[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] names

[Greg Mason]

Vera: One Sunday afternoon about 30 years ago, I had the pleasure of  
meeting and visiting with my wife's great uncle, then living in West  
Germany in a small town near Augsburg.  As we began to discuss family  
history, he produced a loose leaf binder notebook that contained a  
vast array of birth, marriage, and death certificates, going back at  
least 150 years,  all certified by the local NAZI officials in the  
towns where the events took place.  He explained to us that during  
WWII, he had to "prove" that he was not Jewish, so he went to these  
villages (in what was Russia-Poland, mostly Lipno and Rippin Kreis)  
and obtained the family records from church and village files and had  
them certified by the local NAZI officials.  When he and his family  
were forced to escape west in January 1945, he managed to bring this  
notebook with him.  Needless to say, this notebook was a Godsend to  
my wife's and my research project and gives you one method that was  
used to obtain the necessary paperwork.

  Best wishes, Greg Mason


On Apr 23, 2006, at 1:13 PM, Vera-Lynne Benson wrote:

> Ok, so we Germans and Jews had the SAME surnames.  We lived in the  
> same
> general area.  How could the Nazi soldiers tell the difference
> between the "wandering Jew" and the "wandering German"?
> Thru the religion they practised?
>
> What type of paperwork did our families have to prove
> that we were ethnic Germans....especially
> after many of us escaped Siberia?   Didn't we escape with nothing?
> Did we have to re-apply for "german paperwork"?  How did it work
> back then?
>
> Wasn't it a scary thing to share the same name as a family about to go
> to the death....and us, who were saved.  Weren't we vulnerable
> back then to share the SAME names?     - vl
>
>
> Jerry Frank <FranklySpeaking at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> At 04:46 PM 22/04/2006, Günther Böhm wrote:
>>> Lloyd Friedrick schrieb:
>>>
>>>> Here are two family names...........Hartmann .....  Kupferstein
>>>> Would these be common Jewish family names in Poland - Volhynia ?
>>>>
>>> Lloyd,
>>> yes, definitely. HARTMANN has more than 1000 records in the
>>> www.yadvashem.org database, KUPFERSTEIN 783 records.
>>>
>>> Guenther
>>
>>
>>
>> However, to reiterate a discussion that took
>> place here a year or so ago, this does not mean
>> that Lloyd's family has any Jewish
>> connections.  My Frank surname also has more than
>> 1000 hits on that database but they were not
>> Jews.  Jews did not use surnames until forced to
>> do so in the late 1700s.  It is therefore far
>> more likely that they adapted or adopted your
>> surname than that we descend from them.
>>
>> I am not, by the way, anti Jewish.  I just don't
>> think we should get side tracked into Jewish
>> research unless documentation leads us there.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Jerry Frank - Calgary, Alberta
>> FranklySpeaking at shaw.ca
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>
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