Barbara Clow posted this message to the JewishGen forum on June 9, 1999:

Please excuse me if I am asking at the wrong place. In researching my Lithuanian family name of Paznokaitis, I have found that this name was being sold to German Jewish people along with papers to leave Europe. Was this a common practice in 1902-1904? I have found 2 families who bought this name: Milleris and Angrabe. Now my family was from Sudargas, which had a lot of Jewish people. Since I have Catholic marriage and baptism records I know my family was not Jewish. But the people I found who had come to the US and Canada did not revert back to their original names nor practice being Jewish. They married Catholics and pretended to be Lithuanian. This is difficult for me, because when I find someone I think is a relative. It turns out they are not. Have Jewish people run into this problem when they are tracing their genealogy in Eastern Europe? Thank you for any help.

I couldn't help with her inquiry, but answered anyway because of our mutual connection to Sudargas. The following paragraphs are extracted from her subsequent emails:

I must say everyone has been so kind to me with many replies. I must say I feel very bad when I see the Holocaust information about both Sudargas and Jurbarkas where I still have relatives. I have been going to Lithuania every summer since 1994. I stay in Jurbarkas, Kaunas, Vilnius and other towns where I have lots of friends. I have been to Sudargas many times searching for anyone who may have remembered my family. I have a friend at the Vilnius archives who has gone through all the books or me for Sudargas. Unfortunately for me a large gap of years is missing. The ones I need of course.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if our families knew each other. My grandfather Klemensas Paznokaitis was a merchant and a jeweler and watchmaker according to my mother. Unfortunately I don't remember him, as he died when I was only 6. My mother said he spoke 5 languages, Yiddish being one. The story goes that they had Jewish friends, a Goldman family that they joined in Lafayette, Colorado, but I haven't checked that out yet. My only living cousin in Jurbarkas says that the family name at one time was "Milleris", changed during Czarist times to avoid conscription.

Here is a little history on my family. My grandfather, Klemensas Paznokaitis was born in Sudargas in 1881 to Aleksandres and Barbora (Zenkauskaite). He was the 6th of 7th children and the 4th son Aleksandres was a master builder (carpenter). They had a small kaimas outside town at Rezgaliu. It must have been very near the border as they said that one side of the road was Prussia and the other side Lithuania. As each son became of conscription age, he left. Klemens appeared in Scotland in 1903 when he met Ona Truskevicuite. They married and came to the US. I do not know if they went directly to Scotland or were in Germany first. The ship manifest states they were German citizens. (Could have been phony passports, as he snuck out of Lithuania.) He helped his remaining brother and sister come here.

In the summer of 1999 Barbara visited Sudargas, and after her visit she wrote:

I have photographs of the Sudargas cemetery. Also photos of the forest mass graves where the Jews of Sudargas and Kiduliai were murdered. I also have two lists of Jews who used to live in Sudargas and Kiduliai, but the names have been Lithuanianized. Your people are not on the list. The lists were compiled for me by the oldest people living in these two towns who remembered their Jewish neighbors. I also photographed the ground where the former Synagogue was located in Sudargas. And a row of houses that survived WW2 where Jewish people used to live across the street from the synagogue. I also photographed the forest in Alytus where monuments appear in the forest where the Jewish people were murdered. The synagogue in Alytus still stands but is all boarded up. I also photographed the outside of the only Synagogue in Lithuania still active, which is in Vilnius. I will be happy to send all of this to you in exchange for a donation to Lithuanian Orphan Care.

Return to the previous page to get access to the photos that Barbara Clow sent.