From: Israel P Subject: Genealogy 60 Reply-to: IsraelP@pikholz.org Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:31:56 +0200 Dear Cousins, We have more than our usual number of births to report this summary. Maayan Farkas was born here in Israel – both her mother and grandmother (BREZDOWICZ family) follow these summaries. Second cousins Binyamin Yehudah Yedidyah and Aviad Yehudah Ilan were born here in Israel. They belong to both the IF1 and IF2 families and are both named for Benny Ilan First cousins Rochel Strickoff and Racheli Leeba Herbst were born in the US, both named at least in part for great-grandmother Rochelle Pickholz (IF2 family). Two third cousins to those (IF2 family) were born here in Israel, but I don't have names and dates. Rochel Strickoff was born in May and the others listed are all from April. Mazal tov to the parents and grandparents. Two recent deaths as well. Gerry Allon, widow of Max (Pikholc) Allon (CHONE family) died here in Israel and William Mendlow, a Braun/Augenblick descendant of the PITTSBURGH family died in Pittsburgh. Condolences to both families. (From the obits, I learned that Bill Mendlow has a second great-grandchild, but I have not gotten specific information.) The timing on this summary has to do with clearing off the desk before I go to the US for the Salt Lake City Conference on Jewish Genealogy. Since the Mormons have no presence here in Israel, I have no experience working with their unique resources and am looking forward to spending time at their library. I have done quite a bit of preparation for that visit, though probably not enough. I even plan to arrive in SLC three days before the conference, to have uninterrupted time in the library. On the way, I hope to visit some Pikholz graves in Clifton and Paramus NY and in Elmira NY. The Social Security Death Index has a listing for Leo W. Pickholz, who died in January 1971, but with no residence. This seems to indicate that he lived outside the US, but I have had no success finding him until now. Leo (born Wolf-Leib) was the son of Berl Pfeffer and Lea Pickholz of the DORA family and was born in Kopicienice in 1892. The family went to Vienna and he went to the US in 1923. He married about ten years later, but his wife died in 1944. There were no children. At this point, Leo disappears from any records I have seen, until 1962, when he asks the authorities in Israel if they know anything about his sister Amalia who was last seen in Budapest during WWII. Then nothing further. A few months ago, I found someone who knew him during and after the War years, when they both worked for some arm of the US intelligence services. This man told me that he understood that Leo had retired to Lugano Switzerland. The Jewish community in Lugano is small, but I eventually found someone who checked their cemetery records and found that indeed Leo Pickholz is buried there. They do not have a precise date and there is no gravestone. Perhaps someone of knows something about US veterans' matters and can find out if he might be entitled to a marker. Since I became active in Galician genealogy, I receive from time to time emails that begin "Dear Mr Pickholtz, My came to the US from in 19?? … can you help me trace my family?" I do what I can to help these inquirers, either directly or by pointing them towards the many available resources. A few weeks ago, I received a note from a young man telling me that his great-grandfather Charles Specht went from Skalat to Bronx in the 1910s and asking me to help him learn more. I knew that there were no Specht anywhere near Skalat, but in looking around the NY marrtiage records (put online by the Italian genealogists), I found that a Charles Specht married a Nettie Degen in 1914 in NY. Degen is a Skalat name and we have a Degen family among the Pikholz descendants. It turns out this is the correct couple. I found many references to Nettie Degen's family in Skalat records, including her own birth record, but there is nothing on Specht. Charles and Nettie have one living daughter – the grandmother of the young man who contacted me – but she says that her family "came to America to be Americans" and she has no interest in knowing anything that happened before. She claims not to know her own grandparents' first names. The young man and I will continue to make inquiries. Why did I tell you this story? Because Specht is German for "woodpecker," the same as Pikholz in Yiddish. For some time, I have considered the possibility that some Pikholz went to a German-speaking place (Vienna, as a best guess) and took the German equivalent Specht, much the same as the Russian Portnoy would become the German Schneider or the British Taylor. So if this Charles Specht was not Specht in Skalat, it would be logical for him to have been Pikholz. More on this as it develops. Another Pikholz group turned up while I was looking at the latest Italian marriage records from NY. (They are adding new material all the time, so I have a look there every few months.) One of our more mysterious families is described at http://pikholz.org/Places/Grimaylow.html#Libe – three young Pikholz sisters from Grimaylow who appear in New York before WWI, but with no follow-up. We know them as Leike, Libe and Zipe and that there was a father Yehiel and a brother Israel in Grimaylow. I have now found two of the sisters and have made email contact with descendants of one of them. The married names of the sisters are Ball, Weissman and Efros. All three had daughters named Gertrude, so I expect their mother was Gittel. All three also have sons named for the brother Israel, who (according to family tradition) was beheaded by a Cossak. One of the descendants is putting together a chart of the descendants of the sisters and I also have an address for a cousin whose father was in touch with another branch of the family, probably the one we call GRIMAYLOW. I am waiting for all that to come together before I update the database and the website – no sense in doing half a job now and then redoing it in six weeks. After some ten years of keeping my genealogy in a DOS-based program, I am considering moving it to the Windows version of the same program, which I have had in hand for some years. The reason for this momentous move is that the Windows version can link the individuals in the database to documents and photographs. (This is in my own database. I am certainly not talking about putting personal material online.) First I must make sure that the Windows version allows me to the things I do with the DOS version, which is not as simple and obvious as it sounds. But it does give me the opportunity to renew my request for copies of whatever you can give me, in particular, photographs of the older generations. (I'd still like to do some photo analyses, which I described to you after last years' gen conference. But for now, there is not enough material.) That will do for now. More as it happens. Israel P. -- End --