Following is what I said at the dedication, translated from the Hebrew.
Thank you everyone for coming this evening. Even if you are not sure what this is all about. My intention is that you enjoy what I have to say even if you do not get all the details. The family story is a bit complicated but there will not be a test. The important thing is the impression and the conclusions. And why we are in this place at this time.
Many years ago, when I began to take an interest in our family history, my father told me that his grandfather, Hersch Pickholtz, had an uncle Selig Pickholtz. That’s all he knew.
My father was born in the United States and his father arrived at age seven, so there was no family memory of what or who had been in Europe. The town names Skalat, Zalosce, Podkamen and even Tarnopol meant nothing at all to my father. Only that there had been an Uncle Selig who was important. Among all the family uncles.
When I began more serious research thirty-odd years ago, my grandmother told me that the mother of my great-grandfather Hersch Pickholtz had been Rivka Feige. (I already knew his father’s name from his tombstone.) I knew the name Rivka Feige as my grandfather’s oldest sister who died ten years before I was born. This evening is her yahrzeit and that is why I chose this date for this dedication. After all, I had no idea when the older Rivka Feige had died – not a year nor a date. Not even a decade. But obviously she had died before my grandfather’s sister had been born in 1885. That detail did not seem important.
As my research progressed and with the help of DNA, I found that both parents of my great-grandfather Hersch Pickholtz were Pickholtz and that Uncle Selig was the brother of his mother Rivka Feige and not of his father. Rivka Feige and her brother Selig were two of the children of Izak Josef Pikholz (who was known as (Yosef) and his wife Rojse about whom we know nothing even today.
As new research tools became available – online records, DNA and more – I learned that Rivka Feige had first been married to a man named Gabriel, surname unknown. They had two children – Breine and Sarah, around 1840. Gabriel died and Rivka Feige was married to a Pickholtz cousin (as was common practice then, for widows and widowers with young children). Rivka Feige had four children from her second marriage, the youngest, my great-grandfather Zvi Hersch, was born about 1853.
Breine – Rivka Feige’s older daughter with Gabriel – married Avraham Aharon Riss from whom descended several well-known people. Among those was Professor Egon Riss, a well-known cardiologist who worked at Rambam Hospital in Haifa for many years and who earlier had been the doctor of the Old City of Jerusalem during the War of Independence.
Sarah – the second daughter from Gabriel – married Eisig Baar and they moved to Czechia and from there to other countries – but not to Eretz Israel. I am in contact with descendants of both daughters, my half-third-cousins. But what is important for us today is that both Breine and Sarah named their first daughters Rivka. From that it was clear that Rivka Feige died no later than 1862, when my great-grandfather was no more than nine years old. And perhaps much younger.
That fact provides the key. Who raised these orphaned children? To ask the question is to answer it. Uncle Selig and his wife Chana. It does not matter now how exactly I worked that out but the conclusion is clear and unambiguous. The children who were born in Podkamen went to Uncle Selig in Skalat, the place where Rivka Feige had been born. Two of them married Skalaters.
And that is why Uncle Selig was important enough for my father to have known of him.
Uncle Selig, by the way, died on the fifteenth of Nisan 5673 (1913) at age 83, forty years after his wife Chana who had been his partner in raising Rivka Feige’s children.
People do family research for many reasons and sometimes without a reason. I have felt driven to record my family history since I was very young. Now I understand. This was my purpose. We, all of our family, owe a huge debt to Uncle Selig for the kindness that he did for his sister and her children and it has been my role to discover that, and to offer public recognition at this time and in this place, as expressed in this meeting. I shall explain that further.
That is why I chose the window of the tribe of Asher. But you might ask how did I learn that Uncle Selig was “Asher Selig” and not for instance “Yehoshua Selig” like my Hungarian third-great-grandfather. When I found the grave of Uncle Selig’s great-grandson Zigmond Migden twenty-odd years ago, I had no idea that he was a descendant of Uncle Selig. His tombstone just says “Zigmond.”
So let me tell the story. Early in my research, perhaps twenty-five years ago, I received a list of Pickholtz graves in Vienna. Some I recognized, some not. In time, I received photographs of some of the tombstones, some of which appeared smooth, with no lettering. One of those was a man named Meir Pickholtz, who died in his forties in 1916. His wife Lara died two and a half years later.
I felt an unexplained connection to this Meir and eventually found correspondence between his only child, a daughter, and the aliyah authorities. She was living in Italy and wanted to make aliyah. I think she died in Auschwitz.
Seven and a half years ago, I travelled to Hungary with an American cousin and we spent the last day in Vienna. I went to the huge cemetery with a list of Pickholtz graves in hand, including seven Riss cousins. Towards the end I found myself at Meir’s grave, which indeed appeared smooth. But the tombstone gave up its secrets. R‘ Meir Pikholz son of R’ Asher Selig from Tarnopol. This unknown Meir was the first cousin of my great-grandfather. And Uncle Selig was Asher.
The tombstone continues: נפטר בתוך הגולה פה ויען."” (Died here in exile in Vienna) It sounds like the first verse of Ezekiel “Here I am in exile on the River Kevar.”
The epitaph of a man who had he lived through the Great War would have lived out his life in the Land of Israel. This is my family.
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| With my fourth cousin, Zigmond's son |
But there is more. Twenty-odd years ago, I found (as I said earlier) the grave of Zigmond Migden, Uncle Selig’s great-grandson. And with him is his brother Meir who was born in 1916, just after his uncle Meir died in Vienna. When I eventually met Zigmond’s son, I learned that his Jewish name is in fact Asher Selig.
These graves are in the Adivi Cemetery, next to the old cemetery here in Ashkelon. A private cemetery which was in an orange grove. The orange grove is gone, but it was there when I first visited.
Can anyone question how this evening came together to honor Rivka Feige and Asher Selig? Here in Ashkelon? G-d has His ways of making things happen.
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