Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 05:33:17 


Background:
A few things from our four days in Haifa.  First
a word of background.  Yitzhak Kiwetz was a Skalater
who came here after the Holocaust and died in Haifa
in 1969.  On a single day forty-odd years ago, he
filled out several dozen Pages of Testimony for Yad
VaShem.  I was clearly a difficult task both emotion-
ally and the actual work and he took some short-cuts -
such as not indicating how these people were related
to one another.  We have therefore what seems to be two
distinct families that must be connected somehow, but
we don't know how.  Yitzhak was one of ten children of
Tema Pickholz and Zvi Kiwetz, Tema was the daughter of
Eliezer and Chana-Chaya.  Yitzhak's wife and three sons
were killed, but a daughter (Esther) of his younger
brother survived and she grew up in his home in Haifa.
We are in touch with her today.

Cemeteries:
On the way into Haifa, we stopped at the two cemeteries
and took pictures of all the nine graves on our list.
The major find was on the grave of Yitzhak Pickholz of
the Bocec family.  The inscription included a memorial
to his parents who were killed in the Holocaust, and
his father's name is given as "R' Mordecai ben HaRav
Chaim Yaakov."  This is the first time we have a name
for that grandfather.  It is also reminiscent of the other
Bocec family, the head of which is called "Dov ben Yakli"
which seems to be a nickname for Yaakov.
The pictures are still in the camera, but will eventually
make their way onto the web site.

Senderovitz:
We met with Etel and Binyamin Senderovitz and three of
their four children.  Etel is the daughter of Eliezer
and the granddaughter of Chaim.  Her memory is good and
she is very alert, but as with all of us, she cannot
remember what she never knew.  Etel confirmed what I
had thought, that her grandfather Chaim was a brother
of Tema Kiwetz.  She thinks there were other siblings,
but doesn't know names.  The family are definitely Leviim.

Etel also filled in other information, including the
names of her grandchildren.  She is the only survivor
among her own family, although a brother and a sister
"escaped to Russia."  Elet herself lived in Tarnopol
and I asked her about the other Tarnopol families and
about the other Skalat family mentioned by Yitzhak Kiwetz,
but she knew nothing - so I did not pursue the other
Skalat-area families.  Her mother was a Cackis from Bocec
(as in Agnon), but she did not know of Pickholz relatives
there.

Lohamei HaGhettaot:
We visited the Holocaust Museums at Lohamei HaGhettaot
and dropped in at the archives as well.  One archivist
(who knew a Pickholz in Bolechow, but didn't remember
his name) said he would check the archives to see what
he could find on any of our families, with particular
attention to Rozdol, Stryj, Skalat and Bocec.

Esther Jaroslawitz:
This is Yitzhak Kiwetz' niece.  We were not able to meet
but we did speak again and she filled in some information,
such as her own four children and fifteen grandchildren.
Years ago, Yitzhak Kiwetz had her record alot of family
information which she passed on at his behest to the
Skalat organization.  She didn't pay much attention at
the time and will see if she has a copy somewhere.

Other items (after returning from Haifa):
The "disappeared" family of Sam and Fannie has been
removed from the "unconnected" list now that Sam is
confirmed as the brother of Abraham from Brezdowitz.
(Abe's grandson joined us a few weeks ago.) There is
some discrepancy between what Abe's family remembers
and what our old sources tell us and we are trying to
work it out.  Sam and Abe were the sons of Yitzhak
Pikholz and Toby Blum and had three sisters - Mollie
Siegel and twins who never left Europe and whose names
have been forgotten.

We had an interesting discovery recently.  Someone not
connected to us stumbled upon a European marriage record
for a Pickholz man who is known to us.  The record gives
his parents names and shows him to be Pickholz from his
mother.  This same man later went to the USA and in
applying for a Social Security card, listed his parents
surnames in reverse - that is, he said that his FATHER
had been Pickholz.  We will now try to get a birth
certificate to resolve the issue, but the lesson is that
you cannot even rely on documents - even (or perhaps
especially) those written by the person in question.

PLEASE NOTE that Jacob Laor's biography of his grandfather
Nachman Pikholz still stands in isolation.  We had hoped
that by now we would have at least a dozen more.

More as it happens.

Israel P.

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