Searching for Schons in Hungary and Slovakia

By Cindy & Lee Goodman

As a child I never knew much of my roots, my two grand-fathers had past away before I was a year old. My grandmothers were reserved, and never spoke much of the "Old Country". When I was eight years old my Grandmother with the Hungarian roots died. It was then that I started to wonder whatever happened to any of her family.

I questioned my father on his mother's family, but he wasn't aware of anything more than one of his mother's siblings living in either Israel or Belgium. Around the age of thirteen a cousin of my father showed up at my sister's wedding with one of my grandmother's sisters. This woman was a ringer for my grandmother who had past away five years earlier. She was known to us only as Aunt Sari. For the weekend I sat in awe of this woman that spoke no English and was from Hungary. This was the only time I met Aunt Sari.

After many years I decided it was time to know more of my past. As a project, my wife and I decided to start to find out our families genealogy. I got it touch with my father's cousin that I hadn't seen in twenty years and started to ask some questions of the Hungarian past. My fathers only brother offered to give me some papers that had belonged to my Grandmother. It was a treasure chest of information. Among the papers were my Grandparents wedding certificate and Ketuba. Some fifty odd letters written to my grandmother in Hungarian were among the papers. I had ten of the letters translated into English. They told a tale of a family desperate to come to the United States from Hungary. The letters were from 1921 to the late 1930's. All were pleas from brothers and sisters of my grandmother to help them come to the United States.

My father's cousin who was born in Hungary, explained that my grandmother's family had been taken away during World War II and went to various Concentration and Labor Camps never to be heard of again. This cousin had also spent time in Auschwitz, was later deported into Germany for force Labor, and then to Theresienstadt in April of 1945. She was liberated by Soviet troops on May 8, 1945. With her help we were able to locate a starting point for our research. After several visits with this cousin we were shown a photo of my Grandmothers family in Hungary. There were four great-uncles that I had only known by name and two great-aunts. In the center of this portrait, which was taken in Satoraljaujhely, Hungary in 1932, were my Great Grandparents Vincze and Betti Grunvald Schon.

In 1997 my wife and I decided that it was time to make the journey all the way to Europe to visit and walk through the homelands of my ancestors. The Hungarian Special Interest group led by Louis Schonfeld was making a journey to Hungary after the Jewish genealogy seminar held in Paris. We became two of the nine that shared the journey to Hungary. Our journey follows:

We arrived Friday morning in Budapest, we met the rest of our group later that day in the Lobby of the Hotel. And went to Friday night services at the Grand Synagogue on Dohany utcia.

After dinner we had four speakers from the Family Tree Genealogical Research Bureau. This is the only full time Genealogical Service in Hungary. They can be reached by telephone or fax at (36-1) 131-35-69, email family@hungary.net or on their web page

http://www.familytree.hu They converse in both English and Hungarian

They explained what types of sources are available in the various Hungarian Archives and what to expect and what not to expect.

On Sunday we went for a 3 hour train ride from Budapest to the city of Nyiregyhza this would be our base city for exploring Northern Hungary. Monday we were met by our translator who started us out on our trip back to the hometown of our ancestors.

Leaving Nyiregyhza we headed north to Sarospatak, then proceeded on to Vajadcska, this was the town where my Great grandfather would walk to from his village of Alsoberecki three miles on the Sabbath to form a minyan. This was the town that any of the Jews of the nearby village of Alsoberecki were also buried. On the edge of town was the Jewish cemetery, It stood above the hill over looking the village. Right next door was the Christian Cemetery. We drove up to the hill and parked the car at the bottom and proceeded to walk up the hill in the rain. The area that was the Jewish Cemetery had approximately 20 to 30 tombstones still standing in place, most of the stones were fairly well worn and had to make out any distinguishing marks on the stones.

The tombstones were scattered all over the small area and upon close inspection it was evident that there had been many more stones in the Cemetery which were no longer there. The tombstones that remained told of a rather small Jewish population in both the towns of Vajadcska and Alsoberecki. After photographing the remaining tombstones we then drove on to Alsoberecki.

This village had been the birthplace of my Great grandmother Borbala (Betti) Grunvald - Schon. We drove into the village and a warm feeling came over me as I had envisioned this town many times in my dreams. My great-grandparents lived down near the Bodrog River. We headed right toward the river and turned right on to the road where the house stood. I immediately recognized it from photos that I had copies of. The house still looked as it had in the pictures from the 1930's.

A month before we left the United States a postcard had been sent to the next door neighbor telling him of our upcoming visitation. As the car pulled on to the street we saw him peer out from his garden to see these three strangers coming into town.

I had a Schon Family portrait taken in the late 1930's we showed to this to the neighbor immediately recognized my relatives, pointing each one out by name. There were little stories told of each of the relatives in that photo that brought them back to life. All this time I had the camcorder on and captured moments to be cherished forever. We asked questions of the family, and of my great-grandmother sister's family the Hausmans' who lived on the same street.

The neighbor explained when the Germans came into town and rounded up the Jews and marched them out of town. He explained that his wife cried as the Jews were leaving, a German soldier told her that it was forbidden to feel sorry for that Jews and to put her tears away.

Back we piled into the car and we headed north to the Slovak border. The distance seem greater than the six miles that it was as we had to go thru the town of Satoraljaujhely, Hungary to cross the border. The next stop was the town of Ladmovce, Slovakia this was the birthplace of my Great-grandfather Vincze Schon in 1869.

Vincze's mother was born here in this town somewhere around 1835. All records that we have found indicated that her maiden name was Frohlinger, various records have her first name as Jeanette and some have it as Sara.

We went first to the Jewish cemetery located at the end of town, Inside the cemetery there were 30 tombstones still standing in various state of disrepair. After pushing back some brush we took photos and videotape of what stones that we could, the rain was still coming down at a sprinkle as we paid our respects. Our driver had seen the Mayor's office as we drove through the town and suggested that we go back to see if there might be any information that we could obtain there. We were greeted by the Mayor Stefan Barany, he invited us in to his office to chat. Then we were on to the town of Zemplinsky Branc. In the 1850's it was known as Barancs, the population in 1851 was around 500 and about 100 of these were Jews, sadly to say there are no Jews in the town at all. This town was the birthplace of my great-great-grand father Josef Schon. Next to the Christian Cemetery is a section for Jewish tombstones, the brush is as high as 6 feet and is very dense. After climbing through we were shown some of the tombstones by a Cemetery worker. This fellow held back some of the brush as we took photos of the stones. We looked around and continue our drive to the next town of Sirnik, the Hungarian name had been Szurnyeg, in this town the Frohlingers had lived in the mid 1800's. We located where the Jewish Cemetery was but the over growth prevented us from even seeing any tombstones. We then wound up in the town of Leles (Lelesz) , this was also a former home for some of the Frohlinger family, Once again the overgrowth was to much in the cemetery to see any stones.

On Tuesday we left early in the morning with some of our group headed for the archives in Satoraljaujhely . The archives are located at 5 Kossuth Lajos Square inside the City Hall building. We arrived there around 10:00 am . Our contacts from the Family Tree Genealogy Service had arranged for our materials to be pulled in advance of our arrival. The archives in Satoraljaujhely are a branch operation for the main Zemplen county archives that are in Miskolc.

In Satoraljaujhely Archives they had the original registers for Satoraljaujhely and the surrounding cities including some cities that are now part of Slovakia and Romania. The registers are the original registers starting in the years 1841 to 1895. There are approximately 8 fonds of register books. These contain birth, death and marriage records for the area. As we sat and looked through the books we realized what a privilege it is to actually be able to hold and extract information from the original registers that our ancestors had recorded their most important dates in their lifetimes. The books that we used were the same information contained on the Mormon-Latter Day Saints film numbers 064,2954 thru 064,2957.

After we finished lunch our translator made a phone call to the Mayor's office in Alsoberecki to inquire if the birth, death and marriage records for my Schon ancestors were there. The clerk indicated that they were, and if we would like to come over to see the copies to please come as early as possible as the Mayor's office is open from 9 am til 4 pm.

Upon entering the Mayor's office we were greeted by the clerk who indicated that the request I had made for these same records back in September of 1996 were actually on the way to me through the mail. As of yet I had not received these records from Alsoberecki due to the fact that when I originally requested them I had sent my request to the archives in Satoraljaujhely. The Satoraljaujhely Archives holds records prior to October 1, 1895. Any records after that date are always kept in the Mayor's office of the town that the birth, death or marriage is registered in.

Since we were at the Mayor's office and they had the files there they had indicated to us that if we had just written to the Mayor's office in the town they would have made us copies of the info requested. I also inquired if we could have copies of the original ledger entries dating from 1896 thru 1942. The clerk spoke with the Mayor and indicated that it would be okay to make copies out of the original records. One can only imagine the thrill of knowing that I would receive an original copy of the ledger rather than an extract. There on the original was the witness to the birth of many of my great grandparent’s children.

She was Ozv. Grunvald Jakobne‚ which indicated that the was the widow of Jakob Grunvald. This is my great grandmother's mother. Previous to this I was unsure of the death date of my great grandfather as well as his name. The original certificate also contained a signature of the witnesses, which included my great-grandfather and his mother in law, my great-great Grandmother.

The records between the years of 1895 and 1900 in the Mayor's office were in long form as the ones from the later years from 1900 til 1942 were metrical records.

We left Alsoberecki and headed back to Satoraljaujhely and picked up the rest of our group that had spent the afternoon walking through the streets of Satoraljaujhely. We got there just as it started to rain. Wednesday morning we took the train back to Budapest and made arraignments with the people from the Family Tree Genealogical Research Bureau to take us to the tombstone of my Great Aunt Sarolta Schon-Szalay in the Rakosuereszturi

Koztemeto Cemetery (Public Cemetery ) in Budapest's Tenth District. I had met this Great Aunt once in 1969 when a cousin brought her to the United States for a visit, so It was a touching moment to see her tombstone before we left for the Airport for our journey home. The memories will stay with us forever as we made the journey back to see where my ancestors came from.

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