[Cz-L] Why I joined the list

Dear Czernowitzers!

I have recently joined the list, and this is a note, as requested, to
explain my interest.

My grandfather came from Czernowitz to London in 1908 and never went back.
My immediate family and cousins would like to know more of family his life
there, as we know little.

His father's name was Chaim Hersch Siederer. The surname is sometimes spelt
Siderer, and the first name sometimes given in English as Herman. He was a
maker of bedcovers or quilts. We think my grandfather used the first name
Moritz within his birth family (though he always used the name John in
Britain). As he was the oldest son, Moritz may have been the name of his
grandfather - and thus Chaim Hersch's Hebrew name would have been Chaim Zvi
ben Moshe.

His wife, my great-grandmother, was Ruchel Zlate Siederer. Her grave from
1918 (see below) has been discovered and photographed. Thank you very much
to whoever did this and to everybody on the project. That photograph caused
astonishment and delight among many of her descendants here in the UK and in
the USA (branches on East and West coasts). We hope that the work will
eventually discover the grave of her husband, the aforementioned Chaim
Hersch, too. We understand that the two of them died in late 1918 of the
flu epidemic; (the grave dates from December). Ruchel's parents were
Menachem Mendel Riemer and his wife Perl Freier (both deceased by 1905).

The directories discovered by Edgar Hauster list Chaim Hersch at various
addresses in Czernowitz in various years: Turkengasse 17 (1898), and
Enzenberg Hauptstrasse 38 (1909). A surviving wedding invitation for his
second son Mendel puts the family in Dominikgasse in 1913. Edgar turned up
a Roumanian era directory from 1924, which shows the second oldest daughter
Gusta living at Enzenberg Hauptstrasse 40 (next door to the parents' old
house or perhaps there had been a renumbering).

There are other people listed in the directories with the surnames Siederer,
Riemer and Freier. We assume they are related, but do not know how.
Information welcome.

My great-grandparents had seven children in all, or at any rate seven who
survived.

The oldest was a sister, Pepi, who married Leon Goldenberg, and we think
they went to Israel but don't know when. They're not in the Czernowitz
directories. One of that sister's daughters, Bertha Bleier, fled from
Vienna to London in WW2 with her son Erich and they then went to Israel.
Her husband Friedrich Bleier is in the Yad Vashem database. His parents are
in the Czernowitz directories. We do not know what happened to Bertha's
sister Tina Pincus, nor her husband's full name or what became of him. Tina
visited Britain in the 1930s. We think that much of the family was by then
living in Vienna.

Another brother, Ignatz, came to Britain as a refugee with his wife Irene in
1938, and died in 1964 and 1986 respectively. They met and married in
Vienna, but we don't know when. I knew them both. Ignatz had resumed his
trade as a hairdresser. He had previously been in Britain in the 1910s. In
WW1, he was interned on the Isle of Man with his brother, my grandfather
Moritz. Ignatz returned to Czernowitz after WW1 and reported that he found
he had to bury his parents. So it was probably him who was responsible for
erecting the gravestone of his mother found by the 'graveyard rabbits'.

The sister Gusta lived on in Czernowitz during the Roumanian period, but
eventually had to leave (possibly via Vienna) and came to London, where she
died in early 1945.

The youngest brother Koloman Siederer (known as Kubi) was a quiltmaker like
his father. He and Ignatz are in the Vienna telephone directories for 1937
and 1938. He escaped to Brussels with his wife Stella and daughter Ilse.
He fled again, we think via Spain to New York, where he his brother Mendel
had settled, marrying a Czernowitz woman called Ester Nerlinger. There is a
branch of the family, now living in New York and New Jersey. Kubi died in
New York in 1955. Stella was not so lucky, and died in Auschwitz. Ilse
became a 'hidden child', hidden in an abbey and then a brothel (or perhaps
the other way around). She eventually was rescued and came to London, where
she has children and grandchildren.

A couple more peculiarities: My father has my grandfather's birth
certificate from Czernowitz, but, though it gives his birth date correctly
in 1886, it was issued much later in 1905. It has a later entry in the
'Remarks' column which a cousin has had translated. This says (as I
recollect) that, following a new law passed by the Austro-Hungarian Emperor
in 1906, the marriage of the parents in 1907, and a declaration by the
father Chaim Hersch Siederer acknowledging the paternity of the illegitimate
child [my grandfather], the certificate now acknowledges that the child has
the status of legitimacy. The certificate was issued by the Israelitische
Matrikenfuhrung Czernowitz, presumably a civil registration authority for
Jewish marriages created by the 1906 law. My grandfather's brother Mendel
(born 1888) has a birth certificate with exactly the same 'Remark'. The
known dates of the family history suggest that the parents would have been
married in the early 1880s. It is highly unlikely that the 'marriage' in
1907 was anything more than a civil marriage to take advantage of the new
law.

It also may be of interest that my father still has my grandfather's
certificate from some sort of technical college in Czernowitz. This was
issued in 1902 and certifies him qualified as a hairdresser, chiropodist and
wigmaker. He made his living in Britain at the first two of these trades.
My father is rather protective of the certificate or I would scan it in.

It's good to learn about all the activity on the project. I can't do much
to contribute directly, but hope these snippets are interesting, and would
welcome information about any of the names mentioned.

Regards

Nigel Siederer
Email: nigelsiederer_at_good-foundations.co.uk
 
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Received on 2009-08-06 15:44:08