To: @PIKHOLZ.PML
Subject: Genealogy #32
Mon, 24 Jun 2002 17:43:41 +0200

It has been three months since my last summary and I have quite a few
items to cover.  (Among other things, I was in military reserve for
twenty-four days of that time.)

Mazal tov on the birth of Israel Yitzhak Yedidyah (of the IF1 and IF2 
families – for those who know her, that's a grandson of Esther Solomon of 
Givatayim).  Mazal tov on the birth of Nathan Alan Oswell (STEVE family), 
son of Evan Oswell, one of the newer members of this mailing list.  Mazal 
tov to Robert Pickholtz (RavJG family) on the bar mitzvah of his grandson 
Adam Pickholtz.  Mazal tov to Dov and Tammy Pickholtz on the birth of 
Neshama Caila.  Neshama is an addition to the YITZHAK family and is the 
first member of generation 7 of the IF1 family.

Our old geocities website has been deleted and we are now on 
www.pikholz.org.  It's set up pretty much the same way as before.   I 
have inserted a few attention grabbers for new items, plus two new 
sections (at the bottom) – one looking for help with a few items and one 
which links to personal stuff (which you are welcome to have a look at). 

In my last summary, I mentioned the new KCMO family which we found in
Kansas City and California.  We have continued work on that, but seem to
have run aground for the time being.  I hope we will see movement there
soon.

A completely new Rozdol family is MENSCH.  We had previously found a few
references to this family group among the Pages of Testimony at Yad 
VaShem and a few weeks ago I located and met the son and daughter of the 
Pikholz descendant (Yehudit) who submitted those Pages.  (Another brother 
was killed in the War of Independence, the day after another Rozdol 
Pickholz.)  The top of this family is Sara Rivka Pickholz, who married 
Solomon Mensch (Mensz in Polish).  They lived in Lwow and four of their 
five children were killed in the Holocaust.  Yehudit herself had come 
here in the 1920's, but spent time back in Lwow in the 1930's, so the 
daughter I met had actually known some of those who were killed.  Sara 
Rivka was born 1865 in Rozdol and I believe that her father Aron was the 
son of "Original Pinchas."  Sara Rivka's mother is not the person we know 
as Aron's wife, but since Sara Rivka is younger than his other children, 
I believe that her mother was Aron's second wife. It also turns out that 
one of Yehudit's nephews survived the Holocaust and has three sons who 
were raised in Poland.  One of those three lives in the US and another in 
Denmark.  We have a total of six generations and forty-four descendants 
for this family.

You may recall that in my last summary, I mentioned a dead end while
following up a Hubel branch of Pikholz descendants.  Those Hubels are
probably related to "ours," but are not Pikholz descendants themselves. 
But it was not a waste of effort.  The Hubel descendant in Milwaukee
mentioned that her cousin Josef Lieberman, who lives in Berlin,  has
general information about Zurawno, where he grew up.  This information 
had been written by his father.  As it happens, we have a number of Pages 
of Testimony for Pickholz descendants in Zurawno submitted by David 
Lieberman and it turns out that this is indeed Josef's father.  Josef 
himself was born in Zurawno and knew some of those Pickholz descendants 
and was able to help me organize the information that I already had.  At 
least some of those Zurawno residents are from the RavJG family.

We have eliminated the RAPPAPORT family as an independent entity, after a
photo of a Philadelphia grave showed that they are descendants of Yeroham
Fischel, of the RavJG family.  We are still trying to locate the rest of 
those Rappaport descendants.

The biggest breakthrough in the RavJG family is the name of R' Juda
Gershon's brother (and father-in-law), who until now has been known as
"M." R' Meir Wunder is his wonderful encyclopedia "Meorei Galicia" listed
M as Meshullam Zusha, but has now accepted my demonstration that his name
was Moshe (and his wife Sara).  This Moshe was the father of ten children
with about 450 descendants.

Another correction to Meorei Galicia involves the Hebenstreits of Rawa
Russka.  R' Meir Wunder thought that he was a son-in-law of the above
Moshe, while in fact he was married to Moshe's cousin on his mother's
side.  So we can stop looking for Hebenstreits.

The batch of records we received in the last few months have helped
develop a number of families.  We knew for instance that R' Juda Gershon
Pickholz had a sister with a son named Meir Engel of Komarno.  With these
new records, we have the sister's name (Feige) as well as Meir's five
children and the six of his sister Szeindel-Jente Haber.

We also have additional Kozowka births (RITA family) – listed in the town
of Mikulince.  There we have two sets of children, one to Simon P and
Breine Goldstein (around 1880) and one to Simon P and Cire Hencie
Kornweitz (after 1890).  Considering the size of this community, I have  
no doubt that these two Simons are the same person and have recorded it 
that way.

You may recall (I don't know why I use that expression – I know perfectly
well that no one does…) that in my last summary, I presented a theory on
the Pfeffer branch from Kopicienice (and later Vienna).  Here too we have
a Simon Pikholz with two wives, one the grandmother of the Pfeffers and
one the mother of the DORA family.  I have never been able to get far on
the DORA family, but we have finally made progress there.  First of all,
we have added additional descendants and this family is now six
generations.  Then I made a call to the eldest living member of the DORA
family – a young senior citizen living in New Jersey – who was able to
confirm the Pfeffer connection.  In addition to the one Pfeffer 
descendant we knew of (in New York), she was able to tell me a bit about 
a Pfeffer sister (and son) in New York and a brother Marcel Pfeffer in 
Belgium.   (He would have been born 1895 and visited the US while in his 
fifties.)  I am trying to track down his family via Belgium.  This same 
NJ phone call uncovered an Aunt Beatrice Rosenbaum who lived in New York 
and who had two daughters, Theodora Baumgarten and Maude who married a 
Sephardic Jew.  Tracing them is proving more difficult that I would have 
thought.  Dora's granddaughter was not able to help make the connection 
between her family and the ORENSTEINs, although she knew some of them as 
a teenager.

Another New Jersey family which is – I hope – developing now is the
Smiths. You may recall (there goes, I said it again!) that some time ago
we had found Leonard and Selma Pickholtz in Philadelphia orphanages in
1920 and we later found them and their older brother Samuel living with
the maternal grandfather Jacob Smith in the 1910 census.  We also knew
that their father was Joseph Pickholtz (fate unknown) and that their
mother Katie Smith was buried in an unmarked grave in Upper Darby
Pennsylvania in 1909.  My own theory is that the father Joseph was really
Josef-Leisor, the brother of Dora (see above) and that he died before
Leonard was born and that Leonard was named for him.  If that is the 
case, we might even find that Samuel was Simon in Hebrew, named for the
grandfather who never came to the US.  (I was hoping that my NJ phone 
call would shed some light on this, but this was not anything that she 
had ever heard of.)  We considered that Samuel, Leonard and Selma seem to 
have disappeared because they had changed their names to Smith, but go 
prove that.  Well, we did.  Steve in NJ made contact with someone who is 
"doing" that same Smith family, from the perspective of another of Jacob 
Smith's daughters and he actually knew "our" Sammie Smith. It feels like 
we are close on this and I hope it will play out in the next week or too. 
(This whole family has really been Steve's project.)

If you have a minute, please have a look at the link from the main web
page to the "RISS puzzle."  There are some conflicting documents there 
and I'd like to see if anyone sees an alternative to my theory.  This
seemingly minor point is potentially very important.  If indeed, Ryfka
Pikholz is the top of this family and if indeed her parents are the known
couple Josef and Rojse (based on descendants' names) then we may have
resolved how my own great-great-grandmother fits in, for her name is
Riwke-Feige and cannot be a sister of this other Ryfka.  That would make
it nearly certain that Riwke-Feige's patents were Motie and Taube and 
that Motie was not a brother of Josef, but a son.  (I am sure you all 
followed that…)

A few miscellaneous points in closing.  The gen talk I gave in Kiryat
Tiv'on in April was very successful and I will be doing another one at 
the Negev branch of the Israel Gen Society in September.  I withdrew my
article on Given Names Analysis from the US gen publication Avotaynu
because their editors wanted more reworking than I was willing to do. 
This article will appear in the next edition of the IGS publication
Sharsheret HaDorot.  I finally got a look at the Dr. Jacobi gen 
collection at the National Library (Hebrew University in Jerusalem).  The 
late Dr Paul Jacobi had been in touch with several elderly Pickholz 
descendants, but I found no trace of any of that in his collection.

I received a copy of a Hebrew commemorative scroll of Jews killed in the
Holocaust in Stryj.  It appears that there are some people there who are
not listed in other sources and I am going over the material as time
permits.

More as it happens.

Israel P.

-- End --