Re: [Cz-L] Why I joined the list

From: Bruce Reisch <bir1_at_nysaes.cornell.edu>
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2009 13:19:31 -0400
To: Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu
Reply-to: Bruce Reisch <bir1_at_nysaes.cornell.edu>

Hi Nigel:

Thanks for joining the group. The burial register lists Chaim Hersch
Siderer at parcel 56 (now Area 38) plot 198. The stone at that
location is completely crumbled. He died in 1917, and I'm pretty
sure the LDS microfilms for Czernowitz would have the death record,
with possibly parents names and other information. Ruchel was buried
in Parcel 49, plot 112 and there is also a listing for Schmiel
Fischel Siederer, died 1908, parcel 55, plot 19. Ruchel, Schmiel and
Chaim are the only listings for the name Siederer.

I can help you with further information from the burial registers for
the surnames you mention.

Hope this is of some help!

Bruce

>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 17:19:31

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