Ancestral towns of family spouses |
| The town of Dukla was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when Ruth Rubel Rogers' mother was a girl. From 1848 until his death in 1916, Ruth's grandfather was a tailor to Franz Joseph, Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Dukla appears near the southern border of Poland on the map below, published by the Polish National Tourism Promotion Agency in 1995. It is about 120 miles southeast of Krakow, whose history shines light on its own. |
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Symbols near Dukla indicate "major cemeteries" and "outstanding synagogues" according to the map's legend. The large yellow stars signify major ghettos from World War II. Symbols near Krakow, Auschwitz-Birkenau to its west and Plaszow to its south, indicate sites of Nazi death camps and major concentration camps.Dukla became part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the same time as Krakow, in 1795 on the Third Partition of Poland. At the Congress of Vienna, in 1815, the region became a protectorate of Russia, Prussia and Austria. In 1846, the year Franz Joseph ascended to the throne, it became part of Austria, and it remained Austrian until 1919, three years after Franz Joseph's death, when it reverted to Poland. The Emperor wore clothes "My mother always spoke well of Franz Joseph and the Hapsburgs," said Ruth, who married Morris Rubenstein's second oldest son, Arthur. Ruth's mother had a sister, Netti, whose husband was also a tailor. Among his clients was the Duke of Galicia, according to Netti's grandson, Edwin Beer of Little Neck, NY. Edwin told me that the Jews appreciated Franz Joseph because of his zero tolerance for pogroms. "Every time a pogrom started, he would clamp down on the perpetrators," Edwin said. Flowers in his path Because Dukla was situated at the foot of one of the two passes over the Carpathian Mountains, it was of strategic importance, and military exercises were held there periodically, Edwin said. His mother told him that when Franz Joseph came to Dukla to review military maneuvers, young school girls would be marshaled to strew flowers in the path of his carriage. Franz Joseph came to the house Ruth remembers her mother saying that Franz Joseph had always been friendly toward her and her four sisters and brother. "He must have been to the house," she said. "I remember her telling me that everyone in the town came to look when he was there, so he probably came by horse-drawn carriage." Ruth's mother was 29 years old when she arrived in America in 1907 with her husband, Max Rubel. Tarnow: Max Sollender The future son-in-law of Ethel Varonok decided right after his Bar Mitzvah to seek a different kind of life for himself than the one he saw awaiting if he were to stay in Tarnow, a town 45 miles east of Krakow. Click here for his story, the first biographical feature composed for our family web page because of the important role he played in our family. Morris Rubenstein's wife, Esther Simon Morris Rubenstein's in-laws came from Brest-Litovsk, also called Brisk, a town on the border between Poland and Belarus. Situated about 110 miles east of Warsaw and originally Polish, Brest-Litovsk was taken by Russia during World War I, and the peace treaty ending hostilities was signed there in 1918. Brest-Litovsk became part of the Republic of Poland established in 1921, but it was captured by the Germans in 1941 and then retaken by the Russians in 1944. Larry Rogers' wife, Tess Deich Tess Deich's mother came from "Lida Vilna." I was 10 years old in 1952 when I asked Fanny Polachek Deich where she grew up. Lida is now in Belarus, but her response of "Lida Vilna" indicates it was in that particular province or "gubernia" of the Pale of Settlement associated with Vilna (now Vilnius), the capital city of Lithuania. Jerusalem of the North By 1897, 45% of the population of Vilna was Jewish, according to Daniel Soyer, author of Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880- 1939" (Harvard University Press, 1997). Soyer, who worked as an archivist at YIVO while researching his doctoral thesis that became the book, gives credit for that fact to an article by Jacob Lestchinsky, The Jews in the Cities of the Polish Republic, published in 1946 in YIVO's Annual of Jewish Social Science. Vilna had become, during Poland-Lithuania's golden age, the center of Jewish learning, culture and the arts. It had even earned the nickname of "The Jerusalem of the North." The Yiddish Institute for Jewish Research (YIVO) was born and flourished there until 1927 when it was moved to New York City and then, to a multi-million dollar new building, the Center for Jewish History. My earliest and a most significant adventure in this
endeavor was exploring YIVO's holdings in its former quarters at a most opportune moment.
Over a week of visits, I I became acquainted with Leo Greenbaum, whom I encountered
again on library duty one afternoon in the new Center for Jewish History. I always went during Leo's weekly shift. As riches on these two men arrived on my reading table, and the fee for photocopying soared, I shared with Leo about our Uberstein family, our CousinsPlus concept , and our then latest project: a Genealogical Packet for Future Generations (GPFG). In trying to "finish" this project of exploring our family history, I'd prepared something that would aid future generations, when more records would be available. This I distributed to whichever cousin in each of our 18 branches most convincingly promised to hand down his copy to the best-suited descendant. This GPFG consisted of all the main family names in Russian and Yiddish, some maps, and examples of what kind of historical data we hoped to someday find about us Ubersteins. "Let me put this in our genealogical collection," Leo said, revealing to me both the existence of such a collection and his title: "Accessing archivist." In 2001, a successor work -- "Teaching Packet for Future Generations" (TPFG) -- is reaching completion, to be printed on archival paper that is supposed to last for "500 years." A spiral binding makes it particularly sturdy, while still easily allowing the photocopying of individual pages. It will be available in the reading room at the Center for Jewish History, and by special order through my brother, Michael-David BenDor, michael-david@bendor.org. |
