THE UNGERLEIDER FAMILY

The UNGERLEIDER surname probably originated in or near Prague, Czech Republic in the mid-1700s. One story has a starving man stumbling into town, being found and taken in by the local Rabbi. The Rabbi said, “oh, you poor starving man” and the name stuck. This story has a happy ending—the “starving man” ends up marrying the Rabbi’s daughter! Of course, the name could have been given as a joke. The “starving man” could have been a prosperous, rotund sort of person, whom his friends kidded in much the same way a very tall man may get the nickname “Shorty”. Which story is correct? Who know? Who cares? They’re both great stories!

What is known, however is that in 1746, one Abraham SCHICK HUNGERLEIDER traveled from Prague to the famous annual Leipzig fair in Germany, and his name was duly recorded. It is possible he was the founder of the H/UNGERLEIDER clan. It is presumed that everyone with the H/UNGERLEIDER surname in their family tree is related. People with this surname can be found across the breadth and width of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and one UNGERLEIDER researcher has over 20,000 names in her database.

My branch of the vast UNGERLEIDER family lived in Gálszécs, Hungary, now Sečovce, Slovakia. The patriarch of the family was Markus UNGERLEIDER (1804(?)-1881). He and his wife, Rezi née BIRNBAUM, had at least four children, Taube (Toni) who married Salamon HOOR, Ignatz who married Perl (Pepi or Pessl) UNKNOWN, Hani, and Beile (Bertha) who married Moshe Yakov WEISS.

Beile’s older sister Taube (aka Antonia or Toni) and her husband Salamon HOOR had eight children, but I have only been able to trace one of them. Their son Majer was the middle child. He married Hani FRIEDMAN and they had five children, only one of whom, Benjamin, survived to adulthood. Benjamin, born in 1883, married Rivka GRINBERG[ER]. They had twelve children. This family lived in Uzhorod prior to World War II. Seven of the twelve children, along with their families, perished during the Holocaust. One son, Josef, escaped the war by immigrating to British Mandate Palestine, where he married and had two children. Tragically, he died fighting in Israel’s War of Independence, in the Kfar Etzion bloc on the day before the cease fire, signaling the end of the war, was announced. The other four children of Benjamin and Rivka, all girls, somehow survived the Shoah. They all made their way to Israel after the war and rebuilt their lives.

Beile’s brother Ignatz moved to Oradea, a major city in what is today Romania. A family of craftsmen, Ignatz was a master tailor, and his four sons were either tailors, shoemakers, or painters. While there were many losses during the Holocaust, there are descendants of one branch that still live in Romania, and descendants of another branch moved to Montreal, Canada.

My great-great-grandmother, Beile, married Moshe Yakov WEISS, a cobbler, originally from Cemerne, near Vranov nad Toplou. While there are a number of WEISS families in this area of Slovakia, ours is distinguished by the fact that they are Levites. Moshe Yakov, a cobbler, served in the military and according to the 1869 census employed two male apprentices and a female servant, all non-Jewish. He and Beile had eight children, though two probably died as children. Moshe Yakov died in 1873 during a cholera epidemic, leaving behind a widow with six children under the age of twelve. Probably in dire economic straits, a few years later Beile married off her eldest daughter Ottil (Ethel) at the age of 15. Sometime around 1880, Beile left for America with her children, son-in-law, and two grandchildren. They settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. To make ends meet, Beile, who tried on various American names including Betti, Bertha, and Beckie, became a washerwoman and took in laundry. Everyone worked to support the family. Son-in-law Leopold WEISS (it is not known if Leopold and our family were related) and Beile’s eldest son, my great-grandfather Louis, then only around 15 or 16, both worked in the garment trade. Louis worked as a cloak cutter, married Anna WEIS[Z]BERG[ER] around 1893 and in a span of nine years, they had five children: Minnie, David, Lillian, Morton, and Beatrice. By 1910, Louis was able to move his family out of the slums of the Lower East Side to The Bronx. Soon afterward, they moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where Louis had relatives on his father Moshe Yakov’s side of the family.

Unfortunately, Louis died in 1915 of colon cancer, leaving Anna a widow whose five children ranged in age from 13 to 21. My grandmother, Minnie, was the eldest, and assisted the family by going into retail sales. The family eventually moved to the Los Angeles area, where most of the descendants reside today.

Louis’ siblings remained in New York. Related surnames for this family are RIEMER, GREENBERG, TROMMER, KAPLAN, SWARTZ, KATZ, GINSBURG, KLANG, JACOBSON, LEVY, SCHWARTZ, PERLSTEIN, WEINBERGER, LASKOWITZ, ROSNER, MIRKIN, OPPENHEIMER, ANDREWS, JOSEPH, GREENWALD, SCHRIER, ELLENTUCK, and FURST.