To: @PIKHOLZ.PML Subject: Genealogy #40 Reply-to: Israel@pikholz.org Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 10:42:32 +0200 Shalom to all the Pikholz descendants. Since I last wrote, we have had three deaths from the PITTSBURGH family, all from the US west coast area. Condolences to Linda, Karen (Mahoy) and Jerry Pickholtz of the passing of their mother in Wasilla Alaska. Condolences to Pikholz descendant Terry Kraus on the passing of her mother in Phoenix Arizona. And we also learned of the earlier death of Ella Kraus Millin of San Diego California, whose mother was Bessie Pikholz Kraus of Zalosce and Pittsburgh. When I last wrote, I was looking forward to meeting Leonora, daughter of the late Taube Pikgolts of Skalat - she of the four Pikholz grandparents. Taube left Skalat in 1941 at eighteen and ended up in Tajikistan, where her two daughters were born in the late fifties. Because of the conditions, she still did not know at that time the fate of her family in Skalat. Leonora married an Ashkenazic Jewish man from Uzbekistan and came here (with Taube) a dozen years ago. A brother-in-law and an uncle had indeed survived the Holocaust, but Taube never knew that they were buried here. Nor did she ever find her cousin Sally Aptowitzer in the US, who died three years ago. Taube's younger daughter Naila moved here in 1995 and Taube died a month later. Leonora knows something about her family, but nothing much new for us. What is curious here is that I know Skalaters who actually knew Taube's sister and brother who were killed but who never even mentioned the existence of Taube, the much younger sister who disappeared. I have made preliminary contact with another Russian immigrant family, but we have a language problem to overcome before we can proceed. The man, Vladimir Pigolts in in his mid-sixties and has a brother in Russia. They are from St Petersburg and their father was Mikhail, neither of which tells us anything. I'll try to get on that next month or so. Thanks to an Israeli genealogy researcher with related interests, Shuki Ecker, I have put a 1913 map of the Rozdol-Brezdowicz-Stryj area on the web site. Also on the website, if you follow the "Records Indexing Project" link, you will see that JRI-Poland has completed fundraising for the next batch of Rozdol records - 1897-1900 births. we hope to have those in the next few months. (I really want the next batch of death records from Rozdol, but they have not yet been released by the archives for indexing.) It is often difficult to decide when to record a connection which we "know" but cannot prove. In the simplest example, I have recorded much based on what you have told me about your families, but with no documented proof. That may sound trivial, but some serious researcher two generations hence will likely not be impressed - or convinced. I bring this up because we have decided to enlarge the LAOR family based on some connections which seem obvious but for which we have no real proof. Previously, we ran into a dead end when we found the death record for the oldest LAOR ancestor (Aryeh-Leib - 1829-1901) with no mention of his parents' names. Naming patterns had made it clear that Aryeh-Leib's parents were likely Nachman and Sarah Pikholz of Skalat, whose daughter Bassie married Wolf Perlmutter. (I discussed another, new-found daughter Alte Pohorille - aka Parylles - in Gen #39.) In addition, we had three deaths of Pikholz children born in the 1830's, one the son of Nachman and the other two with no parents' names, but living in the same house. We also had a death record for Nachman (1865 at age 70) which fit the births of grandsons named Nachman in 1866. And we had the outstanding matter of the GETZEL family, which we were also sure was a brother of Aryeh-Leib. So after consultation, we decided to bite the bullet and put it all together - the "old" LAOR family, the parents Nachman and Sara (with Nachman's death record) and their known descendants, the GETZEL family and the three children from the 1830's who died young. This enlarged LAOR family has 116 descendants and can be seen at http://www.pikholz.org/Families/Laor.htm We still have not figured how to attach RITA and TONKA to this group, although the appearance of Getzels and Nachmans in those two families implies a connection. Finally, from time to time, I go back over the dead-ends to see if I can see something I had missed before. In this case, the initiative resulted from hearing a speaker from the Central Zionist Archives, which has inherited the files of the Jewish Agency's Missing Persons Bureau and has become much more user-friendly. we had an old reference to Israel, born 1912 in Stryj to Yitzhak Pickholz and Golda Neubauer. In reviewing this file, I did some checking and found that he went by Neubauer not Pickholz and lived in Tel-Aviv, where he died in 1979. I have his grave location and will check it next time I am there. I don't know if he had a wife and children and the CZA will try to check that out. Seifer Stryj, which commemorates the Stryj Jews killed in the Holocaust, has nearly fifty named Pickholz and I have identified almost all of them. The unidentified ones were Golda bat Chaim-Mordecai and five people whose fathers were either Yitzhak or Yitzhak-Isak. So it occurred to me that these could be the mother and siblings of Israel Neubauer. The perfect situation would be if Israel Neubauer's grave has an inscription naming his family who were killed in the Holocaust, as is often the case. but in the meantime I went back to Seifer Stryj where I found a whole family of Niebauers, including Chaim Mordecai, so it looks like Golda is indeed Israel's mother. Then while visiting the National Archives for a look for someone else at the index cards for those who received citizenship during the second half of the British Mandate (1933--1948), I looked up Israel Neubauer as well. Not only was he listed, but he was listed as Israel-Meilech. This second given name had never showed up anywhere before and I expect it isn't on his grave either. Israel-Meilech is a unique name in our database, appearing only in a 1863 Rozdol birth, to Aron and Chaje of the RavJG family. Best guess is that Israel Neubauer would be a grandson. Anyway, all this was four days ago and I have ordered the file. More as it happens. Israel P. -- End --