DID AVRAHAM WEIDENFELD WORK FOR YAD VASHEM?

MOSHE PICKHOLZ FROM BUDZANOW
About thirteen-fourteen years ago, I received a phone call from Shuki Eckert, a Galician researcher with whom I have some overlapping interests. He was at Yad Vashem and he had found a set of about a hundred Pages of Testimony for Pikholz family members. Did I want them?

Well, of course I wanted them. I had inquired a few months earlier and Yad Vashem had been able to provide me with twenty-four Pages, so this would increase the set considerably.

Undated Page of Testimony
for Moshe Pickholz of Budzanow

Among this new group was a couple from Budzanow, for whom no submitter was listed. The father was Moshe Pickholz, born 1888 in Buczacz, with no parents' names listed. The mother was Tema Pickholz, born 1990 (sic) in Budzanow. Her parents were named as Jonah and Matel. They were shot in the Trembowla ghetto in 1942, as was their unmarried son Munio, who was born in 1920.

As I say, there was no submitter listed, nor was there a date or a place where the Page was filled out, but the style was consistent with the first big names project in 1956-57. The only identifying information was the signature of the person from Yad Vashem who assisted in filling out the form. Weidenfeld.

The Pages for Tema and Munio were the same way.

There is a Pikholz couple whose children were born in Budzanow in the 1880-90s, but Moshe does not seem to have anything to do with them. I have not been able to locate the one living descendant.

Moshe's family sat untouched in my "unconnected" pile for several years.

SIGNED BY J
I had never paid much attention to the signature of the Yad Vashem representative on any of these Pages. Apparently, during the big project in the mid 1950s, Yad Vashem sent people around to survivors, asking them to fill out the forms and helping them to do so. Many of the Pages are unclear or incomplete - perhaps because some survivors filled out so many, perhaps because the task was emotionally difficult, perhaps because it was the person from Yad Vashem doing the writing. In many cases, these helpers were students.

In one memorable case, I was looking at a Page on behalf of another researcher and I was surprised to see that I recognized the scrawled signature of the Yad Vashem helper. I'll call him J and I knew him as the Chief Financial Officer of a company where I worked for a few years around 1980, in Beer Sheva. I showed Dov, another co-worker from that period, twenty-odd years earlier, and he agreed - the signature was J.

J was originally from Nahariyya (on the coast, north of Haifa) and would have been a university student in the mid-1950s, which fit the profile of those sent by Yad Vashem to help collect these submissions.

THE FAMILY FROM BUCZACZ
The Page said Moshe was from Buczacz and there is, in fact, a Pikholz family from Buczacz - a family I have mentioned several times in this blog. Chaim Yaakov Pikholz had four sons and I was in contact with a few of the descendants - who in the course of time have been determined to be my fourth cousins. Most of the living descendants lived in the Haifa-Netanya area. There was also a daughter Taube, about whom we knew nothing. 

Some time later, I learned that there was another daughter, Rivka, who married Binyamin Hersch Bernstein of Radauti, in Bukovina. The couple lived in Radauti. because of the distance, there was probably less contact with these Bernsteins than the Buczacz families had with one another, but here too there are a few living descendants in the Haifa area. Actually, three of the Bernstein children lived in the Haifa area - one other was killed in Bukovina.

The last of the three who had lived here died in 1985 at about age eighty-three. She lived in Kiryat Motzkin and has two daughters. Her husband was Avraham Weidenfeld, who died in 1974.

FROM A MICROFILM IN SALT LAKE CITY
Five years ago, I attended the IAJGS Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Salt Lake City and I took some time to examine any number of record sets at the library there. One of those record sets was for Budzanow and included the marriage record for Moshe and Tema. Ours is the second one on the page.

Moshe Pickholz married Tema Baltuch in Budzanow, 8 August 1911

The groom is Moshe, the son of Juda Mendl Pickholz and Heni Schutzman, from Buczacz, born 1880. The bride is Tema Baltuch, the daughter of Jona Schutzman and Marjem Baltuch, Marjem being from Mikulince. Tema was born 23 August 1884 in Budzanow. (I looked at the Schutzmans and determined that the bride and groom were not first cousins.)

The name Juda Mendl is totally unknown to me among Pikholz descendants. Mendel in any form or combination is rare and we have no other Juda among the Skalat Pikholz families. (There are some Leib and Aryeh, but no one specifically Juda.)

But the most likely solution was that Juda Mendl was a previously unknown son of Chaim Yaakov of Buczacz. After all, that's where Moshe was born. But I certainly did not have enough evidence to record him that way, so Juda Mendl and his son Moshe remained among the unconnected.

BACK TO YAD VASHEM
Some time later, I had the occasion to have another look at the Pages for Moshe and his family (by now online) and I saw how Yad Vashem treated the matter of the missing submitter.

They listed their agent, Weidenfeld, the fellow they sent to help the survivors fill out the forms, as the submitter. I checked with them and they said they assumed that this Weidenfeld had been the submitter himself, as well as having worked for Yad Vashem.

Makes sense to me.

I asked them if they would have any idea who this Weidenfeld was and they hadn't.

Then it occurred to me that perehaps this was Avraham Weidenfeld whose wife - the daughter of Rivka Bernstein - may have been a first cousin of Moshe.

If so, it seemed odd that Avraham Weidenfeld submitted pages only for this one cousin and his family, not for anyone else from the Buczacz family. I looked at pages submitted by anyone named Weidenfeld and saw nothing clarifying. It also seemed odd that if Moshe were the cousin of the submitter's wife, Moshe's parents would not be named on the Page, but his wife's would have

I spoke to Avraham Weidenfeld's two daughters and neither was willing to tell me anything - not even if the signature looks like it might have been that of their late father.

But now I had a more specific question - did Yad Vashem ever employ a man named Avraham Weidenfeld of the Haifa area, in their names project. I gave them an approximation of his age as well. Yad Vashem's personnel department told me that they had no information on who did that work in the 1950s and in general had no record of any Weidenfeld.

So I phoned J. It seemed predestined.

J had lived in Nahariyya, so he probably did his work for Yad Vashem in the Haifa area during the summer or other university vacation periods. So perhaps he knew the others working in that project in the same area. Perhaps they had been in a training seminar together.

J is retired and lives near Beer Sheva. He was very surprised by my call, moreso by my question. He had no idea about any Weidenfeld, but suggested I call his older brother who had been involved in the names project for a longer period of time.

The older brother didn't remember any Weidenfeld, but then he said there was not much contact among the Yad Vashem people in the field. He did tell me that they were not employees of Yad Vashem, but rather worked as part of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University. So I tried the Institute and the personnel department at the University, where they thought I was really nuts.

Maybe I am, but it seemed like a good idea.

So for now, I am left with my puzzles and theories. I am recording this so as to be sure not to mislead anyone who might someday examine my database.

IMPORTANT HOUSEKEEPING NOTE
My talk in Givatayim on DNA is 14 October, not 10 October as previously announced.

UNPLANNED OFF-WEEK

I had prepared a post this week, based on this record which I found through the Belarus SIG database and ordered from Salt Lake City.

My great-grandfather and namesake Srul Rozenblum in a revision list from 1874.

The blogpost referred to some issues which I thought it fair to ask the database coordinator to comment on, and he asked for some additional time to check it out.

So I am postponing this post for a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately with all the holidays, I did not have a back up ready to go in its place, so all I have here is to wish you a gemar hatima tovah and a meaningful fast.

COMING APPEARANCES

The last few weeks, I have been blogging about our efforts to learn about the Skalat Pikholz families through DNA testing.

I will be speaking on that subject at two of the Israel Genealogical Society branches in the next few weeks.

Here are the announcements and the lecture description.

A DNA Skeptic Turns His Family On Its Head - And Remains A Skeptic

As a genealogy research tool, DNA is both very tempting because it tests the scientific genealogical makeup of family members, but at the same time uses analysis based on statistics and probability that can lead to incorrect or unfounded conclusions. The experts' explanations often confuse more than they illuminate, especially when you consider that some of these experts are the ones selling the testing services. So what is the lay researcher to do?

 

FOR SOME REASON, THE DATE ON THIS IS WRONG. Correct date is 14 October.

This talk will tell the story of one researcher who – despite his skepticism – used DNA testing to turn his basic family structure on its head, with more plans on the way. And despite his intentions to continue with this kind of research, remains a something of a skeptic.

I am also scheduled to speak on another subject - one which I have done before, both here and in the US.

"Beyond a Doubt: What We Know vs. What We Can Prove"

What do you do when the hard proofs just aren't there, but you are as sure as you can be what they would say if you could find them? If you fold your hands and wait, you may never get anywhere with your research, but if you accept your suppositions as fact, they may never be questioned again. Not by you nor by your research heirs.

This presentation will use examples from the east Galician single-surname Pikholz Project to consider when what you know is beyond a reasonable doubt and if that is indeed good enough.

I am not sure if I'll be blogging next week, so let me offer best wishes to all of you as we enter the new year 5773. May you and your families be written and sealed in the Book of Life and may you enjoy a year of health and prosperity.

THE ROZDOL PIKHOLZ FAMILIES HAVE DNA TOO

I wasn't planning on getting into this so soon after my three-part blog on DNA and the Skalat families, but a commentor last week brought up the subject so I figured I may as well deal with it.

What do we want to know?
Actually, there are two questions. One has to do with the internal structure of the Rozdol families - those we understand to be descended from Pinkas and Sara Rivka. We have death records with ages for two of their sons, so we know that Israel Joel was born about 1807 and Aron was born about 1818. There appear to be at least two other sons - Izak and Samuel or David or more likely David Samuel.

There are, however, some complications, particularly with the descendants of the son Isak, and there is a possibility that DNA testing can shed some light here. Unfortunately, the best candidates for autosomal testing are second- and third-great-grandchildren of Pinkas and Sara Rivka, which is pretty distant for that kind of testing. And there are enough cousin marriages in those families to make those tests even less reliable than usual.



My best estimation of the Rozdol Pikholz families. (Click to enlarge.)
The red bars indicate relationships for which we have no direct evidence.

The other question is whether or not the Rozdol family is connected to the Skalat families. You might think this a simple question, since we have quite a few father-son lines among the Rozdolers and the Y-chromosome does not deteriorate over generations. Pinkas of Rozdol is probably in the same age cohort as Nachman, Isak Josef and the other male Skalat Pikholz born  about 1780-1795, so if he is a brother, his Y-chromosome would be an easy match.

And maybe that is indeed the case.

Rav Juda Gershon Pickholz tells us much about his family in his books. Here is what he says about his grandfather, Rav Pinkas of Rozdol, in the first version of his book Mahane Yehudah.

Although Rav Juda Gershon mentions his father (elsewhere) as Pikholz, he never seems to use the surname in connection with his grandfather. Between that and the fact that the given name Pinkas is totally unknown among the Skalat families, I have been thinking that if there is a Skalat connection, it is through the wife Sara Rivka - which would make a Y-chromosome test quite useless.

There is the possibility of a Mitochondrial (mother-daughter line) test in the MENSCH family, which would go back to Sara Rivka, but we don't really have anyone to compare to on the Skalat side, except perhaps in the RISS family.

So that leaves autosomal tests. But any attempts to match Skalat and Rozdol Pikholz descendants would be at the fifth- or sixth-cousin level and autosomal tests are not really appropriate for that - unless perhaps they show no connection whatsoever.

So how can we proceed?

Eric, who made the comment that prompted today's discussion, is not a Pikholz family member. That's too bad because I'd like to have responded "Good idea. How about if you take the initiative and I'll help in the background?"

Fact is, I have too much on my plate right now, but I will be happy to lend support and direction to any of the Rozdol Pikholz descendants who might want to undertake this project.

A Y-chromosome inquiry is easy. There are plenty of descendants of direct male lines.

Autosomal tests are more tricky since we want to stay as close to the early generations as possible. I did a cursory survey and see one living great-great-granddaughter of Pinkas and Sara Rivka in the BREZDOWICZ family. (At least I think she is living. People do not always keep me informed on a timely basis.)

In the next generation, I see living descendants in four additional families. Beyond that is probably too far to test in any meaningful way.

If someone from the Rozdol side wants to take this on - which involves getting people to agree to be tested and to pay for the tests, aside from questions of analysis - talk to me.

HOW FAR CAN WE GO WITH THIS?

Part three of three

See part one and part two



When I left off last week, I had determined that my great-great-grandfather Isak Fischel Pikholz and Dalia's great-great-grandfather Mordecai Pikholz are beyond a doubt brothers, making us fourth cousins.

I have much to cover here, so I do not want to speculate on the name of their father - our next generation up - though I think I know what it is. Another time, perhaps. In any case, he seems to have been born about 1780, based on the ages of his two known sons.

I expect to be able to add Vladimir's great-grandfather as another son of Mordecai, after we get his test results in another month or two. We also have a family of cousins in Kansas City, whose late fathers ought to be second cousins of Vladimir. One of them has done an autosomal test and we await results.

So to all these, I add the other six Y-chrosome candidates that I listed last week:

3. Lloyd, whose great-grandfather married Aryeh Leib ben Mordecai's daughter.

4. One of the sons of Mordecai Allon, whose Pikholz grandfather lived further east into Ukraine.

5. M, the elusive great-grandson of Simon Pikholz, whose family went to New Jersey in the 1890s and who seems to be closely related to Dalia and me.

6. Moshe, who survived the War with his family in the forest around Skalat and whom we know nothing about past his grandparents' names.

7. Aharon, who has not been at all cooperative, but who is the only Y-chromosome candidate for his family.

And of course Jacob and Bronislaw, the descendants of Nachman, a contemporary of the father of Mordecai and Isak Fischel.

I am hoping to get these six to take tests, though in some cases, we may have to find a way to finance them ourselves.

The seven broken black lines represent those families whom we are trying to connect to an earlier generation.

Red lines represent connections that I assume to be true, but have not yet proven.

Red circles are those who have tested for DNA (Y-chromosome, autosomal or both). Green circles are those who said they would test but haven't yet. Blue are people we need to convince.

Then there are the seven families of four or more generations, for whom we have living descendants but none in an all male line. For those, we can talk about autosomal testing. So let's do so. (Two additional families of four generations do not appear to have anyone who survived the Holocaust and we can only guess exactly where they belong in the family structure.)

In describing these seven families, I will use the names that I have given these families on the Pikholz Project website.

1. RITA. This family is almost certainly descended from Nachman Pikholz and we can test that hypothesis once we have something from Jacob and/or Bronislaw. The oldest person we have here is Moshe Hersch, who was born about 1820.

2. TONKA. This family is also almost certainly descended from Nachman. The oldest person we have is Moshe Pikholz, who was probably born 1851. Moshe's father may have been Gabriel, who was born about 1822.

3. IRENE. This family goes back to Peretz Pikholz who was born about 1820. We have someone born 1916 who doing an autosomal test and we hope that gives a meaningful result. We also have a clue in the names. In addition to the three pre-1800 Pikholz who appear at the top of the chart, we know of a Berl who was born about 1789 and died 1877. We have a few children and grandchildren, one of whom was born soon after Irene's Peretz died and bore the middle name Peretz. So IRENE's Peretz may well be descended the son of this Berl.

4. STEVE. Another family descended from a Moshe Hersch Pikholz who was probably born about 1815.

5. RISS. A family descended from a Ryfke Pikholz, who was born about 1820.

6. MIGDEN. A smallish family descended from Josef Pikholz who was born about 1860.

7. WELWELE. A very small family descended from a Welwele Pikholz who was probably born about 1870.

As we sort out whatever we can with the families in the chart above, we can begin to approach some of these other families and see where that takes us.

This probably comes better as a lecture than as a written blog and I hope to turn it into a Power Point presentation, which can include ongoing developments. Of course, I plan to revisit the chart above as we get results from the pending and planned DNA tests. I'll report them here, so those of you who are interested, should pay attention for announcements of subsequent posts.

The other critical issue - which I addressed briefly and in a more limited context last week - is to what extent are these DNA results proof. If Vladimir and the Kansas City cousins show up as "suggested second or third cousins," can I record them accordingly? Or do I have to stick with notes that begin with "appears to be..." Can I put them unambiguously on a chart or do I have to used broken or colored lines that indicate "maybe." And who decides?

Please leave your comments.

A SINGLE DNA TEST TURNS MY GENEALOGY ON ITS HEAD

(Part two of three)
Here is part one

Hey, let's do some DNA testing! What fun.

A few weeks ago, I told you about a Polish woman named Joanna who learned that her grandfather was the son of a Pikholz man whom we have tentatively identified as one of the sons of Josef Pikholz of Klimkowce. (We thought it might be Josef himself, but he seems to have died a bit earlier.) Josef has a great-grandson here in Israel named Jacob, who is an active participant in our Pikholz research. In order to determine that this story is true, I suggested that Jacob and someone in Joanna's family do autosomal DNA tests.

Different types of DNA testing

Then I realized that Joanna's uncle Bronislaw could do a Y-chromosome test to help identify that line within the larger Pikholz structure. Neither Jacob nor anyone else in his branch has a male line, so Bronislaw is our sole option for a Y-chromosome test for this branch.

As I say, I discussed this in detail awhile back.

Of course in order to apply the results of Bronislaw's Y-chromosome test, we would need to check the Y-chromosomes of the other Pikholz branches. There are seven such branches for which I can identify candidates for testing.

1. Last week, I discussed Mordecai Pikholz (1805-1864) who appears to be closely related to Isak Josef Pikholz (1784-1862). The twenty-one year age difference could fit father and son or brothers or uncle and nephew or any sort of cousins. Isak Josef has no male line that we know of, but Mordecai has a great-great-granddaughter, Dalia, who is very interested on our project. Dalia is not eligible for a Y-chromosome test, of course, but she could do an autosomal, while her late brother's son does the Y-chromosome. So let's test Dalia and her nephew. They agreed and did the tests.

2. Vladimir lives in Ashkelon and is the great-grandson of Jachiel ben Mordecai Pigoltz. This could be the same Mordecai as Dalia's, making Vladimir and Dalia third cousins. So let's test Vladimir. His test is being processed now.

3. Aryeh Leib is almost certainly a son of Dalia's Mordecai, but he has no male line. However, his daughter Ettel (b. 1860) was married to a Jachiel Pikholz of whom we know nothing. Jachiel and Ettel have a male line to a great-grandson named Lloyd, in the United States. A Y-chromosome test would tell us something about Jachiel. An autosomal would be unpredictable because both parents of his paternal grandfather are Pikholz, but that could lead in interesting directions. So let's test Lloyd. He agreed, but hasn't done it yet.

4. Mordecai (Pikholz) Allon died here a few years ago. His family was from deeper in Ukraine, but there is a good possibility he is part of a Skalat family. His three children live in the US and I am in touch with Daphne. Let's test one of Daphne's brothers. She agreed, but no one has done it yet.

5. The family of Simon Pikholz went from Skalat to New Jersey in the 1890s. This family appears to be close to mine and to Dalia's. Simon has one great-grandson from a male line and I am in touch with him intermittently. He is a bit elusive and does not always reply. But since we are doing it, let's test Simon's great-grandson. I asked him and he has not responded.

6. Yaakov Pikholz, his son Israel Aharon, their wives and five of Israel Aharon's children spent the War in the forests around Skalat. The young adults survived. We have no idea how they connect to anyone else. One of the two sons, Moshe, is still living. I have never had contact with him, though I have with his older sisters. Let's see if we can test Moshe. I wrote a letter and received no response.

7. Jachiel and Israel were brothers. Jachiel had three daughters who went to the US before World War I and I am in touch with some of their descendants. Israel had two sons here in Israel, one of whom has a living son Aharon who has had absolutely no interesting in contact, though he did refer me to his sister. Let's see if we can do a test for Aharon. I wrote a letter - even cc'ing his sister - but received no response.

Perhaps some of them are simply not willing to spend the money.

The eight in red are the ones I'd like to test for Y-chromosome.

We also have several other families with four or more generations for whom an autosomal test could be very useful, once we have results from some of those listed above. But that will come later.

We also have a number of smaller families, but in most of those cases we have no evidence of living members for many years.
I realize the irony in all of this, particularly the autosomal tests. In one of my first blog posts, I  wrote about my skepticism of this whole testing business, calling it "smoke and mirrors." There is just too much that is based on probability and guesswork, especially once we get into fourth and fifth cousins. (Not to mention that the website of the testing company does not always make it easy to understand the analytical tools they offer.)

But I figured if we were doing this, I should do an autosomal test myself. Who knows what might show up.

Reasonable preliminary results
My autosomal test (the company calls it "Family Finder") showed thirty-five third cousins, only one of whom was someone I could account for - and he is on my mother's side. He is at best a fourth cousin and none of the others appeared to have any chance of being third cousins in any direction, based on my previous research.

But I figured I could improve the odds by asking my father's sister to test. Any of mine that she matches would be on my father's side and anyone she did not match would be on my mother's side. My aunt took the test.  Among her results were some close matches who were not close for me at all.



Smoke and mirrors? Robert M. is a second cousin to my aunt but remote to me?
It's like asking an engineer for plans for a triangle and getting this.



 But even the ones that both my aunt and I match could be either on my grandfather's side or my grandmother's side, so I enlisted my father's first cousin Herb. Anyone he and I both matched would be on the side we are looking for. Cousin Herb took the test.



Dalia's results came in. She shows up as a "suggested fourth cousin" to me. That's about what I would have expected. Dalia is also a "suggested third cousin" to my aunt, which is also about right. But oddly enough, Dalia is a "suggested second cousin" to Herb, which is definitely too close. Well, Dalia and Herb are both Galizianers on both sides of their families, so there could be an additional connection between them that we don't know about.



Dalia's matches to my known relatives

The bombshell

Then came the big surprise. The one result that no one had considered. A result that contradicted one of my most basic understandings. A result that was based on a comparison that we hadn't even intended to make.

Dalia's nephew's Y-chromosome test. And my own Y-chromosome test. They matched perfectly. Thirty-seven out of thirty-seven matches. No smoke and mirrors here - just a straight Y-chromosome, not affected by other sides of our families.

Dalia's nephew matches me perfectly for thirty-seven markers

My great-great-grandfather Isak Fischel is not from some family that I have to look for. He is a Pikholz. All this business about how my great-grandfather got his Pikholz surname from his mother - flat wrong. His wife still appears to be a daughter (or maybe granddaughter) of Isak Josef Pikholz, so it seems both parents of my great-grandfather were Pikholz. Why did they live in Zalosce, rather than in their birth town Skalat? Who knows.

According to the company's website, a match like that gives a probability of over ninety percent that my Isak Fischel and Dalia's Mordecai are brothers and the autosomal tests just strengthen that. I ran that possibility by the DNA discussion group on JewishGen and had some cold water dumped on me. But I consulted with the genetic genealogist CeCe Moore and she says they almost have to be brothers. Some others thought so too.

I am aware that the fact that Isak Fischel's wife is almost certainly a Pikholz may make these relationships seem closer than they are, but the testing company says that their system "prevent[s] over predictions due to intermarriage and reflect[s] more accurately your relationship to other Ashkenazi Jews in our Family Finder system."

I don't know if this means that I can officially record Isak Fischel and Mordecai as brothers or not. Perhaps the citation police consider this no more than supporting evidence, but it is certainly good enough to put it on a wall chart. If I had a wall chart. (I'd love to see your thoughts on this in the "Comments" section below.)

Either way, the web site will have to undergo major revisions, but not just yet.

I also do not know if we can strengthen this conclusion by upgrading the Y-chromosome test. Dalia's nephew and I had 37 matching markers, but they also do tests for 67 and even 111 markers. I actually tested for 67. So if we upgrade his to 67 or both of ours to 111, would we get results which would be recognized as "fact?" I have been getting conflicting "expert advice" on this question - some say that 37 is sufficient, others say we should both upgrade to 111, which would be a significant expense.

And how much do the autosomal results that we have vis a vis Dalia count? They certainly should! But here too, there are different thoughts from different people. There is a conservative view that DNA can never prove anything - only report on probability.

The surname of Isak Fischel is not the only revelation here. I explained last week that Isak Fischel cannot be the son or grandson of Isak Josef, because of the Isak in both names. Since Mordecai and Isak Fischel are brothers, we now know that Mordecai and Isak Josef are neither father-and-son nor brothers. Maybe uncle and nephew. So now, it looks like this:

And there is more. But this is enough for now.

One thing for certain. When someone says "What do you hope to prove with this test you want me to do?" I don't really need a specific answer. "You never know what might turn up" is my new mantra.

Continued next week.

THE GRANDPARENTS OF HERSCH PICKHOLTZ

(Part one of three)

Isak Fischel
My father's grandparents are all buried in Pittsburgh. I first visited them properly forty years ago and have been there maybe five times since. That first visit was the first time I learned that the father of my great-grandfather Hersch (Harry in the US) Pickholtz was called Isak Yeroham Fischel. That's what it says on his grave. Hersch's sister Leah Braun is also buried in Pittsburgh and his name appears there the same way. The other sister, Bessie Franzos (aka Frankel and Francis) has him as Yitzhak Fischel.

Fischel is the Yiddish equivalent of two different Biblical names - Efraim and Yeroham - so including "Yeroham" on some of the graves provides us with clarification, although he probably rarely used it. He appears in documents as Isak Fischel, occasionally Fischel Isak.

My grandmother told me that his wife's name was Rivka Feige, though I learned later that it sometimes it appears reversed in old documents.

In addition to Leah, Bassie and Hersch, there was a brother Yehiel who never left Europe. I first learned of him from my father, who died back when any genealogy work I was doing could best be described as "puttering." My father himself knew very little of the family history, but he gave me two pieces of information which I have never heard from any one else. My father wrote me a note that his grandfather Harry Pickholtz had a brother Yehiel with three children and had an uncle Selig Pickholtz. I can only speculate why my father would have known that his grandfather had an uncle Selig. That speculation is for another time, but the information is relevant here.

As I got further into my research and records became available through JRI-Poland, I was able to put together the basic structure of the family of Isak Fischel and Rivka Feige. (See to the left.) The approximate birth years of their children are based on their death records. (I also began using the Galician spelling "Pikholz" more frequently.)

I put Yehiel as the eldest because I learned later that two of his children were born in 1874 and 1876. He may, in fact, be younger than the sisters.

Josef and Rojse and Motie and Taube

The Jews of Galicia did not always record their marriages with the civil authorities, but occasionally a registration will show up many years after the actual Jewish marriage date. One such record is the 1887 marriage in Skalat of Berl, age 71, son of Josef and Rojse Pikholz and Dwojre, age 50, daughter of Motie (=Mordecai) and Taube Pikholz.

This couple had ten children and there are a few living descendants.

I got the idea into my head that this was a close-cousin marriage or perhaps an uncle-niece, but although I made notes to that effect, I did not record a relationship between them since I had no evidence.

I never found anything else about Rojse, but I found what appear to be death records for the other three. Motie died in 1864 at age fifty-nine, so would have been born about 1805. Taube died in 1872 at age seventy, so would have been born about 1802. Josef - or more properly, Isak Josef - died in 1862 at age seventy-eight.

If Josef was in fact twenty-one years older than Motie, they could have been father and son, or brothers or uncle and nephew, who knows. Perhaps they were not closely related at all - just two Pikholz from Skalat whose children (also twenty-one years apart) married one another.

Motie had two other daughters and some sons, but I found no other children for Josef. Among Berl's descendants there were some Isak Josefs, whom everyone called Josef, as well as younger ones who were called Josef without the Isak.

It was then that I found the only Selig Pikholz in my database. (Remember, my great-grandfather's uncle?) Selig had a son Itzik Joseph, born in 1862, several months after the death of Isak Josef. This indicated to me that Selig was very likely a son or grandson of Isak Josef. I later found that Selig had an older son Markus (= Mordecai, almost certainly) and the same as Selig's father-in-law. That precluded the possibility that Selig was a son of Motie, who was still alive when Markus was born.

My grandfather had an older brother Yosef Yitzhak, but when we found his birth record, it turned out that he too was originally Isak Josef. So Uncle Joe fit the pattern of those named after Isak Josef, that they were named Isak Josef, but called Josef.

So that sets up Isak Josef as the father or grandfather of the brothers Selig and Isak Fischel. But wait. There is no way that ISAK Fischel has a living father or grandfather named ISAK Josef. That seemed to leave the possibility that our Pikholz name did not come from Isak Fischel, but from Rivke Feige and she was the sister of Selig. (I have written before about the fact that many Jewish couples did not register their marriages with the civil authorities, so the children received the mother's surname.)

That sets up this structure:

Everyone in this structure was born in Skalat, except the children of Isak Fischel and Rivka Feige, who were born in Podkamen, quite a ways away. Why, who knows, but my best guess is that Isak Fischel comes from Podkamen or somewhere nearby. Of course, he is not Pikholz, so he could have come from anywhere. Of their four children, three married into families from nearby Zalosce and lived there. Rivka Feige sent her daughter Bassie back to Skalat and she married someone from there. Bassie's children were born in Skalat.

And what was the surname of Isak Fischel? The surname that should have been ours? Who knows. My very first blog post in this series discusses this at length. I have even ordered every record I could find in east Galicia for people named Isak Fischel, hoping one would lead me someplace.

I may never know the answer to this question, just as I will probably never be able to pin down the relationship between Isak Josef and Mordecai. I am largely resigned to this, but I plod on.

The thing is, although my grandfather died when I was nine, I knew his three older brothers, who died when I was seventeen and twenty-one so I surely could have asked them about their grandfather. The middle sister Miriam (Aunt Mary Braun) lived another nine years and we had some correspondence, so the answer to that particular question was almost certainly available.

I did one thing, however. About sixteen months ago, I ordered a Y-chromosome test, hoping to find someone else with the same father-to-son DNA. You can never tell with these things. Maybe I can identify Isak Fischel's family after all.

To be continued

THE ADIVI CEMETERY

Zygmundt Migden
Back at the beginning of my research, I found a Page of Testimony at Yad vaShem in the name of Gustaw Migden of Tarnopol. He was killed in Tarnopol in 1943.

The Page listed Gustaw's wife - Freida Pickholz, born in 1886 - and three unnamed children. There was no other information about Freida and I did not recognize her from my work to that time.  The Page was sumbitted in 1956 by their son Zygmundt, a resident of Beer Sheva.

I made some inquiries and eventually learned that Zygmundt had lived in Ashkelon and had died in 1986. But the local burial society didn't have him - not in the old cemetery and not in the newer one. Zygmundt had been born in Tarnopol in 1913 and had made aliyah in 1936, a single man.

I renewed my search for Zygmundt from time to time and the road kept leading to Ashkelon, where it ended abruptly.

In the meantime, new records became available and I found the marriage record for his mother Freida Pickholz. She was born 25 November 1885 to Josef Pickholz and Sussel Gruberg. We knew Sussel, who died in Karlsbad in 1928, but did not (and still do not) know anything about Josef's family. Eventually, I found Freida's two brothers and younger sister. One of the brothers seem to have died young, but the other two lived in Lwow and their small families included several physicians.

According to the Page of Testimony, Zygmundt was one of three children, but all I found was an older sister who died as a child, before Zygmundt was born.

Eventually, I came back to the burial society in Ashkelon and I spoke with someone in the office who looked once again and found nothing. Then she said "Wait a minute" and she gave the phone to an older gentleman who had just walked in. I asked him my question and he said "I think he is in Adivi."

The Adivi Cemetery
Rehavia Adiva was the first mayor of Ashkelon (1965-1972) and when his married daughter died at age twenty-four in 1953, he bought a piece of an orange grove near the cemetery and buried her there. Over the years, he and his wife were buried there as well as assorted others.  Over forty in all.

Rivka Yaakoba Goldberg,
Adivi's daughter

He gave me directions and I went to the site. Follow the dirt road around the side of the old cemetery, then further along a dirt road to the right. Look for the cemetery inside an orange grove on the left.

And there it was. Hidden inside the orange grove. No sign or anything.

I spent the better part of an hour, recording the names on the stones and taking photographs of the four Migden graves. They are side by side - Zygmundt, his wife Helena, their fourteen year old son Gedalyahu and Zygmundt's forty-seven year old unmarried brother Dr. Meir Migden. Meir's grave has a plaque in memory of Gustaw.

When JewishGen inaugurated JOWBR, I decided that I should enter all the graves in this cemetery, but Ashkelon is not on the way anywhere, so it waited.

Adivi Today
About sixteen months ago, I was in Ashkelon with my wife and youngest son and we decided to photograph the whole cemetery. It was easier to find this time, as the orange grave was gone. There were still the dirt roads, but you could see the cemetery from a distance.

There was a sign - a sure indication that someone had taken responsibility for maintenance. In this case, the Council for Preservation of Historic Sites and the City of Ashkelon.

There didn't seem to be any preservation going on - no fence or anything and no obvious maintenance. There has been a bit of vandalism.

We took photographs and made handwritten notes on the ones where the epitaphs were not clear. When I got home, I saw that some of those photos were not good enough, so another visit would be needed before submitting it to JOWBR.

The oppotunity for that came a few days ago. I went to Ashkelon with Dvorah Netzer, to meet my putative cousin Vladimir. Dvorah's Russian-speaking Medved cousins generously agreed to host the meeting and to help with the communication.

After that meeting, Dvorah and I went  to the cemetery to finish the photography and I passed on the pictures and the data to JOWBR that same evening. Occasionally, something actually gets crossed off my to-do list.

Housekeeping notes:
1. Next week begins a three-part series on the huge breakthrough on our family structure, based on DNA testing.

2. A colleague of mine in Europe writes as follows:

I am writing to you because I have an iPhone / iPod / iPad etc game developed, the name is Famble. It is the classical word search game - but the words you are looking for are Jewish surnames. It is so funny if you have to find your ancestral surnames, my wife, who is neither a big genealogy fun, nor plays around with computer games, laughed out when she tried Famble and found both times a friends' names popping up. Here is the link:
 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/famble/id543534434?l=hu&ls=1&mt=8

It is also possible to add one's family names to the game, currently it has some 3,000 names in it.

I don't have any of these devices, so cannot venture an opinion. Just passing it on.

HEVRON

At the beginning of last week, I had a phone call from an old friend, Zvi Ofer, who lives in Kiryat Arba, right outside Hevron. Zvi and Celia's second son Uri would be making a brit on Thursday.

Uri and his family live in the Admot Yishai neighborhood of Hevron, quite near the cemetery. They live in the upper floor of a building called Beit Zechariya, which had been purchased by the Jewish Community of Hevron seven years ago, but that purchase has fallen under threat of  cancellation by the Supreme Court. (See more about that here.) The brit was to be in another apartment in the building, with the festive meal in the small park adjacent to the building.

Admot Yishai is named for the father of King David. He and his grandmother - the Biblical Ruth - are buried there.

There is something special about a brit during the nine days leading up to Tish'a beAv, the fast which commemorates the destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem, as well as other national tragedies. During the nine days we do not eat meat or drink wine, have weddings or make music, go to the beach - and according to some customs we don't shave or do laundry. A brit overrides some of that - the meat and the wine and the music - and generally mitigates the sense of bad omen usually ascribed to the period.

A personal good omen too - a few weeks ago, when I was planning my coming blog posts, I set this week's subject as Hevron. It seemed to fit the theme of mourning and coming redemption associated with Tish'a beAv. And besides, the eighteenth of Av is the eighty-third anniversary of the massacre. I do not feel competent to retell this story, but here it is in one sentence.

The local Arabs slaughtered their Jewish neighbors and the British overlords took that as an excuse to snuff out a vibrant Jewish community, hundreds of years old.

You can - and really should - read more about that in dozens of sources including here and here and here.

(It also fits into the current discussion about the refusal of most of the world to acknowledge the murder of the eleven Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympics.)

Hevron remained Judenrein for the remaining nineteen years of British rule and throughout the nineteen years of Jordanian occupation. When the Jews returned, many of the murderers were still there and they feared vengeance.

Who was the first Jew to return to Hebron in 1967? Who was the first Jew to enter the Cave of the Patriarchs in over 700 years? Before 1948, Muslims refused to permit Jews into the Cave of the Patriarchs, they were only allowed to pray outside on the steps to the building, the infamous "7th step"- and no further. Arab guards stationed there would beat anyone attempting to get any closer to the entrance. The first Jew in Hebron and in the Cave of the Patriarchs was the then Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, Rabbi Shlomo Goren z"l.
Rabbi Goren was with Israeli forces as the IDF conquered the Western Wall in Jerusalem. As a general, Rabbi Goren knew that the army's next mission was Hebron. He wanted to be among the first Israeli's in the ancient City of the Patriarchs, so he joined the soldiers stationed at the recently captured Etzion Block (sic), on their way to Hebron. On the 28th of Iyar, at night, he asked to be woken-up when the soldiers began their march to Hebron the following day.
The next morning he woke-up, only to find himself alone with his driver. Realizing that he had been "left behind," he ordered his driver to begin the 20-minute journey to Hebron; he expected to meet the rest of the army, already on their way.
Rabbi Goren thought it was strange that he hadn?t met any other Israeli soldiers on the road as he reached Hebron. He thought that by now the army would be in Hebron. Driving into Hebron, Rabbi Goren was greeted by the sight of white sheets, hung from rooftops and windows, throughout the city. He was astounded, but understood. Knowing that their relatives had killed 67 Jews and wounded many more during the rioting of 1929, the Arabs of Hebron were terrified that the Jews would take revenge. So, they didn't fire a shot, instead they hung white sheets from windows and rooftops to surrender.
Rabbi Goren quickly made his way to the Cave of the Patriarchs. Finding the huge green doors bolted, he fired his Uzi submachine gun at the lock - you can still see the bullet holes in the door till this day. Finally, after getting into Cave of the Patriarchs, he blew the Shofar - ram's horn, as he had done 24 hours earlier at the Western Wall, as a sign of liberation.

Only afterwards, did Rabbi Goren discover that when he left the base at the Etzion Block, the rest of the army was on the other side of the hill, making plans for the attack on Hebron. They did not know that the Arabs would surrender. In other words, Rabbi Goren, a lone Israeli soldier, single-handedly conquered a city of almost 40,000 Arabs. Jews had returned to Hebron and to the Ma'arat HaMachpela - Cave of Machpela or Cave of the Patriarchs, the second holiest site in Judaism!  



The Cave of the Patriarchs

I have always had an affection for Hevron, preferring the Cave of the Patriarchs to the Kotel in Jerusalem. I have spent parts of Tish'a beAv there at least half a dozen times and Yom Kippur twice. My wife and I went there for a day tour one year on our anniversary. And I have taken any number of visitors from abroad on what I call Ultimate Genealogy.



The "Tombs of Yitzhak and Rivka" are
 off-limits to Jews except ten days a year.

 Before the bypass road was completed sixteen years ago, I would drive right through Hevron on my way to and from work a few times a month. Then for more than a dozen years, I drove the bypass road most every day, right around the edge of the city.

At some point I decided I had to make some contribution and when JewishGen set up its Online Burial Registry  (JOWBR), I realized how to do it.



The old Rabbinic "Reishit Hochma" section, refurbished

Thus was born my Hevron Cemetery Project, showing the precise layout of the cemetery, with grave photos and translations. My latest update had been about six weeks ago, but when Zvi called, I realized I could take the opportunity for an additional update.


They are not accepting plot purchases, but at 120 that's where I would like to be.

The brit was called for five o'clock and got underway about five-thirty. There were a few dozens of men and similar numbers of women and children. The baby was named Shai. Afterwards we adjourned to the neighboring parklet, where there were tables set up for a catered meat meal.

It was a pleasant hilltop day, away from the heat that has been oppressing us for the last few weeks. The view down the hill was the city itself - the Arab homes and the much smaller Jewish neighborhoods. Less than a hundred yards away was an Arab house, flying the flag of the Palestinian Authority. Soldiers lounged around. Just another day in another Jewish neighborhood. And another baby boy joins the ranks of the Jewish people in the place where it all began.

CHAYA GITTEL WAGNER

I'm not sure how long ago it was. It was definitely before we began our single-surname Pikholz Project in the fall of 1998. And I know it was late spring, so it would have to have been 1998 or maybe 1997.  My own email files don't go back quite that far.

Wait - the JewishGen Archives. Here it is. From 27 July 1998.

Subject: BAUER from Kunszentmiklos
Comments: To: JewishGen Discussion Group-Moderation
<sgjewish@lyris.jewishgen.org>
I'd turn to you folks for some direction. We have
no LDS here in Israel and I'm not in a position to spend
significant money right now.

My ggm, Regina Bauer, was born 1 July 1870, probably in
Kunszentmiklos. Her father was Shemaya. (Perhaps he had a gentile
first name as well?) Her mother was a Stern From Kaloscha. We know
the names of Regina's brothers and sisters, but do not have an age
order. (Hermina, Ilona, Susanna, Lajos, Sigmund and Louisa. Louisa
came to the US, so we know something about her. One of the brothers
was a high official in Franz Josef's government - perhaps Commerce.)

I expect that my next step is a birth certificate, which would
give her mother's first name, but I'm not clear how to go about even
that simple step, from this distance. Regina was married to Moritz
Rosenzweig (a widower) in about 1889/90 and they lived in Budapest,
but I'm told they weren't married there. Perhaps that too is to be
found in Kunszentmiklos.

Your guidance would be greatly appreciated. (I've run this by the
Hungarian SIG, with no response.)

I got a response from Eleanor Bien in Virginia, she offered to get me all the Bauer records from Kunszentmiklos and to see if there was anything relevant in Kalosca in  exchange for my finding her great-grandmother's grave on the Mt of Olives.


CHAYA GITTEL WAGNER,
the namesake of Eleanor's sister
Carol Skydell, VP of JewishGen

Chaya Gittel Wagner had come to Jerusalem as an elderly widow and died in 1911. I don't remember if Eleanor had a precise date, but she knew her great-grandmother had come from Seret, in Bukovina.

Finding the grave was the secondary mission - the primary goal was to learn her father's name.

I had never done anything on the Mt of Olives before, though I had gone past it many times. How hard can it be, right? Of course I knew that the nineteen-year Jordanian occupation had been accompanied by much destruction in the cemetery, but still.

I decided to start by phoning the burial societies - first time for that experience! - and the first one I called had her. That was the Hassidim and her grave was in a section  right opposite the police station, near the checkpoint at the beginning of the Jericho Road that leads to the Dead Sea. He said if I'd come to the office, he'd go out to the site with me. The grave site was easy to find, he said, because it was very near an easily recognizable pile of tombstones that were out of place.

In the office, I saw the record. It had her name "Chaya Gittel bat" then a large space where her father's name ought to be, "from Seret" and the date, 18 Menahem Av 5671. They didn't have the father's name either, but they left a space in their record book, as though someone expected that this information might yet turn up. Not a good omen.

There was no mention of a surname, but apparently the date and the mention of Seret was enough for him to consider this an absolute identification. There is no gurantee, he said, that there actually is a stone. And if there is, it may not be legible.

We went up to the site and I saw the pile of tombstones that he used as a landmark. More like three stones at various angles, looking something like an Indian teepee.

Some of the graves had no stones. Others were broken or battered by the weather. We went up and down the row a few times, counting plots and trying to make out inscriptions. Eventually, he settled on an unmarked grave and said that this was Chaya Gittel.

Chaya Gittel's stone in its place.
You can see that the left side
had been buried.

But we didn't leave it at that. We decided to look around and see if perhaps the stone was someplace else nearby. And sure enough, one of the teepee stones, half-buried lengthwise, showed "Chaya Git" and "18 Menahem." The rest was in the ground. Even what we were able to read was face down and that may be why it was so legible, having been protected from fifty years of weather.

I seem to recall that we exposed the entire stone on that visit, though it was too heavy for the two of us to move to the grave site. There were four lines:

P"N [= Here lies buried]

Chaya Gittel bat

                   from Seret

18 Menahem Av 5671

No father's name, but there was a space. Like they were hoping someone would yet provide that information.

A few days later, I came out again with one of our boys and a crowbar and we moved the stone to its proper place. I felt bad for anyone who had used the teepee as a landmark, because the remaining stones were now quite useless for that purpose.

I took pictures before and after, plus a panoramic view and had two copies, one for Eleanor and one for her sister Carol. I visited again soon after, after receiving some special stones from Chaya Gittel Skydell.

A few weeks later, I received the Hungarian records from Eleanor. Some of them provide the basis for what I wrote here last month.

When I first considered writing about this here, I asked permission from both Eleanor and Carol. Here is what Carol wrote:

How nice to hear from you Israel.  I tell the story often about how genealogy binds us to people we may never meet in person.  People cannot believe that you were willing to find Chaya Gittel's grave, get your son and his friends to lift the stone that had fallen over it and ultimately visited memorializing the  visit with  prayers and placing two stones from my favorite beach in the entire world (Squibnocket on Martha's Vineyard).  Connectivity is what it is all about and people are truly amazed at what you did on our behalf, despite the fact we never met in person.

Go right ahead and share the story....I never stop telling it!

Housekeeping note - Next week's post will go up Monday, not the usual Sunday.