88mm Width
19mm Spine
156mm Width
88mm Width
Quotations about books.
Where did they come from?
“Never lend books – nobody ever returns them;The only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me” - Anatole France
This is the question you are most often asked, when you tell people that you are researching your ancestors.
“I read part of it all the way through.” - Sam Goldwyn
The answer, I have discovered, is that whilst they may have lived in an area for a long period of time, they did not really “come from” any one place.
“Easy reading is damn hard writing.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne “From the moment I picked up your book until the moment I put it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it.” - Groucho Marx. “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” - Groucho Marx. “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book – I’ll waste no time reading it.” - Moses Hadas “I don’t think anyone should write their autobiography until after they’re dead.” - Samuel Goldwyn and my favourite: “Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.” -Author Unknown
We all forge ahead with our lives, giving little thought to our ancestors or their origins.There is, however, a trend these days to take a breath and look back at how we got to where we are. Our reasons for trying to record the story of our family were more prosaic. We could feel the lives of our late parents slipping into the past and we wanted to recognise that they had been here and had made a difference. They may not have been considered exceptional people in the eyes of the world, yet they had most certainly been so to us. In trying to write about their lives and the people they had been, we opened a Pandora’s box of family history.We discovered that the story of our grandparents’ lives and those of their forebears mirrored the lives of so many people that we knew.They were lives often touched by persecution and hardship but balanced by family and always by humour and love. Did we discover America, as the title suggests? Well, there is evidence that we have connections to a prominent relative who sailed with Columbus and is documented as having done that very thing. You will just have to read the book to find out, Dear Relative...
We do now know, however, where they were for the last few hundred years.
Hamburg Cassel 236mm Height
“The walls of books around him, dense with the past, formed a kind of insulation against the present world and its disasters.” - Ross MacDonald
236mm Height
156mm Width
Krakow
Tlumacz
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Dear relative... a History of our abraHams family (or How We Discovered America)
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Dear relative... a History of our abraHams family (or How We Discovered America) by tony abrahams together with
bernard and Jerey abrahams
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Copyright Š tony abrahams 2013 Produced in association with Words by design 2 south view lodge, Piggy lane, bicester, oX26 6Ht www.wordsbydesign.co.uk
isbN: 978-1-909075-05-4 Printed in the uK
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Contents acknowledgements
ix
foreword
xi
introduction
1
1
early Days
5
2
a short History of the Jews in Poland
7
3
a village near Krakow
13
4
fanny and David
21
5
the New Country
37
6
moritz likier – Josef’s brother
43
7
the levisohn branch
51
8
fanny née levisohn
63
9
How Jews Came to Poland and ukraine
69
10 the east end
79
11 Joseph and fanny
93
12 the lautmans
107
13 the ukraine
115
14 making sense of the Census
127
15 the entrepreneur
137 v|
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16 the entertainers
145
17 the North West frontier
151
18 the first born son
155
19 Great Grandmother fani’s family
159
20 the baby boom babies
165
21 thoughts of our Parents
173
22 Growing up in Willesden
187
23 the later years
199
24 talking about my Generation
205
25 the Naming of the Crew
225
26 a sad Discovery
231
27 We finally found the lautmans!
241
28 everything is relative
259
29 the remarkable story of ryszard abrahamer
275
30 every Picture tells a story
295
31 Not an epilogue
303
Postscript
309
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the ancestors have not passed away. they have just stepped out for a while. Peter Ustinov
The journey through Europe to London
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ACknowledgements so many people helped in the research and construction of this book that it is impossible to name them all. it would not have been attempted without the knowledge and input i received from my brothers bernard and Jeffrey, who shared all the successes and cul-de-sacs with me. my daughter lucy has been my literary advisor and constant support, and my nephew eliot has been a long-term interested contributor. all the family have helped and encouraged me, and i hope they feel it was worthwhile. uncle morry lautman, in particular, was very helpful. the members of the Jewish Genealogical society of Great britain have given wonderful advice and guidance and a number of researchers pointed me in the right direction. in particular, Dr Hannah Gill, who worked tirelessly to track down our elusive lautmans. thank you to all of our new cousins: to Pauline Crump, for the chapter on her grandfather, and to the wonderful Zbigniew Grabowski (ryszard abrahamer,) for the graphic description of his experiences during the second World War. thank you to rosemary Wenzerul for her kind advice, and to all the aaronheims in North america; the late Werner-max ahronheim took a long time to find but he was so helpful and informative. my brother-in-law David finn put the whole story into perspective, and my old friend, Keith Jacobs is a national genealogical resource all on his own! edward Joseph is in a similar league when it comes to expertise. i was lucky to find amateur ix |
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cartologist John bury, who gave so much time to help me with the maps, and to my talented photo restorer, John butler, at www.Photovalet.co.uk. People can be very kind to confused and bewildered amateur genealogists. thank you to my excellent editor, tony Gray of WorDs by DesiGN, for pushing me to the finish line. i lose count of how many times i told him i was nearly finished only to go off again on another tangent. He had wonderful advice and insight and has a talent for seeing the wood through the trees. thank you to my wife, Debbie, for her help and patience over so many years. i am happy and sad that it is finished, but i could not have attempted it without so many willing and generous helpers. tony abrahams, spring 2013
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IntroduCtIon as the twentieth century drew to a close, the gradual realisation had dawned on us that we knew very little of where we came from and what kind of people gave us the genes that made us who we are today. We had a little knowledge picked up randomly over the years from our parents and family which indicated that several generations ago, our ancestors had travelled from eastern europe, like so many Jewish people who were looking for a better life. it occurred to us that if we did not take the time to try and find out all we could with regard to our heritage, the generation above us would soon be unable to provide any information or background and this would then be gone forever. already our own children had either grown into adults or were almost there and we three brothers were fast becoming the older generation ourselves. Whilst we were still blessed with some of our aunts and uncles we decided to try and trace the roots of the abrahams family as best we could. many people have tried to trace their roots and we were to discover that attempting to do so can be difficult, time consuming, fascinating and frustrating, but also compulsive and eventually exhilarating and rewarding. early photographs are often difficult to come by and information from relatives and friends tends to become blurred with the passing of the years. However we three brothers, bernard, Jeffrey and anthony, have endeavored to record as much information as we can remember, 1|
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
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Introduction
plus what we have collected and researched concerning our family’s background in europe and england. there are many stories of Jewish families and their origins and a certain amount of help can be gleaned from Jewish organisations around the world. many families came to england in the 1930s and 1940s and there is considerable information still available for them. However, we began our research in times and places where few records were kept or have survived. We have attempted therefore to fill in any gaps with some general information on the period. We have tried to give an indication of how life would have been for people living in small villages and towns, where perhaps they may have been subjected to anti-semitism, living lives which would have been impossible for us to imagine in our modern homes with all amenities and in societies which have accepted us and made us feel welcome. in some areas, when we found a lack of concrete facts, we have resorted to some speculation and conjecture, and we apologise for this. it may be said that we have taken a certain amount of artistic license. this license has now been revoked by the Genealogical society! as we travelled back in time a further realisation came upon us. our memories of our own dear parents, which are always fresh in our minds, might also fade with the passing of time. We know their characters, their funny ways and their kind hearts. as you read this, as one of their descendants, you should know that the very ability to do so and your characters and abilities stem to a large extent from these two people. they were without doubt the best people that we ever knew and we would like you to know something about them as well. What makes this particular record special is that it is our story and we dedicate it to the beloved memory of our dear father and mother, morry and Kitty, and we bequeath it to all our children for them to enjoy and treasure and to pass on to their own children. 3|
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1. eArly dAys so where to start? in 1989, mum had passed away and Dad had died in 1975, so our options for informants were already limited. our grandparents had long since passed away. in fact, when bernard was born, only one grandfather was still around to witness the beginning of the new generation. but Joseph only lived for another two years and so our search began with our remaining uncles and aunts whom we always felt sure would provide us with valuable information. We were surprised and disappointed to find how little they knew and it almost seemed that they had never made any significant enquiries about their own grandparents or the life that they had left behind in europe. We came to realise that people in the early part of the twentieth century were concerned with looking after their families, trying to get on, and with making a place for themselves in a country which did not easily accept outsiders. they had put behind them poverty and blatant anti-semitism and were determined to make a new life for themselves and their children. living in a bustling cosmopolitan city was an eternity away from the life in a small village in eastern europe that we imagined they must have lived in, and they were no doubt happy to put the old life behind them. they felt no need to teach their children about the old country and the children were too busy to enquire. there are of course two families which make up this story, the Abrahams family and the Lautmans, who were well-known in the east end, and who we of course knew well, having grown up with 5|
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
them as our aunts, uncles and cousins. We did not, however, know much if anything of their background or history. the lautmans lived in a busy, well-populated house, 25 Parkholme road in Dalston, east london, and we remember the house being stuffed with family photos and momentos of grandparents. trying to track them down all these years later has proven to be difficult and for a long time unsuccessful. there were no doubt original documents as well, but over the years through various house moves, our cousins seem to have managed to lose the bulk of them. starting therefore, from two steps back, we have had to try to piece together the information we could extract, and collate documents, photos, dates, facts and stories painstakingly, one by one.
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2. A short hIstory oF the Jews In PolAnd the abrahams and lautman dynasties did not begin in east london and we were intrigued to realise that there must have been a long history of our ancestors in eastern europe. there seemed to be a limited amount that we could unearth regarding the individuals more than two or three generations back, and so we began to research how they would have come to be in england. this took us back one step to what is now known as Poland, and we discovered that this country had had mixed fortunes itself over the centuries. at the end of the twentieth century, Poland was rather grey and run-down in many parts, especially in rural areas, and it was struggling to come to terms with its post-Communist and postCold War past. the country looked at its western neighbours and wanted what they had. it will take them some time to catch up but no doubt it will move into a new phase in its long and chequered history. this history is inexorably intertwined with the Jews during more than the last thousand years of its existence. for almost as long as there has been a written history of europe, there have been scattered mentions of Jewish merchants, scholars and wanderers. in eastern europe there were probably Jewish settlements dating from as far back as the babylonian dispersion. very little is known about them, with one exception. this is the Khazar empire, which existed from the seventh to the tenth century in the forest steppe region of what is now the ukraine and russia. much of the ruling elite was Jewish or had 7|
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
converted to Judaism in order to resist muslim domination. it is estimated from arabic sources that 30,000 Jews lived in the ichazan empire. even when they were not forced into wandering, the Jews were medieval europe’s quintessential travellers. Jewish merchants traversed the european continent carrying goods of many kinds and perhaps introducing produce and manufacturing skills from one country to another. even before there was an entity known as Poland, traders from the east made their way to the flat country inhabited by the Polanic or field people, buying and selling glass products or furs and amber. by the time the Polans clans began to consolidate their state in the tenth century, Jewish merchants from spain and elsewhere were frequently crossing Polish territories in search of new markets. it would seem that by then the Jews already had a shared knowledge of the continent as a whole. Just as they already had their own calendar and system of recording the passing of time, they also had their categories of geography. in Jewish terms, europe was divided into ashkenaz (which consisted of what today is Germany and france), sephard (which included the iberian peninsula, italy and North africa), and rus (taking in the slavik language lands to the east of the German territories). their familiarity with the different parts of europe would have had practical advantages for the traders as they made their way with their caravans across strange lands, picking up words of different languages along the way which would then have been incorporated into their own. among themselves, Jews of Germany, italy and southern france spoke a language called laaz at that time, while the Jews of eastern europe employed a language called Khaanim, based on slavik dialects. there was much contact between the various dispersed fragments of israel. in the middle of the tenth century, the Khazars were supplemented by the Kievan rus empire, which also counted about 8,000 Jews amongst its population. Kiev itself had a Jewish or Zhidovskye gate, perhaps indicating a Jewish quarter. |8
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A Short History of the Jews in Poland
by the twelfth century there are references to rus Jews studying in Western european centres of Jewish learning. Gradually the various elements of Jewish presence in Poland began to gather into more solid evidence. by the middle of the eleventh century, accounts written by western travellers point to the existence of a Jewish community in Krakow, and of other small communities scattered within Poland. it is possible that some of the early settlers trace their origins to the pre-ashkenazi Jews of eastern europe. from here they may have migrated to Poland via Hungary or later via Prague. it is likely that a small group of Jews came to Krakow from Prague in 1096, after fleeing a pogrom that took place during the first crusade. a number of others may have made their way to the slavik territories from the old Jewish communities on the adriatic Coast. by far the largest number of early Jewish immigrants to Poland came from German and saxon lands. some of them may have been escaping persecutors or harsh prejudice and some may have been seeking new economic opportunities. they were ashkenazi Jews who brought with them an already developed tradition of talmudic learning and the yiddish language, which emerged from German dialects around the tenth or eleventh century. these arrivals must have found their way in the new country rather quickly, because by the middle of the eleventh century there were Jews in Poland being active in monetary trade and running princely and royal mints. one surviving document is a deed naming a Jew as the proprietor of a village near Warsaw, indicating that Jews were not barred from owning land. Polish princes thought that Jews skilled in the ways of trade and commerce might bolster the economic future of the realm. they were not only tolerated but probably welcomed. the Jews in medieval Poland were a normal part of the social landscape and relations between them and the ethnic Poles included a good deal of unrestrained contact and even companionship. 9|
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
Map of Old Krakow, showing Abrahama Street in Podgorze
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A Short History of the Jews in Poland
A modern map of Podgorze 11 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
indeed the degree to which Jewish people were incorporated into daily Polish life came as a surprise to visitors from Western europe. as far as we can tell Jews lived in all areas of Polish cities without segregation, although they tended naturally to cluster in particular streets or neighbourhoods. they dressed pretty much in the common manner and the richness of colour or the opulence of their costume depended on the degree of their wealth rather than other distinctions. in Western europe, Jews were required to wear a distinguishing item of clothing, often of yellow, a foreshadowing of later and much more sinister symbolism.
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3. A VIllAge neAr krAkow the new Jewish immigrants to Poland pursued a variety of occupations. they were artisans, merchants, traders and moneylenders. even in medieval times at least some Jewish households had Hebrew books, while the Polish populace, with the exception of the aristocrats, was almost totally illiterate. Krakow, a former capital of Poland, has had a Jewish presence since at least the early fourteenth century. Jews settled here probably because of the city’s location on the vistula river, central to european trade routes. Jews street is mentioned in documents from 1304, and the first of Krakow’s famous synagogues dates from 1407. the origins of Jewish settlement in Krakow are associated with the legend of a Jewish queen called esterka, said to be the wife of King Casimir (Kasimierz) the Great. another account of this tale suggests that esterka was in fact his mistress, with whom he supposedly had four children, two of whom were sons (who were raised as Catholics), and two daughters (who retained their mother’s faith). Whatever the truth of this story, which would probably have made the basis for a soap opera today, it was said of Kasimierz the Great Map of the Vistula River c.1640 that his friendliness 13 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
towards the Jews, considered excessive or even indecent by some critics, was motivated by personal sentiment. He admitted Jews into Poland in the fourteenth century and granted them a favourable charter of privileges. Whether true or not, guides in Krakow will still lead tourists to esterka’s house. in 1494, Jews were expelled from Krakow proper and required to live in the suburb of Kazimierz. in later centuries, as Krakow grew, Kazimierz was incorporated into the city and became its Jewish quarter. in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Krakow Jews were merchants and artisans, such as tailors, goldsmiths, butchers and printers. Krakow was the home of rabbi moses isserles (1530-1572), known as the remu, whose version of the shulchan aruch, the handbook of religious law, defined Jewish life for centuries. in the mid-seventeenth century, along with other Polish cities, Krakow began to decline as a result of wars and political turmoil in the Polish Commonwealth. When the austrians occupied Kazimierz after the first partition, they placed their offices in it and prepared plans for its development. Kazimierz was to become a more important administrative and economic centre on the Polish border, opposite Kracow. However, when in 1776 Kazimierz returned to Poland, austrian authorities decided that on the other side of the vistula there was no other bigger settlement suitable for similar purpose. the most suitable area for development would be the land opposite Kazimierz, at the foot of lasotas Hill. a road to the south cut across here connecting to Wielicki bridge which, destroyed by flood in 1775, was successively rebuilt as a floating bridge (on boats). that land belonged to the town of Kazimierz, given to it by Kazimierz the Great back in 1370. at that time there was a village called Janowa and later Czyzowa Wola. Nowadays there are merely several fishermen’s cottages, some inns on the road to Wieliczka, otherwise fields and pastures. the old name of the village disappeared. | 14
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A Village Near Krakow
very rapidly a fair-sized settlement grew, which now was called Podgorze. the word undoubtedly was derived from an expression in Polish meaning under lasotas Hill. on the 26th february 1784, emperor Joseph ii of austria issued a decree granting Podgorze the civic rights of a free royal borough. for most of the nineteenth century, after the disintegration of the Commonwealth, Krakow was incorporated into the austroHungarian empire. under the rule of the comparatively liberal austrians, Polish literature and theatre flourished. by the twentieth century, Jews made up more than a quarter of the city’s population and lived not only in the Kazimierz district, but also throughout the city and surrounding areas. this is very interesting, i hear you say, but what is the relevance to us? Have patience, gentle relative, and all will become clear. until quite recently, other than a vague understanding that our family had originated in Poland, we knew little and had never really attempted to find out more. the catalyst was probably the most treasured document we possess and ironically the one most resented and disliked by its original owner. Grandpa Joseph Abrahams had arrived in england in august 1886, aged 28. in 1910, with hostility with Germany growing, the british authorities decided that little Joseph the bootmaker was potentially a threat to national security and that he should henceforth carry an alien’s document. He carried this little book until he died in 1942. He had not been singled out for special treatment in this regard. this was a common practice and showed the lack of understanding that the british authorities had when it came to a foreigner, as he would have been perceived. in the book he was required to note any change of residence or business address and report regularly to the police and in fact in 1940, he was fined forty shillings (£2), a tidy sum in those days, for failing to register one his many changes. the book therefore 15 |
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lists all the homes he lived in, of which more later, but also many other fascinating pieces of information. Here we learnt the names of Joseph’s parents, his date of birth, his wife’s maiden name, his occupation and the name of the village he had come from, which was stated as Podgorze in Galicia. Galicia had been crossed out at some time and austria written in. We knew that Galicia had been annexed by austria, which was the enemy in the 1914-1918 war, and was not shown on any modern maps. We assumed that at that time our little village had been obliterated in the years since he had left. Happy in our ignorance, it took a family celebration and a lucky coincidence to show us that it did indeed still exist. Jeffrey’s eldest son and the first of the next generation, eliot, announced his engagement to Judy, whose family had come from Poland. Plans were made for the british contingent to travel to Canada for the wedding in august 1995. before that however, in april of that year, my daughter lucy was celebrating her bat-mitzvah in london. the whole family from Canada came over for the
Modern day Podgorze | 16
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A Village Near Krakow
occasion and whilst in europe, eliot and Judy decided to travel to Warsaw to visit family friends and to research Judy’s family. Her father was the only survivor of his family after the Holocaust. Her mother anna left Poland to emigrate to Canada with her family in 1968. During their stay, eliot happened to mention the name of the village that his great grandfather had left more than a hundred years before. His hosts got out maps and quickly established that not only did it still exist, but that it was a suburb of Krakow. they were taken to visit what had been the village of Podgorze, and found a deserted, overgrown and largely destroyed collection of a few narrow streets with little pockets of old buildings which indicated how the village might have looked. turning a corner into what had been the main business street, they were amazed to read the name on the street sign. it was Abrahama. Not knowing if this bore any relevance to the family, they took photos and reported back on their find to the rest of the family. subsequent research revealed that Podgorze is indeed shown on modern maps, just below Kazimierz, in walking distance of the Jewish area and its synagogues. a short walk across the nearby fields led to a cemetery, which had a Jewish section and some relatively new gravestones, erected after the second World War. these commemorated various members of the abrahamer family. again there was no way of knowing if these were related to us. We discovered that most Jewish gravestones were destroyed in the War and used for paving stones and building materials on the orders of the Nazis, as gestures of desecration. some of these stones have subsequently been rescued by surviving members of the Jewish community and in some cases by non-Jewish Poles with a sense of history, and perhaps as gestures of contrition. they have either been erected as monuments or re-sited in their original positions. 17 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
there was a ghetto in Podgorze built in 1939 at the start of the second World War, where the local Jews were sent. it is near to the railway which led to auschwitz and the terrible death camp there. the square nearby has been renamed Ghetto Heroes square. the next village is called Plaszow. it was here that oskar schindler ran his factory and risked his life to save many Jews during the War. the factory is now used for the manufacture of electronics and there is a monument to him in the courtyard. also nearby is the quarry where the Jews were put to work and subsequently from where they were sent to the concentration camps. the story of oskar schindler, although happening at the time of the second World War – 1939-1945, puts the story of the area into context and explains what were in effect the final days of the Jews as a thriving community in the area. oskar schindler (28 april 1908 – 9 october 1974) was a sudeten German industrialist. He is credited with saving almost 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories, which were located in what is now Poland and the Czech republic respectively. He is the subject of the novel Schindler’s Ark, and the film based on it, Schindler’s List. oskar schindler was a Catholic for all of his life and although initially he may have been motivated by money, he later began shielding his workers without regard for cost. He would, for instance, claim that certain unskilled workers were essential to the factory. the special status of his factory (‘business essential to the war effort’) became the decisive factor for schindler’s efforts to support his Jewish workers. Whenever the ‘schindler Jews’ were threatened with deportation, he claimed exemptions for them. Wives, children, and even handicapped persons were shown to be necessary mechanics and metalworkers. in march 1941, the Jews in the Krakow area were put into a walled ghetto in Podgorze. this ghetto was depicted in the movie, | 18
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A Village Near Krakow
Schindler’s List, but the actual scenes were filmed nearby in the old Jewish quarter called Kazimierz, because there are modern buildings in Podgorze now, while Kazimierz has been preserved in its original state. the next stage of the final solution for the Krakow Jews was the liquidation of the Schindler’s factory Podgorze ghetto and the transportation of the remaining Jews to the forced labour camp at Plaszow on march 13 and 14. the camp population was 8,000. at this point, Plaszow was still not a concentration camp, but a penal labour camp under the jurisdiction of local ss men in the General Government, as the central section of occupied Poland was called by the Nazis. it was because this was a labour camp, under local authority, that the random killing of prisoners by amon Goeth, the camp commandant, did not command much attention among the top brass. the novel Schindler’s Ark explains that executions and floggings at all of the concentration camps had to be approved by the central administrative office in berlin, but not at the labour camps. many Jews were sent on to the auschwitz concentration camp, only 60 kilometers southwest of Krakow. schindler died in Germany on 9 october 1974, at the age of 66. by the end of the War he had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black-market purchases of supplies for his workers. virtually destitute, he moved briefly to regensburg, Germany and, later, munich, but did not prosper in post-War Germany. in fact, he was reduced to receiving assistance from Jewish organizations. eventually, schindler emigrated to argentina in 1948, where he went bankrupt. 19 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
Plaszow labour camp 1941 He left his wife emilie in 1957 and returned to Germany in 1958, where he had a series of unsuccessful business ventures. after a requiem mass, schindler was buried at the Catholic franciscans’ cemetery at mount Zion in Jerusalem, the only member of the Nazi Party to be honoured in this way. stones placed on top of the grave are a sign of gratitude from Jewish visitors, according to Jewish tradition, although schindler himself was not Jewish. on his grave, the German inscription reads, “the unforgettable lifesaver of 1200 Persecuted Jews.” it is possible that some descendents of our family were still there at this time and it could be that those who may have remained in the area up until the first World War were marched to a refugee camp and perished there. if any did survive after that time, then they would almost certainly have died during the second World War in the Holocaust.
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4. FAnny And dAVId During the previous centuries, the borders dividing one country from another were not clearly defined and people travelled largely at will from one to another. they were not obliged to hold passports or carry identification documents and did not have to go through immigration procedures to settle in a new land. as an itinerant people, the Jews in europe may have stopped in a village that attracted them, and if they were accepted or tolerated by the indigenous population, they could move in and start selecting curtain material. Poland was one of the most tolerant and welcoming of the places they might have chosen, and therefore came to have the largest Jewish population in europe. in the seventeenth century, they would have numbered around 300,000 people, of whom it is estimated some 20-25 percent were killed during Cossack invasions. their fortunes in the country swung from dark days such as these, to times when many amassed great wealth and power as friends of royalty and nobles, and some of these were involved in the highest echelons of commerce and politics. at times the Jews were greatly resented by the Poles and restricted in their movements and privileges. by the early nineteenth century, they did not have the right to use a family name in Poland and it was only in the 1820s or 1830s 21 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
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Fanny and David
that they were told to take a surname. We began to speculate as to how the name abrahams had come to be. one could envisage a possible scenario. an official was allocated to a village to hand out the family names and agree them with the inhabitants. the conversation may have proceeded as follows: official: What is your name? abrahams ancestor: My name is Jakob. o: What was the name of your father? J: My father’s name was Abraham. o: And how do you make your living? J: I am a leather worker. o: Then your father’s name will become your last name, with an ‘er’ at the end, which denotes that you work in leather. If you were a tailor this would be ‘s’ and if you were a money lender you would use an ‘a’. Therefore, from this day forth, you will be Jakob Abrahamer. J: Actually, I do not suppose I could be a Rothschild, could I? Please note, this conversation is totally hypothetical! Having stated that we knew so little of the history of the family, an organisation that was recommended to me should be introduced here. the Jewish Genealogical society of Great britain has proven to be the catalyst or source of much of the information that we have discovered. the society consists of around 800 people (at the time of writing), all of whom are researching their own families and take pleasure in helping others doing the same. they are immensely knowledgeable regarding the sources available and how to go about finding the facts, no matter how ancient the history. they are generous with their time and attending meetings at which 23 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
Podgorze at the start of the twentieth century
information and successes are shared has proven to be invaluable. there is a fascinating open email correspondence which every day carries many messages asking for and receiving help with research. at times it even gets quite heated as people argue about what qualifies to be discussed as research, and it soon became clear that there may be much more information available than we might have thought! one of the first tasks undertaken was to hire a researcher who spoke Polish and would be prepared to search the records in Krakow for any information regarding the abrahams family. you may think that the Germans, marching through europe intent on genocide, would have obliterated any record of the Jews. on the contrary, they were meticulous record keepers and although there may not be as much in Poland as in Germany, where the archives are really quite extensive, there are still record offices in other parts of europe which can provide essential detail and wonderful pieces of information that, when discovered, are like finding a seam of gold in a solid granite wall. | 24
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Fanny and David
this information is not always easy to access, as records were not kept alphabetically but rather chronologically. if you do not know when an event took place, it is necessary to trawl through months or even years of births, deaths, marriages and census reports, in order to find a relevant entry. a number of researchers were involved and there were several false starts before we finally made progress. this was some years after we first had the idea, but once the family had been identified, the floodgates opened and one link led to another until we had more information than we thought we would ever find. the piece of information that was crucial and the one that takes a little getting used to is this: our name was originally ABRAHAMER. all the documents found confirm this and all of the family in Poland had this name. the ‘er’ was almost certainly dropped 25 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
when Joseph was going through the immigration procedures upon entering england or soon after by Joseph himself. it was common for names to be shortened or simplified by officials and it may be assumed that the simpler ‘s’ replaced the ‘er’ at this time. further research showed that the suffix ‘er’ is German and Jewish, and may indicate that at some earlier time they had lived in Germany. the name in fact probably was not related to an occupation, as suggested by the above hypothetical example. With respect to the origin of names, the ending ‘er’ means in German something or somebody ‘belonging to’ or ‘having an origin in’, and it might have been given to the children of a person called abraham or born in a place with a name similar to ‘abraham’. there are connections to the name in lublin, a town close to the border with ukraine, but it is likely that the origins of the name lie in the historical connection of the Jews to abraham, the father of the Jewish people. through the years, many versions of the name have been used and in the times before and even after the taking of last names was made compulsory, they were often rarely written and so were subject to different interpretations and spellings. as a long-established surname, recorded in such spellings as abram, abrahamer, avraham, abramsky, D'abramo, brahms, abrahamsson, abramovitz and more than seventy other spellings, it is of pretwelfth century origin. even in more recent times, my father used the name braham and his sister anne called herself brahams. as well as being named after a parent or one’s trade, it was not unusual to take the name of your village as a surname. it is advisable to keep this in mind if you come across people with the same name. it may be that they are not descended from the same line and may well not be blood relatives. the earlier imagined conversation regarding the origin of the name also looks more unlikely!
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Fanny and David
most of the specific information about the family came from census material for Podgorze for the following years: 1857, 1870 and 1880. Perhaps it would be helpful to show the entries as they appear and then try to analyze the information therein: Year 1857, house number 166 David Abrahamer, born 1831 in Podgorze. Wife – Fani Likier born 1833 in Krakow. son – Jonas Markus born 1856. so, here we find our great grandparents, who must have married some time before 1856, presumably in Podgorze, as well as their eldest son. fani’s name was also changed in Joseph’s british alien’s document, even though she never entered the country, when it became fanny licker. Year 1870, house number 1/14 David Abrahamer, born 1831 in Podgorze, a coal merchant. Wife – Fani Likier born 1833. Children: Haje, born 1851 in Podgorze. Jonas Markus, born 1856. Josef, born 1st July 1858. Samuel Major, born 21st January 1867. Jakob, born 1868. and so the family begins to appear out of the mists of time. David was a coal merchant in 1870, perhaps delivering coal with a hand cart or even a horse and wagon, if he was doing well. We also find that Jonas had an older sister who, for some reason, was not mentioned in the earlier census report. Perhaps in 1857 it was 27 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
not required that girls were registered, male children being given greater importance – just a guess! We also find here our grandfather Joseph (Jozef), the third child and second son. Year 1880, house number 1/13 David Abrahamer, born 1831 in Podgorze, an owner of an inn. Wife – Fani Likier, born 1833 in Krakow. Children: Jozef, born 1st July 1858, a shoemaker trainee. Chaje, born 1863. Samuel, born 21st January 1867, an apprentice shoemaker. Mojzesz Aron Selig, born 1872. Jozef, born 1874. Now the information is coming thick and fast and we are able to build a picture. David had become an inn-keeper. He and fani had eight children altogether. the fact that some are missing from the later census report probably indicates that they had moved out of the family home, perhaps having married and set up homes of their own. However, one wonders why Jakob born 1868, is not mentioned in 1880. it is unlikely that he moved away aged only twelve, and one fears that something may have happened to him. another of the entries was puzzling. the youngest child, born in 1874, was also called Jozef. surely there must be some Podgorze market square, mistake. How could two of late nineteenth century | 28
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Fanny and David
the sons have the same name? further enquiries revealed that this was not unusual. it was possible in this way to confuse the authorities with one set of documents into conscripting only one son into the army. and yet, if one had enough foresight to name your children at birth with this in mind, why would you actually register the second birth at all? some time before the discovery of this information, a friend and neighbour, barry Hyman, travelled to Poland to look for information regarding his own family. Whilst there, he went to Podgorze and to the cemetery nearby, where he took some photos of gravestones and memorials to various abrahamer family members. at the time we did not yet know that we came from abrahamer stock, and did not think them particularly relevant or important. one of them is a memorial to izrael abrahamer, son of Jakob. izrael died in 1942, during the second World War, and the relatively new appearance of the stone would indicate that this is a memorial to him and perhaps, given the year, one might speculate that he died elsewhere. this stone has been placed next to a smaller, older-looking stone, which commemorates Jakob, who died in 1914. Could this be Grandfather Joseph’s brother? born in 1868, this would have made him 46 years old when he died. the name abrahamer appears many times in census reports and on gravestones and many of the first names are repeated. one entry in the 1857 census was particularly interesting. it read as follows: House number 168 (two houses from David in the same census) Mayer Abrahamer born 1787 in Klasno. Wife – Malke born 1796 son – Jakob born 1842 in Podgorze. 29 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
Could David, born 1831, be the son of mayer and malke? mayer would have been 44 and malke 35. Did they live two houses from David and fani, with Jakob, David’s brother? making another calculation, Jakob was born when mayer was 55 and his mother malke, 46. in the 1870 census, the following entries appear: House number 1/16 (two houses from David in the same census) Jakob Abrahamer born 1842 in Podgorze, a flour merchant. Wife Ryfka born 1845 in Klasno. Children: Leib born 1862 in Podgorze. Majer born 1864 in Podgorze. Hirsch born 1866 in Podgorze. House number 1/17 (three houses from David in the same census) Mojzesz Abrahamer born 1787 in Klasno, cared for by his son Jakob. Wife – Malka born 1796 in Kalwaria. mayer and mojzesz are certainly one and the same person. i believe with this discovery, we have reached back one more generation and found our great great grandparents. there are a number of other references to abrahamer residents, although none | 30
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Fanny and David
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that can easily be connected. there are none that lived in houses with similar numbers and although there at least two other Jakobs, neither has a son called izrael. if the person commemorated in the cemetery was indeed our great uncle Jakob, it would indicate that the family was still in the area well into the twentieth century, and that members of the family were there in the late 1940s, if only to honour their predecessors by building the memorial. the nineteenth century was not kind to the Jews of Poland. there are reports of diphtheria epidemics which decimated whole communities, and rifts between the rich and poor. there had been continuing oppression by russian invaders, and of course, a steadily growing resentment of the Jews by the Poles. there was anti-semitism and pogroms, and this was the case across eastern europe. the governments of russia, Poland and Germany, amongst others, were pleased to let them go, and few travelling restrictions were placed on them at this time. 31 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
in the 1860s, a trickle of people began leaving, mostly with the intention of making their way to Palestine. by the 1880s, emigration became a widespread phenomenon, a new trope of Jewish life, but now they had different destinations in mind. their objectives were new lives in england and america. David and fanny would not have seen a bright future for their children in Poland. We know that their son Joseph (Josef) had been born in 1858 and was a shoemaker. When he was 27, perhaps a family conference was called and it was decided that he and one of his brothers should leave the only home they had ever known and go to england to start afresh. family legend tells us that Joseph travelled with one of his brothers, although there is no information as to whether the brother actually reached england or what happened to him after that. Now that we know the names of his siblings, it is interesting to speculate as to which brother went with him. Perhaps it was samuel who was also a shoemaker and would have been 18. David probably gave them what money he could spare and sent them into the world with very mixed feelings. the parents may have felt that it was too late for them to leave Poland. Perhaps there was a vague idea that they might follow later. However, in the census report for 1890, fani is still listed but not David, so we must assume that he had died by then and fani had remained in Podgorze. Joseph | 32
We can guess that the emigration of family mem-
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Fanny and David
Medieval illustration of ‘Crakovia’ and Podgorze bers would have made life harder still for those left in the old country. We can imagine them waiting for letters which may have taken many months to arrive, and reading them eagerly with the rest of the family. When such letters did come, they were often exaggerated and told of a new life full of opportunity and advantages, which may have been some way from the truth, as life for young men in the new country may have been, albeit in a different way, as harsh as the one they had left behind. i think that judging from what we have discovered of the history of Podgorze, it had been a thriving and quite sophisticated town, although it would have been the case that Jews may have been limited in the occupations in which they were allowed to be involved. it does seem that Podgorze was not really as orthodox as one might think – Jewish people would have had voting rights and been taxpayers, and also it appears to have been a fairly prosperous area. in a later chapter, we discover further information from a british census report on which i was surprised to see Joseph’s handwriting. i was given a family history to read, The Children of Abraham, written by anita muir about her family, also called abrahamer, who lived in 33 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
Krakow up to the second World War. i could not see any firm connections to our family and they seem to have been well-off and initially quite assimilated, but in the absence of any detail regarding the lives of our abrahamers, i include a section from the book which i thought gave something of an insight into her family’s life there: Our grandfather, Israel Abrahamer married Anna Zollmann, and founded a chain of bakeries in Krakow and a successful grain business in Zielonki. He built a big and beautiful house on Lobzowska Street. He owned his own horses with horse-drawn carriages, small and big for everyday use and a glass-enclosed ceremonial carriage for special occasions. In spite of his increasing wealth, he always lived very simply, but was just, upright and kind. Unlike his father he did not grow a beard and he spoke Yiddish with his wife but Polish with his children. As a boy he had been brought up under the Austrian rule and so spoke perfect German, a language he expected all his children to know. He respected all the Jewish festivals and expected his children and grandchildren to come and celebrate them under his roof, a custom they resented with time, life among the Polish Jewry becoming at that time (end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century) ever more liberal. Orthodox traditions were respected in his home and candles were lit on the Friday night, as I remember and Saturday was a day of rest. Children were all educated in universities of London, speaking languages other than Yiddish, using Polish as the language spoken at home. The generation of our grandfather was fully assimilated into the Polish scene and it must have been all the more difficult for them to understand the strong prejudices against them which were revealed at the outbreak of the War. | 34
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Fanny and David
i am not suggesting that our abrahamers were anything like as grand as this family – indeed i would be amazed if these leather workers, coalmen, flour merchants and inn-keepers lived anything like this kind of high life, but we have established that their addresses, the number references given in the census reports, being in the low numbers, were on or near the main square where the numbering started, and which was quite a smart place to live. there is a nineteenth century inn still standing on the square and i like the idea that this was the one that Great Grandfather David owned in 1880. it must be fairly unique that the Jewish people in a number of european countries had a common language, yiddish, which would connect them, no matter where they were born or raised. this would have made it easier to move from one country to another and also to meet and perhaps even marry someone from another land. the story of Joseph and fanny is a case in point. i have been trying to understand how or why they came together, a Polish shoemaker and the daughter of an orthodox German family, who were friends of senior rabbis. i wonder if this might have been an arranged marriage and one of their main connections was the second language they both knew. Our Abrahamer Grandparents
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
I believe this to be David and Fani, (before and after restoration) i never thought that i might be lucky enough to find a photo of David and fani, my great grandparents, but just before the completion of the book, i found this one, which was in a bag marked ‘unknown’ in bernard’s loft. it came from a batch of my aunts’ photos and i think that the couple depicted are indeed fani and David. the man has the look of the abrahams men (morris, Joseph, moritz), and the woman looks a little like my aunt Hetty. they look very smart, dressed in their finery and i particularly like David’s monocle. it is nice to put faces to them and i am very glad to have found them.
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5. the new Country anyone born between the baltic and the black sea in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries could live their lives in several different countries without ever leaving home: the Prussians, russians and austrians fought over and across the territory for hundreds of years, dividing and redefining its lands and populations. after Poland was partitioned by Prussia, austria and russia in 1772, a town or area may have briefly belonged to the Prussians. from 1815, it may have found itself on the border of the russian empire. after the first World War, Poland regained its sovereignty, although the Germans had destroyed much of the Jewish fabric of life in most areas. all through these years, the Polish and many other european nationals, often peasants, took it upon themselves to persecute and often murder their Jewish neighbours. in 1911, it would have been correct to state that you were austrian, despite knowing without doubt that your personal origins lay elsewhere, and at the time of the census in Great britain in that year, benjamin and Joseph would have been obliged by the authorities to state their nationalities as austrian and their place of birth as austria. We know however, that they did not consider themselves to be so. Joseph without doubt would have said that he came from Poland, and benjamin, so family lore would have it, told his children that he came from romania.
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
this whole idea of ‘Where did we come from?’ often comes up as you follow these stories, and the answer presents itself that our ancestors could lay claim to a number of countries. even where there were clear borders, you would not have needed passports or identity documents to travel between countries. the family in Poland may have previously lived in Germany. Certainly our relatives the ahronheims at one time or another lived in Germany, belgium, possibly france and eventually the Netherlands – more of them later. in the 1870s, the hardship of life under the tzars had been driving russian and Polish Jews across the border into Germany, and onward to Hamburg, bremen, rotterdam and antwerp, where thousands of Jewish emigrants from across eastern europe embarked in steamships for better lives elsewhere. the exodus began in earnest in 1881, when tsar alexander 11 was assassinated in st. Petersburg. a young Jewish seamstress was tenuously implicated and thugs took the opportunity to exact their revenge in an outbreak of pogroms across the empire. the trouble started in yelizavetgrad, spread to yalta and Kiev, and had terrorised 160 towns by the end of the year. by the early 1900s, Jews were regularly being murdered or injured. New laws redoubling restrictions on where they could live and how they could make their living were introduced. We know that Jews were conscripted into the army for many years, but they were also forced to convert and they were likely to die before they were released. the revolution of 1905 brought on the worst pogrom of all, in odessa. altogether more than two million Jews fled russia, austria and romania in the three decades after 1881. the persecution was not the only reason for the mass emigration at this time. there was a general economic depression in Central europe and many millions of people, Jews and non-Jews alike, moved their families in search of a better life. one might ask why our grandparents came to london. most of the people who came in great numbers out of eastern europe intended to go to | 38
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The New Country
america. many came to london intending to travel on and may have been swindled out of their ticket money – there were plenty waiting to take advantage of poor naïve travellers. many travelled on to liverpool to catch a boat to New york. some had been told that they had reached their final destination and were already in america. some could not stand the cramped conditions on board to travel any further and many others had the names and addresses of relatives and landsmen from their home towns and came to them for help to start their new lives. london may have seemed impossibly glamorous to those from small communities and villages. there were well-trodden routes that Joseph and (perhaps) his brother may have taken. it was suggested to us that they would probably have travelled by train from Krakow to the northern seaports of Hamburg or Gdansk. there is a records office in Hamburg, and a letter to ask them to check if the brothers passed through on their journey was answered promptly six months later. there was no record of them passing through Hamburg, but they suggested that they may have travelled via bremen and found a ship to take them the last leg to england, landing at the docks in east london in august 1886. they may have had an address of a relative or friend who would give them temporary shelter and some help until they found a job and some accommodation. the east end of london was a bustling, overcrowded place, full of immigrant Jews from all over europe. they were packed into small apartments and found it difficult to get well paid jobs with much opportunity to get on and make advances in one’s situation. However, Joseph found work as a boot closer. He became a master boot cutter and remained in this trade until he retired nearly 50 years later. We still have the iron last on which he worked. the Whitechapel area and its environs is famous as an area where a number of immigrant communities have made their homes, and from the end of the nineteenth century, the Jews made this whole 39 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
part of london their own. in a way, they created another ghetto, although this time it was largely for their own comfort and security. Joseph was a small man (5 feet and 2 inches, according to his alien’s document), who could look quite distinguished when he was dressed up to go out on the town. the one photo we have of him as a young man was discovered quite recently, and looking at it, it has to be said that, at that time, he resembled no one more than Charlie Chaplin. We assume that he led his bachelor life for some years after arriving but eventually succumbed to the charms of fanny levisohn, and on 1st January 1895, they were married at spitalfields synagogue in london. | 40
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The New Country
Joseph as a young man
Jewish Chronicle wedding announcement January 15th 1895 41 |
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6. morItz lIkIer – JoseF’s Brother Having stated in the earlier section on Josef (Joseph) that we had no knowledge of what became of his siblings, another piece of luck has brought us the fascinating story of his brother moritz and with it a new cousin, of whom we had no previous knowledge. i had posted all known details of the family on the JewishGen website when we first started our research, and over the years i have had a number of contacts from people around the world who thought they might be related because of a similar name or piece of information. in each case, i could find no conclusive connection and had to say that we probably were not related. in particular there are a number of ways that people may have acquired the name abrahams and as it is a relatively common name, it was unlikely that connections would easily be made. similarly, many of those with the name Abrahamer who had taken the name because they had lived in a town which may have been called something similar, may not have been blood relatives to each other, or to us. therefore in late 2008 i was amazed to receive an email from Pauline Crump, who had seen my posting and wanted to know if we had a connection to her grandfather. she wrote the following: My grandfather was Mozes Likier, dob 9 Jun 1873, son of Feigel Reizel Likier (1835) and Dawid Abrahamer. I found this information on the Pariser family tree. I am interested in any information on these families. 43 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
Cross-checking with the abrahamer details, it became clear that this was almost certainly the younger brother of Grandfather Josef, who was listed in the census report as: Mojzesz Aron Selig, born 1872. the further we looked into this, the more we were sure that they were brothers. but why would he have taken his mother’s maiden name as his own last name? fortunately Pauline, a retired historian living in Weymouth in Dorset, had a full history of her grandfather from after he left Poland, which tells a fascinating story. i have asked Pauline to write this in her own words, and although the full account would constitute a book in its own right, i have prÊcised this and present it here. this is a precious look into the life of one of our closest relatives and shows a complete contrast between the lives of the two brothers. Joseph coming to england led a life that we can understand and which seems entirely logical in the context of our recent history. the story of moritz, however, highlights how different two siblings can be and asks the question as to how he could develop such passionate views which were so different to those of his brother. His socialist leanings and life as a political agitator contrast sharply with the simpler story of Joseph, who was just trying to make a living and raise his family. one does wonder what the other six children of David and fani were like, and whether their story is told somewhere in the archives of relatives we may not have been lucky enough to find. Pauline writes as follows: I discovered that in the nineteenth century not all rabbis were licensed to conduct marriages by the ruling Hapsburg (Austrian) authorities and that synagogue weddings conducted by unlicensed rabbis were not at first recognised by the authorities. At some stage, these religious marriages were retrospectively officially recognised and the | 44
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Moritz Likier
‘illegitimate’ children were legitimised. This still does not explain why Moritz, the legitimate son of Dawid Abrahamer and his wife Fani or Feigel, kept his mother’s name while the rest of his family took their father’s. There is no way we can ever know the reason for this, but one can speculate that perhaps Moritz (I shall use the name he appeared to prefer) may have kept his mother’s name to keep his family separate from his political activities and the risks they entailed. He was in conflict with the authorities more than once. The Habsburg police file about him in the Krakow archive links his name to other anarchist leaders and seems to refer to contacts all over Central Europe. According to my father, he was an active anarchist, atheist and pacifist from ‘his early youth to his death’, and spent some time in prison in Vienna for his activities, so perhaps his political rejection of state power and authority and bourgeois conventions extended to rejecting the Habsburg laws which identified him by his father’s name. Dawid and Feisel Abrahamer stayed in Krakow and, according to my Aunt Luise, died in a Polish refugee camp during the First World War. However, she comments that they ‘died young’, whereas if they died between 1914 and 1918 they would have been in their eighties, so this needs further research. i was rather shocked to learn this. i had liked to think that fanny and David, our great grandparents, had died comfortably in their homes at a good age. With this information, we have a clue as to what happened to them and perhaps those of their children that did not get to leave Poland. i am told that many Polish people at this time, whether Jewish or not, were forced to march long distances to refugee camps, where many died. i suppose it is 45 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
unlikely, given the situation in the country, that their end was one they could have hoped for. the story of moritz is fascinating. a left-wing agitator and radical, even when still in Poland, moritz was still in Krakow until at least 1901 but had moved to vienna by 1906. Pauline continues: At some point between 1895-1901 (the date of the Krakow police file) and 1908, the date of my father’s birth, Moritz travelled to Vienna. Presumably there he met Johanna Plescher, my grandmother. She had been born and baptised into the Catholic Church in the tiny village of Unter Wilkischen, Bohemia, now called Dolni Vlkys near the industrial city of Plzen, in the Czech Republic. According to Aunt Luise, Johanna’s father was a metal worker who had been killed in an industrial accident and her mother died soon afterwards. She had four brothers who were all killed in the First World War. Johanna was a seamstress who came to Vienna as a young girl. Between 1908 and 1911 three children were born to Moritz and Johanna – Jan Jozef (John) my father, Aloijza (Aunt Luise) and Ernst (Uncle Ernstl). Like Moritz, Johanna was committed to radical politics from an early age. Initially there was no marriage, because, as anarchists, they rejected as unnecessary such official institutions, but during the First World War, Moritz, despite his lifelong pacifism, was forced into war service. As a result, they married in 1916 to provide Johanna with the security of a pension in case anything happened to him, according to John. I have a faint memory of John talking about Moritz’s war service, guarding supply trains. According to John’s story, the ‘guards’ raided the supplies they were supposed to be protecting and the family actually | 46
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Moritz Likier
lived better during this time of shortage than they did before the War. Moritz and Johanna were self-employed producers of protective clothing such as overalls and aprons and this business was conducted in the living room of their small flat. Apparently, the sewing machines required for this were pulled out in the morning and cleared away at the end of the day. At some time, women were employed who worked in the living room, but I think that at other times the work was done just by Moritz and Johanna. It seems that they produced the clothes as contracts for large companies rather than selling them directly to customers. He died in 1930 aged 57, two years after his wife. His brother, Joseph died in 1942, in his eighties.
Moritz and Jan (John)
Moritz, Johanna and children
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Pauline’s father, John, came to england as a political refugee on 10 December 1939, having lived for some years in Prague. He was also a radical and a political activist like his father and whilst still in vienna he was beaten by right-wing thugs in front of police who declined to help. John apparently knew nothing about his uncle Joseph and his family in england. Had he realised, he had an uncle Joseph and four first cousins, including morris, just a few miles away in london. to the best of my knowledge, the two families knew nothing of each other’s existence. John met Paula mendl in london and they married in 1939 and moved to luton. they had two children, Jeannette Johanna (born may 1940), and Winifred Pauline, known as Pauline (born July 1946). He had a fascinating career, active in union business and labour Party politics. He had a heart condition and died in 1973, aged 64, six weeks before Pauline was due to marry her husband, Jim. Her mother suffered a stroke and died in 1991, having moved to yorkshire to be near her children. Pauline was very pleased to have found her new relatives and is very interested in her Jewish roots, despite not having been brought up in any faith. We have a mutual interest in the family history and are working together to see what else we can bring to light regarding the ancestors. she is a retired historian and a seasoned researcher who brings much experience to the task. she now lives in Weymouth in Dorset and comes to london only occasionally. she and Jim have two children, Helen and James. Pauline was also able to solve to the mystery of the two ‘Josefs’ in the abrahamer census reports. she visited Krakow and had access to the records office for Podgorze. With a researcher/translator she established that the youngest child was called ‘Josefa’ and was in fact a girl! i finally met with Pauline in 2011 and we remarked that it was without doubt the first time there had been a connection between her grandfather and mine for more than 125 years. | 48
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Moritz Likier
We had an interesting afternoon, swapping family stories. the one that i thought summed up moritz’s character best concerned an official austrian rule that all children must be declared to have a religion. moritz strongly objected to this as an atheist and when his objections were overruled, he showed his contempt for officialdom by registering one child as Protestant, one as Catholic and the third as Jewish!
Tony and Pauline
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7. the leVIsohn BrAnCh the geography of europe had been very changeable during the nineteenth century and the area known as Galicia, which encompassed the birthplace of Joseph, had of course been swallowed up by the surrounding countries and the borders more clearly defined. but what did we know of the history of Joseph’s wife, our grandmother, fanny? Well, actually not an enormous amount. We knew that she came from a place called Hessen Cassel in Germany, later to be known as Hesse-Kassel, and that she had been classified as a German Pole. We had concentrated much of our research on Joseph and Podgorze as we did not have any real leads to guide us towards the history of the levisohn family, and did not think there was much to be discovered. once again it was a happy accident which led us to find out more than a little about the family of Granny fanny. many of the members of the Jewish Genealogical society of Great britain have followed similar trails and parallel lines of enquiry and are happy to advise each other, and at the same time derive tremendous satisfaction from the painstaking efforts that they put in, often leading nowhere but sometimes yielding spectacular results. When a new member applies for membership, the first thing that happens is that their details and those of the families they are researching are printed in the newsletter. to our surprise, we soon received a letter from a lady who lived close by, in bricket Wood 51 |
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Dear Relative... A History of Our Abrahams Family
near radlett in Hertfordshire. Her name is rosemary Wenzerul and she was excited to read the name levisohn and Hesse-Kassel. she had had a great aunt called ida levisohn who had come to england from the same place. During the course of our discussions, we thought we had discovered that ida and fanny were first cousins and we surmised originally that their fathers might have been brothers. the more we talked the more we realised how closely their lives were linked and how they seemed to run strangely in parallel. ida and fanny were almost the same age. ida was born c.1860; we did not know exactly when fanny was born, but Joseph was born in 1858 and we thought that the two of them were about the same age. Ida married Joseph Goldston in January 1892. the announcement in the Jewish Chronicle reads: Joseph Goldston Master of the Jacob Nathan Endowed School, married Ida, daughter of Levi Levisohn of Hessen Cassel, Germany, at the Bayswater Synagogue. The Chief Rabbi conducted the service. ida and Joseph had three children: Miriam born c.1893, Hetta born c.1895 and Freda born c.1898. Fanny and her Joseph had four children: Miriam born c.1895, Hetty born 1898, Anne born 1903 and Morris, our father, born 1905. one could speculate that they both named their children after beloved ancestors. We had rather dim recollections of a relative who had lived in london, a reverend isaac miller. He had married a lady with two sisters, one of whom had remained unmarried, and he officiated at all three of our bar mitzvahs. We looked again at the photos of my party in 1963 (opposite) and found a picture of the top table, at which were seated our aunts miriam, Hetty and ann, | 52
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The Levisohn Branch
Anne, Freda, Hetty, Mrs Miller, Rev Miller Miriam and Morry at Anthony’s Bar Mitzvah together with reverend miller, his wife Hetta and her sister freda, who were of course two of ida’s daughters. freda had married a mr alfred Hart-Cohen and may by then have been widowed. lurking behind the flowers was morris, no doubt enjoying the day his youngest son became a man. We knew that fanny had relatives, also named levisohn, who had found their way to belgium, and lived in antwerp. ‘the Girls’, which was how miriam, Hetty and anne were always referred to for all their lives (even by their nephews), visited them probably on a number of occasions. We knew that there was an uncle Julius levisohn and an extended family, and in fact have some photos of them, some of which are reproduced here. bernard recalls receiving a small bar mitzvah present from belgium in 1953. it was a letter opener with a crest on it, and he remembers Hetty telling him that she had travelled to antwerp with her
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Ludwig and Fanny in 1927 with Werner-Max, Karl and their grandfather Julius mother in 1920. ann also visited the family there with her lifelong friend ray Cohen, in the 1930s. We thought mistakenly that Julius was fanny’s brother and looking at maps realised that antwerp in belgium is really not very far from Hesse in Germany and directly on the route to england. Could it have been that he stopped off in antwerp and fanny travelled on to london, perhaps even with ida? it really is a good idea to write the details of who is in a photo on the back of it. from the information on the back of the ones we have, we discovered the following.
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The Levisohn Branch
Julius was born on the 28th august 1857 and lived to a very good age. one of the photos shows him on his 92nd birthday. He had two daughters, miryam and fanny. this family were very economical with names and really believed in recycling them! fanny married ludwig ahronheim and produced two sons named Karl and Werner, and they can be seen in the photo at the top left of the page opposite. the photo with the evidence was taken on the 28th august 1949, and so we knew that they had survived the War. there were no photos of Karl as an adult but there were several of Werner, the latest dated 1955, and showing him with a young lady. He looked rather like me at a similar age.
Werner-Max, Fanny, Miryam and Julius 55 |
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Cousin rosemary and her husband Derek have subsequently traced the history of Hessen Cassel and have sent us the following information, extracted from the 1892 version of blackie and sons ltd, The Popular Encyclopaedia, which had belonged to rosemary’s grandfather, isaac Goldston, brother-in-law to ida levisohn. Hessen Cassel was mainly the northern part of the central German land of Hessen, which currently runs roughly from Frankfurt/Maine and Darmstadt in the south to Kassel in the north. Hesse (English spelling)/ Hessen (German spelling) was a medieval state ruled by Philip I, who succeeded in 1509, and divided between his four sons. One half went to William IV as Hessen Cassel and included the capital Cassel, presumably modern Kassel. One quarter became Hessen Marburg, one eighth Hessen Rheinfels, and one eighth Hessen Darmstadt. Hessen Cassel remained an independent member of the Germanic Confederacy until the German war of 1866 when it sided with Austria and was occupied by Prussian troops and annexed into Hesse Nassau. When independent its population was over 800,000.
The Lower Castle at Hesse Cassel 1890 | 56
at this point we congratulated ourselves – not bad considering we knew nothing of the levisohns. Nonetheless, by now we were seasoned researchers. Would we be satisfied with the gaps in our knowledge? No we would not!
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The Levisohn Branch
through the society, i was put in touch with marcel apsel, an amateur genealogist living in antwerp who agreed to help me to check the belgian records for the ahronheim family. marcel turned the search into a crusade and despite many obstacles and dead ends, he never admitted defeat. a little at a time the story came out and eventually we came to understand the background of fanny’s family and how she came to be in england. together with marcel, we extended the search back to Germany and found documents showing that Julius was born in a town called falkenberg, on august 28th 1857. We also found the details of his wife and parents back to 1815. We confirmed that Julius had two daughters and that one of them, also fanny, married ludwig ahronheim in 1891 and had two sons, Werner-max and Karl. However, there was no mention of our grandmother and no indication that she had been born in the same place or lived in the same towns. following the line of the ahronheims, all efforts were fruitless in finding any record of them after 1955. Chatting to marcel on email one day, he suggested that it was possible that the family might have moved to america, as a lot of people had emigrated there. via the internet it is possible to access the White Pages, the complete telephone directories for North america. on to the screen came a list of ten ahronheims, stretching across the country and into Canada. i picked one at random, Gerald a ahronheim mD in montreal, and phoned him with a, “you don’t know me but...” opening line, quite prepared to be met with indifference or a rebuttal. Gerry was delightful and could not have been more pleased to hear from me. the ahronheims had come to america in the 1930s from Germany, and the ten entries in the phone book were related, either siblings or cousins. they were interested in the history of the family and his sister Judy, a physician in New york, had a copy 57 |
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of the family tree. He sent my enquiry to his brothers and sisters and i had an immediate response from adele, another sister in New york, who was very helpful and warm to a potential new relative. Werner-max was not on their side of the ahronheims, but he was listed in the family tree as a descendant of adolf, a distant relative. another cousin, Heinz (also known as enrique), had coincidentally contacted them some months before. He lived in montevideo in uruguay, and had children living in argentina. and by the way, enrique was Werner-max’s first cousin and he was definitely still in touch with him! so, where was 74-year-old Werner? uruguay? argentina? america? enrique was not on email and so i telephoned him at the home of his daughter, with whom he lived. He spoke perfect english, and was pleased to help. of course, he knew where Werner was. He had been with him only a few months earlier. so, where was he? Amsterdam! Having trailed him halfway around the world, we found him not really very far from where we had begun the search. enrique had recently travelled to europe for a conference on reparations from Germany and had visited him. He did not know anything about our grandmother fanny though. i thought that i would write to Werner to explain the enquiry, and after waiting three weeks for a reply, i decided to phone him. this one call opened a Pandora’s box and threw light on the origins of the family and the mystery of the elusive Grandma fanny. Werner-max lived with his wife eva (no doubt the young lady in the photo opposite dated 1955), and had two daughters, rachel (born in 1957) and berenice (born in 1960). the mystery regarding the relationship between our grandmother fanny and Werner’s grandfather Julius was soon explained. Julius levisohn had married Jettchen levisohn on the 28th august 1857 in Hamburg. | 58
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Werner’s hand-written Levisohn/Aaronheim family tree
The Levisohn Branch
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although their surnames were identical, they were not blood relatives. Jettchen was the sister of fanny and ida. Werner was fortunate in having had an aunt mirjam, also pictured in the photographs, who had not only taken the trouble to preserve the precious family tree, but also had written the family history in a book which she had presented to him on the occasion of his bar mitzvah. Werner kindly sent us copies of the family tree, as well as the relevant extracts from the book which related to our branch of the family. from this we can now trace the levisohns back to Abraham Levisohn, who died in Dorla in Germany in 1833, and his wife Jettchen Levy, from eschwege, who died in 1853, also in Dorla. We do not have their dates of birth, but both of them had almost certainly been born in the 1700s. once again our enquiries and persistence had paid dividends, and far greater than we could have imagined. the complete family tree is reprinted on the previous page in Werner’s handwriting. We had suddenly acquired more new relatives than you could comfortably shake a branch from a family tree at. However, the most relevant and precious little nuggets of information are as follows. our great great grandparents, Abraham and Jettchen Levisohn, had four children, the eldest of which, Leib, born in Dorla in 1816, was our great grandfather. He married Mirjam Sauer, our great grandmother, who had been born in lohne in 1830. mirjam died in obervorschutz in 1866, aged only 30. Despite her early death, they had five children: Abraham, born 26th may 1850, in Dorla. Rosa, born 29th september 1852, in Dorla. Jettchen, born 27th December 1854, in obervorschutz (grandmother of Werner). Ida, born 5th January 1860, in obervorschutz (great aunt of rosemary). Fanny, born in obervorschutz on 5th July 1864 (our grandmother). | 60
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aged 50 when his wife mirjam died, leib remarried ettel ebt, who was mirjam’s cousin, and they had four more children: Ernestine Aron Adolf Sara Emilie leib died, aged 84, on 8th february 1900, exactly five years to the day before his grandson, morris, my father, was born. two of his granddaughters, miriam and Hetty, had been born in the preceding years, and one wonders if he ever saw them. one suspects that with the difficulty of travel, this is unlikely. and so, Jettchen married our well-photographed Julius levisohn, and thereby created the mystery of the levisohn connection, which has now been solved. they had seven children, the youngest of which was fanny, wife of ludwig ahronheim and mother of Werner, our friend in amsterdam. i asked Werner how he and his family had survived the War. they had been living in brussels at the time, and when the Germans marched into the town, they were visited by them and told that they would be returning. remarkably they never came back and the family sat tight and were not bothered until the end of the War. ludwig, however, had been on business in Paris with his brothers and they were arrested and taken away to the camps, from where they never returned. Werner’s older brother Kurt died in Hamburg aged nine, in 1931.
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