My partner Andrew submitted his art in a competition, 5th round of ArtSlant’s Showcase Series. He was a winner in the abstract category. I’m very proud of him.Winners in a showcase advance to a final round of judging for a chance to win the ArtSlant Prize. Below is a screenshot of Artslant.com homepage. Andrew’s art is featured under the ArtSlant Prize Showcase Series on a rotating basis with the other winners of the showcase.
UPDATE (9/9/2016): Since this was first posted, I can now say that Professor Heshel Teitlebaum, University of Ottawa, has confirmed that my family is now part of his research to be published in the near future. I look forward to all the discoveries that he and his team will publish. I have been sworned to secrecy until then. I feel so honored that my family will be remembered. Stay tuned.
Through research, I found the paper titled “A Genealogical History of the Jews of Pinczow (Poland) in the 18th & 19th Centuries” by Heshel Teitelbaum of the University of Ottawa. IIJG Announces Grant Awards The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem has announced that three of the proposals submitted to it have received awards. They include:
• “A Genealogical History of the Jews of Pinczow (Poland) in the 18th and 19th Centuries” awarded to Prof. Heshel Teitelbaum of Ottawa, Canada, for a study. Teitelbaum’s research presents a novel approach to creating extended family trees for the Jewish residents of an entire Polish town. Second, the process necessarily generates surnames for Jews otherwise known only by their patronyms. Third, this proposal introduces, for the first time, the concept of synthesizing group-trees for each of several classes (political leaders, rabbis and teachers, tradesmen, craftsmen, merchants etc.) and for examining the possibility of social mobility between these classes. Finally, the author will, for the first time, analyze the history of the scholarly class in Pinczow on a large scale and identify hitherto unknown family links between various rabbinic dynasties. I am so honored that he has begun to help me find the lost parts of my family and my soul. Before 1821, the jews of Pinczow didn’t have surnames I beleive jews everywhere.. This was called the Patronomic Era. This system of surnames uses the name of a person’s father as that person’s surname. He is using a new methodology through research of each family to assign them surnames so that the data can complete each families tree. We are now back before last names. The year is 1765. I am so taken back at how things keep turning up. They want to be found. The Pressmans , Hakohens , Fogels , Baumwols, Mr. Teitelbaum has been able to connect me with my second great cousin, My great great Aunt who was the sister of my great great grandfather, Sura Jenta baumwoll born 1847.
We only now must find the family going back. He feels that they were their. Now the fun begins.
I have been sharing my research and have been working with Witold Wrzosinski with the Foundation For Documentation of Jewish Cemeteries in Poland. The following is an excerpt from an email from Witold to me:
You have found the grave of Yochanan HaCohen Fogel, father-in-law of Hersz Wolf Baumwoll and great-grandfather of Nathan Baumwoll. He came from Pinczow and was a Cohen. I would like you to see if we can find any of them or any about them.
My family lived their. Many never left until they were marched to death. I am searching for them now.
The following is from World Monuments Fund about the Pińczów Synagogue in Poland:
Pińczów Synagogue, built at the turn of the 17th century, is the last surviving Jewish monument in the city of Pińczów, once a thriving economic and cultural Jewish center. The synagogue is unusual both for its age as well as its adaptation of a Renaissance architectural style. Inside, large sections of polychromic patterning, attributed to the Jewish painter Jehuda Leib, decorate the synagogue’s main prayer hall and porch. Interior murals, some of which date from the 1600s, are the oldest synagogue fresco paintings in the country. The town of Pińczów, which, for centuries, had benefited from its reputation for ethnic and religious diversity, was largely destroyed by German troops in the fall of 1939. The vast majority of the town’s Jewish population was later killed, many sent to Auschwitz, and much of the community’s cultural heritage destroyed. The synagogue itself was vandalized by Nazi occupation troops, and then damaged in fighting during the final year of the war.
When WMF began work at Pińczów in the spring of 2005, the building showed the affects of years of neglect and defacement. Our conservation efforts focused specifically on the women’s gallery and the kahal room, used for meetings of elders, which house some of the synagogue’s finest wall paintings and which had suffered from years of deterioration. A team of conservationists worked to desalinize and restore wall paintings, remove and replace crumbling plaster sections and joints, and clean the exposed wall underneath. The team also replaced damaged window frames and stone elements, and repaired several of the building’s walls. WMF’s project was completed in 2005. Some of the inscriptions and scrolls found during our work there have supplied valuable new research material for academics studying Jewish history in Poland.
Pińczów Synagogue is an emblem of local history, prosperity and the tragic results of the Holocaust. WMF’s conservation efforts at the synagogue highlight the artistic and cultural triumphs of the Jewish community from the 16th to the early 20th century and also acknowledge the neglect of the site due to the loss of the Jewish community in the aftermath of World War II.. Our work also recognizes the significance of the site to a global audience, as both a historical and artistic monument; our efforts to preserve the synagogue’s wall paintings and interior decorations will ensure the site remains in good condition, enduring even as the Jewish community that once surrounded it has largely disappeared.
The Following is an excerpt from Wikipedia about Pińczów Poland and the fate of the Jews and my family during WWII:
Pińczów was destroyed by Germans in September 1939 (see Polish Defensive War), and almost all Jews, who had accounted for about 70% of the town’s population, were killed or sent to extermination camps. Most Pińczów’s Jews were murdered in the death camp Treblinka. The Jewish cemetery was also destroyed. Some Jews of Pińczów survived the Holocaust by hiding in nearby forests. Some, though not many, were hidden by Polish farmers until the end of the war. The Republic of Pińczów was a short-lived Polish uprising, which took place in July – August 1944. Units of the Home Army and other underground organizations managed to push Germans from the area of app. 1000 km2., which stretched from Pińczów to Działoszyce, and from Nowy Korczyn to Nowe Brzesko. The resistance was very active here, there were two attacks on a local Gestapo prison, in which hundreds of Poles were freed.
It is one of the oldest synagogues in Poland, built in 1594-1609. The designer was probably the Florentian Santi Gucci. During World War II it was vandalized by the Nazi Germans, then damaged during fighting in 1944, and it is inactive since then. From the 1970s it has been restored.
screenshot of Quadrataflux III – 5th 2016 ArtSlant Prize Showcase Winner
screenshot of Andrew’s work “Quadrataflux III” on ArtSlant.com
