To: @PIKHOLZ.PML
Subject: Genealogy 41
Reply-to: Israel@pikholz.org
Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2003 22:49:21 +0200

For a change, we have more mazal tovs than condolences.

First we have a late (about a year late!) report of a first born daughter 
Mora to Gabriel and Cecelia Pickholz of Buenos Aires.  (PINCHAS/RACHEL 
family).  Then we have Anna Alexis Goodwin Myers, born to Michael and 
Sarah Myers on 30 April (PITTSBURGH family).  Last, we have Ally Elaine 
Pickholtz, born Monday morning to my first cousin Jerry and his wife 
Marcia.

And we note the death at age forty-nine of Bruce Mandelkern of the STEVE 
family.  (We have never succeeded in making direct contact with any of 
the Mandelkerns.)

We have had developments on several fronts.  First of all , we can cross 
off the Herman Pickholz family that Steve found in the 1930 census in 
Missouri.  Other documents make it clear that this family is actually 
Eichholz and the data entry had been misread by the folks who made the 
census information available.

I have finally gotten to putting known Holocaust victims on the 
individual family pages, in addition to having them in out Holocauist 
section.

When we began this project, I said that I guessed that there were 
probably 1200-1500 people born with the name Pikholz in its various 
forms.  I did a count recently and the numbers we have now are 620 males 
and 498 females.  (Obviously, we are missing many females!)  We are 
missing many post-1900 births in Europe - people who were killed in the 
Holocaust and their deaths were not recorded.  So it looks like my guess 
was not bad.

In my last summary, I reported on the family of Israel Meilech Pickholz-
Neubauer.  Let me update that.  I have found his son and daughter.  
neither knows anything about his family - even the names of his siblings 
who were killed in the Holocaust.  In fact, neither ever heard that their 
father had the second name Meilech.  We do know for certain that Israel's 
father Yitzhak Isak was the youngest son of Pinchas and Rachel 
(PINCHAS/RACHEL family).

I was contacted by someone new from the IRENE family and he added a bit 
of new information. In the course of our conversation, I realized that we 
may have a branch of Skalat Pikholz descendants with the surname 
KORNWEITZ.  I won't repeat the whole theory here.  You can read it at 
http://www.pikholz.org/Mailings/Letter40a.txt

We have learned that Pikholz descendant Egon Riss (born Vienna 1917) left 
Vienna in 1938-39 and probably returned briefly after the war.  I haven't 
a clue where he lived (lives?) and what other family there might be.

The Rochesters from Kansas City and California (KCMO family).  Here we 
have made a lot of progress.  We have learned that Ruben Rochester 
travelled to the US in 1903 under the name Rackister, which was probably 
spelled Rechister originally.  He was going to his cousin Yankel Goldberg 
in Philadelphia and travelled with another cousin, perhaps named 
Braverman.  By the time his wife and children sailed a year later, they 
were going by Rochester and he was in Kansas City.  The older children 
were born in Odessa.  Ruben was born in Brazlav, which is in Podolia - 
now Ukraine, but then Russia - east of Skalat.  His wife Nellie - the 
Pikholz in this story - was from Nemirov, a few miles north of Brazlav.  
Now that we have an original surname and a birthplace, we can proceed.  I 
expect that we will find connections to at least one of the other 
families who were in Ukraine at that time - CHONE, KHARKOV and some other 
small groups.

Finally, we are making what passes for progress on the BARNEY family 
(which is almost certainly part of the IRENE family).  Barney Pickholtz 
of Skalat had a sister Rosa who married Skalater Samuel Greenberg in New 
York in 1912.  In the 1920 census, they lived in the Bronx and they had a 
four year old son Max.  They were not at that address in 1930.  Finding 
Sam and Rose Greenberg is no small task.  I tried the NY cemeteries with 
Skalat burial societies - since they were both Skalat-born - but got 
nowhere on that.  In 1920, Sam was selling electrical supplies and I hope 
that fact will help us find him later.

More as it happens.

Israel P.

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