To: @PIKHOLZ.PML Subject: Genealogy #44 Reply-to: IsraelP@pikholz.org Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 17:28:17 +0200 Condolences to the family of Izak Pickholz (IF2 family) of New York and Florida, who passed away on 5 November at age eighty-five. Izak was born in Stryj and he and his late brother - the sole survivors of their family - went to the US in 1946. One daughter and one grandson are on our mailing list. Condolences to the family of Jean Holt, wife of Sol Holt (formerly Pikholz) of the Brezdowicz family. Jean passed away during the summer but I only learned of this a few weeks ago. (Sol is not online and we have exchanged a few letters over these years of research.) One of their two daughters has recently joined our mailing list. Congratulations to Andrew Pickholtz on the birth of Samuel Roth Pickholtz on 3 November . Congratulations also to grandfather Raymond (IF1 family), one of the original members of this mailing list. Congratulations to Merav and Aharon-Zvi Brand (PITTSBURGH family) on the birth of Elazar-Menahem-Man last Sunday in Jerusalem. He is the brother of Miriam and Moshe. You may congratulate the grandfather by pressing the "reply" button. Pictures at www/pikholz.org/Personal/EM/baby.html . The first four of the 1897-1900 Rozdol birth records that were ordered a couple of months ago have arrived. We have three others on order. The "affiliated Galician surnames" page on the website has been redesigned, including links to the appropriate families. I have also added a page with a list of addresses of Pikholz family members who lived in Vienna. This is kind of a pilot for a more ambitious page for the New Yorkers. That may seem trivial to some of you, but I have no sense of New York and it may give me a better idea of who lived near whom and when. I would also like to develop the "faces" page - photographs of Pikholz descendants who were born before 1900. The idea there is that we might recognize faces from other branches as being similar to our own. The last couple of weeks, I have been shepherding several claims of Pikholz descendants through the International Commission for Holocaust Era Insurance Claims, which was set up awhile ago to force the insurance companies to acknowledge claims of heirs to insurance policies which were never paid out to families of Holocaust victims. In the course of that, we seem to have found some potential new connections. There are three policy holders with the name Pickholz and one other probable, all from Skalat. Two I can identify with absolute certainty and in each case, the person had a brother with living grandchildren whom I know. A third policy holder is very likely a relative of Jacob Laor and the claims process should advance our knowledge of that family. The fourth is not as clear - his name is Pickholz, but I don't really know who he is. I have two theories and one claim has been filed according to each theory. We have ordered some Odessa birth records which we hope will give us another generation on the KCMO family, which we can trace to Nemirow (Ukraine - east of Galicia). They are having some problems in the archives there, But I expect that we will see results soon. It is my belief (more "belief" than "opinion") that the KCMO and STEVE families are connected. We also made contact (finally!) with Vladimir Pigolts who immigrated to Israel from Russia about ten years ago. (This is not simple, because he speaks only Russian.) Turns out that his father Mikhail was born in Tulcin, right down the road from Nemirow, which explains why this is in the same paragraph as the KCMO remarks. My guess is that Vladimir's grandfather Jakob was a brother of Nellie Rochester (KCMO). We have five generations in Vladimir's family, so I will add them to the website as a distinct family. On a visit to Yad VaShem a couple of weeks ago, I found several long reports written by a woman named Olga Pickholz Barnitsch. I had seen a reference to these articles a few years ago, but never saw the documents themselves. I had learned that she was born in 1914, came to Israel in 1958, lived in Ramat HaSharon and died around 1964, but never got further. So I found the three reports (in Polish and German) - one about her family's experiences in the Holocaust and the other two on more general Holocaust subjects. Turns out she was born Michalina Pickholz, but assumed the name Olga Barnitch while posing as a Gentile to avoid the Nazis. She had a brother - Dr Henryk Pickholz - who was killed in Lwow, whom we had heard of before. She identified her parents and grandparents - the grandparents we had before, so we could put together several "loose ends." She also mentioned two other families as being related to her, but without saying exactly how. One of those would be the family of Gustaw Migden, who are buried in Ashkelon. (Needless to say, Jacob's translations were the key ingredient here.) Finally, I found an important document in the RITA family. One of Rita's cousins - Moses Hersch (Morris) Pickholtz (~1892-1958) - whose NY tombstone identified his father as "Joseph the Levi." The implication here is that Joseph is not the Pikholz, but rather his wife. But we had no proof. In 1920, the NY census shows that his sister Henie Greenspan and her husband Eisik are living with him, so I went looking for their passenger lists. Eisik travelled first and under "nearest relative in country of origin" listed Henie. When Henie crossed the ocean, she listed her nearest relative as her father J. something-or-other. But not Pikholz. That makes it certain that her mother was the Pikholz. I cannot read the father's name - something like Zeistein. You can see this at http://www.pikholz.org/Pioneers/Grunspan.html#Second - I circled the entry of interest. I think the surest way to proceed here will be to order Morris' application for a Social security card. That's it. More as it happens. Israel P. -- End --