All posts by Philip

People born in Kańczuga that are in the German Gedenkbuch

January 22, 2017HolocaustGedenkbuch, Germany, HolocaustPhilip

The Federal Archives in Germany has an online Memorial Book, listing as they state on the site “Victims of the Persecution of Jews under the National Socialist Tyranny in Germany 1933 – 1945”. This memorial book lists Jewish residents of Germany that were killed by the Nazis, and contains some 170,000 names. Of those names, nineteen names are listed as having been born in Kańczuga, which I’ve listed below.

Keep in mind that these are only those people who were both residents of Germany and were killed by Nazis during the war. This list does not include residents of Kańczuga who were killed by the Nazis who never lived in Germany (most of them) or those residents of Germany that were killed by groups other than the Nazis (such as those massacred post-liberation on Passover in 1945 by local Poles – even if they had lived in Germany).

If you click on the Details link, it will take you to the page on the Federal Archives web site with details on the person, including if known where they lived before the war, and where to and when they were deported during the war.

Surname	Given Name	Maiden Name	Birth Date	URL
Ament	Herz		1893-01-06	Details
Dorner	Breindel Bertha	Zellerkraut	1873-02-10	Details
Endzweig	Ruchla	Westreich	1897-12-09	Details
Fränkel	Miriam	Turen	1901-01-21	Details
Friedmann	Efroim Ephraim		1881-09-24	Details
Fuhrmann	Benzion Bruno		1894-08-06	Details
God	Feiga	Münzer	1896-09-22	Details
Klugmann	Nathan		1875-08-16	Details
Neumann	David		1893-02-25	Details
Neumann	Pessel Paula	Neumann	1888-06-26	Details
Neumann	Uscher		1896-02-25	Details
Pack	Simon Simcha		1911-10-15	Details
Pelz	Regina Rifka	Münzer	1888-01-03	Details
Rauch	Fanny Feiga	Wiesenfeld-Karthagener	1886-05-08	Details
Saleschütz	Chana Hanna		1904-02-22	Details
Sommer	Feige	Münzer	1897-11-21	Details
Steinberg	Ida	Dorner	1908-12-25	Details
Sternheim	Scheindel	Silbermann	1879-02-05	Details
Wolf	Laja Leja	Glanzberg	1895-01-05	Details

Cadastral Map of Krzeczowice

June 30, 2016Announcements, ResearchCadastral Map, Krzeczowice, Nearby Villages ProjectPhilip

I’m happy to announce that as part of our Kańczuga Nearby Villages Project, we’ve now digitized and made available a cadastral map of Krzeczowice, a village 2.2 miles east of Kańczuga, which shows up in Kańczuga records with surnames including Braten, Einsidler, Engelberg, Knispel, Lilien, Morsel, Schein, Seidenfeld, Spatz, Wolfman, and Zellerkraut.

The map dates from 1849 and includes the plot numbers and house numbers.

The map is made available in the Gesher Galicia Map Room, where you can also find cadastral maps of Kańczuga (1849), and other Nearby Village Project villages Bialoboki (1852), Chodakówka (1849), Gać (1852), Łopuszka Mała (1851), Siedleczka (1851), and Siennów (1851).

Thanks to the team at Gesher Galicia who made this possible.

More info about the massacre of Jews in Kańczuga in 1945

February 18, 2016HolocaustGniewczyna Łańcucka, Holocaust, Jagieła - Niechciałka, KanczugaPhilip

Responding to the previous post about a new stone memorial being planned for those Jews murdered in Kańczuga in 1942 and after the war in 1945, Raphael Thurm sent some additional information. He pointed to the 2002 article in Polish – “Nikt ich nie tykał” which is referenced as a source in the post about the memorial project. That article explains the investigation into the massacre, and the unsuccessful attempt at figuring out who carried it out (basically the locals wouldn’t name names). He also pointed to the page about the massacre at the Virtual Shtetl web site – “The post-war murder place – Węgierska street, św. Barbary street“.

The source for the Virtual Shtetl page is the same article from 2002, which is why one anomaly in the story is the same on both pages. They say the massacre happened on March 31, 1945, which was the Easter Eve, or the night before Easter. The Virtual Shtetl page simply says it was Easter. What’s strange is that one of the victims of that massacre was in my own family, and her granddaughter recounted to me that the murders took place on the second night of Passover, at the second seder. The second night of Passover would have been March 30, not 31.

I don’t know what accounts for this discrepancy. Perhaps contemporary newspaper reports of the murders might shed some light on this, although maybe not. It seems the investigation done by a Polish journalist in 2002 went into many of these details, and determined it was March 31. Yad Vashem’s Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust simply says “Thirteen survivors were murdered in spring 1945 (during Passover) by Polish nationalists.” which is true in either case, it was still Passover on the 31st. Does anyone else have information on this event that might shed some light on when exactly it happened, or adds any other details?

Memorial for Jews murdered in Kańczuga in 1942 & 1945

February 15, 2016Holocaustcemeteries, Gniewczyna Łańcucka, Holocaust, Jagieła - NiechciałkaPhilip

On our Facebook Page, Łukasz Biedka shared a link to a page describing the efforts of the Polish Center for Holocaust Research to build a memorial to Jews killed in Gniewczyna Łańcucka and Kańczuga between 1942 and 1945. During the war they were buried in mass graves, and after the war the bodies were exhumed and moved to the cemetery in Jagieła – Niechciałka near Jarosław. [Update: This memorial has been built, see below.]

The bodies were buried in mass graves with only numbers referencing the exhumation protocol numbers. The center was able to track down the exhumation protocols and identify some of the bodies buried in the graves, and now want to build stone memorials for those who are buried there. For Kańczuga, the names they found were:

Izrael Ejzig, age 35
Chana Krieger, age 20
and her unborn child
Sima Krieger, age16
Dawid Krieger
Pinia Krieger, age10
Jankiel Krieger, age 12
Fejwel Jakubes, age 33
Dora Bergman, age 32
Mindla Saltzman, age 55
Bernard (Berek) Zwanziger, age 26
Izydor (Azri) Reitzfeld
Debora Risman
murdered on March 31, 1945
and 72 unknown persons
murdered in 1942

Unfortunately only 12 names out of more than 80 buried in the mass grave, but it’s something.

They’re looking to raise about $4600 for the two stone memorials (one for Kańczuga, and one for Gniewczyna Łańcucka). Read more on the page. There’s nothing that indicates how far they’ve come in their fundraising efforts, but it only started a few weeks ago, and I guess you can e-mail the center directly and try to find out how much they now need if you’re interested in donating.

Update: See More info about the massacre of Jews in Kańczuga in 1945 for some further details about the murder of Kańczuga Jews over Passover in 1945.

Update: This memorial was built in 2019. Here is a photo of the memorial:

Online copies of Austrian newspapers (including Galician)

November 2, 2014ResearchAustria, Galicia, newspapersPhilip

Thanks to Marla Raucher Osborn who pointed out on Gesher Galicia’s Facebook page that the Austrian National Library recently posted scans of historical newspapers from Austria, including Galicia, to their web site. The site is in German, but I recommend loading it in Google Chrome, and using the automatic translation capabilities of Chrome to navigate the site. Unfortunately, besides being in German, much of the newspapers are printed in Gothic script. There is a relatively good search interface.

A search for Kańczuga currently finds 171 results:

Some of the results includes news from the town, some are casualty reports from WWI, and some I have no idea. It would certainly be welcome if someone with German skills, including the ability to read Gothic script, could take a look at the search results and see if they could determine which references to Kańczuga and the surrounding villages here are relevant.

Three maps now available from the Kańczuga Nearby Villages Project

July 15, 2014Announcements, ResearchBialoboki, Cadastral Map, Chodakowka, GacPhilip

Three cadastral maps from the Kańczuga Nearby Villages Project have been found, scanned, and are now available in the Gesher Galicia Map Room. We are very grateful to the team at Gesher Galicia, both in the US and in Poland, that have made it possible to find these and make them available to researchers everywhere.

Białoboki Village Cadastral Map 1852

Chodakówka Village Cadastral Map 1849

Gać Town Cadastral Map 1852

We don’t yet know of associated house indexes for these maps (like there is for the Kańczuga map), but if we find them we will be sure to transcribe them and make them available. If you have family from these towns, it would be great if you could share information on your family, when they lived in the town, etc. in the comments below.

1849 Kańczuga cadastral map and house index

June 2, 2014Announcements, ResearchCadastral Map, ResearchPhilip

After several years of effort in the Polish archives, funded by donors from the Kańczuga mailing list, I’m happy to announce that we now have a cadastral map of Kańczuga. The map is from 1849 and corresponds directly to a database of house and land owners that is also now indexed and online in on the Gesher Galicia web site.

The map is online here:

http://maps.geshergalicia.org/cadastral/kanczuga-1849/

and the house and land owner database is searchable here:

http://search.geshergalicia.org

If you want, you can scroll down on the left side, and under ‘Record Sources’ you select:

Kańczuga Homeowners List (1849)

That will show you the 255 records in that database, with 40 records shown at a time. Otherwise you can search in the full database, then select the above source to filter it so only the results from that database is shown (there is no way to directly search just that database).

The database includes the house numbers, and correspond to the house numbers on the map. The original data source, a ledger, has land plot numbers as well, but is not in the database online (yet). Donors to the Kańczuga research project can receive the original scans of the ledger. If you’re a donor and want the original scans, or want to donate to the project, please send me a message via the contact page.

Undated Galicia Business Directory

August 9, 2013Researchbusiness directory, genealogyindexer.orgPhilip

Genealogyindexer.org, the web site created by Logan Kleinwaks, is an incredible resource for Jewish genealogy research. If you’re not familiar with it, I suggest checking it out. The site offers a search engine of over 300,000 pages of books that have been scanned and placed online, including business and phone directories, yizkor books, school records, military records, etc. You can follow which new documents are added to the site by following the @gindexer twitter account.

There are hundreds of records that mention Kańczuga, and I recommend doing your own search, but I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention a new document added recently, which is an undated Galicia Business Directory, probably published between 1907 and 1913. Here’s the page that includes the entry on Kańczuga:

The job titles are in German. You can use Google Translate to translate them. As Markus Thurm is in my family tree, I looked up what a Lotteriekollekteur was – it’s a lottery agent.

Also worth nothing is the line with a few words and the little graphics at the top of the entry. These are explained on page 7 of the full document, and it means that Kanczuga was a market town and community of 2338 people, uses the court in Przeworsk, with both a post office and a telegraph station. If you look at the other entries on the page, you’ll see that it points to which towns the people went to for postal mail and for telegraph service. So even from this single page we can see that Kanczuga was the central market town for the surrounding communities, and was where many of them went for mail and telegraph service.

If you find your relative on the page, post in the comments below.

Videos from 2008 of the Kańczuga cemetery in Siedleczka

June 30, 2013Holocaust, Videoscemeteries, Siedleczka-Kanczuga CemeteryPhilip

The cemetery used by the Jewish community of Kańczuga was located in nearby Siedleczka. In 1942, the Nazis rounded up some 1000 plus Jews left in Kańczuga, took them to this cemetery and murdered them, dropping their bodies into a mass grave there. Since that time the cemetery was largely neglected, until 2008 when a group of Kańczuga descendants, including Michael Freund and Howard Nightingale, organized a renovation of the cemetery. The renovation included cleaning up the grounds and re-building a wall around the cemetery.

While the cemetery restoration was completed in May 2008, it seems that in March 2008 videos were posted to Youtube that show the cemetery prior to the restoration work. The second video shows the nearby memorial over the mass grave of those Jews murdered in 1942.

Video walkthrough of the Siedleczka-Kańczuga cemetery:

Video of the memorial to the 1000+ Jews murdered in 1942:

If you visit the cemetery in Siedleczka, consider videotaping your visit and posting an updated video of the current appearance of the cemetery and let us know (we’ll be happy to post it for you if you’d like).

The first fruits…

November 25, 2012Announcements, Researchcommunity documents, landowner recordsPhilip

I am happy to announce that our project to retrieve documents from archives related to Kańczuga is beginning to bear its first fruits.

Kanczuga Fancy Script — Cover Page from 1819 Kanczuga Landowner Record Book

We’ve identified several important records in the L’viv archives, including landowner records from 1819/1820, 1833 and 1850. The records from 1833 and 1850 were not known to exist for Kańczuga before, so this is really great news. Now we need to organize the indexing of these records.

1850 Landowner Excerpt — Excerpt from 1850 Landowner Records

There are also some documents connected to the Jewish community of Kańczuga, such as a community charter from 1889. These kinds of documents do not have as many names as property owner lists, but do provide us with very interesting information on what the community was like in those days, and how it was organized.

1889 Jewish Community Charter Excerpt — Excerpt of 1889 Kanczuga Jewish Community Charter

There are some additional documents we believe exist, but we have not yet been able to locate. This can happen when a document is listed in the local inventory, but is not where it is supposed to be. It’s possible a mistake was made and the document doesn’t actually exist, or it’s possible they were just misplaced. In either case we may never locate them, but we will continue to try to find what we can.

We are currently working to make these documents viewable even before we index them, to those people who donated to the project. The index, when ready, will be freely available, but we don’t know when that will be finished. We expect to have the images viewable by donors online in the coming weeks. Donors will be contacted directly with instructions on how to access the files. If you are interested in viewing these documents and have not donated to the project, we of course welcome you to contribute now (minimum of $50) and we will send you the image access instructions as well (when the images are ready). If you are contributing to this project, please make sure to write in the donor note that it is for the Kańczuga Archival Records project.

We will be moving next on to the Przemysl archives to discover what records exist there for Kanczuga. We already know of the Birth, Marriage and Death records there that have been indexed by JRI-Poland (for which we are very grateful to JRI-Poland), but we will be checking to make sure no other documents exist there that may be of interest.

Kanczuga.org

Virtually Rebuilding Jewish Kańczuga