The Rosenblum Family of Skala

by Jim Ostroff

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My maternal great-great grandfather was Oiza Rosenblum. He was born around the mid-1830s and was married to Pepsha (Pessie) Cohen. I don't know where either of them was born, but from the 1860s to the early 1890s they lived in Skala. Oiza – whose signature is on my grandparents' marriage documents – had several children: Avrum (Abraham), Chaskel, Moshe and Perala. Lore has it that there were two more sons – Dufka and Yussel – who were horse traders and were "abducted by Cossacks."

Avrum Rosenblum Oiza's first child, Avrum, was born in 1860 and lived in Skala for the first 30 years of his life. His marriage to Taube (Bobscha) Tepper of Tluste was said to have been arranged. They were divorced and then remarried, perhaps because Avrum had a reputation for a wandering eye. Avrum and Bobscha had five children: Jacob J. (my grandfather, after which I was named, born 1888), Louis, Chune ("Charlie Red"), Katie and Irving. It is said that my grandfather was born in Skala; but death certificates for all five children list only "Austria" as their place of birth.

In the 1890s, the Rosenblum family moved from Skala to Borszczow, where my grandfather and his siblings were raised. Oiza's son Moshe and daughter Perela married in Europe and came to the U.S. after the turn of the century. Chaskel's family moved to Vienna.
Avrum's son Jacob, my grandfather, married Kayla (Clara) Schkolnik in 1910. Jacob, Clara and their infant daughter Regina (whom we knew as Virginia) emigrated to the U.S. in 1913. They had two other children: Theodora (my mom, born 1919) and Charlotte (born 1924).
One of my Grandmother's Clara's brothers, Paul Skolnick, married one of my great-grandmother Bobscha's sisters, Esther Tepper. That meant my Grandpa Jacob's Aunt Esther also was his sister-in-law and my mother's great-aunt Esther also was her aunt. The genealogical convolutions go on and on.
Chaskel had a granddaughter Lily Rosenblum who had a harrowing escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, found her way to England, and eventually settled in New Zealand. Her son Peter is married to Clare Bruell, who is active in JewishGen work and has attended several annual IAGJS conferences.

Kayla (Clara) Schkolnik and her husband Yakov (Jacob J.) Rosenblum in 1913, the year of their emigration to New York.

Jim Ostroff Skala Research Group member Jim Ostroff is the great-grandson of Oiza Rosenblum