The Generations of Moises Ville

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Origin and Destiny

1889 - Podoliers' Adventure

Old Monigotes

Several Groups

1894 - Grodno Group

1900-1902 The colony grows up

Medanos

Kherson Group

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AGJA- Jewish Genealogical Society of Argentina

Moises Ville's Historical Museum

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Baron Hirsch

Moises Ville in Jewish Encyclopedia

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SOME COMMENT ABOUT THE PASSENGERS LIST AND THE FAMILIES OF THE S.S.WESER   

Many families included in the Weser passengers list abandoned those “comforts” of the Palacios rail station before the founding of Moises Ville, and several others left Moises Ville in the first years, before the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) have taken them under its care. Some may never have arrived at the Palacios rail station. There are still many families to locate. This task and to find their descendant is one of the targets of the future investigation.

Only 42, of the 120 families registered in the passengers list, have the head of household or his wife buried in Moises Ville. This serves as an indication as to the proportion of abandonments in the first years. On the map of Moises Ville 1891 many of the names of the founder families can be seen. 

Almost nothing is known about those more than sixty children that died in the first months. Neither their names, almost all of which should appear on the list of the SS Weser, nor if in that figure have been included the deceased in Monigotes, under similar circumstances. Little by little their names will be discovered as the family genealogies are investigated, and then they will not be forgotten.

 

THE RELATIONSHIPS IN THE LIST OF PASSENGERS

The family heads and the family groups have been identified in the list of passengers by deduction. Since there is no indication of relationship, we can only presume that the official on board listed the members of whole families one after another.

There are cases in which it is difficult, for various reasons, to deduce the family structure or even which family is refered to in the listing: for example Perl Alexenitzer, who appears with her maiden name, was Nosen Slullitel's wife (Slositel according to the list) and the children of both appear with the mother's last name,whereas in Argentina all they were listed under the name Slullitel.

CHANGED AND “UNKNOWN” LAST NAMES

It is a well-known fact that East-European immigrant's family name upon arriving in Argentina was spelled in a different way according to who recorded it. In almost all the cases, the main cause is ignorance of the original language or of the sounds or signs that compose it. Another reason is that the Russian alphabet, different from the Latin alphabet, and additional one, sounds that are not heard in the Spanish language: sh, tz, z (Zain), ü.  Each ship offical or immigration clerk wrote them in a different way as there were no established or defined rules. In general the clerks wrote what they heard or they believed they heard. And this causes much confusion.

Another case is that of family names changed before the departure to Argentina for one's own interest and for different causes: police, debts, military service. The changing of the family name was one of the stratagies used in Russia by our ancestors to survive in the misery and the persecution.

Although there were also official errors. Mr Adolfo Leibovich, colonist of the neighboring Monigotes la Vieja and native of Bessarabia, tells that he believes that his mother's family name was Mendelsohn, but three her siblings had the following family names respectively: Guibert, Herscovicz and Rotman. He also tells that his paternal grandfather, Natan ben Leib Natansohn, changed his last name due to confusion in the registrations, since he was listed  in the Russian way, as Natan Leibovich Natansohn. The midle is not a name nor a nickname, it is a Russian patronymic (father’s name) that is equal to “son of Leib” or the Hebrew “ben Arieh”. Due to this confusion it became the family name. 

It was impossible to locate the family that appears under the Denismann name, until a descendant of the family Levisman recognized Wolf Denismann's children in the list as her uncles. Due to the clerk's error a tragic-comic discussion occurred some years ago among another descending Levisman and the president of the Jewish Genealogy Association of the Argentina (AGJA), Mr. Paul Armony. The family complained because of their great-grandfather's name wasn't  listed on the SS Wesser passengers' list published by the AGJA, and Mr. Armony had no way of  knowing about an error made more than 110 years ago.

 

Leib Levisman (1867-1946)           Bashe Glasberg (1872-1967)

 

We have identified some family that arrived with "changed" names or that maybe the last name recorded was the wife's maiden name. Among the members of the Sexer family (Segzer according to the list) there are listed: Leib (26), Esther (22) and David (1), but nobody knew of the Sexer family or recognized them. Who could they be?

Surprisingly we have found that a boy named Salomon, son to Leib and Esther Bersanker was born in Sunchales (Santa Fe province, 30 km south from Palacios) on September 1889. What didn't make sense was how the Bersanker family that doesn't appear on the listing of the SS Weser, appears Sunchales in 1889, a very little Italian colony at these times without Jewsh population?

Leib surely belonged to the group and he went to Sunchales with his wife for the childbirth, or he was simply one of those that left the original settlement. Later on, following an almost unavoidable law, his son Salomón married a  Moises Ville's Smulovitz girl, also from the SS Weser. It would not be strange since the couple is listed on the list next to the wife's family, that is to say that they would be Leib Bersanker, Esther Sexer and their son David. 

SINGLE PARENT FAMILIES

Not all the family heads are male, there were families composed of mother and children, besides a series of “single” people that are listed in a separated table, though in fact they probably accompanied some relative.

The family heads of the SS WESER  

In bold have been marked the families investigated in this work, and with (MV) we have identified those buried in Moises Ville, which indicates their participation in the establishment of the town. It also indicated who were the proprietors of plots in the old map of the town of 1891.

SINGLES

Some of these single immigrants can be associated to some family, as Pinkus Caufman to Simón Kaufman's family. Also Ite Isacson was sister of Charne, Abraham Schejtman's wife.

The most interesting case is that of Ite Schvigermutter, listed after Marcos Cosedoy's family, as she stood in front of the registration clerk. Let us imagine the poor lady, pointing out to their son-in-law Marcos with the finger, saying in the only language that she knew, in Yidish “ij bin di shvigermuter” (I am Ite, his mother-in-law). The clerk wrote down what he heard.

THE WOMEN OF THE SS WESER

In the lists of passengers, just as in many other lists, the married woman's last name does not appear. That is what has happened in this case, where we have also said, relationships are not indicated. The verification of the women's last names of the SS Weser has identified a great amount of last names that were recorded in the original list, or that are repeated in its own list (women family names). It means that the woman is related to a male of the list (same last name) or to a woman of the list (idem). In the study of  37 families, 21 of them are headed by wives whose single last name appears on the passengers' list.    

The verification of the relationship among the families of the Weser is lacking, but is inferred from this observation. What is sure is that only for exception they come alone, isolated. The group included individuals and families with exisiting  relationships between them.

HUSBAND	WIFE
Zalman Alexenitzer	Eti Grinberg
Abraham Braunstein	Charne Gottesfeld
Isaac ben Israel Helman	Yocheved Ludmer
Libe bat Peretz Faiguenbaum	Hirsch Schilman
Pinjas Feldman	Schifre Charovsky
Moises Fridman	Slote Sterman
Pinjas Glasberg	Miriam Goldemberg
Aaron Goldman	Reize Makler
Israel Godfrid	Ida Grover
Wolf Levisman	Beile Grinfeld
Jose Ludmer	Brana Matusevich
Hirsch Makler	Guitl Grinberg
Mendl Malamud	Lea Feldman
Isaac Morgenstern	Pesie Leibovich
Yehuda Isaac Rejter	Raquel Uberman
Hirsch Reidel	Feiga Reidel
Abraham Rizemberg	Scheindel Rotman
Baruj Roñis	Schifre Fleishman
David Rosenthal	Jane Bark
Samuel Rotman	Midje Rosenwald
Samuel Rudoy	Hinde Stugman
Hirsch Sandler	Ratze Kelinson
Pinjas Sapir	Rosa Charovsky
Ioseph Schapiro	Raquel Rotman
Wolf Schapira	Raquel Tissenbaum
Abraham Schejtman	Charne Isacson
Peretz Smulovich	Miriam Kligman
Isaac Schilman	Reizel Goldman
Schaya Sexer	Eti Lerman
Wolf Scaliter	Leie Sandler
Nosen Slullitel	Perl Alexenitzer
Mordejai Sterman	Jaia Stepanovsky
Marcus Tacus	Scheine Tepper
Leib Tepper	Esther Schapira
Salomon Tissenbaum	Slave Feldman
Yankel Waxemberg	Eva Schlaen
Salomon Weinschelbaum	Iente Schlajovoy

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THE CHILDREN OF THE WESER

A lot has been spoken and written about those more than sixty children of the SS Weser that seemed to have died from a typhus epidemic in the Palacios railroad station, during the month and half – from the end of August until the middle of October 1889 – while our pioneers waited to be settled on their lands. The colonists have related that the little ones were buried using empty cans of kerosene as caskets, and that they were transferred to Moises Ville's cemetery once it was  inaugurated, the following year. A collective tomb was built there in memory of them, and on every important anniversary a homage is carried out at this place, not only to them but to all the pioneers and their terrible beginnings in Argentinean land.

But it has never been recorded who those children were. As with so many other events that happened during the first years of the colony, no written documents about that calamity were left, no names nor dates.

We have constructed a list of the names of children belonging to the families researched so far, that have not been recognized or remembered by those who should be their relatives and crossed checked it with information coming from several sources. Children that appear on the SS Weser roll only and that nothing else is known about them, no descendants nor date of death, or references from their family. That doesn't necessarily means that all those children died in 1889. It is a tentative list, and it is possible that through this publication some data about them or their descendants will become known. Our sources, third or fourth generation descendants of the first colonists,  cannot know absolutely everything and it is possible that some of those children has been recorded with a wrong name, or that they died at a later date and we know nothing about that, or maybe they left the colony some years later and their trail has been lost. If it is so, we may yet find it.

Note. Jan 2,2009: since the publication of this list in 2003 I was able to delete 10 names.

SURNAME acc/list	NAME	Age	CURRENT SURNAME
ELMANT	Chajim-Jaim	3	Helman
FELDMAN	Avrum	7
FRIEDMAN	Feige	6.5	Fridman
FRIEDMAN	Rachel	3	Fridman
MAKLER	Berl	9.5
MORGENSTERN	Lea	5
MORGENSTERN	Feiwel	2
SANDLER	Scheive	1
SCHAPIRO	Schaie	3
SCHMULOVITZ	Menache	10	Smulovitz
SEGZER	David	1	Bersanker?
STERMAN	Rifke	8
STERMAN	Alter	2
TAKUS	Aron	1.5	Tacus
TEPER	Iosef	6
TEPER	Malke	2

 

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Copyright © 2008 Mario N. Jeifetz.