If
you recognize this family story, please contact
Laura Levy – llevydesign@hotmail.com
Our
families only cared for the spelling of their last names in Hebrew, so
they were recoded into Russian Cyrillic and from there to our Latin, or
from Hebrew directly to Latin in a number of ways. The main thing is to
sound out the spelling & see if the sounds are close. Note that
Polish, which uses the Latin alphabet, has slightly different rules for
some of the letters. In particular, in Polish c is pronounced ts or tz.
The
photo below is the Cegalnicka/Tzegelnicka/Sigel/Tzigelnitski/Cigelnicki
family of Smorgon. Lile/Leah/Lilly
CEGALNICKA (Sigel) Levy dob approximately 1909.
Elka
MEIEROVITZ CEGALNICKA
(Sigel) dob 1884 Smorgon Sister
Malcha
(Mildred) born 1913/1914. The
family
fled to Minsk after the pogrom of 1915. Her mother Sheina and sister
Sara went
to Vilna. Elka,
Lile and Mildred arrived
in the United States in 1923.
Sisters Lillian, Elke and Macha (Mildred), 1922 or 1923
Elka's
mother Sheina
MEIEROVITZ, Elka's father was Eliezer. Elka had at least 5
sisters and
two brother. Her
sister, Sara Kac,
was murdered in Ponary in 1942,
Nachman, her older brother, had a son Nisan Meyerowitz (dob 1901)
married to
Mere murdered in Kowno with his family in 1941. Bashe M.
Rabinowitz, fled
to Ukraine. One son immigrated to USA, his name was Rabbi Eliezer
RABINOWITZ.
Settled in Baltimore.
Sara
Kac had a son Shlomo, who survived, made aliyah, and died in Israel
several
years ago and a son Lole who died immigrated to Caracas.
Other siblings,
whereabouts unknown.
Elka
married Chaim
(Hyman)
TZEGELNICK/CEGALNICK/ZIGELNICK/SIGEL dob March 2, 1883 Lida. (We
finally got to
Lida!) It seems they married in Vilna in 1906 - at least that's what
her naturalization
paperwork reads. Chaim had one brother and many step brothers and
sisters. He
arrived in the US under the name Nuch or Ruch Chaim
Zigelinzky in
1914. Chaim's
father was Abraham TZEGELNICK/CEGALNICK/ZIGELNICK,
who was probably also from Lida.
His name is Abraham Yehuda on Chaim’s headstone.
The Tzigelnitzki Family
One
of his sisters, Sarah
Siegel (Sigel) lived in the US but returned to Europe to be with her
sisters in
France. Two of his
sisters were
twins. One of them
might be named Simone
or Simcha. I haven’t located
them, the only clue I
have is that one of the sisters married a man named Lole or Mole
Abromovitz and had a daughter named Janine. The other sister
had a
daughter named Idit.
Family
after the war in France in 1948 - Abromowitz?
“Wilno,
Wielka 47
Woronowa,
June 6, 1926
Dear sister,
I am sending you my photo as I promised you. I understand very well
that you
have surely forgotten me already, you surely can't remember what I look
like.
However I think you will remember me some. I thank you very much for
(right)
your generosity with us, I know you are suffering a lot but you must be
proud
that you can help when it is needed, it is only not good when one
cannot help
... Be well. Your brother Peisakh.
Copyright © 2016 Laura Levy
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Newhouse