This article first appeared in the e-report of the Australian Jewish Genealogical Society, (Sydney), July 2010— Ed.

Researching my father’s paternal Nachemstein side over 25 years has yielded wonderful results both in record retrieval and in finding and meeting cousins all over the world. On my father’s maternal side, however, I only knew my great-grandfather was Markus Weichmann. I did not know where he was born but knew he and my great-grandmother, Therese (born Cohn-Murzynski), lived in the small Polish town of Pakosc (formerly Pakosch) where they had eight children including my grandmother, Cäcilie. Pakosc is in the province of Bydgoszcz (formerly Bromberg) in western Poland which before World War I was part of West Prussia. Although I did not know where my great-grandmother was born, I was able to also successfully research her family tree.

Once in a while, I would look at the JewishGen Family Finder to see who else was researching the name Weichmann, make contact and make no progress. The Mormons held only one microfilm for Pakosc (#719,232) with few births and marriages for 1827–45. I indexed the records and these are on the JRI-Poland database. Some years were missing and Weichmann did not appear. I did find the name in other databases but, without a place of birth, there was nothing to indicate it was part of my Weichmann family.

In March 2010, my wife, Rieke, and I participated in the Second National Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Melbourne. Krstyna Duszniak, a professional Polish researcher and linguist, spoke, and I asked her opinion about using the Google translation aid for Polish. She replied, “It is good enough.” I knew that the civil records of the Jews of Pakosc were in the Inowroclaw State Archives. I Googled to find an e-mail address for the archives. I could not find an appropriate one, so I used the Google Polish translation aid, and I e-mailed the president of the city of Inowroclaw with my query on Markus Weichmann.

Ten days later I received an e-mailed reply (in Polish) from the USC (civil registration office) of Pakosc. It supplied the dates of death of Markus and Therese Weichmann, both having died in 1922. I also was informed that the civil records for births, marriages, and deaths for the years 1875–1908 are held at Inowroclaw, but Pakosc holds post-1908 records that include the marriage record of my grandmother’s sister. I was offered mailed copies of these death and marriage certificates—at no charge. Interesting also are the Polish to English translations using Google. There are some odd words but overall one can make sense of the text, no doubt the same applies at the other end.

The certificates arrived a week later. Rieke and I both looked at them and, within seconds, Rieke (already very experienced in transcribing Polish records) saw that my great-grandfather Markus Weichmann had been born in Lipno. Total astonishment! Her great-grandfather, Getzel Szulman also was born in Lipno; Markus was five years older than Getzel. They would have been in school together, the families would have known each other, gone to the same synagogue. The irony of this was also that after Rieke and I met, her family referred to us as “the Germans,” and my family considered her side to be “the Poles.”

Another significant element of family research is that data collected years ago may suddenly become more relevant. While we were both at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City in 2004, Rieke looked at the microfilm the Library had for Lipno as it was part of the JRI-Poland Wloclawek Archives, for which she is the Archive Coordinator. At the time, she noted that many birth, marriage, and death records included the name Weychman. On our return we looked more closely at the records and drafted out possible lineage connections. I will look at these again to see if any naming patterns resemble what I already know of my Weichmann family.

The informant for the death notice was the son of Markus, Heinrich, who still lived in Pakosc in 1922. He may not have known the names of his father’s parents for none are shown. Heinrich was also the informant for his mother’s death notice which gives Inowroclaw as the town of her birth, also new information for me. Although neither notice has the exact date of birth, it does give their ages in years and months.

In addition to the fantastic resource that JRI-Poland has become, possible only with the help of so many volunteers around the world, the Poles themselves are recognizing and actively transcribing, documenting, and also using the latest technology to tell and display the 1,000-year history of their Polish Jews. In this regard, an exciting event is under construction, namely the Museum of the History of Polish Jews which is located on the site of the Warsaw ghetto and will open in 2012.

The Museum already has a website, www.sztetl.org.pl, which gives the history of the former Jewish communities of hundreds of Polish towns.* The site is aptly headlined “Virtual Shtetl” with text currently in Polish and English, although the construction project is also described in several other languages. I was alerted to this by Naomi Silverton who was referred to me recently by Gary Mokotoff. He directed her Pakosc enquiry to me, as a “fellow Australian.” Again I was amazed at what I found there for Pakosc. Here are references to my great-grandfather, Markus, and his son, Heinrich, in the context of their standing in the community up to 1939. Demographics over a span of years are also shown. Even more striking is the fact that Naomi is only the third person I know with an interest in Pakosc. By helping her transcribe and translate from German some documents from Pakosc, I found that her grandfather would have known my Weichmann family.

Note

*Edward Luft provided a detailed description of the scope of the Virtual Shtetl Project in AVOTAYNU, Vol. XXV, Number 4 (Winter 2009), p.18.

Peter Nash (born Nachemstein) and his family fled Germany and spent World War II in Shanghai, China. He has helped many in their search for family who also found a haven in Shanghai. He has lectured and authored articles on the Jews of China. He is a volunteer guide at the Holocaust-orientated Sydney Jewish Museum.