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The Unguarded Asylum
Citizens of the Empire.
Left: My maternal grandmother's natural mother, Yetta Moskovics. The original is in extremely poor shape, as much from abortive attempts to preserve it as from age.  I applied some electronic manipulation to this image, as minimal as possible, before posting it.


WITH THE HELP OF G-D, MAY HE BE BLESSED

On the first day of the week, the fifth day of the month of Ellul in the five thousand six hundred and seventy-third year* since the creation of the world, according to our way of calendric reckoning, here in the holy community of Ungvar, [we witnessed] how the young man, Shlomo, the son of the honourable Yechezkel, said to the maiden, Mindel, daughter of the honourable Shlomo Zalmen: “Be a wife to me in accordance with the law of Moses and Israel, and I shall work for you, love, nourish and support you as is the practice of Jewish men who work for, love, nourish and support their wives in truth. And, I will give to you the bride price of one hundred silver zuzim, which is owing to you in accordance with the Torah, and your food, your clothing, and your provisions; and I shall come to you in the manner natural to the entire world.” And, Ms. Mindel, the maiden, consented to be his wife. And, the Dowry that she brought from the house of her father, consisting in both silver and gold, in jewelry, in articles of clothing, in home furnishings, and in bed linens, amounting to one hundred pieces of fine silver, was acceptable to the honourable Shlomo, the bridegroom. And, the honourable Shlomo, the bridegroom, added to it one hundred pieces of fine silver of his own, amounting to a total of two hundred pieces of fine silver. And, the honourable Shlomo, the bridegroom, thus said: “With this Writ of Marriage I take upon myself and upon my descendants after me the responsibility of this Dowry, and the Additions to it: that it be paid out of the best of my possessions and property that is under the entire heavens which I have acquired and which I shall acquire in the future. Properties that can be mortgaged and properties that cannot be mortgaged shall in their entirety be a surety and collateral against this Writ of Marriage, this Dowry and against the Additions to it, including even the mantle upon my shoulders, during my lifetime and after my death, from this day forward and forevermore.” This Writ of Marriage, the Dowry and its Additions were accepted by the honourable Shlomo, the bridegroom, with the seriousness of all Writs of Marriage and Additions, which are customarily made for the daughters of Israel as a statute instituted by our sages of blessed memory, and which are neither like an instrument of limited indemnity nor as a facsimile of a document. And, we have made this agreement binding by the symbolic act of transferring possession of a token object from the honourable Shlomo, son of the honourable Yechezkel, the bridegroom, to Ms. Mindel, daughter of the honourable Shlomo Zalmen, the maiden, to the effect that all which is written and detailed above has the validity in it of a transfer of property; and all is in force and in effect.

Signed: Yitzhak Eliyahu, son of our teacher, Menachem - Witness

Signed: Shalom Moshe, son of our teacher, Avraham Ya’akov - Witness

*Sunday, September 7, 1913

Magyarized Jews in Pre-World I Subcarpathia.
My mother's father, Salamon Paktorovics, as a young man prior to World War I.  Though I was told he studied to be a Rabbi, his appearance in this formally posed photographic portrait suggests a thoroughly assimilated citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This would have been consistent with the attitude of many Jews of that time and place.  I'm rather fascinated by the hat on the table behind him; so far it's unclear to me whether this was some subtle indication of his religious affiliation or, on the contrary, a further statement of conformity to the dominant conventions of fashion at the time. I assume the book, in any case, is a visual reference to his literate, educated status.  Since he was born 05 February 1887, I would place the year for this portrait somewhere around 1907-1911.




My mother's mother, Melán Klein (Grünberger).  This is a wedding picture, taken in September 1913. As with the early portrait of my grandfather, I don't see anything in her apparel that seems distinctly Jewish.  The soft-covered book rolled up in her hands may be another sign of literacy, but may also have been a device suggested by the photographer to give her somewhere to place her hands and help her hold her pose.




An invitation to my grandparents' wedding. Translated and rendered into appropriate English syntax, this document reads "Elek Grünberger and his wife/Izsák Paktorovits and his wife/cordially invite you to the wedding of their children/Melánka and Samu/this year on Sunday, September 7th at 4 o'clock in the afternoon/at the house in Ungvár./  Ungvár | August 1913 | Minaj/ Telegram address Elek Grünberger Ungvár./Ung County Publishing House."*  The notice was printed on a large sheet of heavy paper, deeply inscribed with a watermark that included a Star of David with the letters BR inside, and the words "Imperial Mill" in English. Within a year of this announcement, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo and World War I hostilities had begun.

*I'm indebted to Sandi Friedman and Asher Rona for providing the English translation of this document.





My grandparents' Ketuba (traditional marriage contract).  The text is in Aramaic; a complete translation is given below (English translation provided by Alex P. Korn, Heritage Hebrew Translations).


Direct ancestors of Jolán Paktorovics and her four siblings.
Arrows (®) indicate name changes.
Below: Jolán Paktorovics (my mother), at ~7 years of age, detail from the group photo on Page1.  Despite the lack of definition in her grandmother's image, the family resemblance in these two photos seems particularly striking to me.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The oldest photograph in my mother's collection, reproduced below, is of my maternal grandmother's natural mother, Yetta Moskovics.  Yetta died young, around 1894, leaving her husband, Zigmund Klein, with a 3 year old daughter, Melán¾my grandmother. In that time and culture, I was told, a widower was not considered capable of raising a daughter by himself, so my grandmother was adopted by another family (the Grünbergers) and raised as their own. Regrettably, I know little about Yetta Moskovics except for the names of her parents and children (my grandmother had a sister, Rosa)¾and whatever I can imagine about her personality from her picture. I know even less about Zigmund Klein, except that he may have been a milk deliveryman. It seems likely that my grandmother's adoptive father, Elek Grünberger, was a relative of Yetta's mother, Rose Grünberger.  Elek was apparently a well-to-do business and property owner but, although he appears frequently in photographs and documents in my mother's possession, I don't really know much about him either (yet).