IAJGS 2018 in Warsaw - Part 2 Warsaw Outside of the Conference

Ghetto wall marker - Warsaw

     Before the IAJGS conference started, we took the opportunity to tour around Warsaw.  We did take one organized tour where we visited the (reconstructed) old town, the residence of the last king of Poland, the Warsaw uprising monument and other places that gave us some context for the Jewish history part of our trip.  Mostly we walked and explored central Warsaw. Everywhere we went I felt like I was walking on graves.
     The Warsaw ghetto was the largest in Europe holding about 400,000 people at its peak and surrounded by 11 miles of walls, most of them 10 feet high.  When the Nazis liquidated the ghetto and wiped out the last remaining resistance members, they leveled everything inside of the walls.  There are a few wall fragments left standing, but the Poles have placed markers on the streets and sidewalks to show where the wall once was.  There are also monuments to those who resisted, and those who were deported and perished from the ghetto. Wherever you walk you find them.  I also visited the Jewish Historical Institute (a co-sponsor of the IAJGS conference) which had a moving exhibit of documents from the Oneg Szabat archive.  This was a secret record collected by Emanuel Ringleblum, a historian, and his collaborators, of day to day life in the ghetto in the beginning, and then a record of the deportations from the ghetto and testimony of those who had escaped other towns and camps of the destruction of Jews and Jewish life in Poland.  Knowing that they were unlikely to survive, the members of the Oneg Szabat program buried the documents in metal boxes and milk cans, hoping that they would be found in the future and that people would know that the writers had existed. Two troves of documents were found under the rubble after the war. 

One of two milk cans containing part of
the Oneg Szabat archive buried in
the Warsaw Ghetto and found after the war.

   Towards the end of the war, when the Poles in the city also rose against the German occupiers, they were wiped out as well and the remainder of the central part of the city was also leveled by the Nazis.  Bodies that had been buried in courtyards or streets during the uprisings, as well as those who died in shattered buildings or in underground bunkers were left in place when the rubble was bulldozed after the war. Warsaw still commemorates the rising every year.  The anniversary was while we were here so all over the city there were fresh flowers and votives placed at large and small memorials.  There is a museum dedicated to the uprising that I visited before I left.  The story of the uprising and the subsequent devastation of the city was chilling. 
     In the middle of what had been the center of the Ghetto is a monument to those who were deported and killed, and those who, in the end, fought and died.  Facing that monument is the new POLIN museum.  This award-winning museum celebrates the 1,000-year history of Jews in Poland.  The museum was also a co-sponsor of the IAJGS conference and provided speakers at the conference, and special events and tours at the museum during the conference.  The main exhibition is beautifully done, filled with interactive displays illustrating the richness of Jewish life in Poland.  The Shoah has its place in the story but does not overwhelm the larger sweep of history.  A temporary exhibit focusing on the events of 1968 and how they affected the remaining Jewish population under the communist government brings the story up-to-date. 
   Warsaw was rebuilt at once after the war but as a dreary communist "paradise".  Now many of those dreary buildings are being torn down and replaced with gleaming modern architecture.  A new building called the Warsaw Spire, which was next to our hotel, was very striking and has won some European awards for its design.  There is construction  of new apartments, condos and offices everywhere. It will be interesting to see how it turns out.   

IAJGS 2018 in Warsaw, Part one

   

The Old Synagogue in Kazimierz - still active

This years' International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies' conference is being held, for the first time, in Central Europe, in Warsaw, Poland.  Poland was the heartland of what was, before the Holocaust, the largest concentration of Jews in the world.  Although I, unlike most Ashkenazi Jews, cannot trace my family to any lands that were ever part of historic Poland, since DNA has proved that all Ashkenazi Jews are related to all other Ashkenazi Jews, what I am learning about Poland at the conference and in my travels, is part of my family's story, too.
     We came to Poland ahead of the conference to have some time to explore.  We spent three days in Krakow, an early capitol of Poland.  Through good luck, the city was not destroyed in WWII so it has a beautiful old center with a huge main square containing beautiful old churches including one dating from the 10th century.  While there were Jews living in that area from about that time, they soon moved to a nearby city of Kazimierz, which, since it was just outside of the walls of old Krakow, soon was absorbed into that city.  Kazimierz was the center of Jewish life in Krakow up until the population was liquidated between 1939-1944.  Today it is the "hip" part of Krakow with cafes and clubs.  Jews have begun to return to Kazimierz, and there is a new Jewish Community Center and at least two congregations using the synagogue buildings that were used as storage or stables by the Nazis and so were not destroyed.  Other synagogue buildings have been repurposed as book shops or cafes but in a way that respects the remnants of decorations that reveal their earlier function.  The new Jewish population is not trying to recreate the past, but rather to establish a modern Jewish community as part of the Polish citizenry.  A short walk across the river from Kazimierz is Podgorze,

Segment of the ghetto wall - Podgorze

the site of the ghetto established by the Nazis.  It was much smaller than the ghetto in Warsaw (more in my next post).  Walking through it you can see remnants of the ghetto wall, built to look like a line of Jewish tombstones, the square from which the residents were loaded onto rail cars for shipment to a death camp, and two bright spots - the pharmacy of Tadeusz Pankiewicz a Polish Catholic who brought medicines and food to his shop inside the ghetto and hid ghetto Jews, and the factory of Oskar Schindler, made famous by the film Schindler's List, who saved 1200 of the about 4000 Krakow Jews who resurfaced after the war.

Emmanuel Zelkovitch Manning, whose name was NOT changed at Ellis Island

Emanuel Zelcovitch Manning from his 1933
Declaration of Intention to become a U.S. citizen

Today I read a Facebook post by one of my cousins that perpetuated one of the most common myths in American genealogy - that because an immigrant could not speak English on arrival, a name was changed at Ellis Island.  I have no doubt that the person who told him that story about her father believed it, but the evidence says otherwise.

Emmanuel Zelcovitch (father-in-law of my 1C1R Herbie Lieberman) did arrive in New York from England on November 4, 1922, aboard the Aquitania from Southampton1, England. He likely did not go through Ellis Island to be processed, as the manifest says that he traveled second class, and only third class and steerage passengers were sent to Ellis Island unless, on brief pre-examination in the harbor, they appeared to have a medical condition.  His manifest does not indicate that that was the case.

Although he was born in Negresti, Roumania in 1889, both the UK outbound passenger list2 and the manifest of the Aquitania indicate that he was a UK citizen.  His later petitions for naturalization in the US (more on these later) also indicate that he was a naturalized British citizen.  His name is neatly printed on the Outbound UK list, along with his address in Manchester England.  The manifest of the Aquitania, which like all others for arriving passengers was prepared before the ship left Southampton by company personnel who spoke the various languages of the passengers, was likewise neatly typed and shows Emanuel Zelkovitch.  The inspectors in New York simply read the names from the manifest and did not make changes to them.  The manifest also states that Emmanuel was a manufacturer and was able to read and write English and had visited the U.S. on two prior occasions.  Emmanuel had been living in England for some years.   He married his wife Minnie Vogel on March 5, 1919, in Manchester and their first child, Enid (the source of the story above) was born in Manchester in 19213.   The 1922 Manchester phone book lists him as a manufacturer of raincoats there4.

Emanuel Zelcovitch on the manifest of SS Aquitania 1922

Minnie Zelcovitch and baby Enid also had departed from Liverpool, England in November of 1922 aboard the Samaria, and arrived in the US on November 12 through St Albans, Vermont via Canada, and thence by train to Boston where she would join her sister.5  Like her husband's manifest, this one was clearly typed.  It also noted that Minnie could both read and write in English.

The Zelkovitch family moved to Savannah GA where he became a grocer, and they had two more children,  He began using the last name Manning for business, but did not use it in all circumstances. The earliest record that I found was the Savannah city directory of 1924 that lists Emmanuel Z. Manning (Minnie) as a grocer operating a store at 320 Gaston6.  In 1927, he filed a Declaration of Intention to become a U.S. citizen in the court in Savannah7.  He used the name Emanuel Zelcovitch on that document and pledged to renounce all allegiance to the King of England.  He did not complete the naturalization process at that time, however.  The 1930 U.S. census taken in April of that year, shows Minnie using the name Manning with the three children living in the Boston area without her husband8.  On September 25, 1930, Emanuel (Manea) Zelkovitch entered the U.S. through St Albans, Vermont9.  Again the certificate of arrival is clearly typed. When he again filed a Declaration of Intention to become a U.S. citizen in Boston MA on August 9, 1933, ( the process required continuous U.S. residence of five years prior to naturalization) he indicated that his residence immediately prior to the U.S. had been in Montreal, Canada10.  In answer to the question of nationality, he states that he is British through naturalization. In March 1936 when he petitioned for naturalization (along with Minnie and Enid) he again applied under the name of Emanuel Zelcovitch, but at that time he requested that his name be changed legally to Emanuel Zelcovitch Manning11.

Something caused Emmanuel Zelcovitch to begin using the name Manning fairly soon after his arrival.  Many immigrants changed their first or last names to something that sounded more American to them.  Perhaps he liked the sound of the American nickname"Manny" with the alliterative last name Manning.  We will probably never know exactly why he changed it, but the evidence shows that he was not given a new name at Ellis Island.  There are other questions about this man.  Why did he and his wife travel separately to the US?  Why did he go to live in Canada without his family between 1927 and 1930?  Maybe some other family member knows the answers to these questions.  I'll keep looking.

1. Ancestry.com, New York, Passenger Lists, 1820-1957 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010), Ancestry.com, Year: 1922; Arrival: New York, New York; Microfilm Serial: T715, 1897-1957; Microfilm Roll: Roll 3215; Line: 29; Page Number: 45 Record for Emanuel Zelcovitch

2. Ancestry.com, UK, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960 (Provo, UT, USA. Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012), Ancestry.com.

3. Ancestry.com, Georgia, Naturalization Records, 1893-1991 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012), Ancestry.com, National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; ARC Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, compiled 1825 - 1980; ARC Number: 2387451; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States; Record Group Number: 21. Record for Emanuel Zelcovitch.

4. Ancestry.com, British Phone Books, 1880-1984 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007), Ancestry.com, BT Archives; London, England; British Phone Books 1880-1984. Record for Emmanuel Zelcovitch.

5. Ancestry.com, Massachusetts, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1820-1963 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2006), Ancestry.com, The National Archives at Washington, D.C.; Washington, D.C.; Series Title: Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at Boston, Massachusetts, 1891-1943; NAI Number: 4319742; Record Group Title: Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1787-2004; R.

6. Ancestry.com, U.S. City Directories (Beta) (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011), www.ancestry.com, Database online. Record for Emanuel Z Manning.

7. Ancestry.com, Georgia, Naturalization Records, 1893-1991 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012), Ancestry.com, National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, D.C.; ARC Title: Declarations of Intention for Citizenship, compiled 1825 - 1980; ARC Number: 2387451; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States; Record Group Number: 21. Record for Emanuel Zelcovitch.

8. Ancestry.com, 1930 United States Federal Census (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2002), www.ancestry.com, Database online. Year: 1930; Census Place: Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts; Roll: ; Page: ; Enumeration District: ; Image:. Record for Minnie Manning.

9. Ancestry.com, Massachusetts, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1798-1950 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011), Ancestry.com, National Archives at Boston; Waltham, Massachusetts; ARC Title: Petitions and Records of Naturalization , 8/1845 - 12/1911; NAI Number: 3000057; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: RG 21. Record for Emanuel Manea Zelkovitch.

10. Ancestry.com, Massachusetts, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1798-1950 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011), Ancestry.com, National Archives at Boston; Waltham, Massachusetts; ARC Title: Petitions and Records of Naturalization , 8/1845 - 12/1911; NAI Number: 3000057; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: RG 21

11. Ancestry.com, Massachusetts, State and Federal Naturalization Records, 1798-1950 (Provo, UT, USA, Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2011), Ancestry.com, National Archives at Boston; Waltham, Massachusetts; ARC Title: Petitions and Records of Naturalization , 8/1845 - 12/1911; NAI Number: 3000057; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: RG 21. Record for Emanuel Zelcovitch petition for naturalization