Family Trees
As I’ve mentioned before, my mother Eva and her brother Harry didn’t make it easy for their children to ask questions about the past. I knew the names Hilda, Tillie, Bertha, Paul and Robert and that they were somehow related to us. I’d seen a few photos and heard a few stories, but all of these people seemed very distant from me.
In the mid-1990s, my mother got a phone call from a man who was married to a woman who was related to my grandmother’s side of the family. He was putting together a family tree and was very meticulous. Now that I’ve spent time poring over the tree, I am in awe of the work he did, particularly in the early days of the internet when very little would have been available online. He asked my mother and Harry a lot of questions about what they knew about the Löwy side of the family. To my surprise, both Eva and Harry were very forthcoming with this stranger who lived hundreds of miles away. I guess it was a lot easier to talk to him about facts than to talk to my cousins and me about their memories.
The letter below is a copy of one she wrote to clarify some points on the tree. Jon did an incredible job, including footnotes with stories and memories of all the people he interviewed. I now know things I’d never heard that he learned from my mother!
A few things about this letter – like her mother, Eva used a typewriter (a good thing, since her handwriting was virtually illegible) and made this carbon copy for her files. She tells of the serendipity of finding Helene’s memoirs – she moved a bookcase and voilà! I have been amazed at how often serendipity or fate has seemed to play a role in my journey. I’m glad to see I am following in my mother’s footsteps.
One more thing about this letter. You’ll notice that she remembers clearly that Helene’s mother Rosa was born in 1848 – she says she recalls that because it was an important date in Austrian history. This week I spoke with a genealogist in Prague to ask him to help clarify some of the family dates that have eluded me, whether because I couldn’t find them online, I couldn’t do the research since the sites weren’t in English, or the information is only available in physical form. The first thing he did was find information on Rosa’s grave and the year of her birth – 1844, not 1848! As he told me, he likes to rely on facts rather than people’s memories. My mother was absolutely certain the year was 1848.
I was overwhelmed by the family tree Jon created – it is 21 pages long - just a few of the pages are related to my immediate family. Now that I’ve spent time poring over the document, I am incredibly grateful for the trove of information he had compiled and shared. Unfortunately, when I tried to contact him to thank him for all his hard work and tell him how valuable it was, I discovered he had died the year before.
Excerpt from 1997 family tree
The other family tree I have was in Paul Zerzawy’s papers. This was also a challenge to follow, especially since out of 6 pages, only 2 really pertained to me and the entire document was in German. From the page listing Julius Zerzawy’s dates and marriages, I learned the identity of Elise Zerzawy (red mark next to her name) and her son Fritz Orlik. I also learned the birth and death dates for two of my grandmother’s sisters. You can see that the tree was created before 1939, as Paul wrote in the date of his father’s death.
Excerpt from Zerzawy family tree
Using both documents, I’m still finding it challenging to create a family tree of my own, even using software specifically made for that purpose! I am in awe of whoever put together the Zerzawy family tree in the 1930s. No computers or search engines, just hours and days of legwork and library research. Not to mention the painstaking hours of typing up the final document with multiple carbon copies.
You can see a preliminary family tree made last year incorporating info from the Löwy and Zerzawy trees on the Family Tree and Bios page. It’s time to update as I learn more about the family!