The Obermans – The Backstory
Introduction
We began our search for Halborn family members for many reasons: the desire to find where branches of our shared family originated and had settled; curiosity about the way family members lived and survived. But above all, is our belief that it is important to discover and document as much as possible about the fate of those in our family who did not survive the Holocaust and to trace and contact those who did survive and were able to establish families around the world.
Tracing family members who were directly impacted by the Holocaust has been difficult. German invaders and ghetto administrators appointed by those invaders often kept large numbers of records. But those records were not always prepared carefully or accurately.
For Nazi functionaries boredom and haste in the face the shear numbers of incoming ghetto residents, deportees and forced laborers process through the system played a role and contributed errors. Then, as Germany retreated, Nazi leaders ordered those same functionaries to destroy records. But in the haste to retreat, many records remained intact. And in the last decade more and more of those records have been digitized and placed on the Internet, making it possible for us to partially reconstruct pieces of our family story that had remained a mystery for too long.
What we have learned about one branch of the family — the Obermans — is the subject of this post and three to follow.
The 1847 death record for Chasia Halborn, widow of Ankiel Halborn reads: It happened in Żarki on the 12th of November 1847 at ten o’clock in the morning there appeared Mosiek Wajs worker 40 years old and Berek Berman 31 years old and declared that yesterday at 3 o’clock in the morning Chasia Halber has died, 60 years old widow living with her son in law Herszlik Halbern family, leaving behind her sons: Berek 17 years old, Major 14 years old, and daughters Liba married to Herszlik Halbern, worker, Hanka 21 years old, and Gella 19 years old, all living in this very same town. After verifying Chasia Halbern's death with their own eyes the document was read to all gathered and signed.
To Częstochowa
Ankiel and Chassia Halborn had six children, all born in the early years of the 19th Century in the small village of Żarki, about 35 kilometers southeast of Częstochowa. One of Ankiel and Chasia's children, a son named Szlama, died in infancy. We have found no records for daughter Hanka, except for a birth record and her name in the death record for her mother (above). And recently Roman Weinfeld found another record which is probably for daughter Gella.
Three other children — Liba, Chana and Berek — were easier to find. And, while 19th century records are not always accurate or complete, we found some records that make clear all three married and raised large families.
In the mid -1800s, after the death of their mother, the three siblings left Żarki and settled, one after the other, in Częstochowa, in search of better lives and a better chance for their children and future children to grow and prosper.
Chana Halborn and her husband, Natan Lewek Cybulski, were the first to move. Her older sister Liba followed, with her husband Herszlik and their children. Their brother, Berek, followed, and settled in Częstochowa with his wife, Jenta Krakauer.
Liba and Herszlik Halborn lost one of their seven known children in infancy. Three others died in early childhood. Chana and Natan Cybulski lost one of their six children in infancy. Berek and Jenta Halborn lost one of their five known children when he was just two years old. All of these children perished in the mid-19th century when a cholera pandemic swept through Russia and Europe. It is possible that the pandemic took their lives and also took the life of their grandmother, Chasia Halborn.
Given the size of the Jewish population of Częstochowa in the mid 1800s, it is likely that all three of the Halborn siblings whose children we have been able to trace lived close to one another and close to the large families of their spouses.
Together, the three Halborn siblings had 18 children and 26 grandchildren. Over the years, the children and grandchildren who survived to adulthood spread out — moving to Łódź, to Kraków, to Piotrków Trybunalski, and, in the last decade of the 19th Century and first decades of the 20th Century, migrating to Palestine Argentina, and the United States.
Berek Halborn and Jenta Krakauer had six children and 26 grandchildren, bringing the total of known great grandchildren for our common ancestors Chasia and Ankiel Halborn to an astounding 52.
Berek Halborn
Attempting to follow our family through World War Two and the decimation of the Jewish population of Europe during the Holocaust has been slow, distressing and difficult. We traced some descendants of all three siblings — Liba, Chana and Berek — in our family book and in posts on this web site. Most recently, we focused on the descendants of Berek Halborn. But within Berek's family one mystery remained untouched: What happened to Berek and Jenta’s youngest daughter and her husband, Huna Oberman? And what became of their children?
Fajga Rywka Halborn and Huna Oberman
Fajga Rywka Halborn, the fourth of Berek Halborn and Jenta Krakauer’s five children, was born in Częstochowa on September 1, 1870. Twenty three years later, in January 1893 she married 27 year old Huna Oberman. The wedding record notes that Rywka’s father was deceased. Huna is described as the driver of a farm wagon. Berek Dov Oberman, named for his Halborn grandfather, was born on November 22, 1893. He was the first of nine children born to the couple between 1893 and 1909.
Tracing Huna and Rywka’s nine children and many grandchildren has taken a long time and is still incomplete. But with the help of the growing number of records from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Częstochowa Radomsko Area Research Group, Yad Vashem, JewishGen, MyHeritage, and, most recently, the enormous volume of documents made available on line by the International Tracing Service Arolsen Archive, we have finally begun to uncover a few facts.
As happened with other branches of our family, some facts are painful and disheartening. Records placed in the Yad Vashem Shoah database by survivors list four Obermans who were murdered. But for the most part they reveal little about where family members were incarcerated, about whether they survived, or about when or where they perished. Most of our Oberman family members simply disappeared without a trace of the suffering they endured during the Holocaust.
A few facts and a helpful contact led us to discover that at least two Oberman family members outlived the Holocaust: One left Poland and Europe before World War Two. The other endured years of slave labor and survived.
