Daniel Abraham

Mates

Born: 19 October 1875

Born in house #23 which was registered under the names of Isaac and Zlata Katz, parents of Herz Wolf Katz.

See Mates Katz.

Moses Leib

Moses Leib was born 20 May 1877 in Sokal.

Moses Leib Katz died 30 Sept 1877, aged 4 months.

Israel Tewel

Israel Tewel was born Jan 27 1879 in Sokal

Israel Tewel died August 31, 1901, of pulmonary tuberculosis, age 22.

Perel Jütte

Perel Jütte was born 19 Dec 1880 in Sokal.

Perel Jütte married Chaim Juda Leib Kolbuszower v. Gruber, merchant, born in Witków Nowy in 1876, son of Moses Kolbuszower and Hudes Gruber, on 6 September 1915. Considering the Perel would have been 35 years old, this is most likely the date of the civil marriage, the actual marriage most likely having taken place in the late 1890's.

Aron Selig

Born 29 April 1882
Father of Bill (H.W.), Michael and Saul

See Aron Katz.

Hersch

Hersch was born 29 September 1884 in Sokal.

Hersch died 26 may 1885 at the age of 8 months.

Leo (Leiser/Eliezer)

Born 22 February 1886,
father of Toni and Yitzhack.

See Leo Katz.

Zlate

Zlate Katz was born August 14, 1887 in Sokal.

Zlate married Chajem (Chaim) Tennenbaum from Sokołówka, on 30 August 1909 in Sokal. Chaim's place of residence at the time of their marriage was given as three locations: Wilcza Wola, Bojanów and Nisko, indicating that he may have lived on the outskirts of these villages (Wilcza Wola and Bojanów are 10km aparts and 25km from Nisko). These are about 200kms from Sokal.

In 1911, a son was born named Herz Wolf after Zlate's late father. Since this child was born in Sokal, it means that the couple had settled there and not in Chaim's former home.

No other genealogical documents, including birth records for additional children, have been uncovered, either because such genealogical records have yet to be indexed, or else have been destroyed.

At some point after 1911, Zlate and Chaim left Sokal. By 1938, they lived in Lwow ("Lemberg", now Lviv), as evidenced by a postcard sent by Saul Katz to his friend Siegmund Spiegel in November of that year. Saul and his parents Aron and Gustl had been deported from Gera to Poland on October 28, 1938, and they were staying with Zlate and Chaim Tennenbaum, at least for a while. (Aron Katz would later be killed in one of the Lvov massacres. Saul and his mother were deported and murdered.)

Saul Katz
c/o Ch. Tennenbaum
Lemberg,
Podzamcze 15.

Podzamcze (now Pidzamche) is a neighborhood in the center of Lviv. In the beginning of the 20th century it was a working class neighborhood with many factories.

On 20 September 1939, the city of Lvov (L'viv) was occupied by the Red Army under the terms of the German-Soviet Pact. Following the occupation, Jewish community insitutions were closed and Jewish political parties and youth movements were disbanded.

On 29 June 1941, German forces entered Lwów, and Jewish persecution began immediately. Between June and July, thousands of Jews were murdered in pogroms and massacres. In December 1941, between 110 000 and 120 000 Jews were relocated into the newly-created Lvov Ghetto. In parallel, elderly and sick Jews were shot in a series of "selections". Starting in April 1942, transports to the Belzec death camp began. Following these first deportations, about 86 000 Jews remained in the ghetto. During this period, many Jews were forced to work for the Wehrmacht and the ghetto's German administration, especially in the nearby Janowska labor camp.

A work card issued to Zlate by the Judenrat ("Jüdische Gemeinde der Stadt Lemberg" by its official name) indicates that she was still alive at the beginning of the ghetto era. These cards were issued between 1941 and 1942, which is the best estimate we have since the work card is not dated. In the ghetto, she lived 14 Łokietka street, the street where the Judenrat was located and worked as a brush-maker ("Bürstenbinder") for V.H.B.

V.H.B. stood for "Verein Holzverarbeitende und Ausstattungsbetriebe" (Associated Wood Processing and Furnishing Companies) and was one of several manufacturers working for the Wehrmacht. Based on over 250 surviving work cards of ghetto dwellers employed by VHB, the company operated workshops in multiple locations in Lwow, employing carpenters, brush binders and brush makers, keel dressers, locksmiths, machinists.

According to the surviving work cards, approximately 130 people lived on 14 Łokietka street. Among the dwellers were a dozen children under the age of ten, including a newborn baby (born January 1942) and half a dozen elderly people aged 62 to 70.

By 1942, a work card was a matter of life or death for the inhabitants of the ghetto, as those without employment were targetted for deportations to Belzec or the Janowska camp. Working in support of the German army in particular offered a hope of being considered an essential worker protected from roundups.

More than half of the inhabitants of 14 Łokietka street (70) were employed, the majority (29) working as brush makers. Twenty-one inhabitants worked for VHB as brush binders, the youngest employee a fourteen year-old boy. Another eight made brushes for other workshops, either the Lemberg Bürstenfabrik or the Städtische Werkstätte, a workshop organized by the Committee of Jewish Mutual Aid Society.

The next larger employer (9) was the Eastern Railway (Ostbahn). Disturbingly, seven people were employed in support of German army, in particular the Luftwaffe at the Sknilow air base. A couple of people worked for the Judenrat, including a member of the ghetto police.

Although Zlate's work card has her address as 14 Łokietka street, the same address appears as the location of the V.H.B. Bürstenfabrik (Brush Factory) in the 1942 Lemberg directory. Since over one hundred people who didn't work for VHB listed this as their address, including children and elderly people, this means that the brush factory had been added to the building and was most likely a Jewish workshop operating on behalf of a German company (VHB).

The list of inhabitants of the building (at least as it can be reconstructed based on the work cards from the Judenrat) shows that while fourteen lodgers were single, the majority was made up of families, albeit often incomplete.

Only three Tennenbaums lived at 14 Łokietka street: Zlate, Ewa and Arnold, a two or three year-old toddler born 2 Aug 1939. The names of Zlate's husband Chaim Tennenbaum and their first-born, Herz Wolf don't appear on the cards from the Judenrat. From this we may infer that

According to [Yad Vashem testimony], Ewa Tennenbaum was born 8 Mar 1914 in Lwow, the daughter of Jacob and Klara Spritzer, and was married to Leon Tennenbaum, born in Lwow in 1914 [according to ???]. Although nothing more is known about him to connect him to Chaim and Zlate, it is most likely that he was another son of theirs. Confirming the connection between Ewa and Zlate Tennenbaum - as opposed to a mere name coincidence - is the fact that two testimonies were filed by the same person in Yad Vashem. [ insert name / link ]. [ confirm that the same person entered testimonies for Zlate, Ewa and Leon? or just for Zlate and Ewa, but mentions Leon]. (The only alternative would be cousins - but that would almost be more unlikely...]

Finally, we can also assume that Arnold Tennenbaum was the son of Ewa Tennenbaum (Spritzer) and Leon Tennenbaum.

(If confirmed, this would mean that Zlate and Chaim Tennenbaum had moved to Lvow after the birth of Herz Wolf in 1911 and before the birth of Leon in 1914.)

So we can sketch the following for Zlate Katz: She married Chaim Tennenbaum. The couple had a son Herz Wolf in Sokal in 1911; they later left Sokal for Lwow where another son Leon was born in 1914. (They could have had more children, for example one or more daughters whose trace would be lost once she would have been married). Their son Leon married Ewa Spritzer, with whom they had a son Arnold, born in 1939. Chaim Tennenbaum's fate is unknown. He might have been deported during the Russian takeover of Lwow (but then he would have probably survived the war and his trace might have been preserved). Or he most likely was killed in the early days of the German occupation - either killed by the Urkainian mobs or by the Nazis before the creation of the work cards by the Judenrat (so before 1942). The same possibilities apply to their son Herz Wolf who would have been thirty or thirty one years old in 1941-1942. Again, nothing is known about Herz Wolf Tennenbaum, son of Zlate and grandson of Herz Wolf Katz from Sokal. He most likely was married and had children, whose fate too is unknown. We most likely cannot know anything more until the genealogical records of the Jewish community of Lwow are indexed. [ or can you pay someone to go through the records? but there would be tens if not hundreds of thousands of records to go through!!!]

Between August 10-31, 1942, the "Great Aktion" was carried out, where between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews were rounded up and deported to Belzec. The ghetto was liquidated in June 1943; all its inhabitants who survived prior killings were deported to the Bełżec extermination camp and the Janowska concentration camp.

Zlate, who had left the small town of Sokal to live in the nearby city of Lvov with her husband Chaim met the same end as her brother Leo and her siblings who had remained in Sokal, most likely all murdered in Belzec. Zlate most likely died between 1941 and 1943, at the age of 55/57.

The only record for a Chaim Tennenbaum in the Lvov ghetto is for a person born in October 1883 who lived at a different address, on Jordanska street, suggesting that this was not her husband. The lack of any work card from the Judenrat for a Chaim Tennenbaum at the same address as Zlate implies that he may have died in the early days of the occupation, before the advent of the ghetto, or at least before the creation of the Judenrat work cards. In 1941, Chaim would have been 59.

Since there are no records for the couple's children and grandchildren, it's impossible to assess what their fate was. Because there are no pages of testimony in Yad Vashem, one must assume that the entire family of Zlate and Chaim Tennenbaum was exterminated.

Osias Mayer

Osias Mayer was born 6 April 1889 in Sokal.

Osias Mayer is the previous "mystery" Katz brother who changed his name to Max Katz. He emigrated to the USA in 1913 at the age of 24. There he married Rose Eckstein in 1916.

See Max Katz for Osias Mayer's story.

Nachman

Nachman was born 20 April 1890 in Sokal, in house 34.

Nachman Katz married Rifke Rosenblat on 27 August 1919 in Sokal.

Nachman Katz, merchant born and residing in Sokal, son of the late Herz Wolf Katz, and of Sarah Cheina Katz, innkeeper in Sokal.
Married Rifke Rosenblat, born and residing in Sokal, daughter of Joel Pinkas Rosenblat, innkeeper, and the late Sarah Rosenblat in Sokal.

Nachman died 18 November 1928 at the age of 38* of pulmonary tuberculosis. (Death record has age: 40).

Leibisch

Leibisch Katz was born 14 April 1891 in Sokal, house #34.

Leibisch married Hene Freide Selig in Sokal. At the time (7 April 1921), Leibisch was thirty years old, meaning that this was most likely the civil recording of the marriage that probably occured a decade earlier.

Leibisch Katz, merchant (kupiec = merchant, dealer, trader, tradesman, shopkeeper), born and residing in Sokal, son of (the late?) Herz Wolf Katz and Sara Cheine Katz (living), married Hene Freide Selig in 1921. Hene Freide Selig, born in 1894 in Mosty Wielkie, residing in Sokal, daughter of (the late?) Berl Selig and Ruchel Selig (nee Bothknecht) from Mosty Wielkie.

No other documents related to Leibish has been found so far.

Chaje Zeldy

Chaje Zeldy was born 29 November 1895 in Sokal, House # 34. She was named in the Beth Midrash on November 30.

No other records related to Chaje Zeldy Katz have been found so far.