Mexico

The family
I introduced the family of Berl Pfeffer and his wife Lea Pikholz when I wrote about their son Leo the Spy three years ago and revisited them here a couple of months ago.

Lea is one of two known daughters of Simon Pikholz and his first wife Dwore Waltuch. After Dwore died at age twenty-three, Simon married her younger sister Chana, who ended up in the US, as did her four adult children.

As for Lea and Berl, they had twelve children, nine in Kopicienice in east Galicia and the last three in Czernovitz where Lea died in 1913. When Leo went to the US in 1923, the passenger list names his closest relative as his father Berl, in Vienna. Vienna doesn't seem to have a death record for him, so he may have gone elsewhere.

Wolf Leib (aka Leo) Pikholz is on the last line, as shown above, with his father's Vianna address.

One of the grandsons of Taube saw my post about Leo and that was the first I knew of Taube aside from her birth record. He filled in some of the other details. Of the twelve children of Lea and Berl, four died in childhood, five others grew to adulthood and had no children. Dwore lived a troubled life in the US with her son and we do not know what became of them. That left Taube and Joel.

I never saw a birth record for Joel, but his daughter Berta in Mexico City filed a Page of Testimony for him in 1999. Later I found Joel's Czernovitz marriage record to Mota Salter and Berta's 1912 birth record, also in Czernovitz. I had not been able to find anything further, but Taube's grandson told me that she had two children.

Simon Pikholz and his first wife, Dwore. He later married her younger sister and had additional children

Amalie
A Tel-Aviv attorney I work with from time to time phoned me some weeks ago and reported that she saw an index reference to a Custodian of Abandoned Property file in the name of Amalie Pickholz.The file was from 1984.

I had first seen Amalie's name when the Central Zionist Archives accidentally allowed me to look at some Pikholz files in their basement. One of those showed that in 1962, Leo had written to the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem asking about his sister Amalie, who it turns out was living in Rumania. At some point she acquired or deposited assets in Israel, perhaps intending to come here later. Or perhaps she had lived here for a time. It was those assets that the Custodian of Abandoned property would have held.

The attorney had no idea what kind of assets were involved. It could be anything from a small bank account to a large building or a plot of land. Potential heirs would have to document what happened to all of her brothers and sisters, who had children, who their heirs would have been and where they are today. The assets would have to be substantial to make it worthwhile.

Additional inquiries revealed that Amalie had a deposit of cash of 1090 Israeli Sheqels, about $300. So much for that.

Berta
But it did remind me that I had a loose end regarding Joel's daughter Berta. I knew her name as Bertha Federmann from the Page of Testimony and I had the 1999 address as well.

Another Yad Vashem document tells us:

Joel Pfeffer was born in Kopyczince in 1885. He was a merchant. During the war he was in Caserne Dossin (Malines-Mechelen), Belgium. Deported with Transport XVII from Malines,Caserne Dossin,Camp,Belgium to Auschwitz Birkenau,Extermination Camp,Poland on 31/10/1942.

Joel was murdered in the Shoah.

This information is based on a Deportation list found in List of the Jews deported from Belgium - Jewish Museum of Deportation and Resistence (sic)  at Mechelen / Malines.

I also had downloaded Joel's 9 November 1885 Kopicienice birth record from JRI-Poland, identifying his parents as we knew them to be.

A few years ago, I wrote to the address in Mexico that Bertha had given in 1999 but received no reply, nor was she to be found in the Mexican telephone directory. I made some efforts to find a death record or a cemetery entry, but I got nowhere and, being easily distracted, I left it for another time. At this point, I did not know the name of Mr. Federmann, Bertha's husband.

"Another time" came as a result of finding Amalie's $300 and I turned to the discussion groups at JewishGen where I learned that many Mexican death records were to be found at familysearch.org. There were two - Berta and Szaja Chaskiel.

Berta Pikholz Pfeffer died at age 89, having been born in Cernauti Lituania, a naturalized citizen of Mexico, widow of Shaya Federman, daughter of Jacobo Pikholz and Matl Pfeffer. She died at 8:15 PM on 21 April 2001 in Acapulco. The informant and witnesses were not related to her.

On that day, 8:15 was after sundown so her date of death in the Jewish calendar is the twenty-ninth of Nisan.

There were several obvious errors in the death record, aside from spelling variations. Berta's name is "Pikholz Pfeffer" which implies that those were the surnames of her parents. In fact they are the surnames of her father's parents. Her mother's surname is Salter. That error is reflected in her parents names, where her mother is called Matl Pfeffer.

Berta's mother on her birth record

I do not know why Berta herself calls her father's wife "Nina" on the Page of Testimony. Her name is listed as Matl everyplace else, including Berta's birth record. Perhaps it was a nickname. More likely she was a second wife, not Matl at all. I'll have to look into that some time.

Cernauti is Czernovitz, but it is definitely not "Lituania," no matter who ruled and how the map was drawn.

Her father is listed as Jacobo rather than Joel and I assume that is an error, as every other document calls him "Joel."

Her husband Szaja Chaskiel Federman Kupermintz died at age 86. He was born in Bendzin Poland and his nationality was Polish. Berta Pikholz is named as his wife. His parents are David Federman and Zipora Kupermintz. He died at 9:30 AM, 10 September 1997, which is the eighth of Elul. Here too, the informant and witnesses are not family members.

One of these days I'll see if I can get cemetery photos and track down the children.

Housekeeping notes
My 26 January talk for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Connecticut will be at Temple Sinai, 41 W Hartford Rd, Newington. They haven't set the time yet.

Simon's Youngest Son, Joseph Leisor

Simon Pikholz and the Waltuch sisters
Simon Pikholz lived in Skalat. We don't know who his parents were, but we think he is closely connected to my own family. (It would help if some of his living descendants would take DNA tests, especially the one male line descendant who could do a Y test. Thusfar no one has agreed to do so.)

Anyway, Simon was married to Dwore Waltuch, the daughter of Herz and Lea, also from Skalat. They had two daughters that we know of - Lea and Breine. Breine was born in 1860 and Lea probably before our earliest Skalat records in 1859.

Lea married Berl Pfeffer and I have written a bit about her children here. We know nothing about Breine aside from her birth.

Dwore died in 1861 at age twenty-three and as was customary when there were small children,

Dwore's death record - 30 November 1861, age 23

Simon married within the family soon afterwards. His second wife was Chana Waltuch, Dwore's sister. They had nine children (1863-1885), four of whom died in childhood, four went to the US and for one we have only a birth record.

We have no record for Simon after the birth of the last child.

Chana and her son Max followed her two daughters to the US in 1892 and by all indications,she was a widow. She lived in Elizabeth NJ until her death in 1923. We have census and other documents for her daughters Malka Dwojra (aka Dora) and Ryvka (aka Beatrice) and her son Max and I am in occasional contact with descendants of all three.

Jossel Leisor and his children
There were five Pikholz births in Skalat in 1881, three more in nearby towns. Jossel Leisor was born to Schimon and Chana on 25 July.

We next see him getting married in 1899 to Katie Smith in Elizabethport NJ. Katie's parents came from Russia and somehow in the US Lechowitz became Smith. The Smiths lived in Philadelphia and the young couple did as well. The 1900 census says that Joseph (who for some reason is called John) worked as a window cleaner.

Joseph and Katie had four children in fairly rapid succession - Sam, Ida, Selma and in 1906,

Katie's grave site

Leonard J. Pickholtz. Katie died in November 1909 and is buried in an unmarked grave in Har Jehudah Cemetery, Upper Darby PA. In the 1910 census, Ida is in an orphanage, the other three children are with the Smith grandparents and Joseph is nowhere to be seen.

By the time of the 1920 census, the elder Smiths have died, Leonard and Selma are in other Philadelphia orphanages and Sam has disappeared. Still nothing on Joseph. We began working on the assumption that he was dead, but could find no trace of death or burial. And none of the descendants of his brother and sisters had ever heard of him. As though he had been some kind of black sheep.

Much of the work on this family was done by Steve Pickholtz of New Jersey, who grew up in Philadelphia. We were joined in this search by a descendant of one of Katie's sisters.

Joseph's older sister Dora had gone to the US with my grandfather's first cousin Sara Frankel, who had ended up in Denver, so I had this cockamamie theory that Joseph had gone to Denver to join family and look for work. I brashly predicted to Steve that we would find that he had died in Denver or en route, probably while Katie was still alive. I even considered that he died before the youngest child was born and that "Leonard J." would turn out to be in memory of Joseph Leisor.

We found a directory reference to Selma Pickholtz in New York in the 1930s. And a file for Ida showing that she had married in 1922 and had a son and that she was in poor health. Steve made contact briefly with the son a few years ago, but we have not been able to find him again.  He knew nothing of the family history. Ida died in 1938.

Ida's file included the name Pickford and it took quite awhile for Steve to convince me to follow that up. He was right.

Sam indeed had become Pickford. He added five years to his age when he married an older woman, Lillian, but he kept the same birthday, making it easy to recognize him. He married in 1917 and took on her son and daughter. In 1919 Sam and Lillian had a son.

Sam, Lillian and the two sons, one unmarked

Sam died in 1996. Lillian's family has a plot in Montefiore Cemetery in Philadelphia and they are buried there. So are the two sons - the younger one in an unmarked grave. Ida too is in that family plot and her grave also contains the remains of an unnamed daughter of Lillian's older son.

I phoned the cemetery to ask about Ida's grave and it turned out that the woman who answered the phone at the cemetery had been a neighbor of Sam and Lillian. She told me what she could. She knew Selma, who had married in NY - there were no children. She knew nothing of Joseph or of Sam's brother Leonard. I think she felt she had spoken too freely and she never took my calls again or answered my letters. When I visited the cemetery three years ago, she had retired.

Following the Pickford name, we found Leonard, in a military cemetery in Houston. He too had lived into his nineties. And I found his wife. His second wife, who didn't know he was a Pickholtz, didn't know he was Jewish, didn't know that he had two sons (one deceased). She certainly didn't know anything about Joseph.

We corresponded for a couple of years and she tried to do some family research. Then she died. Leonard's other son died a bit later, as did the first wife.

So what happened to Joseph?
Joseph was definitely alive in 1909-1910, involved in some matters that are better not spoken of. There is an indication that he had spent some time in Pittsburgh before that.

Then I found this.

Joseph Lewis Pickholtz, born 1 October 1881, registered for the draft in Kansas City Missouri in 1918. He is married to Elsie, is in the junk business and is missing three fingers on his right hand. "Lewis" is a reasonable substitute for "Leisor" and the birth year is correct, though not the full date.

And then he disappears again. Neither he nor Elsie shows up in the 1920 census or anyplace else. I wondered if he was on the way to Denver.

There is a Joseph Pick in Perth Amboy in the 1920 census, born in Galicia in 1881. He said that he came to the US in 1906. With him were his wife Catherine and children John, Joseph, Josephine, Mary and Sophie. Catherine and John entered the US in 1913. It looked too strange and I never followed it up. Perhaps I should.

I considered that he continued his life with the 1 October 1881 birth date that was on the draft registration and just for sport, I looked up people named Joseph with that birth date in the Social Security Death Index, which normally begins in 1962. And this turned up.

The middle initial "L" again. He died in 1953, when we generally do not find SSDI results. And Gatewood certainly sounds like something that could have been derived from Pickholtz!

I went to the 1940 census and found him with his wife Pauline, twenty-four years his junior, in Natchituches Louisiana. The census record says he was born in Kentucky and was a farmer.

Unlikely to be our guy? You bet. I ordered the death record from the State of Louisiana. His parents are not Simon and Anna, but John Gatewood and Amanda Smith, both of Hartford Kentucky. Close but no cigar.

Back to the drawing board.

Housekeeping notes
Motel Weissman died last week. He was born in Skalat ninety years ago and was the person who said kaddish at our annual Skalat memorial.