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KarenM

Joined: 04 Feb 2025
Replies: 18
Location: Australia
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Posted: Sat Feb 08, 2025 6:58 pm Post subject: Searching for great grandparents

I am seeking assistance in finding my paternal grandfather and great-grandparents and wondered whether anyone could help. My searches to date have not been successful.

My father was born in Warsaw in 1933 (Salek Fischman). My paternal grandmother was Sara Sznajchendler, born on 25 July 1909, Warsaw(?). She married Abraham Fischman (date?). On her DP registration record (1946), her parents are listed as Moroka Schneigendler (father) and Kajla Kirschenbaum (mother's maiden name). I don't have any other information on them.

thank you

Trish
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Posted: Mon Feb 10, 2025 3:48 pm Post subject: Re: Searching for great grandparents

KarenM wrote:

Hi Karen,
I still cannot find anything for your family. The Jewish records on ancestry.com are limited. However, I did see on the Geneteka website https://geneteka.genealodzy.pl/ that the surname Fischman could also be Fiszman. The surname Kirschenbaum could also be Kirzenbaum. I'm not seeing Sznajchendler at all.

You might also try stevenmorse.org website. https://stevemorse.org/

Regards,
Trish

Sophia
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Joined: 05 Oct 2014
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Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2025 4:32 pm Post subject: Re: Searching for great grandparents

KarenM wrote:

Hi Karen,

One difficulty is that your father's birth record should be unavailable online because it is less than 100 years old. A further difficulty (for me, at least) is that the records are in Russian at the time of your grandmother Sara's birth and for the marriage of her parents. If you can get past that problem, then you can search here:

https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/zespol?p_p_id=Zespol&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&_Zespol_javax.portlet.action=zmienWidok&_Zespol_nameofjsp=jednostki&_Zespol_id_zespolu=96486

Just to orient you to how this is organized, it will help first for you to know that the city of Warsaw was divided into districts. You can see a bit about that here:

https://www.jri-poland.org/blog/warszawa-registration-by-cyrkul-districts/

If you know where in Warsaw they lived, that will narrow down your searches.

Each district (in Polish, "cyrkul") has a Roman numeral. When you look at the list of records on Szukajwarchiwach's website, you will see how the records (akta) are organized. There are births (urodzen), marriages (malzenstw), marriage annexes (aneksy) and deaths (zgonow) arranged by district (cyrkul) and by year. Some records seem to be missing. When you find a group of records that you want to look at, click on it and up will come the images of the pages. Usually at the end of each section there is an index. Sometimes you have a group of records that covers (for example) births for several years, or another with births and marriages and deaths for a single year, and in such cases you will see multiple indices within that group of records.

As always with handwritten records, some scribes had good handwriting and others did not. I tried looking at several of the indices merely by looking for long surnames that start with what looks like a "C" (that's for the "S" of Sznajchendler). The given name Sara is pretty easy to spot (it looks kind of like "Capa"). I did not have any luck, but it was not a thorough search.

Good luck with your research,
Sophia

KarenM

Joined: 04 Feb 2025
Replies: 18
Location: Australia
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Posted: Tue Feb 11, 2025 6:26 pm Post subject:

Thank you Trish and Sophia for your detailed responses. I understand that my father was born in Mazowieckie which I understand is/was a province encompassing Warsaw but I am unsure where in Warsaw....

I have very limited insight into their history but all of these links that you have provided are so useful and much appreciated.
thank you

Sophia
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Posted: Wed Feb 12, 2025 7:37 am Post subject:

KarenM wrote:

Hi Karen,

Woj. Mazowieckie is a much larger area to search in than Warsaw, unfortunately. If you had a document with the name of a town, it would be helpful, but I'm sure you would have mentioned it if you knew what it was. Not sure what else to try at the moment.

Sophia

Sophia
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Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2025 11:41 am Post subject:

Actually, everything I see about this family on the Arolsen website shows them as being born in Warsaw.
Too bad that the records of births, marriages and deaths are not complete online. I wonder if there are old city directories that would at least allow you to figure out which district they lived in.

Sophia

KarenM

Joined: 04 Feb 2025
Replies: 18
Location: Australia
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Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2025 1:38 pm Post subject:

Thanks Sophia. Yes I'm unsure where to go with this now as I don't have any information about my family that would indicate more specific locations or districts in Warsaw. Would you have any further suggestions about locating old city directories or does this need to be done in Poland? Thank you

Sophia
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Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2025 6:20 am Post subject:

KarenM wrote:

Hi Karen,

I found a directory from 1930 for Warsaw that you can access online for free. It covers businesses and homeowners.

https://mbc.cyfrowemazowsze.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/813

I will make a few comments for you. First, you can open it as a PDF or as DJVU. While the latter opens more quickly, I would recommend opening it as a PDF because then you have the ability to search the text. I played with it a bit, and I have to tell you that the search function is fussy. Sometimes you will do better to look for a fragment of a name (like FISZ or FISCH) rather than the whole name (FISZMAN or FISCHMAN). It comes down to what the optical search tool is able to recognize.

The 1930 directory may or may not be the best year for you to look at, but it seemed a reasonable place to start. I will add that this particular directory is not one long alphabetized list. Rather, it is a series of lists. The book begins with several chapters of government services, then a list of every street in the city and who lived there, then museums, theaters, hotels, schools, a section that is like the old "yellow pages" which lists people by profession, on and on, until finally on image 805 you get the first list of homeowners in the city. In such a directory, a person could show up multiple times, if they own a home and a business.

I am still not convinced we have the proper spelling of the surname, Sznajchendler. I am hoping that you will find something in this directory that gives you more certainty on that name. Again, I would encourage you to try multiple spellings and to try fragments of the name to see what you can find.

This may require several cups of coffee!

Good luck,
Sophia

KarenM

Joined: 04 Feb 2025
Replies: 18
Location: Australia
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Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2025 6:02 pm Post subject:

Thank you again Sophia! I appreciate your time. I will let you know how I go.

KarenM

Joined: 04 Feb 2025
Replies: 18
Location: Australia
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Posted: Fri Feb 14, 2025 7:32 pm Post subject:

Hi Sophia,
I searched https://mbc.cyfrowemazowsze.pl/dlibra/publication/edition/813 and found some entries that I think are worth pursuing/searching on further.
I was hoping that you may be able to point me in the right direction to dig deeper on some of these, as I am not sure what to do with them to try to verify any connections.
Re: my grandmother's first husband Szmul Blutstein, I located a record for Szmul Blutsztein on image 835 from the link.
Re: my grandfather & grandmother's second husband (Abraham Fishman), I located a record for Abram Fiszman on image 899.
Re: my great grandfather, shown as Mordka Schneigendler on my grandmother's D.P. registration record, I located a Mordka Sznajderman on image 1205.
thank you

Sophia
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Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2025 11:11 am Post subject:

KarenM wrote:

Hi Karen,

I am glad you found some interesting entries in the 1930 directory. I can see that the three addresses still exist in the city of Warsaw. Given the tendency of cities to re-name streets, this seems lucky and saves you a bit of work. For the Szmul Blutsztein you found on image 835, the street address is Stawki 9. Abram Fiszman was at Targowa 46 and I don't know if you saw it, but he shows up again on image 631. Mordka Sznajderman was at Smocza 10.

Looking at a current map, Mordka Sznajderman lived rather close to Szmul Blutsztein, while Abram Fiszman was on the other side of the river. You can try matching these addresses up to the map that divided Warsaw into districts, to get an idea of which district should have held the records of births, marriages and deaths for these individuals.

I think your way forward, now, is to try to figure out which office (USC - - Urzad Stanu Cywilnego) in Warsaw to apply to for a birth record for your father. This is not something I am able to guide you with, but BarbOslo should be able to tell you how to proceed. Once you have that, you will have a much clearer idea of whether Sznajderman is the correct name for your family. It is not close enough to Sznajhendler for me to feel very confident in it. As an exercise, I used the search function on the city directory and looked for entries ending in "dler" and found Szpashendler (image 1207), Szteinhendler (image 1210) and Szuchendler (image 1212) among others, but none of these are convincing to me, either.

Wishing you luck,
Sophia

BarbOslo
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Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2025 1:55 pm Post subject:

Hi everyone,
I can try to contact USC and ask how this can be ordered. You have to remember that USC is not an Archive. You can order documents that you can provide dates for. I assume you can order your father's birth certificate, because you know his full date of birth. There, only his parents are mentioned.
For you, the document that gives the most information would be your grandparents' wedding. Since your father was born in 1933, it took place before that. Do you know anything about your father's siblings? Was he the oldest?
-Barb

KarenM

Joined: 04 Feb 2025
Replies: 18
Location: Australia
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Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2025 3:58 pm Post subject:

Hi Sophia,
Thanks so much for your additional information on this and suggestions for a way forward with names and addresses.

Hi Barb,
Thanks for your reply. I would be very appreciative if you could try to contact the USC to find out about ordering a birth certificate.

I have no information about my grandparents' wedding. My grandmother married twice, first to Abram Fiszman and second to Szmul Blutstein. I am only aware of details about the second marriage (2 April 1948 in Bad Reichenhall) to Szmul Blutstein. There was one child born from the second marriage, so my father's half sister.

My father (Salek Fischman) had one brother (Moniek Fischman, now deceased) born 28 May 1934. My father was the oldest of the two.

thank you
Karen

BarbOslo
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Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2025 4:28 pm Post subject:

Hi Karen,
Give me 2 days. I will see if I can find anything more in this link you got from Sophie.
https://www.szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl/en/zespol?p_p_id=Zespol&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&_Zespol_javax.portlet.action=zmienWidok&_Zespol_nameofjsp=jednostki&_Zespol_id_zespolu=96486

Now I know which Cyrkul the streets belonged to. If the families lived there for a long time then with a bit of flax I can find something.
Then I can contact USC and ask how we can order the documents.

-Barb

KarenM

Joined: 04 Feb 2025
Replies: 18
Location: Australia
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Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2025 5:05 pm Post subject:

Thank you Barb, appreciate your help.
Karen

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