My grandfather, Jonas Lewental (aka: Jonas Löwenthal), was
Löwenthal family, late 1920s;
Mindl and Dawid; Matilda,
Jonas, and Sara (L to R) born on 02 Feb 1922, in Nowa Wieś, near Bircza, Poland (once part of Galicia in the Austria-Hungarian Empire). Shortly afterward, he moved to Korzeniec, also near the Jewish shtetl (community) of Bircza. He had four siblings; Sara, Matilda, Bernard, and Gerszon. Operation Barbarossa of June 1941 saw the Germans invade Russian-occupied Poland. My grandfather’s parents told him to flee (ironically, not because he was Jewish, but because the Russians had forced him to join the Communist Youth League), and he fled eastwards to the Ural Mountains, where he later began a family of his own. To this day, the fate of his immediate family (save for his father, who died of a heart-attack in the Bircza area ghetto) is unknown.

MOND, LÖWENTHAL, LAUBERFELD, and ORLING families

My great-grandfather wrote his name Dawid Löwenthal-Mond recte Niger (aka: Dawid Löwenthal), which – according to information provided by Suzan Wynne and included in her book, The Galitzianers: The Jews of Galicia, 1772 – 1918 – suggests that he legally bore the name of his maternal family (Löwenthal), since his parents had not conducted a civil marriage, and indicated his father’s name (Mond) through the hyphenation. Dawid was born into a religious family centred around Przemyśl, but, like his older sister Lea, he was progressive. His other siblings, Esther and Israel, were known to be orthodox. (I write ‘known to be’, because Israel moved to Buenos Aires before 1922, and was reported dead under peculiar circumstances. It is possible that he became secular, and did not want his father to disown him.) Esther married a Lauberfeld, and had at least four children, two of whom are remembered to be Simche and Rywka. Lea married Hersz Orling (from the city of Przemyśl), and their children were: Mendel, Rywka, an unknown, Israel, Sara, and Jakow. Rywka married before the war, and when my grandfather escaped, he stayed one night at Rywka’s house in Rybotycze, not far from Bircza. He remembers she had a child, but nothing more.

Dawid’s mother, Sima Löwenthal, died during my grandfather’s childhood. She left her house to her children. After that, the Löwenthal-Mond House in Korzeniec held the families of both Dawid and Esther. Dawid’s father, Mosze Mond, lived with Esther (in her section of the house), since he disapproved of Dawid’s secular lifestyle.

TEPPER, OBERLENDER, BIERFASS, and SCHNELL families

My grandfather’s mother, Mindl Tepper (aka: Mina Tepper),
Esther and Jakób Tepper, c. 1950scame from a religious family as well, but her father was more understanding and open-minded. My grandfather’s maternal uncles and aunts included: Blima, Esther (aka: Ewa), and Jakób. Esther and Jakób were the only other members of his near-family to survive the war; they escaped to Uzbekistan, and later moved to Poland, albeit to the other side (to Wałbrzych / Waldenburg). Esther then married Artur Oberländer (aka: Artur Oberlender) (from Drohobycz, Ukraine), and Jakób married a woman named Musia. All four eventually moved to Malmö, Sweden in the early 1960s; Artur and Esther (Z”L) passed away in 1991 and 2002, respectively. Artur’s mother was Klara Rothstein, (his father’s name is not known), and he had an uncle, Isak Samuel Rothstein. All died during the Holocaust. Indeed, Artur’s first wife and son were killed by Ukrainians, before he was taken into the USSR Army. Blima Tepper married briefly, but divorced because of her husband’s gambling addiction.

Majer Tepper, unknown dateThe Tepper family patriarch, Majer Israel Tepper (aka: Meir Yisrael Tepper), was born 05 Aug 1874 in Mrzygłód, a shtetl near Sanok, Poland. He moved, however, to Nowa Wieś, the home of my family’s Teppers. His wife, Szajndel Bierfass, had a sister who lived in Leszczawa Dolna, and had married Aron Schnell, and had two sons, the youngest named Moti (born in 1906), who himself married before the War. Another sister, who had married a Freifeld in Żohatyń, a village not far from Bircza, had moved to New York City. That sister had a daughter, Feige, though it is uncertain when or where Feige was born. Dawid Bierfass (Szajndel’s father) had raised his family in Żohatyń. (Conflicting recollections also place his family around Niżankowice, another shtetl near Bircza.) Other Bierfass relatives, namely the Hamer and Turner families also lived in Żohatyń.

The farthest I go back on the Tepper tree is to Kalman Tepper, the father of Szlomo Tepper, a man who had three children: Jonas Tepper (aka: Jojne Tepper), Esther Tepper and a younger brother, all born in Dynów, another village near Sanok, Poland. Esther married Salomon Leib Liszner (aka: Shlomo Aryeh Liszner) from Tyrawa Woloska, near Sanok, and they had four sons in Dynów: Isak Liszner, Mechel Liszner (aka: Mikha’el Liszner), Nahman Lishner, and Hersch Meilech Liszner (aka: Tsvi Elimelekh Liszner). Isak (1896 - 1942) married Ita Knor and had Rachel Liszner and Yisrael Liszner. Mechel (1899 - 1942) married Schifera Landau (c. 1906 - 1908 - 1941) from Tyrawa Woloska and had a daughter, Lea Liszner (aka: Lusha Liszner), in 1936. Hersch never married, but moved to Przemyśl. These three sons and their father all worked as merchants until the War, when they all perished, at the Belzec concentration camp, in Tyrawa Woloska, or in Lviv, Ukraine. Nahman Z”L survived the war and married in Israel, where he passed away in 1993.

Jonas Tepper, and his wife, Matel Gärtner (aka: Molly Gärtner), lived in Mrzygłód (where she was from), and had four children: Majer, and three daughters that emigrated to the United States around 1902. Majer went with them, and worked as a baker during that time, but returned before the First World War, and when the War began, took his family to Košice, Slovakia, out of fear of the Russians. He did fight in the war on the Austrian side, but fared better than my great-grandfather, Dawid, who also fought as an Austrian soldier, but was captured (presumably while defending the fortress of Przemyśl), and taken to Siberia. It is assumed Dawid escaped back to Poland during the Russian Revolution. Josephine Tapper (aka: Josephine Tepper), the eldest of the three sisters that emigrated to New York City, had married her first cousin Sigmund Gartner (aka: Sigmund Gärtner), a mural painter, in Poland and immigrated with her eldest child, while pregnant with her second daughter, Elizabeth; they would ultimately have six children. Her younger sister Clara Tapper (aka: Clara Tepper) had also married before emigrating from Poland, to Samuel Tobias, and they had two children. The third sister, Sadie Tapper (aka: Sadie Tepper) eventually married Harry Goldsmith in New York City, but their marriage did not last and they had no children. Today, the descendents of the six children of Josephine and Sigmund Gartner make up a large family, mostly in the metropolitan New York City area; the Tobias family also continues to flourish. We are all trying to trace our roots further back than our common ancestor Jonas Tepper.

Ludwik Lach, c. 1950s

LACH family

Town gossip rumoured that Dawid (Löwenthal) had an extramarital son, Ludwik Lach. Today, only Ludwik knows if the legend is true, and he addresses his letters to my grandfather, ‘Dear Brother’. However, he has never fully answered the question of whether he is or is not a blood relative.

If any of this information sounds familiar, if you know anyone mentioned in here, or if you are from (or know someone from) any of the places mentioned (especially the Bircza area), please contact me. I would be very interested to hear from you.

Dina Drozhanska Lewental, 1950s

My grandmother, Dina Drozhanska Lewental, was born 01 May 1924, in Vinnitsa, Ukraine. As Germany invaded Russia, a Jewish neighbour, fleeing eastwards with her daughter, offered to take my grandmother with her. In doing so, she saved my grandmother’s life. Although my grandmother married in the Ural Mountains and lives now in Israel, she has not forgotten her family, and it is quite possible that she has first-cousins still alive in Russia and the United States.

BYKOV family

Kryna Isakovna Bykova (aka: Hayya Isakovna Bykova), was born around 1890. Hayya had at least two siblings. A brother, surnamed Bykov (male form), lived near Moskwa, and a sister (who probably married) emigrated to the United States, either the East Coast or Los Angeles. My grandmother remembers receiving packages from her before the ‘Peasant War’ began in the 1930s. My grandmother also had a brother, but he died while an infant. She doesn’t remember her grandmother’s name, which is only decipherable through her mother’s patronym (Isakovna → Isak / Isaac). Her grandfather lived through the 1920s, and died while my grandmother was a girl. The packages from America were addressed to him, and they stopped shortly after his death.

DROZHANSKI family

Alter Shmajovich (son of Shmaja) Drozhanski, was born earlier than her mother, most likely, and other than that, little is known of either him or his family.

My grandmother grew up in Vinnitsa, one-time part of the Podolsk Region (now a large city in southern Ukraine). A website about the Jewish community in Vinnitsa exists on the Internet, however, it does not mention much about genealogy and history, just about the current life of Jews there.

If any of this information sounds familiar, please contact me. I would be very interested to hear from you.

Unfortunately, I know very little about my MOND ancestors, even though this represents my direct paternal line. My grandfather recalls that they were an affluent family in Bircza, Poland, where he grew up. His grandfather is the farthest back in my family tree: Mosze MOND, born c. 1860-1870 and died in 1940. He had four children, who all took their surnames from his wife, Sima Löwenthal (presumably since they never registered their marriage in a civil institution): Lea, Israel, Esther, and Dawid. Israel moved to Argentina in the 1920s and supposedly died there. Lea married Hersz ORLING (from the city of Przemyśl) and had a family in the Bircza Area, where the whole family was located. (Mosze lived in Korzeniec, near Bircza. Most of the family stayed in Korzeniec, although some settled in neighbouring villages.) Esther married a LAUBERFELD, and had a family, too. After her mother Sima’s death, she and her brother Dawid both received the family house, which they split. Dawid, my great-grandfather, married Mindl TEPPER (aka: Mina Tepper), and they are the parents of my grandfather and his siblings.

This is all the information I have on my family’s connexion to the MONDs. I have more information on Monds in Bircza, mentioned in various lists I have obtained, available at Bircza Online!. Click here to see Bircza Online! and access the lists.

Although LÖWENTHAL is the origin of my surname (the Polish government changed it to Lewental after the War), I know very little about this family, as well.

We do know that his paternal grandmother, Sima LÖWENTHAL, came from this family, although the paucity of others with this surname in the Bircza area suggests that she came from another town, possibly Przemyśl. My great-grandfather and his siblings legally bore their mother’ surname, since (as explained by Suzan Wynne and detailed in her book, The Galitzianers: The Jews of Galicia, 1772 – 1918) some Jews failed to register their religious marriage in a civil institution; thus, Dawid wrote his name as Dawid LÖWENTHAL-MOND recte Niger. My grandfather also remembers that when his grandmother died in the mid-1920s, his father and his paternal aunt Esther Löwenthal, received the family house. My grandfather grew up with his cousins - the house was split between the LÖWENTHAL-Mond and LAUBERFELD Families.

My records on the BIERFASS family are limited. According Esther Tepper, Dawid BIERFASS, living in Żohatyń (or possibly in Niżankowice, another shtetl near Bircza), had three daughters: Szajndel, and two whose names are not remembered. Szajndel married Majer Israel TEPPER, the grandfather of my grandfather. Of the other daughters, one married Aron SCHNELL and had two sons (the younger was named Moti SCHNELL and married before the War); the other daughter married a FREIFELD from Żohatyń (near Bircza), and had a daughter named Feige shortly before or after they emigrated to the United States.

Other Bierfass relatives, namely the HAMER and TURNER families also lived in Żohatyń. These families were somehow closely connected, for Esther described Szajndel as being of the ‘BIERFASS, HAMER, and TURNER houses’.

Josephine Gartner,
unknown date

The farthest that my GÄRTNER family tree goes back is Ari Gärtner and his sister Matel Gärtner (aka: Molly Gärtner), in south-eastern Poland around Sanok, near Przemyśl. Matel married Jonas TEPPER (aka: Jojne Tepper) and had four children. The descendents of Jonas and Matel are discussed in great detail in the summary of Tepper interests.

Ari Gärtner married and had Sigmund GARTNER (aka: Sigmund Gärtner). Sigmund married his cousin Josephine Tapper (aka: Josephine Tepper) (Matel’s daughter, née 1880). Sigmund, Josephine, and the latter’s two sisters all emigrated to the USA around 1902. Sigmund, a painter of fine murals, caught lead poisoning from the paint and died in in New York City, 1922. Josephine faced adversity in raising a large family of six children alone, but succeeded. After her children grew, she re-married in Miami, Florida, but passed away a little over a year later, on 13 March 1938.

Basically, this is all I know about my GÄRTNERs. I am trying to trace the family farther back. My GÄRTNERs were found in the area of Sanok, Poland, before they emigrated to the United States.

Apologies; I have yet to complete this section.

My knowledge of my LISZNER relatives is limited, and based mostly on Pages of Testimony that Nahmad Lishner submitted to Yad Vashem in the 1950s. I know that my direct ancestor Jonas TEPPER’s sister, Esther Tepper married Salomon Leib Liszner (aka: Shlomo Aryeh Liszner) from Tyrawa Woloska, near Sanok, and they had four sons in Dynów: Isak Liszner, Mechel Liszner (aka: Mikha’el Liszner), Nahman Lishner, and Hersch Meilech Liszner (aka: Tsvi Elimelekh Liszner). Isak (1896 - 1942) married Ita Knor and had Rachel Liszner and Yisrael Liszner. Mechel (1899 - 1942) married Schifera Landau (c. 1906 - 1908 - 1941) from Tyrawa Woloska and had a daughter, Lea Liszner (aka: Lusha Liszner), in 1936. Hersch never married, but moved to Przemyśl. These three sons and their father all worked as merchants until the War, when they all perished, at the Belzec concentration camp, in Tyrawa Woloska, or in Lviv, Ukraine. Nahman Z”L survived the war and married in Israel, where he passed away in 1993. Nahman had one daughter, who passed away in 1998, but they were survived by her children who live in Israel. I am tracing the origins of the LISZNER family in Dynów and the connexion to my TEPPER family.

On the Löwenthal side of my family tree, a Lea LÖWENTHAL, who was born c. 1890, married a Hersch ORLING from Przemyśl. They had the following children: Mendel, Israel, Rywka, Sara, and Jakow. In 1941, when my grandfather escaped eastwards to Russia, he stopped at Rywka’s house. He recalls that she was married and had a baby. However, he does not remember the husband or the gender of the baby.

As noted, my Orlings were centred around Przemyśl, Poland. Because this surname is so rare, however, I would be interested to hear from anyone researching this family. Furthermore, I know another individual searching Orling from south-eastern Poland, so please contact me – even if your names do not match.

I know little about this family, as well. Aron SCHNELL had married into my BIERFASS family tree, marrying the sister of Szajndel Bierfass, my grandfather’s maternal grandmother. They had two sons: one was born in 1896 and the younger, Moti SCHNELL, was born in 1906 and married before the War. The Schnells lived in Leszczawa Dolna, a small village around Bircza, Poland.

Feige Freifeld,
unknown date

In my family tree, I have a Feige FREIFELD who lived in New York City. I do not know if she was born there or back in Żohatyń, near Bircza, Poland, where her family was from.

However, I do know that her parents emigrated at the turn of the century, at about the same time that I assume she was born. Her mother’s maiden name was BIERFASS, and was the sister of my grandfather’s maternal grandmother (my great-great-grandmother). Unfortunately, I know little more about the Bierfass family, and this is all the information I have on the FREIFELDs.

An old letter mentions that my grandfather’s maternal grandmother, Szajndel BIERFASS was from the ‘BIERFASS, HAMER, and TURNER houses’. We don’t know any more than this, other than the fact that the HAMER and TURNER families were found in Żohatyń, near Bircza, Poland.

I do not know much about the OBERLENDER family, since it is that of my
Artur Oberlender,
c. 1950sgreat-great-aunt’s late husband, Artur Abraham OBERLÄNDER (aka: Artur Abraham Oberlender). He married my grandfather’s maternal aunt, Esther TEPPER, after the Second World War. They lived for a while in Walbrzych (formerly Waldenburg), Poland, before moving to Malmö, Sweden. Artur passed on in 1991, and Esther followed him in 2002.

Before the War, Artur had a family in Drohobycz, Ukraine – a wife and child – but they were killed by Ukrainians. He served in the Soviet army during the War, and then went to Poland, where he met my great-great-aunt.

I know nothing about his father, but his mother was named Klara ROTHSTEIN, and she had a brother named Isak Samuel ROTHSTEIN. They were from a wealthy family which held property in Berlin. I am not sure where Isak lived and Klara was from. I know Artur was born in Drohobycz, but it is possible his mother’s family was from Berlin.

I am trying to find if any of Artur’s relatives might have survived the War.

In 1941, my grandfather Jonas LEWENTAL (aka: Jonas Löwenthal) fled east from the invading Germans, working the summer in the town of Zolochew. He worked as a zoötechnic (veterinarian / animal husbandry) until the Germans approached the city. While there, he met a school-mate, Josef PURYC, who was, in my grandfather’ words, ‘an excellent student- even scored higher than me; he was the top of the class’. Josef had lost his documents and certificates and my grandfather vouched for him, saving Josef’s life by getting him a good job in that terrible time. On the night that the Germans were closing in, and the last trains were leaving, Josef ran back to my grandfather’s place and warned him, thus returning the favour, and saving my grandfather. They survived many troubles, escaping from many dangerous situations. Eventually arriving in Volgograd (Stalingrad), they took a boat to Perm (Molotov) and then to Pervo-Uralsk. Around there, however, they separated temporarily (Puryc had gotten in trouble with local anti-Semites) and were supposed to rendez-vous in Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk), but Puryc never showed up. My grandfather has a number of theories about what possibly happened to Puryrc:

1. Puryc was possibly killed by someone angry over his popularity. Although Puryc went first (they split up so nobody would suspect them of running away or they would surely have been killed), he never met my grandfather Jonas at Ekaterinburg, and could have been killed on the trip;
2. Puryc just couldn’t find him. They had a back-up arrangement to meet in Cheljabinsk, but perhaps the chaos of the War separated the two friends;
3. Puryc could have been captured by soldiers, and taken to Uzbekistan to train for the army (my grandfather has also suspected that perhaps Puryc went willingly); or
4. Puryc fought in the war for the Russians, married, and had children, supposedly, in Poltava. However, this is hearsay from a man who supposedly knew him during the war years. My grandfather believes this to be the most likely outcome.

Obviously, I do not know what happened to Puryc, but he was a good friend of my grandfather’s and we would very much like to know what happened to him. If you think this sounds familiar, please contact me.

For fifty years, my grandfather searched for the descendents of three great-aunts who went to New York City in 1902. These three sisters had travelled with their brother (Majer Israel Tepper (aka: Meir Tepper), his grandfather, who had later returned. All siblings hailed from the town Mrzygłód, a shtetl near Sanok, Poland, and they had a number of descendents once in the States.

To track these relatives, I made good use of available materials, such as the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), which can be found online for free. I decided to track Sadie Goldsmith, because my grandfather knew she was alive into the 1950s and perhaps later, for his aunt had been in contact with her then.

I found about eight Sadie Goldsmiths in the SSDI, and, looking at the dates, only two seemed as if they matched her approximate dates. On a hunch, I picked the one living from 1890 until 1968.

I sent away for the Social Security Application Form (SS-5), which includes vital statistics that the deceased invididual submitted when applying for a Social Security number. Upon receiving it, I knew it was her. Sadie had listed her father as ‘Jonas Tapper’ and her mother as ‘Molly Tapper’, very close to the names I have (she Americanised ‘Matel’ to ‘Molly’). Providing me with a more information, I probed further and requested her death certificate, trying to track down her beneficiaries, and see who survived her, for she listed herself as a widow.

In early January 1999, I received the death certificate in my mailbox. Quickly opening it, I saw she was ‘found dead’ by an ‘Irving Gartner’ on 17 Jan 1968. Just for luck, I searched Irving Gartner in the SSDI, and found one who died in 1988, Boca Raton, Florida.

At this point, I took a chance and looked at an online phone book to see if perhaps he was still alive, not convinced that he had died in Florida. I found a certain match: ‘Irving and Edith Gartner’ in Boca Raton, Florida. Certain that at least his wife must be alive, I made the call.

There really is no joy like finding family in this continually growing world. While many fear we are growing farther apart because of the impersonal nature of computers and Internet – for the most part, sadly true – these mechanisms can sometimes be used to bring us together. Indeed, the power contained by the Internet demonstrates itself in producing unbelievable results such as finding a massive, flourishing family that I had never known existed.

Ever since my grandfather fled his home on 22 Jun 1941, he has sought out missing relatives. He had limited success: regaining contact with his aunt and her brother in 1958. But the relatives here in the United States that had sent him food and presents when he was a kid captured his imagination. ‘We had their picture on our wall – always’, he recalls. These names - Gärtner, Goldsmith, Tobias, and Rosenthal - have been included in our family trees for years, even though we never knew where they belonged, nor even if he and his aunt recalled them correctly. Finding them, and making this contact, has been one of the most satisfying accomplishments of my life, and something that has really brought my grandfather new happiness in his life.

My family is grateful for this great accomplishment – especially to the individual genealogists and to JewishGen – for the help I received. Likewise, I appreciate all help I receive in my other searches (my grandmother’s relatives in Russia and the US, my grandfather’s ancestors in Poland), and I offer my help – whatever I can do – to others in an effort to help them replant their roots.

If you have researched or know someone from any of the above cities or villages, please contact me. There is a chance you might stil be able to help me. All names are, of course, subject to different spellings: like Liszner (I can think of a few: Liszner, Lischner, Lishner), Löwenthal, Oberlender, and others. If any names come close to some of yours, please let me know.