Nadel / Fuhrmann / Banda Family Biography

Submitted by Myriam Fender

Sara Feiga Nadel first married Wolf Fuhrmann, who was a widower (his first wife was called Schena Schlosberg) with two children: a son, Getzel (George), born 01/05/1865, and a daughter, Pauline, born 22/07/1862. These two children emigrated to the USA where their descendants are still living. Wolf and Schena had had a first son, Hersch, born 24/01/1858, but we assume that he died in infancy.

Wolf Fuhrmann and Sara had a son, Marc Fuhrmann ( also known as Marc Leib Nadel), born in Kanczuga in 08/05/1881 (his mother was therefore 23 at the time). Sara Feiga was very young when she married Wolf; it was in fact an arranged marriage, as was the custom. Her step-children were not much younger than her: 4 and 7 years difference only, and Hersch, if he was alive, would have been one month older than her! Sara saw her husband for the first time at the end of the wedding ceremony when she was allowed to lift the thick veil that covered her face; she is said to have found him handsome!

Sara Feiga belonged to a big family: she is believed to have had sixteen brothers and sisters! She married young, probably at 16 or 17, because her family was very poor, which is not surprising considering its size and the absence of family help in those days. Wolf Fuhrmann lived in the flat above theirs and was 'well-off'. He was probably 20 to 25 years older than her. When he died, she remarried Michel Banda (who died in Przeworsk on 28/04/1905). They had five children, all born in Przeworsk: Estera Rachela Banda born on 23/02/1894) and her four brothers, Mendel, known as Max, born 03/03/1898 (and married to Brandel in Esch-sur-Alzette), Elias, Philippe and Sigmund, the youngest, born 08/01/1904, which means that he was only 15 and a half months old when his father died.

Michel (Meckel) Banda, Sarah's second husband, had a brother(or a son of a first marriage) called Samuel (1864-1918) who emigrated to Metz before the other Bandas. He came from Przeworsk, was a clothing wholesaler, five children with Chana April (1868-1946) Caila, who married Mr. Rosenfeld, Jeannette, who lived in Bordeaux during the war, and died in a concentration camp with her daughter, Martha, who married Dr. Schlanger, who was a rabbi, Michel, who married Frieda Apfel just before the war (she died in Auschwitz with their son Samuel), then Rose, Helene Chaja who married Marc Fuhrmann, with whom she was not blood-related, although they were cousins through Sara's second marriage

So Samuel Banda's children were not blood-related to Marc Fuhrmann. The two families knew each other from Przeworsk in Poland. Przeworsk is a town near Przsemysl. Samuel Banda, having arrived in Metz first, let Marc Fuhrmann stay with him. Marc would have then met Helene again. He married her in 1908 and she was just over 16 years old.

Sara Nadel/Fuhrmann/Banda and her children came to Metz for the wedding, then went back to Przeworsk to organize their removal, and came back to Metz, where they fist stayed with Samuel Banda, who gave them work.

On his marriage certificate, Marc appears as Marc Nadel (his mother's maiden name). The explanation can possibly be found in an American book called Jewish Roots in Poland (Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories). by Miriam Weiner. In Chapter 1: "Introduction to Polish-Jewish Genealogical Research" by Jeffrey K. Cymbler, he writes: "In Austro Hungarian Galicia, according to civil law, only one son in each Jewish family, was allowed to marry. In addition, only those couples who possessed between 500 and 1000 florins and who paid 10% of their wealth as a marriage tax could marry. Galician Jews who had less than 500 florins could not even apply for permission to marry; those with more than 1000 florins had to pay a higher marriage tax. The result was that most Galician Jews were married only in a religious ceremony by a rabbi. The marriages were never recorded nor recognized by the civil authorities. The children of such unions were recorded by the civil authorities as 'illegitimate' and they were required to adopt their mother's maiden name as their own surname. Frequently a mother's maiden name was followed with the husband's surname listed as 'vel' or 'v', meaning 'also known as'."

Although he was living in Metz at the time, on his marriage certificate, Marc Fuhrmann gave his address as Rzeszow. The most likely explanation is that he would have had to do his military service if resident in Metz. At the time, military service lasted three years, and one can understand that he would have tried to avoid it, especially if newly wed!

For the same reason, Esther Banda and Chaim Marder got married in Luxembourg, in Esch-sur-Alzette, on 23/7/1913, although they were living in Metz at the time. When Estera Rachela daughter asked her mother why this was the case, she told her it was because her father had not satisfied his military obligations. This did not however prevent, in 1914, Marc Fuhrmann, as well Chaim Marder, from being mobilized in the Austrian army. Marc Fuhrmann was taken prisoner during the 1914/18 war, and deported to Siberia, from where he came back only years later.