The Mendele Review: Yiddish Literature and Language
(A Companion to MENDELE)
______________________________________________________
Contents of Vol. 07.011 [Sequential No. 137]
31 October 2003
1) About this issue of TMR (ed.)
2) Kadya Molodovski and the "Daytsh" ['German']
3) "Der daytsh, yemakh shmoy" (Kadye Molodovski) and English translation (ed.)
4) References to Yiddish and Use of Yiddish Words in Some Recent Fiction:
Adam Thorpe, P. D. James, Erri de Luca, Martha Cooley, Rosellen Brown
5) Books Received: M. Litvin, fun der velt-poezye_ (ed.)
6) The surname Szul (Naomi Fatouros)
1)------------------------------------
Date: 31 October 2003
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: About this issue
a) The first item in this issue of TMR illustrates the transformation of
the term _daytsh_ 'German' in Yiddish literature, with a particularly
striking instance of its negative use in a volume of children's verse by
Kadye Molodovski. b) The poem in question is given in romanized Yiddish
and in English translation. c) The increasingly common occurrence of
Yiddish-origin terms in American and British fiction is dealt with
cursorily in regard to five contemporary novels. d) A new volume of fine
Yiddish translations from major European authors is reviewed. e) A
reader gives onomastic advice.
2)-------------------------------------
Date: 31 October 2003
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: Kadya Molodovski and the "Daytsh" ['German']
"Der daytsh, yemakh shmoy" ['The German, May His Name Be Blotted Out']
(pp.91-2) is the title of the final poem in Kadye Molodovski's _Yidishe
kinder (mayselekh)_ ['Jewish Children (Stories)']*; today that title
stuns us. "yemakh shemoy" [< Hebrew _yimakh shemo_] is a powerful
magical curse that belongs to the adult world of conflict and
confrontation, hardly a phrase to be taught to young children. To erase
the names of persons is not merely to destroy them physically but to
eradicate every vestige of their being and the awareness others have of
them -- i.e. to annihilate them spiritually. In its complete form the
curse is "yimakh shemo, yimakh shemo vezikhro" ['May his name and memory
be blotted out!']. The phrase is often used as a formula following
mention of a despised individual and has the force of qualifying it with
some such tag as "of accursed memory". Lurking behind its use is the
biblical phrase from Exodus (17:14) "makho emkhe et zeykher amalek" ['I
will utterly blot out the remembrance of Amalek'] Amalek is the
archetypal blood enemy of Jews and Judaism; hatred of Amalek is built
into the ritual of the calendric year and given signal importance in the
Passover Seder. The passage alluding to Amalek is read in synagogue on
the Sabbath p receding Purim. During the reading of the _megila_ on
Purim, Haman's name is accompanied by loud booing in keeping with the
commandment to blot out the name of Amalek (Deuteronomy 25:19), as Haman
was a descendant of Amalek.
However, one glance at the date of Molodovski's book reminds us of the
mood of a time when words were used which today would be avoided or for
which more temperate substitute terms would be found. Though published
in March 1946, the volume was set in prin t in 1945 and the poem itself
may very well have been written earlier. It is a direct expression of
the attitude of most Yiddish-speaking _folksmentshn_ as well as
intellectuals towards the hated enemy during what Lucy Davidowitz has
called the Nazi War Against the Jews. It is both an allegorical
chronicle of the destruction of Jewish life in Poland and a war song, a
rallying cry meant to raise the morale of one's own people and score the
barbarism of its persecutors. It is a chilling composition today be
cause in form it is a children's poem wherein adult curse cohabits
uneasily with the conventional devices of children's verse -- arborial
setting and animal speakers. Full of rimed couplets, it also rings with
three identical unrimed lines. In its 45 lin es, the poem has fifteen
separate rimed couplets and two pairs of couplets within three five-line
stanzas whose middle (or third) line is repeated in each five-line
stanza and which rhymes only with itself, making it a kind of refrain.
Yet we wonder, What kind of poem is this and why is it included in this
children's book? It exploits the repetitive and imagistic devices of
the traditional folk ballad; the narrative is stark and simple, moving
from the idyllic to the horrific with no waystations. The speakers are
animals and their number is conventional -- three birds ask questions
about four humans and three garden creatures (cat, mouse, cricket)
reply. The pattern of question and answer and the refrain of lines
23,25/30,32/37.39 are balladic.
The subject matter, the historical experience of the Shoa can hardly be
hidden from children; on the other hand it needs to be presented with
great care and tact, in ways which young minds can constructively deal
with without being terrified -- no easy pe dagogic task. But in the
early 1940s, to a Yiddish poet, tact was never considered. One needs to
recall the language Ehrenburg used at that time in his letters to the
front, boldfacedly bidding the Red Army soldiers to kill and kill and
continue killing Germans. Molodovski's poem is of the same cast.
We are struck, too, by the manner in which the term "Daytsh" has altered
in Yiddish. In Mendele and Sholem Aleykhem, the "daytsh" is the
progressive Jew, the advocate of maskilic reform who has traded his long
gaberdine _kapote_ for a short jacket and has trimmed or cut off his
beard. He is more often than not a benevolent figure. But World War II
changed things -- and not only for Jews. Here is Yevgeni Yevtushenko in
his "di bobe" [tr. M. Litvin, _Fun der velt poezye_, pp. 130-1]: "di
kinder zingen in sibir di 'varshavyanke' / un s'loyft fun moskve / oyf
tsurik, tsurik / der daytsh..." [1956]** ['In Siberia the children sing
the Varshavyanka / And the German runs, runs from Moscow']. The force
of history made an ethnophaulism out of a positive term.
But again, why did Molodovski include this poem in a children's
collection? We assume the decision was hers, but this need not have
been the case. Perhaps we can only speculate here. Moyshe Olgin,
longtime editor of the communist _Morgn frayhayt_ in New York is said to
have received a doctorate from Columbia University for his _A Guide to
Russian Literature_ (New York: Russell & Russell, 1920). Moissaye [not
Moyshe here] J. Olgin wrote: "one characteristic feature of juvenile
Russian literature. There is no marked distinction between books for
children and books for uneducated adults." [Appendix, pp. 310-311] I
have often wondered how true that was. To the extent that it was true,
it could very well have influenced attitudes of Jewish authors raised in
the Russian milieu. Molodovski did know how to write specifically for
children, but on the painsoaked subject of the Shoa, her raw feelings
(certainly in this instance) rather than her judgement ruled.
*Kadye Molodovski, _Yidishe kinder (mayselekh)_. New York:
tsentral-komitet fun di yidishe folks-shuln in di fareynikte shtatn un
kanade, 1945. [English on back of title page: "Copyright 1945 by the
Central Committee of the Jewish Folk Schools of the Jewi sh national
Workers alliance and Poale Zion in the United States and Canada"]
Illustrated with nine original drawings by Mane-Katz. The other
illustrations are by Tirza and are taken from the Hebrew edition of this
book published by HaKibuts HaMeukhad.
** The "Varshavyanka" referred to here is the Russian version of the
Polish revolutionary song.
3)-----------------------
Date: 31 October 2003
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: Kadya Molodovski's "Der daytsh, yemakh shemoy"
"Der daytsh, yemakh shmoy"
fun Kadye Molodovski
1. hinter varshe in a yidishn hoyf in a kleynem
2. iz gevaksn a boym, nisht gefregt zikh bay keynem.
3. hobn feygl a nest dort gemakht,
4. gezungen fartog un tsheriket farnakht.
5. a gezang farn shuster, er zol zikh freyen.
6. a tsherik farn shnayder, zol freylekher neyen.
7. un farn beker, un farn melamed, vos lernt di parshe
8. hobn feygl gezungen in hoyf, hinter varshe.
9. eyn foygl geven iz baym shuster oyf kest.
10.der shuster flegt kerndlekh varfn lem nest.
11. nokh a foygl geven iz baym shnayder oyf shpayz,
12. flegt khapn un pikn fun zayn shisele rayz.
13. nokh a foygl gelebt hot baym beker fun tish,
14. der beker flegt im tsuvarfn beygelekh frish.
15. un der melamed, der frumer reb mikhl
16. flegt gebn di feygelekh breklekh fun kikhl.
17. biz eyn mol a zumer, az okh un az vey,
18. iz gekumen der daytsh, der daytsh yemakh shemoy.
19. flit der foygl der ershter aroys mitn vint:
20. -- vu iz der shuster? zayn vayb un zayn kind?
21. entfert a ketsl, bahaltn in grub:
22.-- nishto shoyn der shuster, nishto shoyn zayn shtub.
23. es iz a daytsh do geven, un a daytsh iz der toyt!
24. s'iz geblibn a bergl farblutikte shtroy,
25. es iz a daytsh do geven, a daytsh yemakh shemoy.
26. flit der foygl der tsveyter aroys mitn vint:
27. -- vu iz der shnayder un zayn hoyzgezind?
28. entfert a mayzl fun nore aroys:
29. -- nishto shoyn der shnayder, s'iz khorev zayn hoyz.
30. es iz a daytsh do geven, un a daytsh iz der toyt.
31. geharget dem shnayder, geshtokhn zayn froy.
32. es iz a daytsh do geven, a daytsh yemakh shemoy.
33. flit der foygl der driter aroys mitn vint:
34. vu iz der melamed un zayn hoyzgezind?
35. entfert a grilkhl fartsitert mit moyre:
36. -- nishto der melamed, farbrent iz zayn toyre.
37 .es iz a daytsh do geven, un a daytsh iz der toyt.
38. er hot farpaynikt di mentshn, un gekhoyzekht fun zey.
39.es iz a daytsh do geven, a daytsh yemakh shemoy.
40. shoyn nishto hinter varshe keyn yidisher hoyg,
41. nishto shoyn keyn boym un keyn feygl deroyf.
42. es voglen di feygl fun der nest der tseshterter.
43. zey meydn oys daytshland, di heym fun di merder.
44. es veynen di feygl a vistn geveyn:
45. zol der daytsh, un zayn land, un zayn nomen fargeyn.
----
'The German, May His Name Be Blotted Out'
['In a little courtyard in a Warsaw suburb,
Without begging permission, a tree grew.
And birds built a nest there,
And sang by day and chirped by night.
They sang for the cobbler, to make him merry,
They sang for the tailor, to lighten his woes.
In that Warsaw suburb courtyard
The birds sang for the baker and the teacher.
One bird found seeds near his nest,
The cobbler put them there.
Another bird was the tailor's guest,
He always had rice in a proferred plate.
Yet another fed at the baker's table,
Feasting on a fresh-baked bagel.
And the teacher, pious Reb Mikhl
Scattered cake crumbs to all the birds.
Till one summer day, oh cursed day,
The German arrived, may his name be erased!
On the crest of the wind the first bird asked:
"Where are the cobbler, his wife and his child?"
And a cat, hiding in a ditch, replied:
"The cobbler is gone and his house as well.
A German was here, and a German is Death!
A small heap of bloodied straw remains,
A German was here, may his name be erased!
On the crest of the wind the second bird asked:
"Where is the tailor and his whole household"?
And a little mouse replied from his lair:
"The tailor is no more, nor is his home,
A German was here, and a German is Death!
The tailor was killed, his wife was stabbed.
A German was here, may his name be erased!
On the crest of the wind the third bird asked:
"Where is the teacher and his family?"
A little cricket quaking with fear replied:
"The teacher is gone, his Torah is burned.
A German was here, and a German is Death!
He tortured the people and mocked them as well.
A German was here, may his name be erased!
No Jewish courtyard near Warsaw now,
No tree, no birds.
The birds wander from their shattered nest,
Avoiding Germany, the murderers' home.
The birds weep their bleak refrain:
May the German, his land and his name disappear!'] [tr. - LP]
4)-----------------------------------------------
Date: 31 October 2003
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: References to Yiddish and Use of Yiddish Words in Some Recent
Fiction: a) Adam Thorpe, b) P. D. James, c) Erri de Luca, d) Martha
Cooley, e) Rosellen Brown.
-----------------------------------------
a) Adam Thorpe _Nineteen Twenty-One.
In the 21st century, readers of American and British novels will
encounter many references to things they know little or nothing about,
terms borrowed from new sciences, new fashions, new poltics. But a
small body of terms from older spheres may puzzle them even more. The
name _Yiddish_ and Yiddish-origin words will be among them, leaving many
readers in the dark -- even in Manhattan, much less in Derbyshire.
I recently read a novel by Adam Thorpe entitled _Nineteen Twenty One_,
the year in which the action of the book transpires. The book centers
on a group tour to the bloodied battlefields of Ypres where many of the
tourists have lost loved ones. The excursion is most bizarre; the
fighting fields with their unburied human cadavers and ravenous rodents
are altogether repulsive. The writer-hero who has come along on the
tour with his best friend is drawn to a young British nurse who has lost
a brother and has a parallel affair with a middle-aged German woman who
has lost a son. There is one reference to Yiddish in the entire novel,
but it hides a clouded issue, that of the family's conversion from
Judaism to Christianity. One needs to read this novel very clos ely to
catch this strand, one which the author apparently opened but for some
reason failed to develop.
The explicit line, vague in itself is: "He sang the chorus of the
Yiddish love song his father knew, joyously he sang it thinking of his
father. Barambaram." (136). We have no idea what the "Yiddish love
song" was. Jewishness is an almost absent subject in the novel. One
passage is explicit:
"When he woke up, still tipsy and not feeling all that dreadful, he
again thought of his Jewishness. He lay there and mastered his headache
and thought of his Jewishness much more precisely, how in fact he had
never really _thought_ of it before, never really considering it as
something centre stage, as something principal in the play of his life.
He was thinking rapidly, memories flitting past him like tiny winged
things, like mischievous elves -- memories of the morsels of Jewishness
he had come across at home: old photographs of bearded rabbis in
Russia... and his father's strange jokes and the odd strange term for
things, quite / ordinary things. But as far as he could remember he had
never consciously known he was Jewish, the word had never passed an
yone's lips at home -- it was his schoolmates who had revealed it to
him, in the normal rough repartee of the school yard." (256-7). And in
a later line: "He would read _Daniel Deronda_ again, to see what you
did with your Jewishness." (p. 257).
>From one point of view the novelist has dealt very realistically with
the consciousness of a son of a convert who read from The Book of Common
Prayer to his son zealously throughout his childhood. The son seems to
have allowed his father's readings to flow over him. (There was in fact
a Hebrew translation of this work used by Anglicans in their services
with converted Jews, but the author makes no mention of this.) Everyone
appears to know the hero is "Jewish" except the hero himself, who in
this s ole passage recalls "his father's strange jokes and the odd
strange term for things, quite / ordinary things." Here we have,
obliquely expressed, an undeniable reference to Yiddish and its savoury
collocations, only partially abandoned by a father who often sang a
"Yiddish love song."
-- b) P.D. James, _Original Sin_. New York: Alred A. Knopf, 1995. [first
published London 1994]
The splendid mystery writer P.D. James ventures into the inner rhythms
of Anglo-Jewish life in her _Original Sin_, the resonance of whose title
will not be missed. Our hero, Whitechapel-born Inspector Daniel Aaron
joined the police department at age 18 . He is called out on a murder
case on the day he was to attend a luncheon in honor of his parents'
40th wedding anniversary. His brother, David, a successful attorney,
and his brother's fiancee will be there. His brother, three years older
than Daniel, ha s lost a leg and is the mother's favorite. Daniel "...
knew that his aunt regarded him as an uncaring son, an unsatisfactory
nephew, a bad Jew." (120) "And Bella would be there, of course. Like
David, she was a lawyer but she would have found time for his parents'
anniversary. Bella the perfect daughter-in-law-to-be. Bella who was
learning Yiddish, who visited / Israel twice a year and raised money to
help immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia, who attended Beit Midrash, the
Talmudic learning centre at the synagogue, who kept Sabbath; Bella who
turned on him her dark reproachful eyes and worried about the state of
his soul." (p. 123-124). Here we have the interesting association of
learning Yiddish with a general intensification of Jewish religious and
com munal commitment -- not an impossible phenomenon in contemporary
Jewish London. Inevitably , too, with the introduction of Jewish
thematics comes the shadow of the Shoa. Here is the hero's central
dilemma, also quite aptly defined: "Burdened with guilt fr om
childhood, he couldn't reject his faith without feeling the need to
apologize to the God he no longer believed in. It was always there at
the back of his mind, silent witness of his apostasy, that moving army
of naked humanity, the young, the middle-aged, the elderly, flowing
like a dark tide into the gas chambers." (p. 124)
------- c) Erri de Luca. _God's Mountain_. New York: Riverhead Books, 2002.
The philo-Semitic Italian novelist Erri de Luca in _God's Mountain_ (New
York: Riverhead books, 2002) introduces a native Yiddish speaker, a
cobbler: "I'm a shoemaker, a _sandler_, they used to say in my
hometown." (p. 123) The common Yiddish term would be _shuster_, but
Stutshkov does give _sandlr_ and in Modern Hebrew we have _sandlar_
[stress on LAR]. This shoemaker has settled in Italy. "Rafaniello
knows Neapolitan. He says it resembles his native language. To him
Italian's like a piece of fabric, a garment draped over the naked body
of dialect. He adds, 'Italian is a language without saliva. But Neapolitan's
got spit in its mouth that helps you stick your words together. Stuck with
spit: for the sole of a shoe it's no good, but it makes a good glue for dialect.
In my language we say the same thing: _zigheclept mit shpaiecz: glued with
spit_." (p. 1 08) In Yivo transcription this would be "tsugeklept mit
shpayekhts". Ignats Bernshteyn ( _Yudishe shprikhverter un rednsarten_,
Warsaw 1908, p. 317) gives the saying as "Shpay deroyf, klebt es!"
['If you spit on it, it will stick!'] and Bernshteyn comme nts: "Zogt men
tsu-n-a shlekhten bal-melokhe, az er makht a shtikel arbeyt, vos es vet
nit lang halten." This brief reference to Yiddish somehow enhances its image
as a repository of colorful folk wisdom.
------------------------------
d) Martha Cooley. The Archivist. London: Abacus, 1998.
There are Jews and would-be Jews in this remarkable first novel which
touches on T.S. Eliot's verse and private life, the Shoa, kabala, jazz
-- especially Bud Howell, the verse of LeRoi Jones, literary archives,
mental institutions and manic-depression. I n this potpourri we meet
many Hebrew kabbala terms such as _en-sof_ 'infinity', and in the course
of making her New York characters (especially Len) speak, we hear
several Yiddish terms. The vulgarism _putz_ (literally 'penis', used to
mean 'fool') seems right in the speech of Sam: ("He [i.e. Sam] called
me... a worthless putz.", p. 237). _Putz_ is very common in Jewish
English and not uncommon in general English. _bren_ on the other hand,
used in Jewish English precisely as it is in Yiddish, is less com mon in
the Yiddish lexical repertoire of Jewish Americans, though by no means
rare. Here is Len speaking very naturally :[p. 238]: "...not even a
first-class tradesman like Sam, who would show the world what a _bren_
he was, how he was going to leave his mark." [ _bren_ 'fervor, zeal'.
cf. _brenen_ 'to burn'. _bren_ often used figuritively in sense of
'firebrand; dynamic person'. The author italicizes this word, which
indicates her awareness of its foreignness.
------
e) Rosellen Brown. _Half a Heart_. New York: Picador, 2001.
A Jewish girl has gone South where she meets a brilliant black man with
whom she has a child. She is somehow forced to abandon her daughter.
Eighteen years later this young woman shows up on her doorstep. This
highly perceptive novel has quite a few Yid dishisms, fairly common
ones, spelled "intuitively".
We get a jaundiced view of the famous Galveston experiment: "... her
father was actually the one immigrant between them, having come to
Galveston when he was six, direct by boat because so many powerful East
Coast German Jews had made it plain that they'd like their Eastern
European compatriots to camp elsewhere, with their unsavory poverty,
their inferior language." (p. 8) The name of this "inferior language"
is not spelled out, but of course it can only refer to Yiddish, which
was the language of the E astern European Jews who were directed to
settle in Galveston in the effort to diversify Jewish immigrant
absorption in America. We encounter the term _schwartze_ 'black' in a
number of guises: The _schwartze_ 'the (black) cleaning lady' [p. 29
and passim] is a common usage.
But note the following exchange (p. 30): "A colored one. A little
_schwartze_. _Schwartzediche. Black. Blackish." There is an
ambiguity here, the heroine, Miriam, does not know at first if her
mother [who is deteriorating mentally] is referring to a sweater or to
the baby she had given birth to from a black father. Miriam's mother
has never seen her black granddaughter. The author helps the reader by
translating. The SYR spellings here would be _shvartse_, shvartsedike_.
Here are some other instances of use of Yiddish words, all of which
strengthen the reader's sense of a particular intercultural milieu:
"What will people think of you, especially a Jewish girl, who lives in
jeans and an army jacket... like a _wilde chayeh_? A wild thing? A
_wolf_? [The SYR spelling is _vilde khaye_.] (p. 112).
"I have a girl. A beautiful little girl.... A _momser_.... _Momser_
was a Yiddish _bastard_. She had always heard the word in affectionate
jest -- "little _momser_ -- naughty adorable child. A grandmother word.
It was no joke in law, though, in Jewish or Southern or any other
kind..." (p. 160). The Standard Yiddish word is _mamser_, the /o/ for
/a/ pronunciation being dialectal and belonging to Southeastern Yiddish.
The author clearly understands the pejoritive and ameliorative senses of
_mamser_.
"Though maybe guilt would make the check bigger. _That guilt gelt_."
(p. 203) The daughter is manipulative and intent on getting financial
help from her mother. This makes the guilt/gelt near-pun most
effective.
The daughter Ronnee asks her mother: "What's a _shana maidel_?" And
her mother, Miriam, replies: "A _shana maidel_ is a pretty girl." To
which the daughter responds: "Okay, got it, Jewish 101... _Yiddish_
101." Here we have a reference to a college course Ronnee might have
enrolled in. The SYR spelling, of course, is _sheyne meydl_.
The spellings in this and in many other novels reflect the widespread
confusion of Yiddish with German and the relatively restricted knowledge
even among Ashkenazic Jews one or two generations away from Warsaw,
Minsk and Vilna, of the Yivo orthographic s tandards and how to
transcribe Yiddish in Latin letters (the Standard Yiddish Romanization).
Americans have learned to spell _shtetl_ according to the SYR (rather
than _schtetel_), articulating syllabic _l_ quite nicely, though English
does not have words ending in -tl. A website devoted to Nahuatl (
http://www.kith.org/logos/words/lower2/qquetzal.html) comments
facetiously: "One might also guess that all English words containing
'tl' are from Nahuatl. In fact, though, there are plenty that aren't
like ' saintly'. Well, perhaps all English words that end in 'tl'?
Such a hypothesis could lead to interesting but doomed theories about
the origins of _shtetl_ (perhaps the Aztecs were one of the lost tribes
of Israel?) and Kwakiutl." The wit who wrote this was of course making
the common confusion Jewish=Yiddish; the Lost Tribes of Israel, one
assumes, were speakers of Semitic languages, at least originally.
5)--------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 31 October 2003
From: Leonard Prager
Subject: Books Received -- _Fun der velt-poezye_ fun M. Litvin
Litvin, M. _Fun der velt-poezye; iberzetsungen fun frantseyzish,
rusish, daytsh_. [Tel-Oviv]: H. Leyvik farlag baym fareyn fun yidishe
shrayber un zhurnalistn in yisroel, 2003, 213 z"z. [M. Litvin / De la
poesie mondiale; Traductions du francais, du russe, de l'allemand].
ISBN 965-90108-3-4.
A deservedly warm appreciation of the author by Y. Niborski and Vera
Solomon introduces this attractive volume issued ten years after his
death. Born in Russian-occupied Lithuania, Litvin (1906-1993) was as
much a native Russian-speaker as he was a native Yiddish-speaker. He
was well versed in Loshn Koydesh as well as in modern Ivrit and having
lived for an extended period in Weimar Germany, he knew German well. By
virtue of both his rich personal experience and his sensibility, he ably
fulfilled the task he chose for himself -- translating major poets who
wrote in several world languages into Yiddish. _Fun der velt-poezye_ is
a welcome addition to Yiddish translations of French, Russian and German
verse.
6)------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 31 October 2003
From: NFatouros@aol.com
Subject: The surname "SZUL"
In a message in The Mendele Review Volume 7 Number 7 dated 7/22/03 Roman
Szul (r.szul@chello.pl) pondered the origin of his surname. Permit me
to make the following suggestions:
Mr. Szul should go to www.jewishgen.org, and type his surname in the
"search this website box" that he will find there. He may be surprised
to find 19 "click-on-able" sites on which the name SZUL appears -- for
example, in some Krakow and Hungarian records He may also try looking
for SZUL in Jewishgen's Family Finder to see who else is researching
this surname.
Perhaps Mr. Szul will also want to join Jewishgen's Discussion Group and
ask about his name, and may subscribe to Jewishgen's mail groups for
Poland and Hungary and post a message to those groups as well.
Many of us "Jewishgenners" are no longer Jewish, and some of us also
wonder whether they have Jewish backgrounds. Also, a lot of people find
themselves wishing that their parents had spoken more about their
backgrounds, and that they had questioned their parents about their
origins before it was too late to ask.
Naomi Fatouros (nee FELDMAN)
Bloomington, Indiana
NFatouros@aol.com
Researching: BELKOWSKY and BIELKOWSKY, Odessa and Berdichev; ROTHSTEIN, Kremenchug; FELDMAN, Pinsk; SCHUTZ, RETTIG, WAHL,
Shcherets; LEVY, Mulhouse; SAS or SASS, Podwolochisk; RAPOPORT,
Tarnopol, Korostyshev; BEHAM, Salok and Kharkov; WOLPIANSKY, Ostryna.
___________________
End of The Mendele Review vol 7, no. 11
Editor, Leonard Prager
Associate Editor, Joseph Sherman
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