Przemysl B'nai B'rith

Longtime blog-friend Michal recently discovered that her great-grandfather, Dr. Oswald Bethauer, was the president of B'nai B'rith in the Przemysl area in 1937.

I have attached two files: one is the book of all the Bnei Brith organizations in Poland in 1937 including Przemysl, and the other is a picture of my GGF with a pin of the symbol of Bnei Brith on the jacket.

Family Silverman

From e-landesmann William:

Shalom David,

I am trying to trace ancestors with very little real hard info but I might get lucky!

Based on a bunch of photographs taken in Przemysl around 1875 (also some in Lviv) and a little census info, I am looking for Solomon Silverman b1827 with daughter Esther b1855 Have you any info on these please?

Regards, William

William sent me a trove of post cards. His great grandfather is to the left. He is not sure who many of the people below are, other than that they seem to be related to the Silvermans of Przemysl.

My grandfather was Emanuel Silberman. I don't think we are closely related.

Anyone look familiar?

Remembrance and Reconciliation on Facebook

Thanks to the ever-energetic Marla, Remembrance and Reconciliation Foundation, Inc. is now on Facebook. LIKE it here!

 In addition to updating on R&R's ongoing work of maintaining and restoring the Przemysl Jewish Cemetery, our Facebook page is the place for announcements of exciting new initiatives, like our current proposal to convert the former Scheinbach Synagogue building in Przemyśl into a Galician Cultural Center which would be used for historical, artistic, cultural, and religious purposes.

 And if that's not enough, the page is constantly posting interesting photos, videos, and comments covering all things of interest to Jewish Przemysl, including the photo below from the YIVO archives:

Notice of daily low-cost lunches available at the kehile for individuals and families, Przemyśl c. 1926

Bina

From time to time I wonder why I bother keeping this blog up. Last week I was reminded why.

I had just received an email from yet another brother/sister of Jewish Przemysl looking for any traces of their family that still may exist. One of the items she forwarded was the birth certificate of her Przemysl father.  I looked over it, marveling as I always do at the tight calligraphy of pre-typewriter data collection.  Then I saw something that I had not seen before.

Under Column 10 "akuszera," (midwife) was the name "Bina Silberman." Bina, born Blima Malz, happens to be my great-grandmother. 

Bina was, and still is, the stuff of deep family lore. She was always described as not a midwife, but as the midwife of Przemysl. She delivered everyone's grandparents. Of course, there was no picture, no real sense of who she might have been as a person. When I wrote my novel about pre-WWI Przemysl, The 11th of Av, she became one of my main characters in the form of Gitla, the town's mystical midwife.

Dig deep enough and I'm related to you. Dig deeper and our distant relations were best friends. Your grandfather sold mine their dairy. Mine made your family's armoire. That's why we all search and keep searching, because is some way, we are all connected.

Found Missing matzevot in Przemysl

This is an update to an earlier post on Jeff:. Does anyone know the answer to his three questions, below?

The photo below was taken in the Przemysl cemetery in 1949. It shows the matzevot of my great grandmother, Rachela Nadel (died 1944), and my her nephew, Tzwi Leizer Rosiner (died 1943 and interred in Jewish cemetery in 1949).

Last week I sent someone to the cemetery and he located the matzevah of Tzwi Leizer Rosiner. It is clear from the photos attached to this email that the matzevah had been toppled off of its original location and when the cemetery was renovated the matzevah was accidentally placed on the foundation of another grave, just off to the left-hand side. In other words, the Rosiner matzevah is now on the grave of another person. Please see the photos attached.

You can see from the 1949 photo the metal enclosure/fence of the other grave which is still present today. Unfortunately, my great grandmother's matzevah is no longer there.

The questions that I have are as follows:

1. Do we need to contact anyone to obtain permission to remove the Rosiner matzevah from its current location and place it back where it should be?

2. Do we need to contact anyone to obtain permission to place a new matzevah up where my great grandmother's matzevah used to be?

3. Can you recommend anyone in Poland who I can hire to create new matzevah with hebrew letters and move the Rosiner matzevah?

Best regards/Kol Tuv,

Jeff

Looking for family Stein

Dear Sir,

I am a daughter of Stefan Stein, a Holocaust survivor born in Przemyśl (Poland). My father’s mother, four brothers and a sister were killed in Holocaust; my father survived the war at Horodenka, in my mother’s family home.

I am trying to get some knowledge about the life of my family killed in Holocaust, because I don’t want that they fall into oblivion. Also, I have a dream to find a trace of a member of the family who survived the Holocaust, and whose children or grandchildren are alive.

I have never known any family from the side of my father; even one photo have not remained. The only traces after those people are the documents, which luckily remained untouched in the Office of Przemyśl and in the Archive of Przemyśl. Thanks to them, I could construct my little family tree, but still I have no trace of any living family member and I didn’t find any photo.

I live in Poland (in Łódź), I am a retired teacher of mathematics. I have no family except my sister Irena. I would like to join some research group to work together; we could exchange sources of information about Przemyśl, perhaps find some photos. I know a little Yiddish and Hebrew.

Ms. Marla Raucher Osborn, whom I met in the Facebook, in the “Polish-Jewish matters” group and in the Polish “Drugie pokolenie” (Second Generation)group, advised me to contact you.

I would be very happy if you could help me to join a group working on Przemyśl. As you don't know me, I am sending, in the attachment, the copy of my father’s (Dawid Stein) birth certificate from Przemyśl.

Yours truly

Krystyna

Missing matzevot in Przemysl

Photos and an email from a long-time Jewish Przemysl supporter:

I am attaching three photos which were taken in the new Przemysl cemetery in 1945 or 1946. I have seen some videos on youtube of the cemetery but have not noted the memorial stones that are the first two photos of this attachment. I thought that you might be interested in them for historical reasons.

(photo credit Hirsch Dingott zt'l, all rights reserved)

More importantly, I am very interested in locating the two matzevot on the third photo which have a fence around them. The grave of Ruchla Nadel (left) is that of my great grandmother. She died on the day that she was liberated by the Russians. I was in the cemetery two times but was not able to locate these stones. The Rosiner grave on the right is that of Ruchla Nadel's nephew. I only recently obtained these photos and did not have them when I visited the cemetery. I assume that the Nadel plaque has been vandalized. However, with this photo, I am hoping that I may be able to locate the foundation of the graves and then have new ones erected.

By any chance do you have photos of all of the matzevot in the cemetery including those that are destroyed? Do you know someone in Przemysl that I can hire to survey the cemetery with the photo and try to locate the graves.

This is a project we really need to get going on. The cemetery is huge and only a small portion of it is well preserved. Knowing what is where is the first step to uncovering all that is there.

Best regards, Jeff

All saints day in Przemysl Jewish cemetery

thanks to John Hartman

Professor Mario Hübner Lehrer

 Dr. Pablo Santiago Hübner Varela, from Montevideo, Uruguay, is searching for information on his father Professor Mario Hübner Lehrer (1925-2008) who was born in Nizankowice, south east of Przemyśl just over the present-day Ukrainian border. He was descended from a long line of rabbis and scholars and after immigrating to Uruguay with is parents he went to university became a noted scientist. Pictured below, he converted to Catholicism in 1950.

If you have any information on his family  you can email him at hublan(at)netgate[dot]com[dot]uy

Pablo writes:

My father was Jew, my mother Spaniard. He born zadik Kohen, family of Rabbis, chief of Jewish communities, Town Hall Council etc. For me is important all about Lehrer Family, Hübner family, Nizankowice, Nyzhankovychi specially where born my father. Also Dobromyl an Bircza where HÜbner comes from and Lwow,Lviv, Lemberg. Also Lublin and Krakow.

Grandfather ABRAM JAKOB LEHRER

Great-grandfather Abram Jakob Lehrer with friends walking in Nizankowice

Mania Lehrer Ganz in Przemysl

Abram Jakob Lehrer at Yeshiva Jajma Lublin,1930 near him is his son, the future Rabbi Efraim Lehrer Ganz

My father Mario, Majer, besides him Naftali Hübner his father, Chaja Hinda or Hela Lehrer Ganz, Hübner by marriage and the eldest people, Abram Jakob Lehrer and his wife Leah Ganz (really Lehrer by marriage and birth.

The new Gesher Galicia web site...

... is awesome!

If you have any interest in Przemysl, nearby towns, maps, data sources, researchers, stories, everything --in one place--you just have to become a member of Gesher Galicia. Trust me, it is the best $25 you will ever spend looking for your roots.

Is Herman Kosterbaum David Rosenberg?

From an email from Susan:

I am trying to find any information on Herman Kostenbaum. I have a birth certificate that shows that he was born 27 June, 1886 and I also have papers that show he served in the military.

The thing is that my grandfather's name was David Rosenberg. His birth date is the same as Kostenbaum. I know that my grandfather's mother (given name Marem) was married several times. We think Kostenbaum was one of her husbands and that possibly my grandfather changed his name before coming to America. I pulled up the Jewish Records Indexing from Poland on Jewishgen.org and it does show a Herman Kostenbaum born to Marem ( which is the correct name of his mother) but does not list father's name. My grandfather had two sisters and a brother but again not sure which last name.

Anyone with information please email me and I will forward to Susan.

Please Help Preserve The Przemysl Cemetery

The long Polish winter is almost over and soon Mr. Joachim Glettner will begin the annual spring maintenance of the Jewish Cemetery in Przemysl, Poland. Mr. Glettner is one of the last remaining acknowledged Jews in Przemysl and for the last 15 years he has partnered with the Remembrance and Reconciliation Foundation to restore and maintain the cemetery.

While the Foundation covers material costs: mostly stone, concrete, and equipment rental, Mr Glettner does masonry work for the site without any compensation. Just keeping up with storm damage and erosion now runs over $5,000 per year and as we continue to gain access to more and more sections of this large cemetery, those costs will increase considerably.

On top of routine maintenance, this year Remembrance and Reconciliation will partner with Daemen College of Buffalo, New York and the East European State College of Przemysl in a project involving the Jewish Cemetery. Students from both colleges will work this summer to map each gravestone in the cemetery as to name, pertinent information, and location. We have had the names of most people in the cemetery but not locations so it has been difficult for relatives to locate their relatives’ graves. Modern technology will allow us to access names and locations of each individual grave site on computer or other electronic device. This should prove to be an exciting and quite unique contribution to preserving the Jewish heritage in Eastern Europe.

Please help us again this year with a generous donation to fund our yearly maintenance as well as the new mapping initiative. US tax-deductible donations may be sent to: 

Remembrance and Reconciliation, Inc. 

300 S. Hyde Parke Avenue, Suite 150 Tampa, FL 33606 USA

Or by PayPal at: http://www.remembrance-reconciliation.org/contribute.html 

Thank you for helping to preserve the cemetery, one of the few remaining Jewish treasures in Przemysl, Poland.

Warm regards,


John Hartman, President
David Semmel, Treasurer
Remembrance and Reconciliation, Inc.

Precious (metal) Przemysl

Dear Blog-friend Marla's ancestors were goldsmiths in Przemysl. Below, she researches:

My RAUCHER family came from Przmeysl, Poland, today at the Ukraine border. My great-grandfather Selig and his son Marcus were goldsmiths in that town. They emigrated to NY in 1891 and 1897, respectively, where they continued this occupation. Marcus' son, David (my grandfather) later also went into this line of work. Logan advises me that you had an ancestor who was a famous goldsmith from Lwow, and that you are something of an expert on Galician Jewish goldsmiths' marks. I am wondering if perhaps you have some info or leads that might be of interest to me for my Przemysl ancestors Selig and Marcus RAUCHER/RAUSCHER?

Mastermarks...?

How nice of Logan to call me an expert. I have done lots of research in this area, hoping to find more of Baruch Dornhelm's (From Lemberg) works with some success. One problem is that many Polish -Ukranian Jewish goldsmiths did not sign much of their work. I can give you a list of some key books to look at and I will look myself. I never found our relatives master mark in a book. I did find his brother's in Vienna but maybe you will be more successful. Fortunately, the family has his tools, including his mark. Do you have the mastermark they used in New York? It could be the same. Did they work for themselves? The best resource is probably in the Polish/Ukrainian Town Archives of business records. Contacting the archive is one resource I have not done as yet so I am guessing. There was an assay office in every town. Pieces that are marked have the town mark, year and metal quality marks and sometimes the maker mark. Let me know what questions you have. I will send you some book titles/ internet sites. They are in various languages. Looking forward to hearing from you, Marilyn P.S. I have a great grandmother Penner/Panner from Przemysl area.

Brief dead-end...

I am afraid I have no information on the "mastermark" my RAUCHERs may have used, either in NY or in Przemysl. Nor do I know if they worked for themselves or for others, in either location. I have personal experience in the Przemysl archive and also with a professional researcher and friend who lives in Lviv who has done quite a bit of work in that archive as well. Perhaps I can pursue this avenue, as you have kindly suggested. In the meantime, if you can please send book and internet references my way, I would be most appreciative.

The mark of Przemysl...

I found the story of your discovery of your grandfather fascinating. Now I understand your search better. Having been away this last year or so from my research, I will have to review what I have. The timing is perfect since I have planned to start the process to do something productive with this research. There are many books on Jewish Art, which includes silversmiths but one stands out because its focus is Galicia and the vicinity. "SILVER: Masterpieces of Jewish Art" by A.Kantsedikas I am assuming that your gggrandfather made Jewish items as well as secular and other. Also, if you can get all the marriage records of your gggrandfather in Przmysl, you might find information about his apprenticeship signed by the master and required for the marriage. The mark for the Przmysl assay office was F1, in a rectangle, for the years 1866-1922. This would be in addition to other marks, the mastermark and the fineness mark. Their are lists of mastermarks online. I hope this is useful. I have to dig a little deeper for the references for mastermark sources. Best Regards, Marilyn