August 2025
Twenty years on, the information on this page has been updated and is available on the main DAVNOB site, and also on a separate website: https://avramchaim.webnode.co.uk/
April 2004
I was recently surfing the internet - in websites with names like like `Shtedlseeker' and `JewishGen' - where obsessive family historians like me are trying to ferret out information. I spent a lot of time trying to research the Salits (or Sallitts) - on the ground that it would be easier to track down the name Salit than the name `Davidovitch' which was much more common (i.e. popular!). But I was getting nowhere - so a little while back I moved over to the other side and tested out the ground with Avram Haim Davidovitch.
The only facts I had were:
1/ that he came from somewhere near Warsaw (at the family reunion Sophie gave the name Chodjes - but the problem with all names is the variable transliteration).
2/ I knew the family were brewers - and
3/ at the family reunion Lionel told us that he was born in 1866.
I searched various databases and came across a very comprehensive archive called the All Poland Database - and found one Avram Haim Dawidowitz born in the Warsaw region in 1868. That was near enough (they were always fiddling the books one way or another because of the army service). So I sent off to Poland and got a copy of the birth certifiate (or registration of birth). What arrived was indecipherable to me. Steffi looked around for a translator. The first gave a very rough outline that confirmed the name (Avram Haim) and the name of the mother - but apart from that very little. Steffi then gave it to another of her contacts and we got the following back `verbatim':
No. 125 the village of Krazh. It took place in the town of Tsekhanov in the year of 1868 on the first day of July at nine o'clock after midnight. Leorek Davidovich came in person, a worker living in the village of Krazh, 23 years old, in the presence of shkolniki (interpreter comments: this is translated as schoolchildren from the Russian) Abram Vontroby, 53 years old, and Gershon Totengreber, 31 years old, living in the town of Tsekhanov, to present us a baby,a male, born in the village of Krazh on the twenty second day of June this year at four o'clock after midnight by
his wife Estera Elka, maiden name Kats,26 years old. When the religious ritual was being performed the baby was given the name of Abram Khaim. This akt was signed by us and the witnesses after it had been read. The father cannot write.
Sinatures: Abram Vantroba, Gershon Totengreber
A person in charge of civil state akts
(signature)
So I now had more information - the village where he was born, the town where he was registered, the names of both parents, and the birthday. I also had the names of the witnesses which might also be helpful. But is this him? Steffi pointed out that it says `the father cannot write' - whilst we know that he was the `educated' one. (In fact looking back now, we realise we were thinking of Avram Haim - but it is Leoric who is described here). She mentioned this to a colleague who said that `cannot write' only means that he didn't write Russian. According to the bureaucrats if you didn't read or write Russian you were illiterate - regardless of how many other
languages you had. I then started to look up the places. I located the towns on the birth certificate (and found them on the maps) - they are Ciechanow (Tsekhanov as transliterated in the translation) and (I think) Krusz (the nearest village to Ciechanow that sounds like Krazh) If you have a map of Poland the co-ordinates are Ciechanow 5253 2037
Krusz 5250 2022
I checked out and found that there are other family records of Dawidowitz, and of Wantroba and Totengreber (the witnesses) in Ciechanow (none that take us further forward however - but it might help later). Ciechanow turns out to be quite a significant Jewish town - with a lengthy book on the internet. It's a fascinating site but not a lot of help at the moment. The main thing of note (after a cursory glimpse) is that in 1897 there were 19 brewers. It sounds like there was a thriving cottage industry - so it might be that it wasn't as big a scale brewery as we assume.
So that's it to date. Has anyone heard the names Estera Elka Katz or Leoric Dawidowitz? Did grandma ever mention the names of her parents-in-law? Do you have any information that might confirm what we have so far? Did you ever hear the names - the towns, the witnesses? Do you know Avram Haim Davidovitz's birthday? `Davidovitz' by the way is the spelling given for him in the 1901 census (that appears elsewhere in Davnob).
The story continues...
Lionel's Reply -September 2004
Dear Roger,
IN THE MATTER OF LEORIK DAWIDOWITZ (age 23 years) AND IN THE MATTER OF AVRAM CHAIM DAWIDOWITZ
(aged 8 days); both of the village of Krusz in the province of Ciechanow: The above LEORIK presented himself on 1st July 1868, in the township of Ciechanow, with two schoolboy witnesses AVRAM VANTROBA, age 53 years, and GERSHON TOTENGREBER, age 31 years) to register the birth of the above AVRAM CHAIM to the wife of the above LEORIK (ESTHER ELKA ne KATZ, age 26 years) on 22nd June of this year. After the details were read out this certificate was signed by me as Registrar, and by the two witnesses - the father cannot write. Well, mazaltov to them all. The details are obviously correct for the people involved. But I doubt they can be our people. Our Avram Chaim was born in 1866, I don't know in which month. But he died on 4th August 1924. Edie, who was almost 14 at the time, had to go and pick up his death certificate. It gave his age as 59. So before that August
he was 58. Take 58 from 1924...
Also there were 11 years between my parents; Mamma was born in 1877 on \the second last day of Pesach". When she was married in March 1899, the second last day of Pesach" fell on the 9th April; which remained her birthday for the rest of her life. She died in 1958, aged 81. Take 81 from 1958...
Next - location. My father was born in a place he called Chodjisk, I'd never been able to find it on the map. But bearing in mind your comment on the vagaries in transliteration I looked again and there it was Grodzisk. In Russian and probably Polish too `G' is sounded as `H'(the name `Hermann' is spelt `Germann'). So it became Hrodzisk. Sophie told me that Dada slurred his R's in effect dropping them. He therefore got `Chodjisk'. It's 20 miles SW of Warsaw, in the province (county)
of Warsaw. Now CIECHANOW is 47 miles from Warsaw and in a different `province' entirely, the province of Ciechanow.
Our Leorik, my grandfather - and that very likely was his name - would be called Leib in Yiddish. I am called after him. My father couldn't have called any of his other sons Leib, for his father was still alive. When I was born, in 1922, he knew that his father was dead. (A Rav in Warsaw wrote to the Rav in Hull that the old man had been burnt in a stable by the Germans during the war.)
My father's account of his family background, as told to my mother, was this. At Chodjisk they had a large property, that principally grew sugar beet for their brewery. His mother (forename unknown), after trying for some years, had been unable to have a child and they therefore adopted a boy. Shortly thereafter she conceived and had Avram Chaim. The latter didn't get on with his adoptive brother, or with his father either - they argued. Dadda had socialist ideas which his mini-capitalist father most likely didn't. That's the story anyway. Why he left home Mama didn't know exactly. (One family idea was that it was to avoid conscription).
So I hunted down his diary again - in a steel cabinet, buried under a pile of papers and files. It's a big cloth and leather-bound ledger, 13" x 8" with 572 numbered pages. He didn't use many of them. It starts with a brief resumee, 1890 - 1893. (In 1890 he was 24). The diary proper begins in February 1893, in New York. There are dollar signs, and addresses, some repeated in English, perhaps to get the spelling right. (Otherwise of course it's all in Yiddish, written in a fast cursive Ivrit.) I can make out a word here and there. The entries, pretty random, usually start `Heint in ich...' (Today I was...). The dates are rubber-stamped, English. In August 1896 the rubber stamps change to French. He's in Paris and writing in the days, Lundi, Mardi etc. Then in March 1899 the rubber stamps revert finally to English and he's
in Hull.
On his wedding day, 12 March 1899 (when he would be 33 and Mamma almost 22), I made out the words `chuppa' and `chasana'. The last entry is in 1905, a year after Sophie (Tsip) was born on 30th September 1904. He could speak and write Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, Russian, French, English. Is it possible to suppose that his father Leorik, in a fair way of business, proprietor of a `large property', might also be able to write in a Russian cursive script? That is of course if there was any `large property'.
After my father died, Joe decided to see if there was anything for him in it. He got the Rav in Hull to write to the Rav in Warsaw. After a lengthy delay a reply came. The property was indeed there. It exceeded the area of land stipulated for the Jews and had been nationalised by the government of Marshall Pilsudski. Joe had little hope of any sort of claim and the Rav told him to forget it and not `stir things up'. The adopted brother had a large family and grandchildren who all lived in the farmhouse. And part of the land had become the winter quarters for a circus. All
this was in Hebrew script which Joe couldn't read, and the rav had translated for him. Joe showed me it. I'm almost sure I've got it somewhere in all the lumber. It sounds crazy, I know, but evidently it's true.
My father remained a socialist. He started the garment-workers' union in Hull and had it inaugurated by a labour chieftain. Joe went to the railway station to meet this man, I think Arthur Cook of the TUC, and escorted him to the hall Dadda had hired. So that's it.
As for Salletts - I think it's Sallit despite the 1901 census spelling, which is peculiar anyway. In the Davidovitz return it shows my father as being 28 and Mama 22. In fact they were respectively 35 and 24. Also they're both listed as Russian. That's right for Mamma - Lithuania was then part of Russia. But Poland was Poland. Still, the Sallits... My mother came from a place she called `Sheervint' in `Vilna geberner' (I suppose district or county). I found it, a little north of Vilnius - Sirvintos, with a tiny sort of cedilla over the S which turns it into Sh. Shirvint.
She had three brothers, Melech, Tevye, Yakov, and one sister Saretl (I suppose Sarah Ettie). Melech and Jack both came to Hull. Saretl married a man called Tsodik Landsmann, and this couple later on also came to Hull. But Tsodik (Charlie) couldn't find proper work and they returned to Lithuania. In the 1930s their sons Harry and Berl came to visit us from Kovno (Kaunus) where they were in the textile business. They and their families, all the Landsmanns, were murdered in the
Holocaust. So was Tevye (Tobias) and his family. They are all registered I think in Yad Vashem.
Well this megillah must end. Thank you very much for the websites and all the information: a good deal more succinct than mine.
From us, shana tova, and chatima tovah,
As ever
Lionel
Roger's Reply to Lionel - February 2005
Dear Lionel,
Thanks for your very helpful and interesting letter, and apologies for the delay in a proper reply. No really new information I'm afraid - just some (not at all succinct) comments.
I see we have problems around dates! I have to say than I'm very sceptical about any dates I find. Avram Haim in particular has a range of ages in the records - I think that they probably didn't take age too seriously before they had digital watches to regulate their lives. So whilst I acknowledge your arithmetic, I still have doubts - and in regard to the year of his birth I still reserve judgement.
Location - yes that sounds more interesting. The Chodjisk problem dogged me for a long time (apart from the fact that every Davidson I spoke to pronounced it slightly differently!). Like you I couldn't find it anywhere - and if there was a Jewish community there it should have appeared in the Jewish Genealogy files. So following your advice I went back and found general Jewish Genealogy information on Grodzisk or Grodzisk Mazowiecki (it is as you say 18 m WSW of Warsaw. Unfortunately there are several other places called Grodzisk within 100 miles of Warsaw - one in the suburbs only 6.5 miles NNE from the town centre. But the one you mention has a website by a group who are trying to reclaim the records from the Grodzisk Mazowiecki Jewish cemetery (partly destroyed). It is incidentally a sizeable town. Of course the only answer is to go out there!
Now Sirvintos. As you guessed it is Shirvint in Yiddish - and is recorded as being in Vilna Gebernia so Grandma got her terminology and geography right. The Mormons have records for the Vilna Gubernia (sic) Crown Rabbinate Metrical Records 1854 - 1905 which I'm trying to get hold of. The Jewish Genealogy people recommend using the Mormon records. One reason for this must be their accuracy.
Following on from my comments about problems with dates, there is a major problem with Jewish records in general. So much was destroyed by the Nazis that Jewish survivors have tried to recall - and in their urgency to prevent the memory of those killed from getting lost have been giving whatever information they could. But looking through Yad Vashem records I suspect that names, places and dates are quite fuzzy and vague. The Mormon records and the Polish State Records, and the Jewish records based on research in cemeteries seem more reliable.
In the Yad Vashem records however I have found a possible reference to Tevye Salit - married to a Roza Mankevitz (we believe he was married to a Roza) with adult children Ana, Miriam and Sala - all in their 30s - but located in Wilno in Poland. There is a WILNOWO in Poland but it could be a mistaken entry that should read Wilno (Vilna) in Lithuania. (Editor 2008: When I wrote this I didn't know my history. Vilna - or Wilno in Polish - though now as Vilnius the capital of Lithuania, was between 1920 and 1939 annexed by Poland.)
So is this him - or not? The record was entered in the 1950s by a niece (Spektor). Does this ring a bell with you - and if so did she know or just guess? (This is the only holocaust record I've found for our Salits or Landsmans).
Now for the brewery. I think you are right here. The idea of the brewery as a cottage industry might hold if the Ciechanow idea was stronger. The birth certificate I have is fairly strong evidence (oddly Avram isn't as common a name as you would think - and Leoric is rare in the records - I trawled through over two thousand Dawidowitz's from Poland!). That would mean of course that Avram Chaim liked to embellish his background (whilst I got the impression you thought he might have had some dark secret?). But on your side of the argument, Cyrie's story about meeting the Polish sailor who was in the Circus that quartered on the estate provides a separate piece of evidence - and that is stronger! Well as you can see the search goes on. If you do come across THE letter from the Polish rav to the Hull rav - do let me know. I think that's the piece of evidence I really want to see!
Enough of my ramblings. Best wishes.
Roger