force me to leave the country by March 12 at the latest. It is my greatest wish to go to Palestine and because I am alone in the world ( I have lost all my relatives in the war), so I turn to you with the urgent request to help me in my despair. I implore you to allow me to come in a short time for the aforementioned entry certificate, because I must leave the country no later than March 12.
 
In the hope that you will consider my request, I sign
yours respectfully

 
Gittel Gutta Pickholz

 
    Via Porta Rotase, 14 

______   ______ Salerno Italy 

Dear much honored Miss Pickholz,

  We acknowledge your writings of Dec 20 1938 regarding obtaining a certificate for traveling into Palestine.
 
Therefore, we suggest that you contact our Palestine Office in Trieste, Via Del Monte 7.
 
There you will obtain the important information regarding your Aliya.
 
With high regards,


  

There is no further correspondence in the file and we have no idea what transpired in Gusta's life until late 1943. 

However, one of our US family members found a website with a description in Italian of the deportation of sixty-four Jews from Sondrio, in northern Italy to Auschwitz.  This site includes the name of Augusta Pickholz, who is the same as Gusta / Gittel.  This websire (http://www.shalom.it/2.01/Q.html) is no longer active.)

Following is a translation from Italian (translated by Miriam Maimouni) of parts of a letter I received from Ferrucio Scala, who witnessed the deportation from Sondrio and is responsible for the information in the above website.

"Dear Israel,
thank you for having written me. However, I don't know the English language. My son Andrea translated it for me. I am answering you in Italian. If you want to avoid looking around for a translator, get in touch with Herman Marek. You can reach him through GHETTO FIGHTERS' HOUSE MUSEUM - Lohamei Haghetaot M.P. Western Galilee 25220 - Israel. He knows Italian very well and also writes it. He takes care of the Museum to the Memory of the Children. In order to answer adequately to your straight questions, my response will have to be a bit more lengthy. And that's good. The Jews in Valtellina? There were two periods. The first from Sept 29, 1941 to Oct 25, 1943. It is in this period that, due to the laws on race of 1938, the Italian army (as far as the APRICA in Valtellina is concerned) takes numerous families in the Balkan region away from the Germans and the Croatian Ustasha. On March 3, 1943, the Jews in APRICA count about 300 altogether. This is what a note of the Interior Ministry, Head of Police, to the Interior Ministry, says. Subject: The Jews interned in APRICA. The number, starting with 144 in 1941, reached 215, and then 272, and finally approached 300 in 1943. The above-mentioned letter reveals that it was almost impossible to get the number in Aprica reduced.  All other places in Italy did not admit any more arrivals. It says: "In the province of SONDRIO, and to be exact, in the town of APRICA, about 300 Jews of Balcan origin have been interned for some time. Part of them have been permitted officially to reside in Sondrio because they had problems with the mountain climate. It is pointed out that the afore-mentioned Jews urgently need to be interned somewhere else, for the following reasons:

(basically, it was feared that there would be some contact of the antifascist ideas of the Jews with the natives or villagers or refugees [evacuated persons] in the plains of Lombardy. Also eventual contacts with "the community of Aprica [which is] too close to Switzerland and therefore it is not commendable to leave the Jews there who at any moment may take up contacts with elements beyond the border, possibly through third
parties." Fear of the intelligence, and finally: "The Jews in Aprica stir the miscontent of the local population because they acquire the rationed goods at exorbitant prices." (sic!) We know that among the 272 Jews in Aprica, 218 were considered poor. The administrative department of the local police headquarters of Sondrio, paid out 8 Lire daily to the head of family, 4 for the wife, and 3 for every child, so they were living in abundance! Plus 50 Lire monthly for rent or lodging. The Jews were lodged in private houses or in guesthouses/hotels: the Mirafiori, the San Pietro, the Aprica, and a co-operative kitchen in the Albergo Posta in the neighborhood of MAVIGNA. Salomon Mosic was the elected representative of those interned in Aprica. Riccardo Kohn was the president of the Palestine Office of Zagabria, and then, in Switzerland, the director of administration of an institution for young Zionists at Bex near the valley of Rodano. These two and a third [person] were the elected heads, and they dealt with the authorities of Sondrio in whatever problems there were. Who watched over the Jews of Aprica? Two officers of the carabinieri: Luigi Tosetti, who became head of the partisan detachment in Valle Camonica. He died March 19, 1945 through the explosion of a hand grenade. The other, Bruno Pilat, finished in Mauthausen. Friendly guardians. Let us not forget that some Jews in Sondrio were put up in rented houses. Aprica is situated at 1170 meters above sea-level. This does not cause any problem to those suffering from high-altitude syndrom. It is a large former pasture in the shape of a half-curve, vast and airy. It is the passage from the province of Sondrio to that of Brescia. If one continues from there, one arrives at the Tonale Pass, and finally in Trentino. From Aprica one can walk on non-dangerous paths  through the shrubbery to arrive there, one crosses the national road and can climb up further, either by Villa di Tirano (Lughina Pass) or, slightly to the south, through Bianzone-La Bratte-Baita Campione, the Anzana Pass (2200 m), and descend to the Salent valley which leads to Campascio in the Poschavio valley. Sept 9, 1943 - Mosic and Khon write a plea to the Police headquarters of Sondrio. They are asking for all of them to be permitted to leave Aprica. A nice good-bye letter. The Police writes to the Interior Ministry and submits the request (absolutely no negative implication by the Police president). The evening of Sept 8."

...................... ISRAEL, THIS IS A LENGTHY ACCOUNT OF ALL THAT HAPPENED DURING THIS TIME BUT NO NAMES ARE MENTIONED. THIS MAN HAS GONE
THRU GREAT TROUBLE + EFFORT TO PUT IT ALL TOGETHER FOR YOU. IT IS PROBABLY A SUMMARY OF HIS BOOK (THIS IS MY ASSUMPTION) BUT WITH PAINSTAKING DETAIL.

I SHALL LEAVE OUT MOST OF PAGE 4 AND ALL OF PAGE 5 PLUS HALF OF PAGE 6.
THERE HE WRITES:
 
"That is the story of what followed. And the Jews? Shadows. Legends. I wanted to bring the shadows to light and finish with the legends. I am very sorry, but I know nothing much about Augusta Pickholz. The Memory Book of Liliana Picciotto Fargion mentions her on page 474: 'Pickholz Augusta, born in Tarnopol in Poland on 30-6-1901. Last residence recorded: SONDRIO. Imprisoned in the prison of Milan. Deported from Milan to Auschwitz on 30-1-1944. Number doubtful. Died there and date unknown: Document 1a Transport 06. (Augusta Pickholz, judging by the characteristics of Transport 06, must have been arrested while trying to get to Switzerland.)"

PAGE SEVEN:
"Dear Israel, I am rich in time and patience. My relations with the Jews started in November 1942 when I was in hospital for lethal diphtheria. Chances were I would not survive. When I came to, I saw a young woman who stood by the door. She wore a beautiful blue night-gown, had black hair, and she smiled at me. My mother told me: 'She is Jewish". Indeed. 59 years have passed, but after researching like mad I know today that her name was Amendola Giuseppina, born in Kenosha (Wisconsin, USA) on March 17, 1917 - the daughter of Salvatore and Larancio Maria. She was  described as North-American Aryan in the list of refugees of Sept 10, 1943. She was confined to Aprica. That sight was real. But the register of the hospital gave three entries and three discharges. First as born in Aprica, and resident of Aprica. Then born in Canoscia Wiri, then born in Canoscia
[Kenosha - IP] Viscaya [Basque region]. I got bogged down in vain researches in the region of Bilbao in the Basque region. All this as a consequence of errors in the entries, of the malcomprehension of languages and lack of knowledge. Probably Guiseppina was the daughter of Italian emigrants, in a town famous for its canned food, and 150 km from Chicago. How come she was together with Kroats, Serbs and Jews from the Balkans? We shall never know. I have engaged in a long voyage into the past. This is why I remain watchful so it will not happen again. Best regards, Ferruccio Scala "

Miriam writes:
THIS MUST BE A VERY NICE MAN. HE SURE DESERVES A WARM THANKYOU... ( I
apologize immediately for meddling! but I feel very touched by the way, and what, he writes) ON THE LAST PAGE HE DESCRIBES THE PHOTOGRAPHS, AND ASKS YOU TO MAKE THEM KNOWN/HAND THEM TO THE APPROPRIATE PLACES IN ISRAEL AND AMERICA SAYING "WHO KNOWS..." THE PHOTOS ARE ALL FROM THE MEMORIAL
CEREMONY - ON PHOTOS 2 and 6 YOU SEE FERRUCCIO SCALA (THE ONE WITH THE YELLOW JACKETT). PHOTO 7 SHOWS A GUY AGED 86 NOW WHO WROTE A DIARY IN THE PERIOD IN QUESTION.

What Shall We Do With An Orphaned Segment?

One of these inquiries that appears every day or so in my email inbox reads as follows:

As you are in the process of writing your July lecture on DNA and the Lazarus tool, I thought that it would be appropriate for me to ask you what should I make of the fact that I match about 50 **0Pikholz DNA kits?

My kit # is [redacted].

Best, Olivier Szlos

So I have a look, as I usually do, and see that he indeed matches fifty-four of my kits.

• twelve of my seventeen Rozdol-Pikholz kits 
• all four of my Kwoczka cousins
• two of my four sisters, my brother and me - but the other two sisters
• one first cousin on my mother's side and two second cousins, one from each grandparent
• two second cousins on my Pikholz side plus one of my two double second cousins
• one third cousin and one 3C1R on my Pikholz side
• one second cousin and one 2C1R on my father's mother's side
• six other Pikholz to whom I am fairly closely related (4-5 cousin territory)
• a few other Pikholz descendants 
• and a few other kits not specifically related to me

GEDmatch has everyone listed at 4.5 generations or closer. It looked like a decent vein to mine.

On the other hand, Aunt Betty and Uncle Bob are not on Olivier's match list and in general, the potential for patterns of matching segments looked weak.

Six of Olivier's matches with my project have a longest segment of 20 cM or more, but three of those are my brother, one sister and I, all over 26 cM. That in itself got my attention. I ran a series of chromosome browsers but no matter how I did it, the only interesting group is this.

OK, excellent match. But which of my families does it come from? Nothing at all from Aunt Betty or Uncle Bob, but my father may have received this segment while they didn't. But surely someone else must have.  One would think, after all that testing!

On my grandmother's side, Olivier has matches with Marshal (my double second cousin) and my other cousins Susan, Fred and Shabtai. But not there. (And not with Marshal's brother at all.)

On my grandfather's side, there are matches with my second cousins Terry and Marty, but not on this segment. And not at all with Herb, Rhoda and Roz. And none of Olivier's matches with the four Kwoczka cousins fall on this segment. (They match each other enough to identify that Olivier has a distant common ancestor with the Kwoczkas.)

Or maybe our match with Olivier comes from my mother's side. But only one of our two first cousins is a match with Olivier. And one of two second cousins on my grandfather's side and one of four on my grandmother's side. Needless to say, none of those matches show up on "our segment."

Moving a bit further away on the Pikholz side, my regular readers will recall that my great-grandfather Hersch Pikholz had two Pikholz parents. Hersch's father seems closely related to Mordecai and Taube Pikholz and six of their descendants match Olivier - not very strongly, mind you - and in any event, not on our segment. And not much with each other either.

Two of those six are related to Hersch Pikholz through both of his parents, but others who are related only through Hersch's mother Rivka Feige do match Olivier at all.

So in some ways this is very typical - lots of matches but not much we can do with them.This is not the first time I have run into someone who match my siblings but no one else, but the other occasions have been smaller segments - 10, 12, maybe seventeen cM. This orphaned segment - one with no clear ancestry - came to three of us in chunks of more than 26 cM. And Judith has two bits there that total more than 17 cM.

I have done my due diligence here and it has left me frustrated. Sometimes you do everything you are supposed to do and it doesn't help.

The one thing we do know is that Olivier's father has those same matches, so we are at least certain which of Olivier's sides this comes from. His geography is the Lublin area of Poland, which is not much help.

Housekeeping notes

I'll be speaking in Hebrew for the IGS Rishon Lezion branch, 6:30 PM 19 June at the Rishon Lezion Museum, 2 Ahad Haam Street.

When I sent out my pre-Passover greetings and genealogy summary to the Pikholz descendants, I asked if anyone wants to attend the Conference in Orlando and introduce one of my talks. Thus far one Rozdoler has registered - for the entire Conference, no less - and will introduce my presentation Monday morning. I have never met her, but I look forward to doing so in Orlando. The talk she will be introducing has a couple of references to her grandfather, great-grandfather and and both second and third great-grandparents.

–   Monday 24 July 9:45-11:00, Room Swan 9
Beyond a Doubt: What We Know vs. What We Can Prove
Introduced by Audrey Pickholz Sandford.

Jutte Leah Kwoczka's Lazarus Kit

Last summer at the IAJGS Conference in Seattle, I gave a new presentation called GEDmatch.com’s Lazarus Tool As It Applies to Two Kinds of Endogamy. It was well-received but I felt it needed some changes. I also received a few more kits that I had to add. I am beginning to work on those for the Orlando Conference in July. This is the summary I submitted with my proposal.

Lazarus is a tool offered by GEDmatch.com, which can create a partial genome of a person based on autosomal test results of descendants on one hand and non-descendant relatives on the other. This recreated kit can be compared to other kits in order to help determine and clarify relationships. 
But for endogamous families, this is more complicated, especially when you consider that there are two distinct types of endogamy. 
This presentation will address the two types of endogamy and the way to best use Lazarus while reducing "contaminated" input inadvertently introduced due to multiple relationships. It will also address the use of Lazarus as a tool for DNA analysis. 
The presentation – much of which is based on the speaker's recently published book "ENDOGAMY: One Family, One People" – will use examples from the single-surname Pikholz Project.

The talk will take place on Tuesday 25 July at 2 PM in a room called "Osprey 2" and will be introduced by Mindie Kaplan. The handouts are mostly tree charts so people will be able to follow the family structure.

The kit I am most interested in recreating in this presentation is my great-grandfather Hersch Pikholz (~1853-1931), but along the way, I shall recreate kits for my father, my great-grandmother and Hersch's mother Rivka Feige, with a nod to my grandfather as well.

People who have done Family Finder tests are shaded in green.

It is the kit of my great-grandmother, Jutte Leah Kwoczka (~1855-1926), Hersch Pikholz' wife, which I wish to comment upon here. We have Family Finder tests for fifteen of her descendants - three grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren. 

Those fifteen descendants should be fine as Group 1*. (Actually we have two more great-grandchildren, but I am not using their tests as their parents are already included.)

For Group 2*, I used the grandson of one of Jutte Leah's brothers and a great-grandson of the other. That gave me a Lazarus kit for Jutte Leah of 1490 cM, not quite enough for GEDmatch to make it useful for one-to-many comparisons to other people.


I figured I should be able to make up the missing 10 cM and then some by testing a great-great-grandson of Jutte Leah's brother Pinchas.

The "and then some" turned out to be more than one hundred cM and the new kit was 1816 cM, more than enough for batching.

Finally - well not quite finally - this week I received Family Finder results for a sister of the great-great-grandson that I had added previously, giving me a fourth person in Group 2. The total cM went up by another 16 cM, for a total of 1833 cM. Not very much gained there.

But there are definitely false matches in that total. Aunt Becky's husband, Uncle Harry, is the son of Pinchas Kwoczka's wife's sister. 

That means that Aunt Becky's two granddaughters share Zwiebel/Lewinter DNA with the three descendants of Pinchas - DNA which has nothing at all to do with Jutte Leah Kwoczka and should not (MUST NOT) be included in her Lazarus kit.

So I had no choice but to remove the granddaughters of Aunt Becky and Uncle Harry, leaving thirteen members of Group 1*. This reduced the size of Jutte Leah's kit to 1644 cM. The irrelevant Zwiebel/Lewinter DNA was 189 cM, a very significant amount.

Please note that the last day of Passover begins this evening (Sunday) - the last two days if you are still in exile. I'll not be reacting to comments made during the holiday until my Wednesday morning.

* In fact, GEDmatch gives you only slots for ten kits in Group 1. But I have more than that in this case, so I had to reverse Group1 1 and Group 2. That doesn't matter to the computation.

Second Cousins - Lydia's Family Finder Results

Less than three months ago we found the descendants of my mother's mother's missing sister Alta Rosenbloom Kaplan, who had remained in Russia when the others went to America. I wrote about this here, then again here when I met my second cousin Lydia in Columbus Ohio.

It took two months, but we now have Lydia's Family Finder results. As expected, her first eleven matches are her known second cousins. Eight are grandchildren of my grandmother Sarah and three are grandchildren of her brother Uncle Hymen.

The ISOGG table says that second cousins should share about 212.5 cM and Blaine Bettinger's Shared cM Project (at that same link) has that about ten percent higher, so Lydia's numbers are very high. With one exception, all her second cousin matches are upwards of 342 cM and two are over 420 cM. It's worth noting that those two are not from just one of Alta's siblings - Kay is from my grandmother and Beverly is from Uncle Hymen.

Here is the whole set of matches for the twelve second cousins.

The average match between Sarah's grandchildren and Uncle Hymen's grandchildren is 346 cM (longest 47 cM). Between Sarah's grandchildren and Lydia the average is 365 cM (48 cM) and between Lydia and Hymen's grandchildren the average is 377 cM (59 cM). Those are large numbers but Lydia's total matches are less than 10% greater than the others.

It is very tempting to say that this is a normal result of structural endogamy, the kind that affects all Jewish families, especially those who come from the same areas. But that would be wrong.

Lydia's mother is not Jewish. Her matches with her second cousins should not be this large. They should certainly not be larger than the matches between the grandchildren of Sarah and Hymen. And lest anyone suggest that Lydia's non-Jewish mother may have Jewish roots, let's look at her myOrigins.

Lydia is estimated to be 45% Ashkenazi Jewish and 46% East Europe non-Jewish, plus a few fragments. This is what we would expect from a child of a Jew and a non-Jew. So no endogamy between her parents.

But there is more. Lydia's closest second cousin match is Kay, who also has Jewish DNA from only one parent. Kay's myOrigins shows 44% Ashkenazi Jewish, 6% Asia Minor and 50% West and Central Europe. No relation between her parents either. But Kay and Lydia share 438 cM!

So why are Lydia's second cousin matches nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the Rosenbloom second cousins? It seems to me that Lydia's grandparents Alta Rosenbloom and Berl (or Baruch, there is some debate) Kaplan must have been closely related. Even first cousins. That would give Lydia an extra dose of DNA to be shared by the second cousins.

As it happens, we can test this theory. In two weeks, on my Hungary/Slovakia trip, I'll be stopping in Nuremberg to see Lydia's first cousin Inna. And to take some of her DNA. Both of Inna's parents are Jewish so her matches with the second cousins should be significantly greater than Lydia's, benefitting from both the structural endogamy that Lydia lacks and the personal endogamy of related grandparents.

And if my summer plans work out, I will stop in Moscow on my way to Orlando, to see another first cousin of Lydia and Inna. That would be Lea and she too is Jewish from all directions. So if Lea and Inna match the second cousins significantly more than does Lydia, I shall see that as strong evidence that Alta and Berl are closely related. Whether we can use that to get anywhere is another question.

r 

Speaking of my maternal grandmother, Sarah Rosenbloom Gordon, today (Thursday) is her yahrzeit. Fifty eight years.

Here she is with her husband and first four children. My mother, the youngest, was not yet born. Aunt Ethel and Uncle George are on the right.

The picture was taken in Vandergrift Pennsylvania.

Six Siblings - Part Four: Origins Revisited

Nine weeks ago, aftter we received my late brother's Family Finder results, I began a series called "Six Siblings." Part One was about FTDNA's "ancientOrigins" and "my Origins," neither of which I put much stock in. Parts Two and Three followed and dealt with comparisons among the siblings' matches. I intended Part Four to be about our second cousins and our matches with them, but we have a second cousin in a new line whose test results keep being postponed, so I have busied myself with other things.

In the meantime, FTDNA came out with a new version of myOrigins. An Enhanced Version. In their words:

This simple tool delivers both new and newly refined reference populations, including smaller trace-percentage results previously not available. These latest additions to our populations and the refinement of existing clusters ​provide a deeper look into your family history and what makes you…YOU.

The original myOrigins results for the six siblings, in birth order

Now the first thing everyone does is to look to see what has changed since the earlier version, both in the product and in our own results. If we happened to have saved our results. I wouldn't have saved mine, but as it happened I had just blogged about it in Six Siblings, so I had our results, though not those of other project members.

(Let me remind my readers that I do not take this analysis seriously and certainly do not give much credence to the precision, but as they say, it's for entertainment purposes.)

So what has changed? Well, here is how the results look. Mine, for instance. Can you spell B-O-R-I-N-G? It shows 91% Ashkenazi Jewish, 8% Asia Minor and <2% North African.

So 1% migrated from Western/Central Europe to Ashkenazi Jewish. No other changes.

Blue stars indicate changes

But it is not quite so. Genetic genealogist Diahan Southard posted a chart explaining the differences in terminology and I shall assume she writes with authority.

I had been assuming that my Eastern Middle East and North Africa were an expression of the Sephardic Jewish Diaspora

"Not so" says Diahan's chart. What was previously Ashkenazi Diaspora was actually both Ashkenazi and Sephardic. (Why FTDNA spells only one has a "c" at the end? Who knows!) In any case, they think my 91% is all Ashkenazic and the Turkey-Azerbaijan and North Africa are meant to be just that.

FTDNA explains what the two Jewish groups are, but does not explain why they had previously been grouped together under the heading "Ashkenazi."

So here are the results for the six siblings, again omitting those categories where we have no representation at all. (We appear in birth order.)

• Each of us is 91-99% Ashkenazi and within 1% of the old version results.
• The average of our Ashkenazi results went up from 94% to 95%.
• None of us any Sephardic, as defined by FTDNA.
• Other than Amy and Sarajoy, the total of out Ashkenazi and Asia Minor is at least 99%.
• Judith, Amy and I had our Eastern ME changed to Asia Minor. Sarajoy did not.
• A lot more tiny fragments which are really just for entertainment.

In short, BORING!

For comparison, I looked at the myOrigins for our two closest relatives, my father's sister and brother. Aunt Betty is 99% Ashkenazi and Uncle Bob is 97%, with a few fragments which are not attributed to Asia Minor.

I was not going to write about this at all, but it has been the subject of a lot of talk on genetic genealogy social media. Besides, there have been two other new developments that I have found even less interesting. (Not to disparage other population groups who may have results of significance.

One is the new MtDNA analysis. The company writes

We’re excited to announce the release of mtDNA Build 17, the most up-to-date scientific understanding of the human genome, haplogroups and branches of the mitochondrial DNA haplotree.

As a result of these updates and enhancements—the most advanced available for tracing your direct maternal lineage—some customers may see a change to their existing mtDNA haplogroup. This simply means that in applying the latest research, we are able to further refine your mtDNA haplogroup designation, giving you even more anthropological insight into your maternal genetic ancestry.

My MtDNA has nothing new.

The other is the Ancestry Genetic Communities which they describe as follows:
This new advancement is only possible through the millions of AncestryDNA members around the world who have chosen to participate in the Research Project as well as the massive collection of family trees, only available on Ancestry. The science behind this feature was recently published in one of the prominent scientific journals Nature Communications...
At launch there will be over 300 Genetic Communities all around the world to go and explore, with many more on the horizon. We will compare you to all of them and list the ones you have a connection to based on your DNA. These Genetic Communities dot the globe and are often more specific than what’s possible to discover with an ethnicity estimate, providing a more recent connection to your past.

What they told me? This.
Exactly what I expected? By no means. But interesting? No. About what I would expect from someone who is 91% Ashkenazi.

Housekeeping notes
Actually, as far as housekeeping goes, pre-Passover is nearly complete. Cooking and such remains to be done before the seder Monday evening. (Remember, we have only one here in Israel.)

My pre-holiday letters to the Hebrew-speaking Pikholz descendants have been mailed. The email summaries and holiday greetings will probably go out today (Sunday).

The rabbis of old tell us that just as Nisan was the month of geulah (redemption) from Egypt, so we expect it to be the month of geulah in our own day. Faster please.

The Disappearing Skalat Families

Blogger deleted the first version of this while I was writing it. So I'm trying to recreate it.

The Families

The Pikholz families of east Galicia, as of last week

The chart on the right has appeared on the Pikholz Project website since its inception. It breaks down the Pikholz families for which we have four or more generations, into east and west and by family size. The western families are from Rozdol and the eastern families are from Skalat. Inevitably, there are a few families which we cannot identify with either group.

Procrastinatiion
A few days ago, I received the following remarkably non-specific inquiry, of the sort I receive several times a week.

Hi, your gedmatch kit came up as a match to mine (Axxxxxx), and I was wondering if you might have any info or ideas about the connection (like what side of your family etc.) Do you have a tree online? I am on ancestry and geni if you want to see mine.

Regards,

I responded immediately as I often do and when he thanked me for my prompt reply, I wrote something like:

I try to answer inquiries like this quickly. If I don't, they end up in "the pile" and who knows when I'll get to it.

I am a terrible procrastinator. I like to go after the low-hanging fruit, to do the things that are easy. I call my research "electric" because it follows the path of least resistance. I put them on my calendar of things to do and move them along from month to month, sometimes without even looking at them. It was always thus, but it has gotten worse in the past four years as I have gotten more and more involved in DNA-based research.

For instance, in the run-up to the publication of my book "ENDOGAMY: One Family, One People," I found enough genetic evidence to allow me to declare exactly how certain of our families are connected to one another. As a result, I was able to merge some of those families together.

I demonstrated that two men named Moshe Hersch are in fact the same man and I also determined who his parents are. I demonstrated that the family I called "TONKA" was part of the family I called "HUSIATYN"  and they together they are part of a family called :"LAOR" as is the family called Rita. I recently confirmed the Tonka-Husiatyn relationship based on a paper trail, as I described here.

And there were more such discoveries - two years ago.

Updating the website
So what's the big deal and why am I writing about it now? Well, my website is very high maintenance. I do it all by hand and am not interested in trusting it to an online service that will do everything automatically.

When I find some "new" Pikholz descendant who lived a hundred years ago, I have to update my database, and the relevant web pages. These could include immigration, the Given Name Analysis, recording and displaying European records, the schematic tree of the

The first lines of the Given Name Analysis for older Pikholz descendants named Shimon, Simon or similar

particular family, the Virtual Cemetery and yahrzeit table, the Holocaust pages, the password-protected tree in outline form that includes information on the living and more.

It's a ton of work.

It's even more work when I make a change in the structures of the families. That involves adding parents' names, changing links and names, and more in all those departments which I mentioned above. A simple example is the Shimon list above where I can now add parents' names to the first and third entries.  And we now have a death index entry for Shimon, so we can replace the 1835 birth date with "1930."

It's a huge project and I have been moving it along my calendar for two years.

Doing it
One day last week, probably prompted by my discussion with Rita which I described here, I decided to work some of those mergers into the website. The family pages RITA, TONKA and HUSIATYN are gone as Nachman Pikholz of the LAOR family expands from 162 descendants to 377.

While I was at it, I merged my own family, Steve's Uncle Selig's and the Riss/Baar family (from my great great-grandmother's first husband) into ROSA, which now numbers 687 descendants instead of just 110.

And the descendants of Mordecai and Taube Pikholz (the family called ELIEZER) now number 621 instead of only 395. That reflects the addition of their sons Simon (previously DORA family), Szulim (ORENSTEIN) and Arie Leib (MATI).
 
I also got around to adding two new five-generation families STERN and WEINSTEIN, whose origins are unclear. (I have been in touch with them for nearly two years.)

The eastern families are now down to nine, where the image at the top of this page shows seventeen.

The ROSA and ELIEZER family schematic charts became unwieldy, so I kept four families on their own pages, similar to what I had already done with FISCHEL from Rozdol.

That leaves cleaning up the links. I have done some. I will probably do some more. The rest will go on the calendar.

Housekeeping notes
Dates and times for the 37th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy have been published. Here are mine.
 –   Monday 24 July 9:45-11:00, Room Swan 9    
Beyond a Doubt: What We Know vs. What We Can Prove
–   Monday 24 July 2:00-3:15, Room Osprey 2
Lessons in Jewish DNA – One Man’s Successes and What He Learned On the Journey
–   Tuesday 25 July 2:00-3:15, Room Osprey 2
GEDmatch.com’s Lazarus Tool As It Applies to Two Kinds of Endogamy
–    Wednesday 26 July 8:15-9:30, Room Swan 8
Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?

New Rozdol Births 1906-1915

According to Yad Vashem's Pinkas Kehillot, there were 2262 Jews in Rozdol in 1900, 2110 in 1910 and 1725 in 1921. In all three of those years, the Jews were just under half the town's population. The population was decreasing but Jewish babies were still being born. According to JRI-Poland, 997 of them in the years 1906-1915. Thirty-eight have at least one parent named Pikholz, though that spelling was gone - replaced by "Pickholz."

http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/rozdol/Rozdol_Shul.htm

Of the thirty-eight, twelve are people I already have in my database, usually with birth dates and house numbers. Sometimes the birth years are not the same as what their relatives remembered in my interviews with them or in Pages of Testimony.

Parents of seventeen others are known from previous births and I simply have to add these new ones. The Excel file has the house numbers, the parents' names and towns of origin. It does not have birth dates other than the years or maternal grandparents' names and there is no indication if the child died while young. Those seventeen births were to ten sets of parents.

One birth is to a couple whose identity is unclear because we have several of them, but the actual birth record, when it becomes available, should give us the maternal grandparents' names, thus solving that question.

The remaining eight births are to couples I cannot yet identify.

• Three births to Markus Ber Gross or Grossman and Szerka Pickholz.
• One birth to Samuel Leuter and Rechel Pickholz.
• One birth to Symon Harzstark and Rechel Pickholz, both of of Mikolayev.
• Two births to Aron Schymin Morgenstern or Morganthau and Syma Pickholz, both of Mikolayev.
•  One birth to Tobias Pickholz and Marjem Kleingesich.

The maternal grandparents' names on the actual records should help, at least for the four couples where the Pickholz is the mother.

There are also four births to Benzion Bender or Bander and Selda Pickholz or Pistohl, both of Mikolayev. I don't know if this is ours or not. (There seem to be a lot of Mikolayev births here. Very possibly the mothers are sisters. But there are also a lot of non-Pikholz Mikolayev births.)

I have noted some additional records which may be ours. As we move further from the original families, we have more married daughters' names to keep track of. I can no longer do a straight "sounds like Pikholz" search and assume everyone is covered. I'll deal with this when we see the actual records linked online.

I'm still hoping to see post-1901 Rozdol deaths.

Housekeeping notes
For the first time, I am actually thinking about checking into the conference hotel Friday.
Dates and times for the 37th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy have been published. Here are mine.

 –   Monday 24 July 9:45-11:00, Room Swan 9  
Beyond a Doubt: What We Know vs. What We Can Prove
–   Monday 24 July 2:00-3:15, Room Osprey 2
Lessons in Jewish DNA – One Man’s Successes and What He Learned On the Journey
–   Tuesday 25 July 2:00-3:15, Room Osprey 2
GEDmatch.com’s Lazarus Tool As It Applies to Two Kinds of Endogamy
–    Wednesday 26 July 8:15-9:30, Room Swan 8
Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?