To: @PIKHOLZ.PML
Subject: Genealogy #20
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 23:10:04 +0300

Condolences to the family of Sally (Sara) Aptowitzer
of the family we call Orenstein, who passed away 13
August (12 Av).  Mrs. Aptowitzer was born in 1905 in
Skalat to Tova Pikholz and Ezra Orenstein and seems
to have been the oldest Pikholz decscendant and the
oldest person we know who was born in Skalat. She
and her late husband lived in Brooklyn since 1939.

We have added an interesting piece of tangential
genealogy to the web site - the ancestors of Rabbi
Yaakov Yitzhak Wahrman.  He was married to a Pickholz
of the Pinchas/Rachel family and included eight of
his ancestral lines - including many well-known rabbis -
in an edition of his great-grandfather's book Daat
Kedoshim, which he published in 1959.  One of the more
curious items there is a David Shemuel son of Pinchas,
names which are characteristic of his wife's family.
Perhaps we will be able to check into that some time.

In the course of following up a Page of Testimony submitted
to Yad VaShem in memory of someone we hadn't heard of
before, we came across a Pickholz-Thalenberg family with
three living descendants of Holocaust survivors.  One of
them has joined this mailing list, so far.  The family is from
Boryslaw and I believe we have a fifth generation back
that we haven't yet confirmed.  I expect that they will
eventually connect to one of the larger families - probably
RavJG.

Speaking of Holocaust survivors and victims, I have been
remiss these past months in maintaining the Holocaust section
of the web site.  When I last updated it there were 255
Pickholz descendants and spouses listed as victims.  I am
currently updating this section and at last count, we have
identified 416 Holocaust victims in the families. I hope
to have it updated by the end of the month. There are
undoubtedly more, but some of our towns are not well
documented regarding Holocaust victims.

And speaking of the end of the month, the High Holidays
are approaching and as many people have the custom of
visiting their family cemeteries at this time, please
note that we have some twenty cemeteries with Pickholz
graves that have not yet been photographed.  Some of
these cemeteries have just a few graves, while Mt. Lebanon
in Iselin NJ and Beth David in Elmont NY have more than
a dozen each.  (In the case of Beth David, that is in
addition to the twenty-one we already have.)  Our virtual
cemetery has 180 graves thusfar, in addition to some
that are in various people's cameras not yet developed.

We have filled in quite a few blanks in the Brezdowitz
family, after making contact with some more of their
members and after getting a summary of passenger lists
that also included Brezdowitz residents from the Yitzhak
family.

Old documents recently acquired for Nathan of the Getzel
family and Benjamin of the RavJG family remind us that
just because it is written doesn't make it correct.  In
both of those cases, there is information that conflicts
with other known dates.

I met Wednesdy in Herzeliyya with David and Leah Schwarz
and Leah's sister Nusha Zomer.  Leah and Nusha are Pikholz
and all three are from Grimaylow, just outside Skalat.
They brought me up to date with their branch of the family,
which runs to seven generations.  I knew that David (who is
eighty-six) was part of "Hershke's Band" who survived in
the forests outside Skalat.  I did not know that Leah was
with him, together with her two sisters, two of her brothers
and (until they were killed) her parents.  The group consisted
of over thirty Jews and they survived by stealing from the
Anit-Semitic Ukrainian peasants in the villages.

Parts of their story has been told here and there, but
hearing it from them told me much I hadn't known.  They
were discouraged from talking about it while their children
were growing up, because the ruling Labor Zionists said
that they were an embarrassment and didn't want them
"making their children defective."  They are getting older
and I am not the one to write up their story properly,
but I will write a summary in the next few days.

More as it happens.

Israel P.