Zuckermanns of Oprischeny

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May 22 - Family reunion by phone.

May 26 - Alice recalls the following about the family: Pupa was married to her cousin Moishe Zuckermann, and they lived in Oprischeny. She went to visit their house. Rosa moved to Czernowitz and worked in the Marmarosch(?) Bank. She died sometime before the Second World War. Libby and Rachel (Rokhel) lived with another sister in the family home in Oprischeny. Alice also now remembers there being a brother named Gadalia, and may have met him. She has never heard of a brother named Josel.

May 27 - Adela's notes show Max embarked in Antwerp, Belgium and arrived in either Halifax or Quebec City. Margo's notes show he arrived in Halifax on May 10, 1910. Immigration records show no boats arrived in Halifax on that day, but one arrived from Antwerp on that day in Quebec. No name matching either Zuckerman or Brown or its variants appear on the passenger list. Adela's notes show he spelled his name Brohn. However it also shows he may have emigrated anywhere between 1906 and 1910! (Sorry, I'm not checking all the records).

June 2 - I finally received a response from GenAmi, the French genealogical society. They had the following listing for Zuckerman of Opriseni. It is both interesting and confusing. They record what are seemingly two brothers interned in France, near the Belgian border, and later deported to the concentration camps in the east from Malines. Malines was the main deportation station from Belgium, near Antwerp. Which Opriseni is not specified. There may be the strange coincidence that there was another Zuckerman family in the Opriseni outside of Iasi, who had children born during the same period as Max and Abraham and their siblings. Interestingly, Josef is the name Josel, who was one of the brothers. Alice however has no recollection of a brother with that name. Maybe the fact he was in France has something to do with this? Jacques is an unknown name by either Alice or in Margo's or Adela's notes. Jacques is Yakov in Hebrew. Why they were in the area of Antwerp is also mysterious, but this would apply as well if they came from the area of Iasi. I did find it interesting that Antwerp is where Max emigrated from.

ZUCKERMANN Josef born Opriseni 19.5.1897
Prisoner camp de Dannes et Condette,
Deported from Malines (B) by convoy XVI/684 of 31.10.1942
ZUCKERMANN Jacques born Opriseni 2.9.1902
Prisoner camp de Dannes et Condette,
Deported from Malines (B) by convoy XVI/685 of 31.10.1942

June 5 - Family tree in progress updated (click here) pdf format.

June 10 - Click on or or for the results of Zuckerman +Oprischeny. Or try Zuckerman +Opriseni, or even Zuckerman +Bukovina. Even try mixing them up with Brown, or Toronto, etc. We are going worldwide.

June 15 - Here is the Search Notice ad that started it all. Published in the April edition of Die Stimme (The Voice). The article was seen by one of Alice's cousins on her mother's side and sent to her. Following it is an article the paper wrote in the June edition about our great success.

1.Search Notice - Translation (click ad to view original German)

I am trying to locate anybody who might know of my family, or any other that came from the town of Oprischeny (Opriseni), between Czernowitz and Sereth. There were apparently only a few Jewish families, but these are the names of some I have found who came from the town and may have immigrated to Israel: Zuckermann (my grandfather's name), Dr. Julius Pariser, Kroner, Weider, Weissbrod, Grosser, Mordechai Glantzer (Glenzer).

Any information I could get on the town or these families from Bukovina would be a great help.

My contact information is:
Warren Brown
w_brown@canada.com
1 416 422 1880

Thanks very much,
Warren

2.Fantastic Achievement for Die Stimme - Translation (click article to view original German)

This month Die Stimme had a fantastic success in bringing a family together. In the April issue of Die Stimme, we published a search notice in which Warren Brown of Toronto, Canada was searching for information about members of his family from Bukovina, who appeared to be lost forever. A few days ago we received this very moving email from Warren (Oren) Brown from Canada:

"You will be happy to know that I received a call today from Israel, from a woman named Alice Manoiu (Zuckerman). A friend of hers just received the latest edition of Die Stimme, and saw my ad, and showed it to her. She is in fact my cousin. Her father was the only member of the family to survive the Shoah. She had always heard of an uncle who left for Canada before World War I, but never thought it possible to find him or his family.

Thank you and your organization so much for all of your help. You have helped to reunite a family - 95 years after they were last in touch!
Pass on the good news to anyone who may be interested."

The publishers of Die Stimme are very proud about this extraordinary success, and we hope in the future to be able to find other people whose families consider them lost forever. Because, “Hope is the last to die”.

June 25 - Alice spoke with her aunt, who originally told her about my ad in Die Stimmie. She clarified why Alice originally thought three sisters lived together in the family house in Oprischeny, but could only remember two later on. One of the three, probably Rokhel (Rachel), moved to Tarascheny to get married. Tarascheny (Taraseni) appears on the 1910 map close up as the first village directly north of Opriseni. In my original notes I commented that it was the closest village with any significant Jewish population, and one where they were farmers. Taraseni is the village where Alice mother's side of the family, the Ostfelds came from. They were sent to Yodenitz in Transnistria with her grandparents and aunt where all of them died.

June 26 - Translation of "Curierul National" (click for original Romanian article)

The large Romanian village of Opriseni in the Czernowitz region has more than 2000 inhabitants. The village has been known in documents for 585 years. Because of this, the inhabitants celebrated a holiday joyfully on the 21st of September. This is also the holiday according to tradition connected to the village church. The holiday also brings many celebrants to the village from Romania. The people of Opriseni are very proud that the village is so old. A long time ago, Alexandru cel Bun (the Good), a Moldavian prince signed the villages first recorded documents on 17 March 1418. The history teachers from the village school, Pinitlei Biletchi and Niclolae Bodrnariuc do everything to ensure the documents are preserved, something that has not been done in other villages. The holiday was celebrated in the village church. The church was built primarily between 1910 and 1914, and building was completed in 1927. It is a very large and beautiful church, and the inhabitants are very proud of it. During the communist era, many churches were destroyed or they become storehouses. The inhabitants of the village collected money, and even sold their farm animals to help repair the church. In the church courtyard is a monument made from black stone in honour of the soldiers that died in the First World War, and also the Second World War, and the people who were deported. {Note: this is probably primarily a reference to the Soviet deportation of the “bourgeois” to Siberia in 1940, but could also be a reference to the 15 or so Jews deported by Nazis, including the Zuckermanns}. Everything that has happened to the inhabitants of Opriseni, during all eras, the persecutions, deportations, hunger, atheism, all kinds of wrath, they could not destroy the vigor of the national spirit, and the peoples’ love of the tradition of their ancestors.

June 28 - Alice has submitted Pages of Testimony to Yad Vashem in memory of Pupa (Letti) Zuckermann, her husband and first cousin, Moishe Zuckermann, Rachel Zuckermann and Libby Zuckermann.

July 12 - Alice found these pictures after searching through some boxes. She has no idea how pictures taken before the war are in her possesion. They may have been the few pictures they took with them when they were deported, and somehow kept with them.

The first is a weding picture of Avraham and Rosa Zuckerman. On the back of the photo is a stamp, which reads "Atelier artistic Jacob Brill, Cernauti" or Artistic studio of Jacob Brill, Czernowitz.. Written beneath it is Zuckerman Rosa si (and) Ady, 1925 Dec. 24. Ady is the name Avraham Zuckerman was called by his family and friends. This is interesting also because it is in Avraham's own handwriting.

Avraham & Rosa, 1925 (left); Max & Becky, 1922 (right)

The second photograph is a real find. This is a photograph of Avraham and Max's sister Pupa and her husband Moishe Zuckermann standing in front of their house in Opriseni. This is not the family house where the children were born, but a house in the same village where Pupa moved after getting married. On the reverse is written "A souvenir, 12 June 1939, Pupa, Opriseni". I have restored the photograph using Photoshop, but unfortunately, the crease runs right through Pupa's face, so we can't she what she looked like. In the enlargement, it is clear what her husband, and cousin, Moishe Zuckermann looked like.