 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
 |
||
The Kindness of Strangers
Finding My Turmann Family
"Karl mentioned in this article that he was the sole survivor of his Lemberg clan.... I wrote to him immediately—and quickly heard back from him by phone. We both had the same reaction—we were in tears. We are second cousins, once removed!"
Turmann family Tombstone, Wiener Zentralfriedhof,
photo by Traude Triebel
My story begins in 2007 when I found the names of my maternal great-grandparents, Leon Turmann and Rosa (Zuckerberg) Turmann, on the JewishGen Burial Registry – Austria. That information, and the many JewishGenners who responded to my inquiries, led me to discover the history of this branch of my family and to a tearful connection with an unknown family member. Names on a Tombstone The photographs generated new information and raised many questions. The engraving on the tombstone read S.L. Turmann, not Leon Turmann. How did the name Leon appear on the burial database with only “S.L.” on the tombstone? What did the “S” stand for? In addition to my great-grandmother’s name, Rosa, the name Salomon Turmann also appeared on the tombstone. Who was he? The names of their parents were not listed on the tombstone, so I was still in the dark as to the names and vital dates of my great-great-grandparents. Help from the Austrian-Czech SIG
The most intriguing piece of information gleaned from the marriage record, however, was the fact that my Turmann family was originally from Lemberg (Lvov), not from Vienna as I had thought. This would provide a new direction for me to follow in my research. The helpfulness of JewishGenners didn’t stop there! A few months later Traude Triebel, the woman who had sent me the tombstone photos and the marriage record for my great-grandparents, sent me another record for a person with the Turmann surname who had the same parents as my great-grandfather! Yes, it was the marriage record of my great-great-uncle, Isak Mayer Turmann. Before this, I had never known the names of any of my great-grandfather’s siblings. Searching for Great-Uncle Heinrich and his Son
According to family stories, this cousin had been in a prisoner of war camp in Canada during the war, but I didn’t know whether he had come to Canada voluntarily or had been arrested as an enemy alien in England. I posted a question about this to the JewishGen Discussion Group and received many replies, including one from an individual who found a file on my cousin in the Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives. What a wonderful surprise! I contacted the Archives, they contacted his living descendants, and his family agreed to obtain and send me a copy of the 54-page file. It contained many letters from my great-uncle Heinrich pleading for his son’s release, a letter from my grandfather, and other interesting items. Finding a Family SurvivorA JewishGen researcher sent a recommendation to the JewishGen Discussion Group to go back and revisit our research, to check for new and updated information—and so I did just that! In re-examining some Polish records in the JewishGen database and comparing them with names in the Shoah Names Database at Yad Vashem, I found that several pages of testimony from Yad Vashem for my family members were from the same person, Karl Blick of California. Who was this Karl Blick? I googled his name and was amazed to find a recent newspaper article that told of his ordeal in a Siberian prison camp for five years during the war, his eventual release, marriage in Poland, and immigration to the US in 1954. Karl mentioned in this article that he was the sole survivor of his Lemberg clan. Finding his address, I wrote to him immediately—and quickly heard back from him by phone. We both had the same reaction—we were in tears. We are second cousins, once removed! I sent him my family history chart and he sent me photographs of our Zuckerberg family taken in Vienna and Lemberg. A cousin of mine who lives in California visited with Karl and his family, and we continue to keep in touch. The Kindness of JewishGennersThe databases and discussion groups on JewishGen have been and continue to be invaluable resources for my family history research. The community of researchers on JewishGen is so supportive, intelligent, generous and far-reaching. In response to this generosity, I have helped JewishGen with donations and have assisted other researchers in their efforts, which I find very gratifying. I am proud to be a member of this tribe! May 2010
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
