SCHLESINGER FAMILY

Simon SCHLESINGER was born in Gálszécs [Sečovce] around 1832 and married Leni MOSKOVICS (born around 1841 in Baskocz) in Baskocz on 4 December 1862. Baskocz is a little north of Homonna (Humenne). JewishGen records flesh out the MOSKOVICS family in Baskocz, naming parents and siblings. It is interesting to note that Leni’s older sister Chaje also married a man from Gálszécs (Isak MARKOVICS). Simon and Leni appear in the 1869 census records in Leszkocz, a few miles to the west of Homonna, with their three children, Moricz, Maria, and Bernat, along with two other people. Later records suggest they continued to live close to Hommona and had at least seven children. Their youngest, Helen, was born in Mislina, another village in the Homonna area, in 1884.

In trying to trace Simon Schlesinger back to Gálszécs, all that could be found on JewishGen, in the 1869 census, was a Betti Schlesinger born there in 1834, two years after Simon, and two other women born Schlesinger in 1833 and 1834 and who were living as married women in Gálszécs in 1869 but who were not necessarily born in Gálszécs.

The varied adult lives of Simon and Leni’s children are probably typical of the experience of many Jewish families from the Carpathian region of Hungary. Moricz moved a short distance east to Munkacs (Mukachevo), married and then settled in Ungvar (Uzhhorod) with his wife and at least three children. Bernat moved to Pest where he spent the rest of his life, marrying twice and finally dying there in 1939. His mother, Leni, came to live with him after she was widowed and she died in Pest in 1921. There is evidence that both Moricz and Bernat sought to assimilate into Hungarian society (as did many Jewish families at this time): Bernat changed his name to Bertalan and Moricz adopted a new family name, Sandor. Bertalan’s second son took on the entirely Magyar name of Imre Szendro.

The three youngest Schlesinger children all emigrated to America at separate times in the 1890s, settling in New York where they married other recent Jewish Hungarian immigrants. Helen Schlesinger returned to Hungary to be with family members for the birth of her second child in 1907 but this appears to be the last time that there was a direct contact. There are many descendants of Helen Schlesinger still living in the United States.

Moricz Schlesinger’s son Hugo Sandor also left Hungary and made a life for himself abroad, but under more unusual circumstances than his American cousins. Born Herczel Schlesinger in 1892, Hugo served in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I and was captured on the Galician front. He spent time as a POW in Siberia before escaping eastwards after the Russian Revolution. After working for a period with the American YMCA, he ended up in Shanghai in the early 1920s where he developed a successful business career with the controversial American entrepreneur Frank Raven. He returned briefly to Europe to visit his widowed mother in Uzhhorod (now in Czechoslovakia) at the end of 1923 where he soon married Klara STEINHART. The newly married couple returned to Shanghai and were soon joined there by Hugo’s married sister Erzi, and her husband Geza Vajda. Both Hugo and Erzi stayed in Shanghai right through the Japanese occupation. Hugo died in California in 1947 on his way to Europe with Klara, perhaps hoping to find surviving family members. Erzi and Geza left Shanghai with their two boys at the end of 1948, shortly before the victorious People’s Liberation Army occupied the city. The family members all obtained US citizenship, but Erzi and Geza continued to run the family business from Tokyo.