KENNETH JACKSON STULL, Proud Jew

National Commander, American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor

Uncle Kenny

When I still very young, I already knew that Uncle Kenny was different from my other relatives. He had tattoos on his arms and his back. He was an electrician and smoked Lucky Strikes. He came from rural western Pennsylvania and used expressions like "redd off the table." He sat flat-footed on his haunches, with his arms around his knees, the way he learned from the Filipinos. And he had been a prisoner of the Japanese.

And on one or two occasions that I recall from childhood, he referred to himself as a Jew.

He was also my sandak (~godfather).

Kenny Stull was the eldest son of Francis Jackson Stull and Velma Thompson and was married to my mother's older sister, Ethel Gordon. Aunt Ethel had grown up in Vandergrift Pennsylvania without any Jewish education to speak of. There were no outward signs of anything specifically Jewish in their home or their lives.

The house on Franklin Avenue,
two and a half years ago.
I was surprised how annoyed I was that the
owners had allowed it to deteriorate so.



They had gotten married shortly before he went off to war and although he had been home a couple of years by the time I was born, they had no children. I guess that's partly why my parents chose him to be my sandak. Besides, the sisters were close despite the eleven year age difference.



We lived in Pittsburgh and they were in Vandergrift, but we visited with them often and when we'd stay over, it was at their house on Franklin Avenue, rather than with my grandparents. When I was very young - I want to say six, but that's crazy even for my parents -  my mother put my younger brother and me on a bus to Vandergrift for a few days' visit with Aunt Ethel and Uncle Kenny.

They had a "Lassie phone" with a party line and you had to dial the operator and ask for Vandergrift 577A. I knew how to do that well before first grade.

One time we went to see them when I was about five and they brought out a little blonde girl, maybe three years old. "This is Sally. Soon she will be our daughter." Sally became Donna and about two years later, they had a daughter on their own. Aunt Ethel was in her fortieth year.



With their children and son-in-law

 Eric was born seven years later. Aunt Ethel died when he was just turning fourteen.

A few days before his thirtieth birthday, Eric was killed in a freak automobile accident in which he should have played no part.  Donna died of cancer five years later, leaving a husband and two children. The second daughter has not responded to our attempts to make contact during the last few years, even when my mother died.

I stayed in touch with Aunt Ethel and Uncle Kenny until I moved to Israel thirty-nine years ago. They travelled to Chicago for my wedding and we visited with them a couple of times in Vandergrift.

To the extent that I thought about it at all, it was obvious to me that he had become Jewish because he married a Jewish girl and they wanted to keep her parents happy and his references to himself as Jewish were for effect. Shows how much I knew.

He Killed a Girl
One day, when I was about twenty-six and here in Israel, my mother started talking ex nihilo, as she did from time to time. I will tell you what she said, but mixing in the details I have learned since. I don't know if my mother knew all these details as she had been ten years old and hadn't yet known Kenny.

Indiana (PA) Evening Gazette, 3 February 1937
"Mudless Shoes Freed Motorist"

On the evening of 8 January 1937, Kenneth Jackson Stull of Leechburg was driving on the road between Leechburg and North Vandergrift and he hit a girl. She had been walking along the road - one of a group, which apparently included her mother. Catherine Frayer Beatty was seventeen when she died and had been married for two weeks.

On 2 February, a coroner's jury accepted the highway patrolman's testimony that it was an accident. She had no mud on her shoes, so she must have been walking on the road itself, not off to the side as Mrs. Frayer had claimed. It had been dark, so he wouldn't have seen her. No charges were brought.

Soon after, he was in church on Sunday morning and the angry voice from the pulpit said something like "There is a murderer among us. The law says he is not guilty, but he knows and we know he is a murderer." Kenny left the church, never to return.

Having renounced his spiritual anchor, he was rather at a loss what to do next. My mother said "He drove around until" - and she made it sound like hours, but it may have been days or weeks - "he came to a 'Jewish church' and he went in." And some time after that, he completed his conversion and became Jewish.

I don't think he knew any of the Gordons at the time. He didn't marry Aunt Ethel until November 1940. Very possibly he decided that since he had become a Jew, he should look for a Jewish girl. Yet they were married in Hardy West Virginia, so it seems they eloped. (Thanks to Beth at the Vandergrift Historical Society for that  bit of information.)

Soon the army came calling. He learned about the Phillipines. And Bataan. And Corregidor. He survived the infamous death march and whatever else the Japanese had in store for their prisoners.

The four Vandergrift Gordons in WWII        (My mother was too young)
The Jewish Criterion (Pittsburgh) 24 September 1943.

 He came home, went to work for my grandfather for awhile, eventually going off on his own. He tried a few businesses, eventually settling on one he called Ken Electric, was elected to serve as a Vandergrift Councilman and smoked his Lucky Strikes.


Beth Jacob Cemetery, Lower Burrel Pennsylvania

 

Uncle Kenny served two one-year terms as National Commander of the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor veterans organization and participated in a veterans trip back to the Far East to see the camps once again.

He lived his last years near his second daughter down south and died weeks before his seventy-sixth birthday.

Milt Rosenberg and His Guest, Jan Thompson

I often have podcasts on while I work and two or three times a week will listen to Milt Rosenberg's wonderfully eclectic night time interview show on WGN in Chicago. On Memorial Day, he had on a woman named Jan Thompson who is in the process of releasing a film called "The Tragedy of Bataan."

As I listened to the archived show the next day, I decided to google "Kenneth Jackson Stull," just to see what is out there. What I found included this: 

On January 25th  members of the “A” Company led by the 803rd Battalion’s Executive Officer, Captain James D. Richardson joined men of the 21st and 34th Pursuit Squadrons, all virtually untrained and poorly equipped to become combat infantrymen in the defense of the Aglaloma-Quinauan Point area on Bataan’s rocky southwest coastline.  These raw troops aided by Philippine Army and Scout forces engaged in combat with about 600 Japanese invaders who had attempted a landing behind the lines.  On January 26th in a Japanese ambush, 10 men of “A” Company were killed-in-action and another 38 wounded, decimating the unit.  On February 5th “A” Company’s survivors were relocated to Corregidor where they spent the next 3 months engaged in tasks that they had been trained to do, i.e., widening and extending Kindley Field, the island’s airstrip, constructing aircraft revetments, maintaining roads and utilities, etc.  Working in the open, the unit was exposed to ever-increasing Japanese artillery barrages and air raids and suffered eight more casualties including the C.O. of the company, Cap’t Zbikowski who was killed on April 2, 1942.  Just prior to Corregidor’s surrender on May 6, 1942 the remaining physically fit “A” Company men were integrated with marine and navy defenders on the beaches at Monkey Point.  Troops of the Japanese 61st infantry Regiment, a component of the 4th Division landed on the north coast of Corregidor on May the and the island was surrendered by General Wainwright the following day.

Pvt. Kenneth Stull left Corregidor in the latter part of May and after a brief stop at the Bilibid Prison in Manila he was transported north to the Cabanatuan P.O.W. camp where he remained until November 1942 when he sailed to Japan on the freighter, “Nagato Maru.”  After his arrival in Japan in late November 1942, Stull spent some time at the Shinagawa P.O.W. camp/hospital in Tokyo, perhaps in ill health prior to moving to the large Omori camp located on an island in Tokyo Bay and connected to Tokyo proper by a 300 foot long timber causeway.  The Omori camp became the home for many Air Force personnel downed in the Pacific during the war or over Japan in the last year.  

Thanks to the American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Museum at
the Brooke County Library in Wellsburg West Virginia for this envelope

I sent the link to some of my family, including to three of my DC-area second cousins who are some years older than I.

Cousin Dick Sincoff wrote back:

I greatly appreciate the article. A significant omission was the Bataan Death March, which he survived. At a local theatre in D.C., not long after the fall of Corregidor, we saw captured Japanese film and saw Kenny standing near Gen. Wainwright. My mother made us stay through to the next showing to confirm it. She ran from the theatre; she called Ethel in Vandergrift and told her that he was alive. Ethel already had received a telegram from the War Department that Kenny was missing in action and presumed dead.

He continued thus (emphasis mine):

After the release of prisoners, he went to rehab hospital in Hawaii for many weeks and finally was flown to Andrews air base in suburban Maryland outside of Washington. I went with my mother and father to greet him. He was rail thin but held himself tall. He still had the thick glasses he wore--albeit wired and patched. He spoke very little about the war thereafter, but in 1948, when I was 13 and spent 2 weeks with him, he opened up some, told me some of the horrors and some of the sabotage that US prisoners did while in the camps. He was often beaten because he was Jewish.

As you know, Kenny converted to Judaism. At one time while a POW, the camp boss told told all Jews to come forward, and Kenny did so. As he stepped out, a fellow American, held his arm and said, "Stull, you don't have to do that." Kenny said yes he did, because he was a Jew. I felt great emotion hearing his stories, as I guess did he. For the rest of his life, he never liked men with extra-short haircuts and avoided rice.

On summer afternoons after work, he would walk with me on the bluff overlooking the river and rail tracks and softly tell me things, out of earshot from Ethel. I still wonder if he opened up with others as he did with me. Maybe I was just a kid who needed to know, who needed to hear the horror, and maybe not let it happen again. But it did, didn't it?

This is the story of one man, my uncle and sandak and has significance for me and other family members, so I can close here.

I really should be saying kaddish for him. For my sandak.

Afterword for Genealogy Researchers

But there is also a lesson here for us genealogy researchers which I don't want to pass by. I don't know who besides me knows the story of the conversion. Cousin Dick, for instance, will learn those details when he reads them here. Nor do I know how many other people know the bits I emphasized in red above. I certainly hadn't and my mother probably didn't either. Until last summer, Cousin Dick and I had not seen each other in probably fifty years, though we have been exchanging emails recently.

Often when we researchers contact cousins, we will talk to one or two of a group and assume we have them covered.  That is not the case. You can never tell when a particular story or piece of information has fallen only to one specific person. And even so, what makes something come up from distant memory into conversation. It is important to talk to everyone, and not just once. And there are still important things you will miss.



Graphic by Sarajoy

MORE ON THE SKALAT MEMORIAL

Last week, I told you about the annual Skalat memorial that was to be held last Monday at the cemetery in Holon. So let me tell you a bit about how it went.

There were more people there than last year. Shammai's son Zvi was there with his kids, so we were fine for a minyan.

David, the son of the late Chaim Braunstein - the leader of the Skalaters for many years - was there for, I think, the first time.

Henia showed me a book about her mother, Tonia Kaczor Winter, which had been ghost-written for her, including a large collection of photographs from Skalat. Her uncle had been a professional photographer in Skalat, so this is not a trivial collection. You can page through the book here. Tonia herself was there as well, with an aide, who comes from Poland, but walking and looking well.

Zvika Sarid, Yocheved's son, has been leading the program since Chaim Braunstein fell ill a few years ago. He spoke of the visit that a group of them - about twenty people, many from the Sarid family - made last year. He gave a very detailed report on the state of the two monuments, how they are being maintained, what money is needed, etc.

Chaim and Shammai had a fund for maintenance of the monuments and Zvika recently authorized the release of  about half of it for immediate needs. The fund needs replenished and anyone who wishes to contribute can send a check to Zvi Sarid (on his name), Kevutzat Yavne, DN Evtach, 79233 ISRAEL.

The mayor of Skalat spoke of refurbishing the shul and making into some kind of museum, but Zvika told them that the amounts of money involved were far beyond any possible benefit to anyone. It's not as though Skalat has much in the way of tourists or other visitors. The physical shul building is deteriorating, much graffiti etc, but we must all accept that this is the way of things. Perhaps the condition of the building can best be seen as a mark of shame for the local Ukranians.

We said more Psalms than usual and everyone said kaddish. Motel said the memorial prayer.

Zvika also told the story of his uncle Herschel Weissman, the older brother of Motel and Yocheved. Herschel had been in a work camp and after Skalat was liberated by the Red Army, he decided to forgo making aliya and instead joined the Russians, as a guard for German prisoners. "I want to find opportunities for revenge," he told the others.

He ended up working in a prison camp near Sverdlov and for a few years the family had some kind of contact. Apparently he took too many liberties with his revenge plans and found himself in prison. After  awhile they never heard again. Yocheved's late husband Yitzhak decided that Zvika was to be named for him.

Recently, Yocheved retired from her job on the kibbutz and used her new free time to go through all kinds of things that she and Yitzhak had collected over the years. In the process, she found a letter she had never seen before. A Jewish woman who worked in the prison had written that Herschel had died. No one but Yitzhak had ever seen this letter and no one had ever known the details contained in it.

Now the Sarids are talking about going to see his grave in Sverdlov and perhaps bringing Herschel back for burial here.

The group that made the trip last year published a book with photographs and narrative from their trip. Lots of Skalat of course, but also other places on their itinerary. Oddly enough, there was a section on Podkamen. My great-grandfather was almost certainly born there, to his mother who was from Skalat. Turns out, Yocheved's husband Yitzhak was from Podkamen, hence the Sarid family's interest. I asked them how I can get a copy and they said they'd let me know.

Next year will be seventy years.

Also please note, I will be speaking - in Hebrew - on Sunday, 10 June, 20 Sivan at 7 PM - at the Israel Genealogical Society's Giv'atayim branch, on the subject

BEYOND A DOUBT

What We Know vs. What We Can Prove

at the Shazar Center, 30 Yavnieli Street, Giv'atyaim. There is a small charge for non-members.

REMEMBERING SKALAT

On Shavuot 5703, Skalat became Judenrein.

Some six hundred of the last Jews in the ghetto were marched out to burial pits that had been prepared in advance and shot. The only ones left were about four hundred in a labor camp and those who had hidden in the forest.

On Monday, the seventh of Sivan, the day after Shavuot here in Israel and the second day of Shavuot abroad, a group of survivors that gets smaller every year and a few descendants will meet at the monument to Skalat at the Holon Cemetery outside Tel-Aviv. Last year, we were maybe two dozen, but did not have a minyan.

Zvika will speak. His mother Yocheved will listen.

Yocheved's brother Motel will say kaddish.

Shammai's family no longer comes. They used to be represented by three generations. Shammai and his wife were both from Skalat, but he died a few years ago on Shavuot - days after his son-in-law - and they meet elsewhere on that day for their personal memorial.

Jurek from Sweden has asked me to mention that his aunt who lived in California died a few months ago and I will do that.

I will no doubt see David from Netanya and his sister Zippi - their mother was Cyla Pikholz, who came with her husband back in the 1930s. Two of Cyla's sisters came after the War - Tonka is buried in Holon as well and Shufka is buried in Herzliyyah. Tonka wrote two articles in the Skalat memorial book. Her son has lived abroad for years and Shufka's kids never come. Two other sisters and the parents were killed in Skalat.

Perhaps my fourth cousin Leonora will come, if she can get off work. Her mother was Pikholz from all four of her grandparents. I call Leonora "my cousin from the cemetery" since that is where we most often meet. One of these weeks, I'll tell her story here. She has an uncle buried in Holon. Her mother never knew that her brother-in-law had survived.

The memorial in Holon,
seen from the side.
My translation is to the right.

Inside the memorial
is a scroll with a list
of victims from Skalat.

To the suffering people of the Skalat community 
to the fathers who took their lives in their hands,
in desparate attempt to save their children,
to the mothers who hair blanched
from pain and fear for their dear ones,
for those tortured and shot in the town streets,
in the ancient citadels
and on the banks of the river,
to the thousands taken in the death cars,
to Belzec, on the road of blood and suffering
and were ground to dust., to the few who dared
to jump from the speeding trains,
because they never quit or gave up hope,
even at the edge of destruction,
for the thousands at the pts of death,
fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers
brothers and sisters, counting the
last grains of sand in the hourglass,
their eyes desparate and no one comes to rescue,
to the brave, the daring, the fortunate,
who in that night of storm and unrest,
of hope and desparation, joined the fighters of
Kobpak and whose blood filled the path
of the Resistance in the Carpathian Mountains,
to the thousands of the community who were killed
with the cry of SHEMA YISRAEL on their lips,
to the few who remained, by miracle or by chance,
fewer every year, and during these many years
they carry the cries of the entire community,
and the greatest and heaviest cry of them all,
the cry of the dead and of the living, echoing
throughout the world, from then until the end of time:
MANKIND,  WHERE WERE YOU?

There is a whole row of these memorials along the eastern fence of the cemetery, and others elsewhere. Other towns are memorialized in other Israeli cemeteries. And graves which mention parents and brothers and sisters and others who were killed are common.

As readers of this blog may know, many of the Pikholz families came from Skalat. It is probably one family, but I have not yet succeeded in linking them all together.

My grandfather's grandmother Rivka-Feige Pikholz was born there, probably early 1820s. Her four children and most of her grandchildren were almost certainly born in Podkamen and Zalosce, though one daughter married a man from Skalat and her children were born there. Three of Rivka-Feige's children went to the United States.

Yad VaShem's Pinkas Kehillot series says that there were 3256 Jews in Skalat in 1890, out of a population of 5889. The number of Jews had gone down a bit by 1921, but after the Germans came in 1941, Jews from some of the smaller towns nearby were added to the population. Not always of their own volition.

Once the shul. Now a warehouse.

There were five major killings of the Jews of Skalat. In the first three, Jews were taken by truck to Belzec and killed there. There are no records. That was when the Germans still thought that the world would object to the mass murder of Jews, so it was kept quiet and nothing was recorded. Eventually they realized that the world didn't care at all and the result was transports to industrial-sized death camps, often with meticulous records.

The first killing was 18 Elul 5702, 31 August 1942. Six hundred old and infirm. The Jews of the Judenrat had to deliver them to the Germans. That drove a wedge between the Judenrat and the rest of the Jews, but more important, it served the Germans' purposes by making Jews complicit.

Then what was called "the large killing" - 10 Heshvan 5703, 21 October 1942 - three thousand Jews. A few of those were "selected" for slave labor and a few others jumped from the trucks to freedom or (more likely) death. Freedom? - about fifty escaped and returned to Skalat. Where else was there to go?

The "small killing" was 29 Heshvan 5703, 9 November 1942. "Only" eleven hundred that time.

The fields of the last two killings.
A memorial made of a few surviving gravestones from the
old cemetery is in the background.
This memorial has been upgraded, but with the same basic motif.

The site of the old cemetery.
Now it's the municipal soccer field.
The stones were used for paving
and fencing, but are now gone.

For the last two killings, the Jews were simply marched out of town and shot beside open pits. Some died from the shooting, some from the burial. The first of those two was 2 Nisan 5703, 7 April 1943 - about seven hundred Jews. And the last six hundred on Shavuot.

The new memorial

There is more on Skalat. Much of the aggregation is my work, but some was done by the folks who took over the site.

And there are two memorial books - here and here.

We will be meeting Monday afternoon at five-thirty. That's ten-thirty on the east coast of the US. Right about the time some of you are saying yizkor. Perhaps you'll give a thought to the dead Jews of Skalat

ROSENBLOOM UPDATES

Israel David Rosenbloom

Eight weeks ago, I wrote about not knowing the maiden name of my great-grandmother, Etta Bryna, the wife of my namesake Israel David Rosenbloom. I would like to update that report with a couple of new documents, plus add some other points about the Rosenbloom family.





Click to enlarge.
Maiden name of Mother... Don't know

Uncle Hymen's application for marriage license

I said then that Uncle Hymen did not know his mother's maiden name when he filled out his SS-5 form for Social Security, as his mother had died when he was two. His sister, my grandmother, was nearly ten years older so almost certainly knew her mother's maiden name, but she was not registered with Social Security, so there was no document. Nor did the name appear on my grandparents marriage record, which my grandfather filled out. It ocurred to me, however, that when Uncle Hymen and Aunt Becky were married in Pittsburgh in 1919, my grandmother was certainly present and could have supplied their mother's maiden name on that occasion.

I ordered that 1919 marriage certificate. As you can see above on the left, it says Maiden name of Mother.....Don't know. So much for that.

Rosie's death certificate

Then there was the matter of their sister Rosie (Rachel Leah) Rosenbloom's death certificate. She died at twenty-three and is buried in New York (Mt. Zion Maspeth) but we have never been able to locate a death record. I had been hoping that the younger sister Shayna Liba would have supplied that information.

My friend Renee Steinig located the place of death - Central Islip State Hospital, a psyciatric facility on Long Island - and  obtained a copy of the death certificate. I had the impression that she had died of consumption and indeed the certificate shows the cause of death as "pulmonary tuberculosis." But mother's name - nothing. (No father's name either, for that matter. I guess it was part of being institutionalized.)

So here too, we are at a dead end. At least with the available resources.

I have six matches on my mitochondrial DNA - maybe something will come of that.


The eldest sister

As long as I have reviewed what I know about our Rosenblooms, let be introduce the eldest sister, Alta.

We think she was born about 1880. Her husband was Berl Kaplan and they had three sons and a daughter. The eldest son was Yaakov and one of the others was Baruch Yosef. We don't know the name of the third. The daughter was Etta Bryna.

The photograph here was taken in Moscow sometime in the 1920s. We are assuming that Berl had died by then.

The son on the left is the one whose name we don't know.

The last we know of any of this family is in 1930. At that time, two of the sons were married and each had a baby girl.


Finally...

One of Uncle Hymen's grandsons  just told me that his grandfather had said that Israel David had "davened Lubavitch," that is, was affiliated with Habad.I had never known that.

Also please note, I will be speaking - in Hebrew - on Sunday, 10 June, 20 Sivan at 7 PM - at the Israel Genealogical Society's Giv'atayim branch, on the subject

BEYOND A DOUBT

What We Know vs. What We Can Prove

at the Shazar Center, 30 Yavnieli Street, Giv'atyaim. There is a small charge for non-members.

WEDDINGS

As I sit down to begin writing this, it is Thursday, the thirty-third day of the Omer. Lag BaOmer, as it is usually called.

The forty-nine days of the Omer - from Pesach until Shavuot - were originally a joyous period. But in the time of the Talmud, it became a  time of mourning, comemorating the deaths of twelve thousand pairs of students of Rabbi Akiva. There are differing traditions about whether the dying ended on the thirty-third day of the Omer or if it was a temporary respite, but in any case we mark that period by not having a haircut, not shaving, not listening to music and most particularly not marrying.

Therefore, Lag BaOmer became a popular day for weddings.

My great-grandfather, Moritz Rosenzweig, married his second wife, Regina Bauer, on Lag BaOmer 1890. His first wife, Hermina Schafer, had died at twenty-four, leaving two small children. Moritz and Regina had three children in Budapest and after arriving in the United States in 1900, had one more - my grandmother.

A sidebar to this story is that my grandmother never knew. That is, never knew that there had been a previous wife. 

She learned that when she was about nineteen and while out in the neighborhood, one of the men from shul called to her "Remind Freddie [her eldest brother] that he has yahrzeit tonight."

Legend has it that she had some choice words for the rest of the household.

Their older daughter, Aunt Helen, married Uncle Joe (Pickholtz - he was my grandfather's older brother) on Lag BaOmer 1913. He was twenty-three, she was barely seventeen. (In the Jewish calendar she was a week short of her seventeenth birthday and she always boasted that she was married at sixteen.) When I was a teenager, they had a large fiftieth anniversary celebration, to which those of my generation were not invited.

Also on my father's side, my first cousin Jerry Pickholtz married his wife Marcia Seidel on Lag BaOmer 1997. Mazal tov to them and their family.

And a couple of second cousins on my mother's side.  Beverly Rosenbloom married Steve Hirsch on Lag BaOmer in 1979 and her brother Geoff married Donna Sandler exactly two years later. May both couples enjoy many years.

There are probably more than a few others, but I don't make a big deal of collecting marriage dates. I probably should. Lots of things I probably should do.

But I am leading up to two wedding-witness stories that have nothing to do with Lag BaOmer.

Three years ago, we attended the late summer wedding of Pikholz descendant Jacob Laor's daughter Noa to Nadav Mazliah. The rav - Sephardic, brought by the groom's family, I am sure - was walking around before the ceremony, looking like he was looking for a Sabbath observer to serve as a witness. He came over to me and asked if I am related to either the bride or the groom. I said "The grandfather's grandfather of the father of the bride and my grandfather's grandmother had the same last name and came from the same town, so we are probably sixth or seventh cousins - maybe even fifth. But we have no idea how."

The rav gave that a moment's thought, then decided he'd rather find someone else.

The second story was more recent. A few months ago, we received an invitation to the wedding of Eliyahu Kaplan and Oshri Sharoni. Eli is the youngest son of Menachem and Dalia (Pickholz) Kaplan. Dalia's great-great-grandparents are Mordecai and Taube Pikholz of Skalat and my great-great-grandmother Rivke Feige Pikholz is related to one of them somehow - a sister, a niece, maybe a first cousin once removed. I tend to assume that Rivka Feige is a younger sister of Mordecai, so I call Dalia my fourth cousin, with an asterisk.

Menachem and Dalia are enthusiastic supporters of the Pikholz Project, but we had a casual acquaintance when we both lived in Arad, twenty-odd years ago. Dalia's mother even tried to talk genealogy with me, but for reasons I cannot relate here, I was not able to respond properly.

Anyway, the wedding was a few days before I was to finish my twelve months of mourning for my mother, so I told them I would come for the ceremony but not stay. Leading up to the ceremony, Menachem told me that I was to be a witness. I did and a Pickholz signature now adorns the ketubah of the young couple. We all feel that our great-great-grandparents are pleased.

Also please note, I will be speaking - in Hebrew - on Sunday, 10 June, 20 Sivan at 7 PM - at the Israel Genealogical Society's Giv'atayim branch, on the subject

BEYOND A DOUBT

What We Know vs. What We Can Prove

at the Shazar Center, 30 Yavnieli Street, Giv'atyaim. There is a small charge for non-members.

PICKHOLZ FROM BUDAPEST

A week ago, after Shabbat, I saw a notice of the death of Michal Esther Gispan. She was not yet fifty-four. Michal left a husband, four sons (19-29), a daughter in sixth grade, parents, a sister and a brother. She lived not far from us, but we had never met. But I know her father, a retired professor at the Hebrew University. And I am sure that I crossed paths with her husband when we were both in Yeroham thirty-six years ago.

I went over to the house Monday morning. There have been mourning signs all around the neighborhood all week, even more than for Prof. Benzion Netanyahu, who lived two blocks away.

SEARCHING IN BUDAPEST
Years ago, when I was making my first inventory of Pikholz descendants, I came across a Henrik Pickholz buried in Tel-Aviv. He had died in 1983 at age seventy-one. According to his tombstone, his father was Moshe - we have many of those. I was able to determine that Henrik had two daughters living abroad, but they were not cooperative and I learned nothing more from them. I was told by his ex-wife that his brothers and sisters had all been killed, but she knew no names or anything.

When I first searched the old Bad Arolsen microfilms at Yad Vashem, I found a card for Henrik, with a Budapest address. It listed his mother as Erzsebet Rosenberg. Nothing else and no cards for other family members.

A few years later, I commissioned a researcher in Budapest to see what he could find. He came  back with this:

Dear Israel,

I said 9 children of Mozes Pikholz and Erzsebet / Lifsche Kornberg in my last message. I must correct myself: just 7 children:

Stefania / Sarah Rivka, 1898 August 24.

Viola Frida / Feige, 1900. August 12.

Hermina / Mirl, 1902. September 5.

Arpad / Avraham, 1904. December 31.

Etelka Szerena / Etl, 1907. July 2.

Irma / Fradel, 1909. February 4.

Henrik / Chayyim, 1911. September 6.

I found the marriage of Mozes and Erzsebet in the civil register.

They married at the sate authorities, just 1908. January 19., so ten years after their first child birth. The record said:

Mozes Pikholz was born 1870. February 2., his parents: Taube Pikholz (just one name, and it seen at place for the fathers)

Lifsche Kornberg was born 1867. May 30., her parents: Chayyim Kornberg, and Sarah Rivka Stein. They died already before the marriage.

I recognized the 2 February 1870 birth date from a set of records we had acquired earlier so I could easily place Henrik and his family into the overall Pikholz structure. From other sources, I found that the two older sisters had sons soon after WWI, but I have made no further progress with this family.

The researcher also had something else.

Also found children of Izsak / Yitzhak Tallenberg-Pikholz and Feige Meles-Silber.

(I writing Tallenberg-Pikholz, because the records also mentioned him as "Tallenberg other Pickholz" named.

Dezso / Shmuel, 1905. December 18.

Matild / Motl, 1907. April 16.

Aranka / Golda, 1908. July 4.

As the records, Izsak Tallenberg-Pikholz was born in Boryslaw, Galicia, and Feige Meles was born in Horodenka, Galicia. They lived Budapest VII. (Seventh district or ward), Dob u. 69.

As the civil birth record of Dezso, Izsak was born around 1877, and Feige around 1882. This record shown their marriage 1905. December 26 in Budapest, but I did not found it. Also this civil record corrected the mother name: Gitel Feige Silber, instead of Feige Meles.

The Boryslaw birth records for 1877 are missing but I was quite sure that the parents of Yitzhak were David Samuel Pikholz of Rozdol and Sara Thalenberg of Boryslaw, thus accounting for the two surnames he used.

So Yitzhak had three children, born in Budapest nearly a hundred years ago. Knowing nothing of any of that family, I assumed that this was another trail that was to lead nowhere, as with so many from that period in Europe.  I added them to the family website and that was the end of that.

NOT SO FAST
Fourteen months later, I received this:

Dear Sir,

My name is Mordechai Kremer and I am the grandson of Yicchak Tallenberg and (Gitel) Feige Silber (or Schuchner, not Meles). I read your internet site with great interest and in the following I would like to supply you with some additional information concerning our branch of the family.

Yicchak Tallenberg died in Budapest in 1941 after a long illness (27 Elul Tav-Shin-Aleph).Feige Tallenberg (Silber) was born in 1983 in Horodenka, Galicia and passed away in Jerusalem in 1970 (2 Tammuz, Tav-Shin-Lamed).

They had 3 children: (1) Dezso (David Shmuel), (2) Matild (Matl) and (3) Aranka (Golda). On the family tree they appear as the 5-th generation.

Data on the 5-th generation:

1. Dr. Dezso (Shmuel David) Tallenberg was born in 1905 in Budapest. He studied and practiced medicine in Prague. He joined the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War and fell there in 1938 as a doctor on the front. After the war, he was given the highest military order "in memoriam" by the Czechoslovak Republic. The family issued a memorial volume in his honour, which is available upon request. Dr. Tallenberg was married to Vlasta Gruenhut (1906-1984) in Prague. The couple had no children.

2. Matild (Matl) Tallenberg was born in 1907 in Budapest died in Jerusalem in 1989 (17 Tishri Tav-Shin-Nun). She was married to Henrik Kremer (born in 1900 in Budapest and died in 1998 in Jerusalem, 12 Tammuz Tav-Shin-Nun-Chet.) They have one son Kremer (Laszlo) Mordechai.

3. Aranka (Golda) Tallenberg was born in 1908 in Budapest. She married Imre Engel (born in 1902 in Budapest and died in 1945 in the Shoah). They have one son Engel (Pal) Zvi. Golda Tallenberg lives now in an old age home in Jerusalem.

This kind of thing happens from time time - that's one reason for laying it out on the Internet - but the thrill of it never gets old.Yitzhak had died in 1941 of an illness, but his wife and daughters came here to Jerusalem and Golda was still living at age ninety-seven! And Deszo - who carried the ancestral name David Samuel - was a physician who served in the Spanish Civil War. And there were additional generations, beginning with Mordechai's daughter Michal Gispan and her five children.

In addition to the booklet that the family prepared in memory of Deszo, Mordechai wrote up his own experiences growing up in Budapest, the war years, making aliyah and the years leading up to his marriage to US-born Ruth. He showed me both of these when we met, soon after his first making contact. Each story was its own kind of heroics.

Later I met with his aunt, Golda Engel, who lived into her 102nd year. Born in Budapest, lost her husband, but survived and eventually died in Jerusalem.

So now I have met Michal's family, here in Jerusalem. We will try to maintain contact, perhaps as soon as the unveiling in a few weeks in the Yemenite section on Har HaMenuhot. Before then, I will be in touch with Mordechai to make sure I have names and dates any spouses and grandchildren.

A generation passes and another emerges. It is that much harder when it is not in the natural order.

It is not always easy to turn the dry data into flesh and blood - I certainly struggle to do so here - but I'll try my best.

AM YISRAEL HAI.  עם ישראל חי.                         

HILLEL ACADEMY OF PITTSBURGH ALUMNI REUNION

Last week, there was a reunion of students of the Hillel Academy of Pittsburgh, for alumni of eighth and twelfth grades covering about a dozen classes. I was a student there for seventh through tenth grades.

The entire high school,
when I was in tenth grade

The program was at the school, but Sunday we were being Skyped in for a few hours from Faygie Butler Posy's house here in Jerusalem. Morris Kinast was the organizer who coordinated with us and he had asked me to speak for a few minutes about what I have done over the years and reminiscences of Hillel.

Most of what I had to say about what I have done was on the Reunion's Facebook page and in the Power Point that Morris had prepared, but I agreed to complement what I had already written.

We had a nice turnout here on the Jerusalem end - twenty-one Pittsburghers, plus a few spouses. The Skype connection was not good enough to have any meaningful interaction, so I scrapped what I had planned to say. At the suggestion of Shanen Bloom Werber, I am fleshing out my notes here. (I always do what Shanen tells me to do.)

Hodesh Tov.

On behalf of everyone here, I want to thank Morris for getting us all together and Faygie and Carl for opening their home to the assembled. Morris asked me to speak about what has happened to me over the years, and to recall my experience at Hillel. Most of what I can say about myself is on the Facebook page and the Power Point, but I'll add a few things.

For those of you who remember me, I am very much as I always was. I was a chronic under-achiever and I still am. I was incurably optimistic and I still am. I was always losing the battle of the waistline and I still am. And I was insufferably full of myself and I still am - but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Of course like with most of you, the age is showing. I cannot read without glasses and I am constantly telling my grandkids to speak up - when I am not pleading with them to quiet down.

Back when I was thirty-seven or thirty-eight, I read a book about ADD and I recognized everything in it. Suddenly the world made sense. And I have been grateful ever since that they hadn't yet invented Ritalin when I was young.

For me, life's big game-changer came from Hillel, but not from the school or any of the teachers. It was from another student. Marc Fogel dragged me to Bnei Akiva and everything flowed from there. The idea of aliyah
was never on the radar of the school or the teachers.

So let me say a few things about Hillel, and what is Hillel but the teachers.

In Jewish studies, we had some excellent teachers who really knew their stuff. I expect that everyone who ever attended Hillel, would put Rabbi Nadoff at the top of that list.

We had others who knew their stuff - or at least we can give them the benefit of the doubt - but they couldn't control a class. Or they were simply boring. Or they had strange teaching methods. One in particular taught us a list of four hundred words and promised us that if we learned them, we'd be able to speak Hebrew fluently. Four hundred words. All nouns. I think of that teacher today when I use the words for soup and restaurant.

I learned over the years that Rabbi Rottenberg was right on almost everything, but that on one matter - which he himself defined as very important - he was absolutely wrong.

As far as secular studies go, anyone who ever thought that teachers should not be seriously demanding needs only to poll the Hillel High School students throughout the years about Mr. Tomko. He never felt he had to be anyone's buddy and no one expected any favors. Everyone learned.

There were other excellent teachers, as well as some average and a few who should have been doing something else.

There were two who tried to brainwash us on matters social and political. One did so as a matter of ideology. One did so out of ignorance, not ever considering that anyone might think that Franklin Roosevelt hadn't made the sun shine. Had I taken those particular lessons home, my father would have set me straight PDQ and I would have brought his arguments back to the classroom. It would have gotten ugly.

There were two classes we were never offered and over the years I was sorry for that. One was writing and one was speaking. Mrs. Belle used to have us get up and speak in front of the class frequently, but she never taught us how we should be doing it. As a result, I acquired the confidence to speak in front of a group even when I had neither structure nor style and without much content to offer.

Mr. Mandell hinted once that there was such a thing as a dedicated class in writing, but he never taught it. I went through school thinking that writing was for girls.

Let me leave you with something else, that I have learned over the years that has nothing to do with school. Those of you who still have a parent - or even older aunts and uncles - prompt them to talk and listen to what they say. Ask directed questions about when they were young and about their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, their aunts and uncles. Get names, dates, places. ("Russia" doesn't count as a place. Be specific.) Get them to label the photographs. ("My grandfather" is not an acceptable label.) If you can bring in a professional interviewer and cameraman, do it. We did that with my mother.

You think you know about your grandparents, but life is more than a resume.

I am a genealogist and there are parts of the basic structure of my family that I may never know, yet all I had to do was ask my grandfather's brothers back when I was a teenager, for they surely knew the answers.

Even if you aren't really that interested, eventually someone will ask  "Why don't you know..."

Then talk to your grandkids, independently of their parents. Repeat yourself shamelessly. They may laugh that you do, but "familiar is good." Tell them who and where and when. Make them charts and show them maps. And label your own photographs.

Last summer, I took one of my grandsons to the cemetery at PZ Sheraden. We went to my grandparents and great-grandparents and some aunts and uncles. I showed him the grave of the great-grandfather who was on the building committee of the PZ. He pretended to be interested, but he will remember.

If you talk to your grandchildren about these things, then sixty or seventy years from now, they will talk to their grandchildren and they will say "My grandfather said..." or "My grandmother showed me..." They will be talking about you. And you will know and your soul will be happy.

GO STEELERS                   PARTY ON DUDES          

THE 17th DAY OF THE OMER - תפארת שבתפארת

or   THE INTERNET AND ME          

or      MY FIRST-BORN SON AND RABBI SHEMUEL                

Computers in the Corporate Office

I had been working there for about a dozen years, this large, well-known (in Israeli terms) industrial corporation with maybe fifteen hundred employees. This was sixteen years ago and the Internet was just beginning to be used in companies such as ours. That's "such as," not ours itself. The head of the computer department had said in no uncertain terms that no one in the company needed Internet and no one would have it.

He had been terribly wrong before, as when he insisted in 1984-85 that no one would ever need a PC and that the two of us who shared one would soon be shown the folly of our ways.

Visicalc - Our computer's
memory was 32 kb

Lotus 1-2-3 version 1A

But I did the budget and cost accounting of the mining division for several years on Visicalc and Lotus 1-2-3 1A, while the processing plant economists kept working with pencil and paper, waiting for the expensive new central system to kick in. (It never did.)

I had learned a bit about email and the world wide web when I was in the US for my first-born son Yerachmiel's wedding a few months earlier and I was really interested in bringing those tools into my office. Such confidence that I had was really what you would call today "faith-based."

For some reason, someone overruled the computer guy, and I was told that I would be given my own Internet connection. Perhaps that spreadsheet work had given me some credibility with someone.

Counting the Omer - No Computers Needed

And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the day of rest, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the waving; seven weeks shall be complete; even unto the morrow after the seventh week shall ye number fifty days          (Vayikra 23)

So we count the Omer for forty-nine days, counting each day and each week, from the second night of Pesach ending the night before Shavuot.

The colors show the seven Kabbalistic
terms, by day and by week

Kabbalah assigns one of seven Divine qualities to each of the seven days of the week and then to each of the seven weeks. First is חסד (hessed) kindness, then גבורה (gevurah) strength or fortitude, followed by תפארת (tif'eret) glory or beauty, נצח (netzach) eternity, הוד (hod) majesty, יסוד (yesod) foundation and finally  מלכות (malchut) kingdom. So the first week is hessed and the days of that week are hessed in hessed, gevurah in hessed, tif'eret in hessed etc. That pattern follows throughout the seven weeks and in saying this much, I have reached the outer limits of my understanding of the subject.

My First-born Son

Yerachmiel was born around noon Friday, the second day of Iyyar, thirty-nine years ago, in Chicago. My parents had made aliyah two years earlier and it was already Shabbat for them, so I could not call them with the news. Most of my other close family lived in Pittsburgh, but they were all on the way to Silver Spring Maryland for my cousin Marshal's bar mitzvah. So aside from my then-wife's Chicago family, the only call I could make that day was to Marshal's parents, who reported the news of the first grandson and first great-grandson to the Pittsburghers, including my grandmother.

Today, he and his wonderful wife of sixteen+ years, live in suburban Chicago with their sons. He has been ordained in traditional Jewish jurisprudence ("yadin yadin") which he continues to study and serves as the rabbi of a small, but vibrant shul.

But that is now and I was telling you about sixteen years ago.

So.  Where Is This Leading?

A few days after Pesach sixteen years ago, I was told that the company had ordered me an Internet line, from a soon-to-be-defunct provider called shani.net. It was to be up and running the following Sunday. So Sunday morning, the day after Rosh Hodesh, I made my way to work as usual - driving to Beer Sheva, going to the 5:40 minyan, then getting the company bus for the half-hour ride to our offices. I would sleep during that ride, usually drifting off before we even left the city.

But that morning, I stayed awake another two or three minutes, enough to see the large billboad near the exit to the city. Some forgettable inspirational message with one of the iconic, ubiquitous pictures of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who had died going on three years earlier.

And down at the bottom, it said http://www.chabad.org/.

And I figured that was as good a way as any to test out my new Internet connection. When I went into the site, I saw that they were offering a daily email called something like "Thought For The Day." I signed up.

They sent me their thought for that day - 2 Iyyar, the seventeenth day of the Omer. I no longer have what they sent, but it made an impression, so I will bring the story from another Habad publication.

My grandfather (the Rebbe Maharash) was born on this day [2 Iyyar] in 5593 (1833).

When he was seven years old he was once tested in his studies by his father, the Tzemach Tzedek. My grandfather did so well in the test that his teacher was enormously impressed. Unable to restrain himself he said to the Tzemach Tzedek, "Well, what do you say? Hasn't he done marvelously?" The Tzemach Tzedek responded: "What is there to be surprised about when tiferet-within-tiferet does well?"

With the footnote:

1.

There are seven midot or Divine attributes, the first (and major) three being chessed (kindness), gevura (severity) and tiferet (beauty). Each attribute contains elements of the others, chessed-within-chessed, gevura-within-chessed, etc. 49 combinations in all, corresponding to the 49 days of the omer. The Rebbe Maharash was born on Iyar 2, the day of tiferet-within-tiferet, an extraordinarily high spiritual level.

The Rebbe Maharash, properly known as Rabbi Shemuel, was the fourth leader of Chabad.

"Tiferet within tiferet." My son's birthday.

It was clear that this Internet thing and I were going to be good friends.

THE CLIENT IS NOT ALWAYS RIGHT, BUT HE IS ALWAYS THE CLIENT

DON'T LOOK THERE - I

The first attorney who wanted to hire me was a loud New Yorker here in Jerusalem, dealing with an inheritance. The deceased had filled out Pages of Testimony at Yad Vashem for five brothers and sisters. Another brother and sister had survived the Holocaust and had predeceased her – one lived in Europe and one in the US.



The latest version of an English Page of Testimony
This week is Yom HaShoah. Do you have family
who have not been memorialized? Go to
http://db.yadvashem.org/forms/pot/filling/out?language=en

The deceased had also filled out Pages of Testimony for her parents, stating that they had nine children. The attorney wanted to know what happened to the ninth. I suggested that there may have been a child who died before the War and he agreed that this was likely the case, but he needed documentation. The family came from a town for which there were no surviving records, so it would be no simple matter to prove the death of a child or young adult in the 1920s or 1930s.

I told him my hourly rate and he refused. He wanted a flat fee based on results only. I wished him luck finding someone on that basis, and he eventually agreed to my terms. He did insist that I was to spend no time on Pages of Testimony, because he himself had checked all the possibilities and the ninth child was not there.

The eight known children had been born during the period 1908-1926, so I expected to find the ninth during that period, or perhaps a bit earlier or a bit later.

The first thing I did was to ignore the attorney's instructions and check the Pages of Testimony. He may have been the know-it-all attorney, but I was the professional. At least, that's what I was trying to be.

The deceased had submitted many Pages of Testimony, not just for her immediate family, but for other relatives and acquaintances, mostly from her home town. One was for the missing sister. She was married, therefore went by a different surname, and she had lived in her husband's town. The odd thing was that she was born in 1900, way before any of the others, and had two very young children who were born when she was in her late thirties. But the hometown and the parents were clearly identified and the deceased had identified her as a sister, so there was no question of accuracy.

I billed the attorney for two hours' work. He was not happy to have missed the Page himself. He shorted me on the check and I sent it back. When he asked me if I could find records of the deceased's cousins, I turned him down.

I should have agreed to a flat fee.

This week is Yom HaShoah. Do you have family who have not been memorialized?

DON'T LOOK THERE – II

One of my first clients was an Englishman living in Jerusalem. He wanted to know a few things about his grandfather, who had gone to England from eastern Europe around 1900. He had seen his grandfather's grave, so he knew the father's name, but didn't know anything about the mother. He also wanted to know about the grandfather's immigration to England.

I asked about other family members and he told me that the grandfather had two sisters who went to the same city in the US and both married Jews with common surnames, but he didn't know anything about their families and could see no point in going that route.

The immigration was fairly straightforward. I found the grandfather arriving in England several years later than expected, but his name, age and home town identified him unambiguously.

But there was nothing on the mother in any of the sources I could find.

I went after the sisters in the US. In most states, a death certificate has a space for mother's birth name. Of course that does not always mean it actually appears, but it is a reasonable way to check. Another possibility is the application for Social Security (SS-5) which also has a space for mother's birth name. But both the death certificates and the SS-5 forms required an unambiguous identification, and we didn't have that.

So I messed a bit with the US census records for 1910 and 1920 and eventually found someone who could be one of the sisters, with a son named the same as the client's father. The local Jewish community is well-organized and I figured I could get death and burial information from them – for a fee – and that I might find the sister buried in the same place. From there to death certificates would be an easy step.

I brought this plan to the client and he shot it down. "I said I don't want to look there."

I don't think it was just the money. There must have been something else. But he is the client, so that's where it ended.

PLEASE SPARE ME THIS!

On 8 February, prospective client – a genealogy researcher whose name I know - writes:

Hello,

I would like to find in Israel descendants of my family who lived in the tsarist Russia and early USSR in Moldova, Bessarabia and someparts of Ukraine. Could you help me?

On 9 February, I respond:

[T]he answer to this kind of question is "maybe." It depends on so many things.

Tell me what you know, what you want to know and what steps you have already taken. Then I'll have a look.

On 14 March, I follow up:

[I]s there something you wanted to do with this?

On 16 March prospective client writes:

what do you mean by "is there something you wanted to do with this?"

I would like to find in Israel the surname [surname redacted] of those who came from Ukraine, Moldova and Russia proper.I have the census of 1858 in [town name redacted] are 6 males. I know to about 80 per cent their descendants. I would like to find those who came to Palestina and Israel.

So that's the answer to "tell me what you know." I wished her luck.

EXAMINING THE SKALAT FAMILIES

Jacob meets Joanna
One of the purposes of a family genealogy web site is to serve as a place where unknown family members can find each other. In the case of the Pikholz Project, we occasionally meet a previously unknown branch in exactly this way - someone looks for his grandfather online and finds him on our site.

About nine months ago, I received an email from a young woman in Warsaw named Joanna who told me that her late grandfather Julian was the son of a Polish woman and an older Pikholz man. Joanna didn't know the man's first name, but she knew where he lived and what he did for a living. She continued:

The features of my grandfather Julian, my mother and her brother, and mine have always been perceived as original and Semitic rather than Slavic, which might be accounted for by our origin and the multicultural mixture existing in the borderland area.

Around the year 2000 my mother told me and my son Filip that my grandfather Julian's father was Pikholtz, the administrator of one of the estates where my great grandmother Marta had worked (she had become a wife and a mother by then which means that Julian was a child born out of a romance). My mother told us the situation was very awkward, Marta was Julian's lonely mother so, in an intolerant environment, he was badly treated being a child born out of wedlock, and Jewish to top it all.

I took a long time to associate certain facts of my grandfather's life with his speechlessness. Being Polish and Jewish he had to hide from both the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and from the Germans. Then he had to hide from the Polish being a Jew. His features and his face were unambiguous.

My mother told us that the Pikholtz family were in the ghetto (probably in Podwołoczyska) during the war. Someone saw the Pikholtz sons being brought away, Julian was said to know one of them personally.

I had no problem identifying Julian's putative father as a certain Josef Pikholz who has a single living descendant, a great-grandson Jacob here in Israel, who is one of the prime movers of our research and a Polish speaker to boot. (Well, not "a single living descendant" - Jacob has children and grandchildren - but you get the idea.)


There are other children in some of these families.

If what Joanna tells us is true, then she and Jacob are second cousins. That would be closer than any other relative he has on his mother's side. But how do we prove it?

Well then, despite what I wrote here a few weeks ago, DNA seems to be the way to go. The easiest thing of course would be a Y-chromosome test on all male lines, in this case leading down from Josef. But line from Josef to Jacob includes Jacob's mother. Nor is there an all male line from Josef's father Arie Leib or even from Josef's grandfather Nachman. So although we have a male line from Josef to Julian's sons and grandsons, we have nothing to compare it to.

I spoke with the folks at Family Tree DNA, where I had done my own testing last year, and they suggested a test they call Family Finder which can measure degrees of cousinhood based on the percentage of overlapping DNA, without regard to whether the lines being tested are male, female or mixed. Since we are talking about really close cousins here, that should suffice.

So in the coming days, Jacob will be discussing with Joanna exactly how they will do this test.

The Twenty-two Skalat-area Pikholz Families
But since we are already dipping our toes into this pool, we decided to look at the next step.

We have probably twenty-two Pikholz families of four or more generations from the Skalat area and although we assume they are all related, we have no proof, nor do we have any idea what the full family structure might be. To be sure, some of those families seem to be related to one another, based on patterns of given names, family traditions or other considerations, but that represents only the preliminary stages of proper research.

So the question is, how can we use DNA testing to advance the project.

Here again, the obvious path is that of Y-chromome testing, to see that everyone leads back to some original male Pikholz. Unfortunately, that will not work. Two of the families (marked in blue in the chart above) have no living descendants, so there is no one to test. Five others (marked in red) - include my own line - have women of unknown (or at least unclear) parentage in the first generation, so the male line is meaningless. Of the other fifteen, only seven have a male line that has living descendants, plus there is an eighth which can also be useful. Let's lay them out.

LAOR - This is the family of Jacob and perhaps Joanna that I discussed above. Assuming the connection with Julian proves to be valid, Julian's son is a candidate for testing.

RITA and TONKA - We have living descendants, but no male line.

ROSA and ELIEZER - We have one son in the second generation of ROSA and he married a daughter in the second generation of ELIEZER. Unfortunately the living lines from that marriage are not male-only. We do, however, have one line in ELIEZER which is all male, down to two brothers who live in Israel. Members of that family are interested in their history, so there should be no problem getting one of them tested.

MATI - The man at the top of this family is almost certainly in the second generation of ELIEZER, but there is no male line to test. However, one of the daughters in the next generation married a Pikholz of unknown parentage and we have a male line from there. I am very interested in having that line tested. Contact with the single candidate for testing is sporadic, but it is not hopeless.

VLADIMIR - The top if this very small family is also possibly from the second generation of ELIEZER. There is one person to test, an older Russian-speaker here in Israel. I hope we can secure his cooperation.

ORENSTEIN and DORA - These two families are related, according to family tradition, and there is a marriage between them. We have one male line for DORA in the US, none for ORENSTEIN. Here too, contact with the single candidate for testing is sporadic, at best.

STEVE, IRENE and WELWELE have no male lines and we have no real ideas whom they might be connected to.

GRIMAYLOW - This is a family with no obvious connection to any other, but the one line we have is a male line with two brothers, one about eighty and one over ninety, both living in Israel and both have sons. I have never been in contact with either, but some years ago was in contact with their sisters. This will not be simple, I suspect, but may be doable.

ISRAEL - Of the two brothers in the second generation, one had daughters who went to the US and the other had sons, one of whom has one candidate for Y-chromosome testing. He rebuffed my only attempt at contact  some years ago, but perhaps we will be able to do something this time.

CHONE - This family is from eastern Ukraine, but my guess is they came from Skalat. My contact is with a female descendant in the US, but she has brothers who would qualify for Y-chromosome testing.

So we have eight people we'd like to test, six of whom may need serious convincing. Not to mention that these tests cost $169 each.

Another thing
Four of the five families whose earliest identified Pikholz ancestors are women, have female lines which I would like to test.

PITTSBURGH - This is my family and there is one line that is female all the way down. Perhaps we can get cooperation there.

RISS - There is one very elderly woman in Chicago who qualifies. She has only sons, but the female-line test can be done with a male at the end, as males have mitochondria too.

KCMO - There is one candidate. Maybe. If we can make contact with her. We haven't thusfar.

KHARKOV - My contact person here became invisible six or eight years ago.

Also, there are two sisters here in Israel whose mother was Pikholz from all four grandparents. Their female line goes back to the female half of the top of ORENSTEIN.

All of these are interesting in a "you never know what might turn up" sense.

There are some other possibilities as well, but that's enough for the present.

Perhaps in a few weeks, I'll analyze our Rozdol families in the same way.