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I began researching my family in the late 1990s. As anyone who does genealogy research is aware, knowing your ancestral hometown is key, and the first hometown I discovered was that of my great-grandmother, Lena Alexander. She was born in Gálszécs, Hungary (today, Sečovce, Slovakia).
In the Family History room at a Mormon/LDS temple near my home, I ordered two microfilms with records for Sečovce. They arrived a few weeks later, and I spent hours scrolling through the reels, record by record. Interpreting the century-old handwriting wasn’t easy, and the fact that the text was in four different languages (German, Hungarian, Yiddish, and Slovak), none of them English, was also a challenge. But names are names, and I was excited to find a lot of Alexanders.
Over time a picture emerged of a couple who had ten children between 1860 and 1880, the third in line being my great-grandmother. The father was a master shoemaker, and the children were merchants whose shops dealt in leather goods, including leather hides and shoes; one was a cobbler. My research led me to a cousin in New York City whose grandmother was one of the ten children. Growing up in the region, he and his family regularly visited his grandmother in Sečovce. He described the small town in vivid detail, in a way that transformed it into something very real.
In 2001 I boarded a plane bound to visit the town. In Budapest, I met up with a genealogy researcher/translator and a driver, and in a comfortable white minivan, we left for Slovakia. When I planned the trip, my goal was to do the kind of research I had done back at home, accessing paper records. But on the overnight flight, I changed my mind. My goal would be to find a living relative from that town. Connecting with a living, breathing person would be so much more meaningful.
In Kosice, Slovakia’s second largest city, we checked into our hotel and immediately began our search. Quickly, we had a lead. An older gentleman from the community shared with the genealogy researcher the exciting news of an Alexander infant who had survived the Holocaust. Additional research established that this survivor was now living with his family in Australia. We were even given a phone number, a tantalizing detail that failed to live up to its promise, when, back at the hotel, upon calling, I learned that the number of digits in Australian phone numbers had changed, the number was useless. Locating my cousin would prove not to be so easy.Arriving in Sečovce the following day, our first stop was the Public Record Office near the entrance to the town. There I was stopped dead in my tracks by an unsympathetic official who informed the genealogy researcher that absent proof of relationship, no records would be shared with me. Good thing I had changed the goal of the trip from paper research to finding a living relative. The official did refer us to a gentleman whom she described as the “town historian”. Arriving at the address, we met Peter Sklencar, owner of a graphic design business and ardent historian of Sečovce, who was very kind and knowledgeable. He took me on a tour of the city that included a visit to the surviving Jewish Cemetery (an older cemetery, he told me, had been covered over years before with a parking lot). I looked in vain for the gravestone of one of any Alexander family members. Only later, back at home, I found the gravestone of my great-great-grandmother on a disc I obtained containing the images of all the stones in the cemetery.
Peter and I kept in touch after my return to the US, and he later shared a surprising discovery. The building in which his office was located, and where I first met him, had once been owned by my Alexander ancestors.
My great-grandmother’s younger sister, Pepi Alexander, married Chaim Weinberger, Rabbi and teacher at the town’s cheder. The couple had eleven children, including a few who immigrated to the US. Just to the right is a picture of Chaim with his students:
My great-grandmother’s youngest brother, Bernat Alexander, was born deaf and mute. As was the custom at the time, he was sent to Bratislava and trained as a cobbler. Early in 1941, when he was 64 years of age, Bernat was informed that his shoe repair business would be liquidated together with all other Jewish-owned businesses. He wrote a letter to Jozef Tiso, the Roman Catholic priest who was President of Slovakia, asking that his modest business be exempted. There was no response and Bernat was subsequently killed, along with most of the Jewish population of Sečovce. In 1947, Tiso was executed for crimes against humanity. Bernat’s only daughter, Esther, survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel.
The search for my cousins in Australia went on for more than six months, but in December of 2001 we finally connected and in 2003 we held a family reunion in Florida. Today, almost 20 years later, I’m in regular contact with my Australian cousins.
My great-grandmother Lena joined her older sister Fannie in Philadelphia. Lena married a man from her hometown (against her will it is said; she was happy as a single working woman) and the couple had seven children, among them my grandfather. Like Lena’s siblings in Sečovce, most from that generation became merchants with shops that dealt in electrical supplies and hardware. Lena long wanted to travel to Sečovce to visit her mother. In 1914, her son Harry purchased a steamship ticket for her and her youngest daughter, Nettie. They were scheduled to leave at the end of July, but world events intervened, in the form of World War I, and sadly Lena was never able to make the trip.
The Alexander family tree appears below. Surnames associated with the family through marriage in Sečovce include: Berman, Friedman, Horn, Keszler, Klein, Papper, Perlman, Schönwald, Schwartz, Straussman, Weinberger, and Weitzer.
The Alexanders of Gálszécs/Sečovce:
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(1840-1921) author's g-g-grandmother (click to enlarge) |
to Pres. Tiso of Slovakia (click to enlarge) |
to Pres. Tiso of Slovakia (click to enlarge) |
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Compiled by Judy Petersen
Created by JP 22 November 2021 Last updated by JP 26 November 2021 copyright © September 2021 Judy Petersen Email: Judy Petersen |
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