Most intriguing in the records was the appearance of records concerning Berko Salit. A marriage record appears on October 1st 1902 for Berko Salit, age 22, whose father was Ruvel, and who came from Gedrovitz. The bride was a divorcee Malka Pauzner, 12 years older than him. Seven months later, on 18th April 1903 their son, another Ruvin, was registered. There has been no mention of Berko, though he comes from Gedrovitz and his father is Ruvel. It is possible that he is not mentioned because of a possible ‘scandal’, but he wasn’t mentioned in records before 1902. By then his ‘siblings’ Melach and Grandma were already in the UK. Berko would have been born in about 1880.
The problems of Internet Research now came to the fore. I discovered in UK Jewish burial records that Uncle Jack (the youngest of Grandma’s brothers was born in about 1879. The same site stated that his wife Fanny who died in 1942 (Jewish year 5722) , and was born in 1868 (ie. she was more or less 12 years older than him). For a time I assumed that this meant that Jack and Berko were the same person, and that Fanny was Malka The question was what had happened to the child Ruvin? (Jack and Fannie’s sons were Jo, Abe and Shlomo, and the daughters were Gittel, Edith, Beckie and Milicent). As we have seen, names change constantly - for example Jo Salit was George Salit (who died in 2007, and who achieved fame when an asteroid was named after him).
Double checking however I discovered that other family records said that Fanny died in 1962, and indeed the Hebrew date recorded for her death by the UK Jewish burial records was 5722 (i.e. 1962) - so the English date in the UK Jewish burial records was a mistake. So Fanny certainly wasn't Malka. .
The search for Berko continues.