From: Israel P Subject: Genealogy #67 Reply-to: IsraelP@pikholz.org Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:43:59 +0200 Dear Cousins, I'll start with the mazal tovs and condolences, as usual. Mazal tov to the Weissman branch of the ISRAEL family on the birth, just after Rosh Hashanah, of Ryan Nathaniel Zuckerman. This is a family I first found about eighteen months ago and told you about at the time. Mazal tov to the Weisses of the IF2 family on the birth of Ohr, shortly before Rosh Hashanah. Mazal tov to Michal Drot - PITTSBURGH family - on her marriage to Yossi Leibovitch, here in Jerusalem. Condolences to the family of Jack Ankus (RavJG family) who died in mid- September at age eighty-three and is buried in Menorah Gardens in Weston Florida. Jack was the (eldest?) grandson of Bendit Pickholtz of Skole and New York. Condolences to the DORA family on the passing of Becky, widow of Leonard Pickford, the son of Joseph Pickholtz of Skalat and the Phila-NJ area. Becky died 2 November and was buried in Houston Texas. I had written quite a bit in these summaries about our attempts to find this family and I finally made contact with Becky two and a half years ago. In the course of my genealogy business development, I have signed onto Facebook and LinkedIn. Facebook is rather trivial at this point, but I have some ideas about what to do there. LinkedIn is a business networking tool ("Facebook for grownups"). I have not chased after LinkedIn connections with most of you, but would welcome anyone who wishes to connect. Now I have to figure out what to do with it, aside from collecting recommendations. You can see me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/israelpickholtz I received material from the Arolsen archives for about half the people we asked about last spring and some has been quite useful. It is not clear what is the status of the other half. Orders for many people were placed as part of a single package and some of the files may have been sent to the wrong people. (I received two that belonged to someone else.) My last several summaries have reported on developments in the IRENE family (from Skalat) as I found several branches I had not known about. There is more. About two months ago Elaine Weissberg, of the newly discovered Berman branch of IRENE wrote to tell me that her daughter's bat mitzvah was coming up and that she wanted to pair her with a Holocaust victim of bat mitzvah age. Perhaps I could find her an appropriate Pikholz cousin. I was able to refer her to her grandfather's second cousin Herta Pickholz, who was sent from her native Vienna to her death in Maly Trostinez (near Minsk) three weeks after her twelfth birthday. I have never been involved in this kind of memorial, but it seems to me to be a good idea. Another of the newly found parts of the IRENE family that I reported on here last spring is Yetti Pikholz Margel, who ended up in Jerusalem (via Teheran) in 1943. She died here in 1970 and her daughter Franceska died eight years ago at age eighty-seven. I finally met with Franceska's daughter Liorit, who is an attorney here in Jerusalem - a very exciting meeting, to be sure. Among other things, she told me that Franceska's older sister Paulina had not been killed in the Holocaust as I had thought, but had survived and lived in Poland. Paulina (aka Lincha) had visited here in the 1960s and had also been here briefly in the 1920s or 1930s as part of a youth group visit. Liorit also spoke of a visit from family in California in 1963 and showed me two photographs (which I really have to return to her). Does anyone - especially in the IRENE family - recognize anyone here? http://pikholz.org/YMargel01.html Liorit showed me a family tree that had been done by a family member in Ramat Gan and from that I learned that Liorit's great-grandfather Yaakov Pikholz and his sister Sarah Pikholz Kornberg (grandmother of Herta of the bat mitzvah story) were twins and that this Ramat Gan family were also descendants of Sarah. I have since had some spirited conversation with Sarah's great-granddaughter Gili and have located the 1955 grave of Sarah's daughter Frania, in Bytom Poland. This grave is now on our website. But there is more. Young Herta's parents were first cousins. Her mother's mother was Sarah Pikholz Kornberg and her father's mother was Blime Pikholz Brandes, Sarah's sister. That much we knew. What we didn't know is that there is a living granddaughter of Blime in Florida. I found her about two months ago and we have begun a correspondence of sorts, both directly and via one of her two daughters. We also learned about another daughter of Blime, Charlotte, who married a Rosenbaum in Vienna. They were killed with their two sons. Who knows where all this may lead, but the amazing thing here is that our knowledge of the number of living branches of the IRENE family has increased significantly in the past ten months. Finally another development from an obscure corner of the family data. When I first came in contact with Vienna records nearly ten years ago, there was a reference to a woman whose maiden name was Szeindle Kramer (born in Obertyn, Galicia) who married Nathan Karpf-Hundert 25 October 1920, with the note that she had been married to a Pickholz but had been divorced in 1912. There was no indication of who that Pickholz man was. About two months ago, Steve found a passenger list showing Nathan Karpf- Hundert and his wife Scheindel arriving in Toronto in 1920 and on the same ticket - but not with them as it's a different surname and the list is alphabetical - is a twelve year old boy named Gusti Pikholz. This must be Scheindel's son from her first marriage to the unknown Pikholz, before she was divorced. I have tried contacting some of the Hunderts who know these people but have not gotten anywhere yet. There are two questions now. What happened to the son and who is the father. I don't suppose this means anything to any of you. More as it happens. Israel P. -- End --