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Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Category Archives: Family

Posts about my family.

Marry Someone We Know

11 Wednesday Aug 2021

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Anthropology, Family, Genealogy, Kolski, Names, Pifko-Winawer Circle, Piwko, Walfisz, Winawer

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cousin marriage, endogamy

My Mom was always looking for wives for my brothers. She favored people we knew—the O’Leesky girls next door or my best friend Kara. These were girls who were in and out of our house all the time and Mama came to love and trust them. All it took was noticing one of her sons was also friends with one of these girls and that was it. “June and Ronnie should get married,” she would say, noticing how they walked hand in hand at age ten. Then, she wanted Wilan to marry June’s younger sister Kim. Once Kara became a fixture in our house, Mama talked longingly about keeping her close and the best way to do so seemed to be marrying her off to one of her sons. First, she hoped Kara would marry Ronnie. Later, she hoped Kara would marry Chris. After all, they got along so well. Only now, years later, I realize Mama never tried to match me with any of the boys in the neighborhood. She never felt sure about me pairing off with anyone, though she began warm up to my first love—around the time we broke up—and she developed a fondness for my husband. Eventually.

Ron and June hold hands circa 1969. In front, my brothers Wiley and Chris, me, cousin Andrew, and June's sister Kim
Ron and June hold hands circa 1969. In front, my brothers Wiley and Chris, me, cousin Andrew, and June’s sister Kim.

Mama was slow to make room for people in her inner circle, but once she did, she wanted to keep them close for life.

This may well be a holdover from the Jewish family she was distanced from by her mother’s conversion. After all, that family is made up of a crisscross web of Piwko, Walfisz, Kolski, and Winawer ancestors. Her grandfather’s brother married her grandmother’s sister (Hil Majer Piwko married Hinda Walfisz, while Jankel Wolf Piwko married Tema Walfisz). My grandmother’s brother Abraham Jon married Bertha Kolska (the female version of the surname), while her sister Regina married Pinchas Kolski. I don’t know how Bertha and Pinchas were related, but it’s likely they were since they both came from the same town, Kłodawa. When Regina died, another sister, Rachel, married Regina’s widow.

The practice of marrying within these linked families continued even among descendants who moved to Switzerland, Israel, and the United States. A generation later, Pinchas and Rachel’s son Abrash married Jankel Wolf and Tema’s granddaughter Poili. So Abrash and Poili were second cousins twice over—their Walfisz grandmothers were sisters and their Piwko grandfathers were brothers.

Other overlapping relations tie the family web together even more tightly. Two of my grandmother’s other sisters married cousins—Liba married Jacob Winawer and Sarah married Saul Winawer. Sarah and Saul’s son married Sally, whose older sister was married to Sarah’s brother Philip.

It takes a 3-D chart to keep track of it all.

For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out how another cousin, Arline Jacoby, was related to me. Eventually, I figured out the connection goes back to both sisters of my great grandmother Hinda Walfisz. Arline’s grandmother was Łaja/Leah Walfisz. Arline’s husband Harry was the grandson of Tema Walfisz, or more likely, Tema was his step-grandmother.  After Tema’s first husband Jankel Wolf Piwko died, she remarried Akiva Jakubowicz, who was also a widow and the father of two sons including Harry’s father. It took me a while to piece this all together because in the US, the family name was shortened to Jacoby.

Clearly, the family pattern was to marry within the group—what anthropologists call endogamy. Endogamy was very common among Ashkenazi Jews; they very rarely married non-Jews, and if they did it usually meant that the offspring were not raised Jewish. That’s why it is more common to find traces of Jewish DNA among non-Jewish Slavs than it is to find Slavic DNA within Ashkenazi Jewish populations. I wonder, though. How common was it to seek spouses among families that were already related to via other marriage ties? And what were the reasons for it? Was it akin to my mother’s desire to strengthen emotional links with people she already felt an intimate attachment to? Or was it more related to the pragmatics of religious and business connections?

Memory Map Exhibition includes Skierniewice, the Piwkos’ Hometown

08 Friday May 2020

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Cemeteries, Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Memory, Museum, Piwko, Post-World War II, Skierniewice, Synagogues, Yiddish

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Cousins in Poland, Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre Center, map

The Atlas of Memory Maps exhibit features maps drafted by non-experts in an effort to preserve the memory of their hometowns, which had been destroyed or radically transformed during and after World War II. Most were published in Yizkor books, memorial books compiled by Jewish survivors. The exhibition is mostly in Polish, but includes some English-language information. The maps contain notations in Yiddish or Hebrew. This virtual exhibition by Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre Center includes maps from Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, Moldavia and Slovakia.

I found a map of Skierniewice among over 150 included in the exhibition. My grandfather Hil Majer Piwko was born in there in 1854, as were his siblings Jankel Wolf (1857), Urysz (c. 1861), Dawid (1862, d. 1865), Nusen Dawid (1866), Chawa (c. 1871), and Fajga (c. 1878). It’s where Hil Majer brought his bride Hinda Walfisz in 1873, and where they started their own family. It’s also where his parents were buried (Cywia Rajch in 1862 and Chaim Josef in 1912), and probably his stepmothers, too.

Here is the map from the exhibition:

SkierniewiceMapInterwar_onlineexhibit

Map of prewar Skierniewice drawn from memory by an unknown author

Comparing it with a contemporary map, it’s hard to figure out exactly how they match up. Maybe someone who can read Yiddish can help me by translating the words on the map. Please leave me a comment if you do! I think the rivers on each map are the same, and the space marked with crosses in the bottom center of the prewar map may be the green space marked “Church of St. Stanislaus” in the bottom right of the contemporary map.

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Map of contemporary Skierniewice. The site of the synagogue is marked with a black dot surrounded by a grey circle. Source: Google Maps

I’ve been to Skierniewice twice, with my cousin Krysia in 2013 and with my cousin Bob in 2018. Little remains of the town’s Jewish heritage.

Skierniewice Rynek in 2013
Skierniewice Rynek in 2013
Krysia and me in Skierniewice, the birthplace of our great grandfather. April 2013
Krysia and me in Skierniewice, the birthplace of our great grandfather. April 2013

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With cousin Bob, the former synagogue in the background–it’s now an electrical supply store

The synagogue, though the exterior is well maintained, now houses an electrical supply store. On the road running parallel to the river, a few tombstones have survived in the old Jewish cemetery, but they are in what is currently the backyard of a private residence. I wonder if this cemetery was included on the prewar map? The newer Jewish cemetery contains  many more surviving tombstones as well as commemorative markers outlining the history of the town’s Jewish population. It is located beyond the bottom edges of these maps, off a dirt road a short ride south of town.

 

Located in Lublin, Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre is one of the oldest and most active Jewish heritage organizations in Poland. About its origins, Tomasz Pietrasiewicz writes:

The changes brought about by the fall of communism in Poland in 1989 initiated the process of regaining Memory by the Polish society, and Lublin was among many Polish cities which had to face their forgotten past.

When we began our activities at the Grodzka Gate [which historically separated the Jewish and Catholic districts of the city] in the early 1990s, we knew nothing about the history of Jews in Lublin. We were not aware that the enormous empty space on one side of the Gate conceals the Memory of the Jewish Quarter. We did not realize that the Gate leads to the non-existent town, the Jewish Atlantis.There is a huge parking area, lawns and new roads where there used to be houses, synagogues and streets. A large part of this area, including the foundations of the former Jewish houses, was buried under a concrete cover, and the memory of those who lived here was hidden as well. You cannot  understand Lublin’s history without these empty spaces near the Gate. For the NN Theatre, they have become a natural setting for artistic actions, Mysteries of Memory, which uncover the memory of the past while mourning the victims of the Holocaust. (from “History of Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre“).

More information about the exhibition and Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre can be found at the following websites:

Jewish Heritage Europe

Grodzka Gate-NN Theatre Center

 

Our Story in MyHeritage Blog

04 Monday May 2020

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Bereda, Family, Genealogy, Identity, Israel, Kolski, Photographs, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Pre-World War II, Warsaw, World War II, Włocławek

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Colorized photos, MyHeritage

Now, the English-language MyHeritage blog has a story about us: Hidden Photo Reveals a Secret Past and Reunites a Family, written by Talya Ladell.

The article also contains cool colorized photos. You can compare the black and white originals with the color copies by dragging the cursor over the image.

helena-Colorized

Babcia Halina in Florida during the 1950s. Colorized photo

Cousins Reunited by a Photo and a Family Tree

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Bereda, Family, Genealogy, Israel, Kolski, Photographs, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Pre-World War II, Survival, Trauma, Warsaw, World War II, Włocławek

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Cousins reunite, Finding family, MyHeritage

I met my cousin Pini Doron in 2013 when I found his family tree online and wrote to ask if we might be related. He asked for proof, so I sent him the photo in the header of this blog, which he recognized from his own copy. He wrote back “welcome to the family” and ever since I have felt embraced by my extended family in Israel, with Pini at the heart of it. The photo, which includes both of our grandmothers, confirmed that we are cousins.

Last week, we were contacted by Nitay Elboym, who writes for the MyHeritage Hebrew-language blog. He decided to write about our family in commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s a story of connections and separations that span a century.

You can find it in Hebrew at the Internet news service YNet:

אחרי 70 שנות נתק: גילה בארה”ב בני משפחה שנעלמו לאחר השואה

and in the MyHeritage blog:

בזכות תמונה ואילן יוחסין: בן לניצולת שואה גילה בני משפחה שנעלמו

I’ve attached the text in English. I used Google Translate and then edited it. This is the article that appeared in the MyHeritage blog. The YNet version only has minor differences.

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Colorized photo of the family from about 1916. Marysia’s grandmother is sitting on the left and Pini’s grandmother is standing on the right

Thanks to a photo and a family tree: a Holocaust survivor son has found family members who disappeared

 By Nitay Elboym

April 21, 2020

74-year-old Pini Doron of Hod Hasharon is a longtime MyHeritage user who built a family tree for many years dating back to 1800. Pini thought he had already finished his search, when he received a message with an old family picture. This time, he realized immediately, it was an extraordinary discovery.

“I get a lot of inquiries from people who think they’re related to me,” Pini says. “I am usually skeptical of my relation to them, so I politely ask everyone to explain how we are connected. In this case too, when I received the message, I responded that I would love to know what our family relationship is,” he recalls.

“Actually, at that time, I was pretty much at the beginning of my family history research,” recalls Marysia Galbraith, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama, USA. “I was looking for bits of information wherever possible. But when I saw Pini’s family tree on MyHeritage, I knew it was about me, I just didn’t know how. In short, I had no idea how to prove to him how I was related to his family tree, so I just sent the only picture I had. Besides my grandmother, I didn’t know who the people were. Then he answered me ‘Welcome to family.’ His reply almost made me cry. ”

Operation Rescue

The Piwko family lived in the town of Wloclawek, Poland. At the outbreak of World War II, Pini’s grandparents – Pinchas Kolski and his wife Rachel (nee Piwko) – and their two children, Mirka and Samek, were left there while Pini’s father was saved because he and his two brothers were sent to Israel before the war to work the family lands in Kfar Ata. “Because their city of residence was close to Warsaw, they were transferred to the Warsaw ghetto right at the beginning of the war, around 1940,” Pini says. “In the ghetto, Samek was murdered, and my grandfather died of illness. So my grandmother and her daughter Mirka were left alone, looking for a way to survive.”

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Mirka and Rachel Kolski at Pinchas Kolski’s grave in the Warsaw Ghetto

Meanwhile, Rachel’s sister, Halina, lived in relative safety outside the Warsaw ghetto, because after divorcing her first Jewish husband, she remarried a Christian man named Zygmunt Bereda. “Rachel and Halina’s father were not ready to hear about this relationship. So, when she married a Christian, he sat shiva on her,” said Pini. “Her sisters tried from time to time to keep in touch, but because of their father, the connection got weaker.” Halina and Rachel’s father, who passed away around 1930, could not have imagined that it was precisely the person who, because of his religious identity, he rejected, would save not only his daughters, but also his other descendants.

When Halina told Zygmunt that her sister was in the ghetto alone with her daughter, he decided to come to their aid despite the risk involved. “Zygmunt was a very successful businessman with a lot of property. In addition, he probably had many connections, which opened doors to him that were closed to others,” explains Marysia. “He used these connections to forge documents for Rachel and her sister, which allowed them to escape the ghetto.”

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Halina Bereda, Marysia’s grandmother. She and her Christian husband saved the family

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Zygmunt Bereda. A Polish Christian who saved the family of his Jewish wife

But the matter did not end here. Zygmunt and Halina protected the two after they left the ghetto and hid them in buildings they owned throughout the war. At the same time, they were able to forge additional documents that allowed them to leave Poland to Switzerland, and from there, in 1949, the two immigrated to Israel.

“Years of disconnection ended thanks to a surviving photo and family tree on the MyHeritage website. Ever since we started chatting, I have found that Marysia isn’t only a wonderful person, she is also a thoughtful researcher,” says Pini. “She has set up a blog where she writes personally and collects her interesting findings. Everything she does is well organized, backed up by documents, and she knows how to find almost everything. She even studied Polish, which probably helps her a lot in genealogical research.”

The wheel turns over

At the end of the war, Warsaw was devastated by the bombings. The many businesses and houses that Zygmunt owned were also destroyed. He and Halina lost their property and had no place to live. The rescuers now needed help, and the one who came to their aid was the former wife of Samek, Rachel’s son who died in the Holocaust. After the war Halina and her daughter Maria, Marysia’s mother, immigrated to the United States and settled there.

“The truth was kept from us,” says Marysia, who has grown up as a Christian all her life. “For years, family members have been whispering about being Jewish, but never really getting into it. I have spent a long time trying to figure out why my mother and grandmother hid their Jewish heritage and why they were not in contact with Rachel. I think the trauma of the Holocaust left a deep scar on my grandmother. She thought, “If they don’t know, then it won’t hurt them.” That’s probably why they didn’t keep in touch with Rachel and her descendants in Israel.”

Since the family tree has linked Pini to Marysia the two speak regularly, and they have also met in Israel and in Poland with other family members. “When we went to the graves of our families, the sight was unusual. On one side of the cemetery wall are Jews with a rabbi, and on the other side are Christians with a priest,” Pini recalls. “But what is important? In the end, we are human beings and destiny connected us together.”

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During the roots journey to Poland. Pini stands to the left and beside him Marysia

PinisTree

Pini’s Tree showing the family connection between Pini and Marysia

The image that led to the discovery – now in color

To revive the old image that made the exciting discovery, the company’s investigators used the MyHeritage In Color ™ auto-coloring tool and sent the result to Pini and Marysia. “It’s wonderful,” says Marysia. “I’m going to share the colorized picture with my family, including my 90-year-old aunt who will be especially happy.”

1916BabiasFamily_color

Colorized photo of the family from about 1916

Inheritance

02 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Family, Identity, Memory

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biological inheritance, Dani Shapiro, genealogical heritage, Genetic testing, Inheritance: A Memoir, reproductive technology, semen donors, unthought known

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love takes a deep dive into the meaning of family and identity, and how our genealogical heritage shapes who we are. The way we are raised clearly matters, but so does biological inheritance. Shapiro knew and cherished the Jewish culture of the family she grew up with. She only learned about her non-Jewish genetic paternity when, at the age of 50, she took a DNA test.

inheritance

Dani Shapiro’s book reminds me how powerful language can be. She focuses less on what happens than how it affects her, giving voice to her inner thoughts and feelings. It’s a good reminder for me, as a social scientist preoccupied with documentation of social worlds. Sometimes it’s better to provide fewer details, taking the time to plumb their deeper meanings.

As much as she embraced and was embraced by her family, Shapiro writes about the feeling of not quite fitting in. She would gaze at her father’s face and not see herself reflected in his dark hair, eyes, and complexion. Only when she met her blue-eyed, pink-cheeked biological father did she have that moment of recognition. Although she was raised in a household where her Jewish credentials were never in question, her physical appearance made her feel pressured to prove her Jewishness—by reciting Hebrew prayers, by referencing her kosher upbringing.

This isn’t to say that all Jews need to look a certain way. That’s not Shapiro’s point, and it’s not mine. But I do understand the urge to find yourself in the features of your parents.

Through it all, Shapiro never questioned the story of her heritage that was told to her, even when her mother let slip that her parents struggled to conceive and so they sought help for fertility issues. Even when her half-sister told her it was common practice at the time of her conception to mix the sperm of the husband with that of a sperm donor to increase the chances of pregnancy. Even when a poet stared at her and concluded, “You’re not Jewish.” She never doubted her origins, even when she looked in the mirror and saw her own blond hair, blue eyes, and pink and white skin.

What resonates the most strongly with my own experiences is that failure to know, even when you kind of do know. Shapiro’s mother knew how her daughter was conceived. She must have had some idea that her daughter’s biological paternity might be in question, but she nevertheless provided doctors with her husband’s family medical history and worried Dani might have inherited health issues from them. Similar things happened in my family. In fact, I did this kind of thing myself, when for instance I did not even consider my Jewish heritage while researching all the genetic diseases I should watch for while pregnant with my son. I had learned that my grandmother’s family was Jewish when I was in my 20s, but it didn’t really enter my consciousness as an expectant mother in my 30s. That’s how strong my identification was with my mom’s adopted Polish Catholic heritage.

Shapiro refers to the psychoanalytic concept of “unthought known,” experiences that are indescribable in words but that nevertheless influence thoughts and behavior later in life. The concept refers to awareness derived from early, preverbal childhood experiences, so it’s not an exact match to what I’m describing. But certain aspects apply. Even though I “knew” the secret of my mom’s family origin, I chose not to include it in my self-identity. I excluded it from the way I thought about myself, and also how I presented myself to others. I’m sure my mom did the same. She identified as a Catholic Pole and refused her Jewish heritage. She felt offended if anyone ever alluded to it. For her, and I guess for me too, who we were supposed to be was more real than who we actually were, who we actually came from.

Except that growing up, I felt something was hidden. Here my experiences come closer to the psychoanalytic meaning of unthought known. I felt the silences in my family history, and the feeling of displacement they produced. Shapiro’s story is a little different, because she fully embraced the Jewish heritage of her family, confident in her deep roots in that community. So for her, learning that her biological father was not Jewish led to a sense of loss and of disconnection. For me, by contrast, learning about my Jewish family has filled the empty spaces in my own family story. I know who I came from, which helps me know who I am. I’ve been embraced by my complex, heterogeneous extended family.

George Bereday and His Vision of Education

09 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Bereda, Family, Photographs, Pre-World War II

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George Z. F. Bereday/Jerzy Bereda, Halina Piwko Bereda, Maria Bereda(y) Galbraith, Maria Weglinska/Hana Piwko

I was happy to receive a package from Poland yesterday–a surprise post-holiday gift? In fact, it was a book by Justyna Wojniak titled Szkoła – Polityka – Prawo: George Zygmunt Fijałkowsky-Bereday i Jego Wizja Edukacji (School, Politics, Law: George Z. F. Bereday and His Vision of Education).

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School, Politics, Law: George Z. F. Bereday and His Vision of Education by Justyna Wojniak

The author contacted me a year ago to talk about my mother and her brother for her doctoral dissertation about my uncle George Bereday, who was instrumental in establishing the discipline of Comparative Education. Most of the book focuses on Bereday’s scholarly work on the idea of equal education for all, methods for comparing educational systems in different countries, as well as his concerns about equal rights and social justice generally. I will read the whole book eventually, but the first chapter is most relevant to my search for family heritage. Wojniak cites this blog in the chapter about my uncle’s childhood and early life in Poland, and even discusses my mom’s service in the Polish Underground Army during World War II. It’s great to see my work being put to use, and translated into Polish for Polish speakers to read.

I was also amazed to find a photo on page 28 of my babcia with a young George/Jurek on one side and a young Maria/my Mama on the other. They are all smiling, and Babcia holds both children by the hand. It’s winter–they are wrapped up in warm coats, hats, gloves, and boots, walking along a gravel road with barren trees in the background. I would guess my mom is about six years old and Uncle George about eight, which would make it around 1928 or 1929. Based on the time and rural setting, my guess is it was taken at Dębinki, the estate outside of Warsaw where they lived from about 1928-1934. Mama always said those were the happiest years of her life.

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George/Jerzy, Halina/my Babcia, and Maria/my Mama Bereda in Poland around 1928 or 1929.

I have never seen this photo before. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing a photo of my mother as a child. And even more surprisingly, the source of the photo is my own cousin Krysia! We’ve been in touch, and I’m counting on her to send me a better copy than this one.

Cousin Connections

20 Monday May 2019

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Family, Genealogy, Jewish immigrants, Names, Pifko-Winawer Circle, Piwko, Walfisz, Winawer, Łódź, Żychlin

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Akiwa Jakubowicz, Ancestry, Arline Jacoby, Borscht Belt, Catskills, Efraim/Philip Piwko, Jakubowicz, Mrs. Maisel, Nathan Jacoby, Tema Walfisz Piwko Jakubowicz

When I met Arline Jacoby in 2016, she was a spry and effervescent nonagenarian with vivid memories of the Pifko-Winawar Family Circle gatherings she attended throughout the early decades of her marriage. She knew that she was related to the Pifkos, but she couldn’t remember exactly how. She thought her husband Harry Jacoby was connected somehow to my great grandmother Hinda Piwko, whose maiden name was Walfisz. She also suggested her ancestors might be part of that family line as well, making her and her husband distant cousins.

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Pifko-Winawer Family Circle, New Montefiore Cemetery, Organized 1938. Note the Jacoby name on right

No one else seemed to remember the exact family connections, so I just added this to the long list of mysteries to solve one day.

Periodically, I have come across interesting tidbits about Arline. She was featured in the “Sunday Routine” column of The New York Times (“How Arline Jacoby, Artist, Spends Her Sundays,” by Alexis Cheung, July 21, 2017). The article describes Arline’s daily life on Roosevelt Island. In one photo, dressed in a white blouse and loose off-white pants, she holds her cane in front of her as she talks with friends on a bus. In another, she smiles brightly as she reaches for a plant in her garden. And in a third photo, she’s swimming; “I’ll spend about an hour doing laps, and then I’ll go into the steam room,” she explains. In the final photograph, Arline looks up at a sketch in her installation at Octagon Gallery. Still a practicing artist, she says, “My studio is across the street from my house. I paint, I do printmaking, monoprints, paint in oils and watercolor.” Her vibrant spirit shines through the brief vignettes and quotes.

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Arline in her garden. Photo credit: Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Another article from Tablet Magazine recounts the history of the Borscht Belt resort that the Jacoby family ran for many years. The “colony” was founded in 1941 by Arline’s father-in-law Nathan Jacoby, and later managed by Nathan’s sons Harry and Ben. The Catskills became a summer haven for New York Jews who left the heat of the city and set up house in resorts that organized all kinds of entertainment and outdoor activities. According to the article, some affluent middle-class families preferred the laid-back atmosphere of bungalow colonies like the Jacoby’s over the fancier hotel resorts nearby.

I learned from the article that Nathan Jacoby was born in Łódź, Poland in 1894, and came to America in 1921. He got into the bakery business “through a family connection.” Could that have been my grandmother’s brother Philip Pifko who had bakeries in Brooklyn at that time?

The Tablet article explained, “In the summer, he operated the bungalow colony as a second business, renting the units for the season. Jacoby wanted the colony to be a destination for Jews who had worked their way up into the middle class—light manufacturers and lawyers, many from the Midwood neighborhood in Brooklyn, with good businesses and good cars. The parking lot was filled with Cadillacs and Lincolns. These were families who loved parties and balls, and Jacoby was determined to entertain them, building a stage in his casino building for traveling comics, singers, magicians, and musicians, and for bungalow talent shows, too.” Arline’s daughter Annice said “What my grandfather created was not only a business. He created a sense of place. This was the good life.”

I was reminded of these family-oriented camps when Midge Maisel and her family spent much of Season Two at a similar resort. Arline remembers that comedians like Lenny Bruce performed there, another parallel with The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which features Lenny Bruce performing in the Catskills. By the time I was growing up in 1970s, the bungalow colonies declined in popularity. My friends went to sleepover camps for kids only.

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Midge Maisel in the Catskills. Screen shot from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.

The breakthrough in my search for a family connection came when I was contacted via Ancestry by Cherie, whose husband is a descendant of Akiva Jakubowicz, the second husband of my great grandmother’s sister Tema. That’s when a light turned on. Could it be that the Jakubowiczes changed their name to Jacoby when they came to the US? Could Arline’s husband Harry have been a grandson of Tema, the sister of my great grandmother Hinda (Walfisz) Piwko?

I already had Akiva (Kiwa) Jakubowicz and his two sons Elias and Nathan in my family tree. Cherie confirmed that her husband descends from Elias, Nathan’s younger brother (Nathan was born in 1896 and Elias was born in 1898), and that they changed their last name to Jacoby after settling in the US. Elias moved from Łódź to Berlin where he married Martha Brusendorf. She was a German protestant, but they raised their children in the Jewish faith. When the war broke out, they lived in hiding in Berlin with their younger daughter, while their older daughter escaped to England on the kindertransport. The family reunited after the war, and immigrated to the US. They were sponsored by Nathan, who had been in New York since 1921.

Armed with this information, I was able to locate documents about Nathan, Arline, and their sons Harry and Ben on Ancestry. Arline Plumer and Nathan Jacoby married in 1947 in Philadelphia, her hometown. I’m not sure, but this might be Arline’s high school yearbook photo from 1943, Girl’s High School, Philadelphia.

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Arline Plumer, class of 1943, Girls High School, Philadelphia. Is this my cousin?

If so, Arline’s parents were Isidor/Isadore and Anna/Annie Plumer, and she was the youngest of eight siblings. Her father is listed on his naturalization documents as coming from Barski, Russia, but in the 1920 census, he and Anna’s place of origin is listed as Russia (Pol.)  and their native language is Polish. All of their children were born in the US.

I found Nathan Jakubowicz in the 1925 New York State Census. He worked as a baker and lived with his wife Marie, one-year-old son Harry (listed as Herman), and a cousin Sol Winawer. I believe Sol is the son of my grandmother’s sister Liba, making him and Nathan first cousins once removed. This document also hints at an answer to the question whether Nathan worked in my great uncle’s bakery when he first came to the US. There, in the neighboring apartment, lived my grandmother’s brother Philip Pifko and his wife Goldie. So maybe Nathan is one of the many relatives Philip assisted when they first immigrated, offering them a job in his bakery and helping them find a place to live.

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1925 NY State Census. Nathan, Marie, and Herman Jakubowicz live with Sol Winawer. In the neighboring apartment, Philip and Goldie Pifko live with other relatives.

By the the 1930 Federal Census, Nathan had changed his last name to Jacoby.

Inked1930Census_NJacoby_LI

By the 1930 Federal Census, the family name had been changed to Jacoby.

All of this shows pretty convincingly how Arline’s husband Harry was related to the Pifko-Winawers. I’m still looking for comparable evidence that Arline is also a cousin. My guess is she descends from Łaja, the 3rd Walfisz daughter listed in the Żychlin Book of Residents together with my great grandmother Hinda and Harry’s grandmother Tema. I found one hint on Arline’s mother’s death certificate, which lists Anna Plumer’s parents as Morris and Leah Fox, originally from Poland. Elsewhere, I’ve seen Łaja and Leah used interchangeably, so I’ll keep digging.

The search continues. I’m glad to have figured out, at least in part, how Arline and I are cousins. At minimum, her husband and my mother were 2nd cousins. Perhaps she and my mother were 2nd cousins, as well.

DSC07428

Cousin Arline talks with Mama, January 2016

 

What if…

04 Saturday Aug 2018

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Family, Memory, Polish Culture, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Warsaw, World War II

≈ 2 Comments

Just about every time I come to Warsaw I take a pilgrimage to this spot.

The view down to where my mother used to live, when Kościelna Street continued straight at the bottom of the stairs.

My mind turns inward to the way I remember it in my imagination, based on my mother’s stories and archival photos. Back then, these stairs led to a neighborhood of narrow streets where old cottages sat beside brick businesses, and where my grandfather built my grandmother a three story villa behind a cast iron fence.

When I visited today, I pictured roads instead of pathways. With buildings on either side. The villa would have been straight down and on the left, just after the path that runs perpendicular.

For some reason I started to wonder what my mother’s life would have been like if there hadn’t been any war. Would she have married her first love, a priest? Or would he have decided to honor his vows to the church? No doubt, she would not have waited to have children. I imagine her with four, including the daughter that was born instead of me, only 10 years earlier. No need to wait through the war, dozens of surgeries, migration, and illness to start a family. Would she have resigned from her dream of becoming a doctor, or found a way to balance her home and work responsibilities? Maybe she would have lived with her active young family in the villa, where her mother could help.

And the daughter that was born instead of me would no doubt be a grandmother, with a grandchild the same age as my son.

Without the Nazi invasion, Poland’s Jews would not have been murdered, and the Soviets would not have imposed 45 years of state socialism. Instead of being destroyed, Warsaw would have continued to grow, its Jewish population an important component of the city’s economic and cultural vitality. Poles would have had to figure out how to live within a country full of diversity, where the Polish nation could not be defined as ethnically pure or exclusively Catholic.

Would my family still have hidden their Jewish heritage in such a Poland? I wonder. What do you think?

Imagined conversations with unknown ancestors

30 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Family, Photographs, Piwko

≈ 2 Comments

Gazing at old photos, I imagine having conversations with my ancestors. Photos are deceptive that way. They appear so immediate, so full of meaning. And yet, these are relatives I never met. I don’t even know who they are. Take a look at this handsome fellow:

Przystojniak

Mama called him “przystojniak,” “handsome guy.” But who is he?

When I showed this photograph to my mother in 2011, when she could only communicate in single words, she exclaimed, “przystojniak!” In Polish that means “handsome fellow,” or if I want to believe Google Translate, “hunk.” Mom would never have called someone a “hunk,” so I’m sticking with “handsome fellow.”

When I asked mom who the handsome guy was, though, she didn’t know.

I wonder if it might be one of her mother’s brothers, perhaps Abraham/Jon Piwko who came to the US long before mama was born. It would help if I could pinpoint the year in which the photo was taken. His clothes provide some hints–the short, wide tie, the jacket pocket, and the cuffed pants. Still, I don’t know enough about historical fashion to figure it out.

If this is Abraham, it was taken when he was young, maybe even before he left Poland in 1906. The carved stone bench looks more European than American, but who knows? It’s also striking that his feet are not on the ground, but rather on a round pillow. By 1908, when this photo was taken Abraham wore a mustache without a beard:

BerthaPiwkoNathanPaulineEwa c1908

The Pifko brothers around 1908, New York. Front from left: Philip, Abraham, Paulina, Ewa, Bertha, Nathan. Back from left: Raphael Kolski, Sam and Max Alexander

Looking back and forth between the two photographs, I can’t tell if it’s the same person or not.

These photos were in the envelope my grandmother labelled “Do Not Open.” She didn’t want us to know about our family history because she didn’t want us to know our ancestors were Jewish.

One other photo in that envelope depicts a young girl. She stares at the camera with assurance, a charming smile revealing her dimples. Long curled locks reach down to her waist. She holds a telephone to her ear, tilting her head down toward the hand-held earpiece. A cousin has identified her as Abraham’s daughter Paulina Piwko, the older girl in the group photo above.

PaulinePiwkoRosen

Again, clues to the date of the photo should be in the clothing–the white lace-up boots worn with knee-high stockings held up with garters, the pleated white dress reaching just above the knee, with a frilled collar and pleated short sleeves. Again, I don’t know enough to be able to read these clues and pinpoint the date the photo was taken. If this is Paulina, she would have been a little older than in the group photo. If she is 10 in this photo, it was taken around 1913.

My cousin Krysia has remarked on how much this looks like our grandmother. And I agree. Babcia also had dimples, thick, long hair, and the kind of charm that seems to radiate from the girl in the picture. If it were Babcia, that would mean this photo was taken around 1904. Candlestick phones like this were in use from around 1890-1940, so that clue doesn’t narrow things down enough to confirm or rule out either possibility.

Still, my cousin, a descendant of Abraham, knows this photo and recognized it as his great aunt Paulina. Why would he have seen a picture of my grandmother? Why would it have been among the photos that were passed down in his line?

Here’s a fantasy explanation–one I have no evidence for outside of the photographs themselves. Could the photos of the handsome fellow and the charming girl have been taken at the same time? Might the siblings have wanted photos of each other when the older brother went away the America, never to return? It’s a long shot, but it would make a good story.

Inclusion and Exclusion in the Polish Nation

20 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in antisemitism, Catholicism, Family, Genealogy, Identity, Jewish immigrants, Poland, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Pre-World War II, Włocławek

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Honorary Citizen of the Russian Empire, Mizrahi Party

Were Jews included as part of the Polish nation or were they excluded from it? This was one of my driving questions when I started to uncover the Jewish roots of my (Polish) mother’s family. I wondered if I might find my ancestors in some kind of hybrid Polish-Jewish space in which they identified as both Polish and Jewish. Or perhaps they lived in a world that ran parallel to that of their non-Jewish neighbors, with limited points of interaction. What I have found so far is neither straightforward nor consistent. It doesn’t fit entirely nor unambiguously into a narrative of hostile separation nor of peaceful coexistence. I’ll be focusing here on my ancestors’ lives before World War II. The Holocaust was such a devastating event that it needs to considered in its own terms, something I’ll try to do in another post.

The Polish lands were hospitable to my Jewish ancestors, allowing them to prosper for generations. My grandfather Jacob Rotblit owned a Ford dealership in the 1930s, and before then he was a manager of an international trading firm. Or maybe he sold jewelry. It’s hard to find absolute proof, but either way, he maintained important business interests.

Poland PartitionMap

Poland was under Russian, Prussian, and Austrian rule from the end of the 18th century until World War I. The region around Warsaw, where my family lived, was under Russian rule, though it had some degree of autonomy for some of this time. Map source and more information about the partitions of Poland: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/466910/Partitions-of-Poland

My grandmother’s father Hil Majer Piwko was in the lumber trade. Documents from the National Archive in Włocławek show he owned a building supply store in the 1920s, and according to Aunt Pat, he owned a sawmill before then. Pat also writes that he was recognized as an “honorary citizen of the Russian Empire” for his service during a cholera epidemic. This was sometime before 1918, when the region near Warsaw was part of the Russian Empire. Apparently, the title “honorary citizen” came with some of the rights that were normally reserved for the nobility.

So there was separation but also opportunity. It was not very easy for Jews to become gentry, unless perhaps through marriage, but there were other means by which they were granted special honors and rights. By comparison, different social classes faced road blocks against entering the gentry, regardless of ethnicity or religion. For instance, most peasants lacked the financial means and cultural capital to gain such social standing. At least in some times and places, wealthy, educated Jews would have had more avenues to social advancement.

More about my family’s prosperity can be read from the family portrait that was taken around 1916. Hil Majer and his wife Hinda had many children. They were wealthy enough to dress in fine fabrics. Hil Majer’s traditional clothing suggests that he had the freedom to practice his faith and customs, while his children were free to assimilate, as indicated by their modern clothing. Separation wasn’t just enforced by the majority, but also sometimes chosen to preserve cultural and religious distinctiveness.

JechielHindaAndChildren

The Piwkos c. 1916. For more about this photo see: The Photo That Started it All, Some Reassembled Stories, and What Year Was It?

 

Why did the family move from Hil Majer’s native Skierniewice to the village of Sobota, before settling down in Brześć Kujawski and then Włocławek? It seems likely they were following economic opportunities, but also possibly they were seeking a place more hospitable to Jews. This fits a common narrative about the Jews as wanderers. They arrived in Eastern Europe as tradespeople, financial advisers, and estate managers, and eventually established settled communities. But I’ve also been told that by the 19th century, most Jewish families stayed put. That’s why knowing the place of origin of one relative usually leads to many more relations.

Włocławek hadn’t always welcomed Jews. Until the end of the 18th century, it was a Church town, home to a bishop’s cathedral, with restrictions against Jewish residents. But then the city secularized, and as it industrialized and became an engine of commerce, the Jewish population also grew. Located as it was between Warsaw and the Baltic Coast on the Vistula River, Włocławek became an important port, and home to paper, ceramic, metal, chemical, and food processing factories.

Włocławek-Wyszyński_street_on_photograph_by_Sztejner

Włocławek before 1898. Note the factories near the river. By Bolesław Julian Sztejner (1861-1921) (http://www.wuja.republika.pl/widoki_ogolne_wl.html) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

 

In addition to economics and religion, political factors shaped the degree of inclusion available to Jews within the broader society. Antisemitism grew in the 1880s throughout the Polish lands, as Polish nationalists became more active in their pursuit of national sovereignty. Once Poland gained its autonomy in 1918, tensions deepened. Some political forces, led by Józef Piłsudski, argued for a broad definition of citizenship within the new Polish state, insuring equal rights for the 1/3 of the population that was Ukrainian, German, Jewish, and other minorities. Another political faction, led by Roman Dmowski, advocated for a narrower definition of Polishness, based on an idea of “pure blood,” by which he meant shared descent that also tied the nation to Catholicism. At the same time, Jewish nationalism grew, and took on a number of forms, leading some to embrace  Yiddish culture, and others to espouse Zionism. Some Jewish nationalists dreamed of a safe place within the countries in which they lived, while others turned their eyes toward Palestine.

Włocławek became a crossroad for different varieties of Judaism, including Zionism, Hasidism, and Reform. Around the time that my great grandfather moved there, a new rabbi, Jehuda Lejb Kowalski, also arrived. He was very popular, and succeeded in reconciling the factions within the Jewish community. In 1902, Kowalski helped found the Mizrahi Party, and was a key leader in this Orthodox Zionist organization. Perhaps Kowalski is what drew the family to Włocławek? I’m not sure of Hil Majer’s affiliation, but his son-in-law, Rachel’s husband Pinkas, was a member of the Mizrahi Party in Włocławek, and a representative of the governing board of the city’s Jewish Community in 1931. Hil Majer’s oldest son Jacob represented the Zionist Party on the governing board from 1917 until 1922, and he was on the City Council from 1917-19. In other words, Jacob wasn’t only involved in Jewish political life; he also held a position in city government.

So there were opportunities to integrate into the broader society, to pursue economic and political goals, and to flourish as a distinct religious and cultural group.

But clearly there were problems that caused my relatives to leave for other countries, long before the German occupation and Nazi assaults against Jews. One of Hil Majer’s brothers went to Canada in the 1880s; the son of another went to Switzerland. In 1906-7, two of Hil Majer’s sons went to New York. Over the years, Philip sponsored many of the next generation who started out in the US at his bakery. Four more sisters, including my grandmother, also came to the US. Jacob’s children, as well as Rachel and her children, went to Palestine starting in the 1930s. Still, choosing, or even being forced, to leave didn’t necessarily signal a lack of attachment to Poland. For over a century, there have been mass migrations from the Polish lands by Catholics, Protestants, and Jews who, regardless of their national or ethnic affiliation, chased after their dreams in distant lands.

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