From: Israel P To: @PIKHOLZ.PML Subject: Genealogy #52 Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 08:17:10 +0200 Dear Pikholz descendants, It has been a difficult summer, here in Israel and abroad. It would be nice to think that lessons will be learned. More likely not. Condolences to the family of Leslie Singer, husband of Gloria Pickholz (IF4 family) who passed away on 5 September. They had recently celebrated their fifty-first anniversary. A few months ago, our search for William Sabin, the son of Sam Pickholtz of Erie PA ended when we learned that he died in February 2001 in California. (This family is from the Skalat side and lived in Budanow.) William Sabin had no children and was an only child. We know of one first cousin who should be still living, but we have not been able to locate her. I have contact with sonme of her cousins on her other side and they may be able to help me. We have also traced one of the RISS family, Deborah Riss-Pickholz, who lived in Vienna. We knew that she married Wolf Tennenbaum, but knew nothing else. We have now learned that she was married to a man named Isidore Kleiner who predeceased her and that she was last seen in 1942, when she was sent from Theresienstadt to Treblinka. In the last summary, I discussed our discovery that Leisor Degen (ELIEZER family) of Skalat had gone to New York in 1913 with his wife and three children and that another child was born in NY. Leiser himself moved to Israel late in life and died in 1969 at age ninety. We have still not located his grave and we have not been successful making contaxct with his surviving son. In the meantime, we seem to have his brother Matis in Tarnopol, whose family were killed in the Shoah. Thusfar, I have not been successful in developing the history of this particular branch. Last time, I also mentioned that we had discovered the family of my grandfather's first cousin, Sara Pickholz Tunis. We have now acquired her son's birth record and are trying to learn a bit more about this family. While examining the database of Yad VaShem's Pages of Testimony, which is now online, I was able to find references to the family of Gittel Riwe Kiwetz, whose Feuerstein family were killed in the Shoah. Kiwetz are a branch of the ELIEZER family. Until now, we only had her alone. Another branch of the ELIEZER family is the family of Samuel and Rechil Pikholz. Until now we knew that there were ten children, born from 1879 and that none of them seem to have died in childhood. The eldest - Yitzhak Yosef Frankel - went to New York and a granddaughter is a member of this list. But no one knew anything about Yitzhak Yosef's nine younger siblings. I have now found Pages of Testimony for two brothers - Shaul and Moshe-Leib - and a daughter Pesie Margolis. So we now know that these three were killed, but we know nothing specific about the remaining six. There may even be living descendants. We recently received access to some records from Jagielnica, south of Skalat. Those records include births to Devorah, daughter of Wolf Perlmutter and Basie Pikholz (LAOR family). We do not know Devorah's husband's name as it doesn't appear on the selection of records which we ordered. Here too, it is possible that there are living descendants. Awhile back, I told you that I had found a reference on a Polish site to a Stanislawa Pickholz who was hidden for two years by a Polish family from Chortkow. I didn 't know who this was. I checked with the source of the Polish information and was told that this woman survived the Holocaust, married a man named Berger and made aliyah in the 1950's. That sounded exactly like Sylvia (Shufka) Berger, who died a few eyars ago in Herzeliyya (TONKA family). I spoke with her family and they said that indeed she had been with a Polish family, but that none of the other details matched and that the family who helped her had been recognized as Righteous Among the Gentiles and that it was not the family I referred to. So this mystery remains. Finally, the Smith-Pickholtz family of Philadelphia and New Jersey. I have mentioned them often in these summaries and am not going to rehash it all now. What we knew of them was basically centered on the period 1900-1920, so we were looking both to connect the father Joseph P to a set of parents and to see what became of them and where they are today. We kept learning more, but not quite enough. It reminded me of learning limits in mathematics, where you can get closer and closer without actually getting there, but you can proceed as though you had. Over the summer, we received absolute proof that Jospeh was Jossel Leisor of the DORA family for whom we had a Skalat birth record (1881). The proof was the marriage record of Joseph to Katie Smith, his known wife, a record which named his parents. Further we closed in on the identification of Joseph and Katie's son Samuel, and were attempting to contact his two children in New Jersey. About ten days ago, that particular house of cards seems to have collapsed, as we received a photograph of Samuel's grave, showing different parents entirely. As I write, we are considering how to proceed and I expect we will revisit this case in future summaries. That is enough for now. Let me close by wishing all of you and your families a good, calm and peaceful new year and that you be written and sealed in the Book of Life. More as it happens. Israel P. -- End --