Gallery — The Feig Family Archive (v5.55)

— Matzeivos · The Family in Stone —

The gravestones

The matzeivos of the Feig family — gravestones photographed in situ at the cemeteries in Deans, New Jersey, with full Hebrew transcriptions, English translations, and the traditional acrostic structure preserved letter by letter. The stones are the most authoritative single source the archive has for the family’s Hebrew names — they confirm what civil records left half-said. As more family stones are photographed, each one will be added here in the same template.

Below: Bobby · Zeidy · Feter Isaac

— THE FAMILY IN STONE · DIRECTORY —

Klein Side

Weisz Side

Show all matzeivos transcriptions →

Family photographs anchor the recent generations; for the centuries before photography, generic period imagery from public archives helps place the family in the streets and synagogues of their world. Real family photographs are marked with a small F tag; period imagery is marked with P and attributed to its source.

Pre-1850 · The Old Country

Tiszadob · Apagy · Mád · the Hungarian villages where the family began

This is the world the family came from before any photograph of it survives. We have names — Klein, Schvartz, Weisz, Goldstein — and a few villages on a map of what is now eastern Hungary, but no faces. What follows are the places themselves, and what daily life looked like for Hasidic Jewish families in this region in the 1700s and 1800s.

— Imagine —

A synagogue in the Carpathian region

The shul at the center of every village — built of wood or stucco, the women's gallery upstairs, a study hall behind. The synagogues of Tiszadob, Apagy, and Mád would have looked very much like this in the generations before our family had cameras: a single hall with a raised bimah at the center, the aron kodesh on the eastern wall, oil lamps hanging from the ceiling, the old men's seats by the door so they could slip out to daven mincha at sunset.

— Imagine —

A Hungarian Hasidic Jew, 19th century

The dress of the men in our family before the wars: long black coat, fur-trimmed shtreimel hat for Shabbos, a beard never trimmed, peyos curled behind the ears. József Klein, who taught at the Mád yeshiva and is the great-great-grandfather of every Klein/Feig descendant, would have looked this way — alongside hundreds of other Hungarian rebbeim of his generation.

— Imagine —

Pressburg (Bratislava), where József Klein learned

The Pressburg yeshiva — founded by the Chasam Sofer in 1807 — was the gravitational center of Hungarian Jewish learning for over a century. József Klein traveled there from Tiszadob to study, then returned home to become a rebbi at the smaller yeshiva in Mád. Picture the city's main square in the 19th century: cobblestones, market stalls, the cathedral spire visible above the rooftops where Jewish students walked daily to the beis medrash.

— Imagine —

A Jewish market in Eastern Europe

The economy of village Jewish life: a market square, peddlers with carts of geese and grain, women in headscarves selling cheese and honey. The Weisz, Klein, and Feldman families lived this way for generations — the men in trade or learning, the women keeping the home and helping in the shop. We have no photographs of those mornings; only the names of the people who walked them.

ii.

1850–1900 · The First Photographs

The earliest images of the people we knew by name

By the 1880s, cameras had reached even small Hungarian towns. The first records of family members we still know by name — Pinchas Goldstein, Samuel Weisz, Roza Grósz, Regina, Lipot — survive from this period. Some are photographs. Most are ledger entries: marriage registers, birth records, the bureaucratic paper that anchored a person to a place.

Pinchas Goldstein, Zeidy's maternal grandfather, photographed in Tiszadob, undated — F · family photograph

Pinchas Goldstein · Zeidy's maternal grandfather

**Pinchas Goldstein** — Zeidy's maternal grandfather, Lina Klein's father — photographed in Tiszadob, undated. He was a **Kohen**, which means both of Zeidy's parents come from Kohen lineage: his father Emanuel (HaKohen) and his mother Lina (Bas Kohen, daughter of Pinchas HaKohen). On the granite memorial plaque at the base of Zeidy's matzeiva, Lina's name is inscribed as *Milkah bas Pinchas HaKohen*.

Samuel Weisz and Roza Grósz marriage register, 1890 — F · family record

Samuel Weisz and Roza Grósz · marriage register, 1890

The Hungarian civil register entry recording the wedding of Bobby's paternal grandparents. Samuel — Shaul ben Aryeh Refael HaKohen — was the patriarch whose grave still stands in Nyírbogát; Roza, the Sura Rochel for whom Aunt Rivka was named, would die in 1933. From this single line in a ledger, every Weisz descendant on the site flows.

Regina Weisz birth record, 1899 — F · family record

Regina Weisz · birth record, 1899

Bobby's mother, born in Apagy in 1899 to Samuel and Roza. She would marry her cousin Lipot, raise five children, and be murdered with three of them at Auschwitz in 1944 at the age of 51. This page from the Hungarian civil register is one of the few documents we have from her life.

iii.

1900–1940 · The Old World

Lives lived in Apagy, Tiszadob, and the early American chain

Family life before the rupture — Apagy and Tiszadob in the early decades of the twentieth century, the start of the American chain (Simon Grósz arrives in Selma, Alabama in 1909; Sam Feldman follows). For a brief generation the family was photographed as families everywhere are: at home, at weddings, at the family store.

Emanuel and Lina Klein, Zeidy's parents, photographed in Tiszadob, undated — F · family photograph

Emanuel & Lina Klein · Zeidy's parents

**Emanuel and Lina Klein** — Zeidy Laci's parents — photographed in Tiszadob, undated (likely 1920s or 1930s). Both were deported to Auschwitz in May 1944 and murdered there. Their names rest on the granite plaque at the base of Zeidy's matzeiva in Deans, NJ — *Menachem ben Yitzchak Yosef HaKohen*, and *Milkah bas Pinchas HaKohen*.

Emanuel and Lina Klein outdoor portrait — F · family photograph

Emanuel & Lina Klein · outdoor portrait

Lina (left, in a head-covering and bow-tied blouse) with her bearded husband Emanuel, photographed outdoors among foliage in Tiszadob — undated, likely 1920s or 1930s. The only photograph of the two of them together in the archive.

Lina Goldstein 1886 birth record, Tiszadob — F · family record

Lina Goldstein · birth record, 1886

Zeidy's mother, born 19 October 1886 in Tiszadob to **Goldstein Péter** — a "szatócs" (small shopkeeper) originally from Tolcsva in the Tokaj wine region — and **Krausz Róza** of Tiszadob. Midwife Andor Borbála. Naming day 22 October 1886. This is the Jewish synagogue register; her sister Gizella appears in the same registers a year or two later.

Ilona Klein 1912 birth record, Tiszadob — F · family record

Ilona Klein · birth record, 1912

Emanuel and Lina's eldest child, born 7 August 1912 in Tiszadob. Father Klein Emánuel, kereskedő (merchant), age 25; mother Goldstein Lina, age 26. Ilona is registered as "leány, izr." (female, Jewish). She would be murdered with her parents at Auschwitz in 1944, age 31.

Jenő Klein 1913 birth record, Tiszadob — F · family record

Jenő Klein · birth record, 1913

"Jenő bácsi" — Uncle Jenő — born 27 September 1913 in Tiszadob, registered 5 October 1913, entry 99. Father Klein Emánuel, keresk. segéd (merchant's clerk), age 26; mother Goldstein Lina, age 27. He survived the war and lived in Brooklyn until 2006. Hebrew name Eliyahu (אליהו) HaKohen.

Lajos Klein 1914 birth record, Tiszadob (final entry of year) — F · family record

Lajos (Avrohom Chaim) Klein · birth record, 1914 — final entry of the year

Zeidy's older brother, born 26 December 1914 — the very last entry of the 1914 Tiszadob civil register, which closes with the formal notation "Az 1914 évi anyakönyv jelen utolsó folyószám 155 …" Father Klein Emánuel (Mandel), kereskedő (merchant), age 25. He would die in the Hungarian forced-labor battalions in the USSR around 1942–1943. Hebrew name Mordechai Elazar HaKohen.

Rachel Krausz Goldstein 1926 death record, Tiszadob — F · family record

Rachel Hindi Krausz Goldstein · death record, 1926

Zeidy's maternal grandmother — "Goldstein Péterné née Krausz Rachel," age 82, of Tiszadob — died 12 March 1926 at 7 PM of heart failure (szivszélhüdés). Her parents are listed as néhai Krausz Ábrahám and néhai Fischler Tömöri (uncertain reading on the mother's given name). Her death was declared by her son-in-law Büchler Ferenc — Gizella's husband, who would himself perish at Auschwitz 18 years later.

Pinchas (Goldstein Péter) 1927 death record, Tiszadob — F · family record

Pinchas (Goldstein Péter) · death record, 1927

Lina's father, Zeidy's maternal grandfather — Goldstein Péter, kereskedő (merchant), age 93, of Tiszadob — died 3 August 1927, cause "végelgyengülés" (general weakness / old age). Late wife: Krausz Róza. Parents: néhai Goldstein Lipót (= Yehuda Leib HaKohen) and néhai Rosenzweig Adelka (Hungarian civil form of Rivka). His son-in-law Büchler Ferenc declared the death. The matzeivah survives in Tiszadob and bears 5 Av 5687.

Pinchas Goldstein higher-resolution portrait — F · family photograph

Pinchas Goldstein · portrait (higher-resolution scan)

The studio portrait of Pinchas that has long been in the family — bearded, brimmed hat, the patriarch of Tiszadob in his later years. This is a higher-resolution scan of the photograph previously in the archive.

1948 retroactive death registration of six Tiszadob Auschwitz victims — F · family record

The 1948 retroactive death register · six members of the family on a single page

A page of the Tiszadob death register from May 1948 — three years after the war — recording the legal "deaths" of six members of the extended family who perished at Auschwitz in June 1944, finally registered by court order Pk. 2061/1947-6 of the Tiszalöki district court. **Klein Emánuel** (entry 29, age 57, "thalmudista") and his wife **Goldstein Lina** (entry 30, age 57); Lina's sister **Goldstein Gizella** (entry 27, age 58), Gizella's husband **Büchler Ferenc** (entry 26, age 60), and their son **Büchler Gyula** (entry 28, age 28). The page also records a 10-year-old schoolboy, Heisz Ervin Ede (entry 25) — connection to the family unknown, registered under a separate court order. The cause for all six: "Erőszak utján való megsemmisítés" — annihilation by violent means.

Simon Grósz declaration of intention, Selma 1909 — F · family record

Simon Grósz · the first to leave

In 1909 — five years before the First World War — Simon Grósz filed his declaration of intention to become an American citizen, in Selma, Alabama. He was the first of the family to make the crossing. Sam Feldman would follow in 1916; Henry Feldman in 1922; Sarah Weisz, Jack Fogel, and finally Aunt Esther came after him. The chain that would, decades later, save Bobby's life, began with this single page.

Apagy family photograph showing two intermarried Weisz-Feldman households, c.1922 — F · family photograph

Apagy, c.1922 · two households joined by marriage

Two intermarried households photographed together in Apagy around 1922. On the left, Ignácz Feldman with his first wife Hanni Weisz (Lipot's sister) and their young children — Géza (in the middle chair) and the baby Ferenc in his father's arms. On the right, Lipot Weisz with his wife Regina Feldman (Ignácz's sister) and their son Imre. Standing in the center is Regina Weisz, Hanni's unmarried sister who would later become Ignácz's second wife. Seated front-center is Miriam Grósz Feldman, the matriarch — mother of both Ignácz and Regina Feldman. By 1944 Lipot would die at Ebensee, Regina Feldman at Auschwitz; their son Imre and the toddlers in this photo were among the few who survived.

Weisz family photograph, c. 1925 — F · family photograph

The Weisz family · c. 1925

One of the few surviving prewar family photographs. Among these faces are people who would not survive 1944. Bobby — Irene — was a small child when this was taken, perhaps not yet born. Look at the dark coats, the formal Shabbos dress, the children's solemn faces. By the time Bobby could remember any of them, half would already be gone.

Hanni Weisz Feldman portrait — F · family photograph

Hanni Weisz Feldman

Lipot's younger sister. She married her first cousin Ignácz "Nossen" Feldman — the marriage that bound the Weisz and Feldman lines a second time, since Roza Grósz and Miriam Grósz were already sisters. Hanni died in childbirth in 1929 at a young age. This photograph is the only image of her we have.

Roza Grósz death certificate, 1933 — F · family record

Roza Grósz · death certificate, 1933

Sura Rochel Grósz Weisz died on 11 Adar 5693 — 9 March 1933 — in Nyírbogát. The certificate confirms her name, her age, and her place of death. Aunt Rivka, born to Tatty's parents in 1947, was given her Hebrew name Rivka Rochel for this great-grandmother.

Samuel Weisz headstone, Nyírbogát — F · family record

Samuel "Shaul" Weisz · the headstone in Nyírbogát

The grave still stands. Samuel — Shaul ben Aryeh Refael HaKohen — died on 30 Nisan 5700 (8 May 1940). The headstone bears his name, his Kohen status, and his death date. Eli — Eliyahu Shaul — was named for him three generations later.

iv.

1944–1945 · The Year

Deportation · the camps · the murders · what cannot be photographed

Most of what happened in this year was never photographed. There are no family pictures from Auschwitz, from Ebensee, from the Don River. What survives are the artifacts the events left behind — a memorial panel at a former subcamp, a granite plaque set into the base of a matzeiva in Deans, NJ. These are the stones the survivors made for the dead.

— The arrival ramp at Auschwitz · 28 May 1944 —

The day they walked off the train

The Apagy and Tiszadob Jews arrived in Auschwitz in the last week of May 1944 — within days of Shavuos. Bobby was twenty years old. Her mother Regina, her grandmother Miriam, her three younger brothers Endre, Erno, and Jeno, and a dozen other relatives walked off the trains, were sorted at the Birkenau ramp, and never came back. We do not have a family photograph of that moment. Bobby's testimony in 2014 — recorded by Michal — is the closest record we have.

KZ Ebensee memorial panel listing Lipot Weisz — F · family record

KZ Ebensee · memorial panel

Lipot Weisz — Aryeh Refael ben Shaul HaKohen, prisoner number MH 120451 — was murdered at the Ebensee subcamp of Mauthausen on 4 Adar 5705 (17 February 1945), nine weeks before American liberation. His name is inscribed on this memorial panel at the Ebensee site. Aryeh Feig was named for him.

1945–1950 · Survival

The DP camps · Sweden · the manifest of the SS Stockholm

Bobby crossed an ocean to get here. Imre would follow eight years later through Vienna; Jenő after that. The documents from this stretch — the SS Stockholm passenger manifest, naturalization petitions filed in lower Manhattan courthouses — record people stepping off boats and beginning American lives in their late twenties and early thirties, without parents.

— Bergen-Belsen DP camp —

The years between liberation and Brooklyn

After liberation, Bobby spent time at the British-administered Bergen-Belsen DP camp — the same site where typhus had killed Anne Frank and tens of thousands of others only weeks before. From there, she made it to Sweden, where she would remain until 1950 working in a factory, slowly rebuilding. We have no photographs of those years; the manifest of the SS Stockholm (below) is what survived.

SS Stockholm passenger manifest, 1950 — F · family record

The SS Stockholm manifest · 1950

Bobby's passage to America. The 1950 Stockholm manifest records her arrival in New York, where Aunt Esther's chain — the people who had crossed decades earlier — was waiting to receive her. She would settle in Brooklyn, marry Laci Klein (Zeidy), and raise the family that became the Feigs.

Irene Weisz naturalization petition — F · family record

Bobby · the naturalization petition

Irene Weisz's petition for American citizenship. The official form on which she became, by oath and signature, an American — twenty-six years after the day her family was sent from Hungary to Auschwitz, and seventeen years after the smoke had stopped rising at Ebensee.

vi.

1950s–1990s · America

Brooklyn · Chicago · the children · the next generation

The family rebuilt. Bobby and Laci married in 1952, raised six children on President Street, sent them to the schools and the shuls of Hasidic Brooklyn. Aunt Esther's branch settled in Chicago. These photographs span roughly forty years — wedding portraits, candid kitchen shots, the 1984 Chicago portrait that holds three Apagy-born Weiszes in the same frame.

Obituary of Simon Gross, page 1 — Gross Rites Set Here On Tuesday — Selma newspaper, November 1957 — D · primary document

Obituary · Simon Gross · Selma, November 1957

The two-page Selma newspaper obituary of **Simon Gross**, published the day after his death on **Monday, 11 November 1957, at 1:20 a.m.** in a Selma hospital. Headline: "Gross Rites Set Here On Tuesday · Death Follows Period Of Failing Health." Buried at **Live Oak Cemetery, Selma**; funeral 10 a.m. Tuesday at Breslin Service Funeral Home with Rabbi David Schoenberger of Temple Mishkan Israel officiating. The obituary records his full Selma life — fifty-two years on Broad Street, first as a window-dresser for Isidore Kayser & Co., then founder of **S. Gross**, then partner in **Cohen and Gross** from 1947 when son-in-law Alex Cohen joined; 32nd-degree Mason and Shriner; the last active member of Selma's Orthodox congregation **B'Nai Abraham**; in 1956–57 the interpreter who helped the Selma Rotary Club resettle three Hungarian refugees. It names his son **Emil Gross** of Columbia, S.C., his three married daughters (Mrs. Alex Cohen of Selma, Mrs. Henry Raskin of Montgomery, Mrs. Nathan Miller of Columbus, Ga.), and his five grandchildren including Hermine Cohen. It records his wife **Mary Schwarz**'s death year as **1951**. And on page two, in plain English, this acknowledgment: *"He maintained always a deep affection for his native land, altho all members of his immediate family there had died"* — published in Selma thirteen years after 1944, one of the earliest documented public references by anyone in the American branch to what the war had done in Hungary. **Two source conflicts noted:** the obit gives his birth year as 1876 (his 1909 Declaration of Intention, signed at age 30, says 1878 — we keep 1878), and his birthplace as "Didapest" (the 1909 Declaration says Nyíregyháza — almost certainly a print error or family-told-the-paper "Budapest"). Document number 3 in Chapter Six.

Obituary of Simon Gross, page 2 (continuation) — covering business, civic and religious life, and survivors — D · primary document

Obituary · Simon Gross · Selma, November 1957

The two-page Selma newspaper obituary of **Simon Gross**, published the day after his death on **Monday, 11 November 1957, at 1:20 a.m.** in a Selma hospital. Headline: "Gross Rites Set Here On Tuesday · Death Follows Period Of Failing Health." Buried at **Live Oak Cemetery, Selma**; funeral 10 a.m. Tuesday at Breslin Service Funeral Home with Rabbi David Schoenberger of Temple Mishkan Israel officiating. The obituary records his full Selma life — fifty-two years on Broad Street, first as a window-dresser for Isidore Kayser & Co., then founder of **S. Gross**, then partner in **Cohen and Gross** from 1947 when son-in-law Alex Cohen joined; 32nd-degree Mason and Shriner; the last active member of Selma's Orthodox congregation **B'Nai Abraham**; in 1956–57 the interpreter who helped the Selma Rotary Club resettle three Hungarian refugees. It names his son **Emil Gross** of Columbia, S.C., his three married daughters (Mrs. Alex Cohen of Selma, Mrs. Henry Raskin of Montgomery, Mrs. Nathan Miller of Columbus, Ga.), and his five grandchildren including Hermine Cohen. It records his wife **Mary Schwarz**'s death year as **1951**. And on page two, in plain English, this acknowledgment: *"He maintained always a deep affection for his native land, altho all members of his immediate family there had died"* — published in Selma thirteen years after 1944, one of the earliest documented public references by anyone in the American branch to what the war had done in Hungary. **Two source conflicts noted:** the obit gives his birth year as 1876 (his 1909 Declaration of Intention, signed at age 30, says 1878 — we keep 1878), and his birthplace as "Didapest" (the 1909 Declaration says Nyíregyháza — almost certainly a print error or family-told-the-paper "Budapest"). Document number 3 in Chapter Six.

Jenő Klein (Uncle Jenő, Hebrew name Eliyahu) and his wife Esti, photographed at a family event, likely 1970s or 1980s — F · family photograph

Jenő and Esti Klein · Boro Park

**Jenő Klein** (Hebrew: *Eliyahu*) and his wife **Esti**, photographed at a family event — likely the 1970s or 1980s. Jenő was Zeidy Laci's older brother and the only other Klein sibling besides Laci to survive the war (his path was through Theresienstadt). After 1959 they settled in Boro Park; Jenő ran a children's furniture store on New Utrecht Avenue. They had six daughters. Jenő died 17 June 2006 at age 92.

Ferenc Feldman in his Brooklyn apartment — F · family photograph

Ferenc Feldman · Brooklyn

Hanni Weisz Feldman's son — Bobby's first cousin. Ferenc survived the war and made his way to Brooklyn, where he kept apartment, lived a full life, and remained a thread between the Weisz and Feldman lines on this side of the ocean. This photograph was taken in his Brooklyn apartment.

Menachem and Fruma Feig at their wedding — F · family photograph

Menachem and Fruma · the wedding

Tatty and his wife Fruma at their wedding. From this day, the Feig family of the next generation — Yitzchak Yosef, Yehudah Leib, Eliyahu Shaul, Mordechai, Michal, and Aryeh — began.

Tatty (Menachem) flanked by his parents Bobby and Zeidy on his wedding day. — F · family photograph

Tatty's wedding — Bobby and Zeidy with their son

**Tatty (Menachem Feig)** in the center, on the day of his marriage to **Fruma**, flanked by his parents — **Bobby (Irene Weisz)** on the left in lavender, **Zeidy (Sam · Laci · Mordechai Elazar HaKohen)** on the right. This is the wedding that produced Eli and his six siblings: Yitzchak Yosef, Yehudah Leib, Eliyahu Shaul, Mordechai, Michal, and Aryeh. The chuppah that continued both broken lines — Tiszadob through Zeidy, Apagy through Bobby — into the next generation.

Bobby and Zeidy — Apagy and Tiszadob, surviving daughter and surviving son — at the wedding of their son Menachem to Frumie. — F · family photograph

Bobby and Zeidy at Menachem and Frumie's wedding

**Bobby (Irene Weisz Feig)** and **Zeidy (Sam · Laci · Mordechai Elazar HaKohen)** at the marriage of their son **Menachem (Tatty)** to **Frumie.** Bobby was the surviving daughter of Apagy — born to Lipot and Regina in 1926, taken to Auschwitz at 18, Bergen-Belsen after, recovery in Sweden, Brooklyn in 1950. Zeidy was the surviving son of Tiszadob — born to Emanuel and Lina (Milkah bas Pinchas) HaKohen on 25 December 1922, survived Auschwitz; his parents and his older sister Ilona were murdered on 6 Sivan 1944, married Bobby in Brooklyn in 1952. *Their son's wedding. The second generation past the rupture, beginning a third.*

Chicago family group photo, 1984 — F · family photograph

The Chicago family · 1984

Henry Feldman's family in Chicago, photographed in 1984 — the cousins on the other side of the lifeline that began with Simon Grósz's 1909 emigration. The family in this photograph descends from the Feldmans who left Hungary before the war and lived to see their nieces and nephews born in safety.

Father and son. Tatty (Menachem) on the left, Zeidy (Sam · Laci · the surviving son of Tiszadob) on the right, at 33 West Walnut St in Long Beach, NY. — F · family photograph

Tatty and Zeidy — Long Beach, late 1990

**Tatty (Menachem Feig)** on the left, beside his father **Zeidy (Sam "Laci" Feig)**, photographed at the family home at *33 West Walnut St, Long Beach, NY* in late 1990. Zeidy was 67 here — forty-six years after the Tiszadob deportation that killed his parents Emanuel and Lina (Milkah bas Pinchas) HaKohen on 6 Sivan 1944, and his sister Ilona. He had eight more years to live. The continuity of a Tiszadob Kohen line that almost ended in 1944, photographed in a Long Island living room.

Bobby, Zeidy, Tatty, and three of Tatty's children at the family home in Long Beach, NY. Tatty is holding baby Eli. — F · family photograph

Three generations of Feigs — 33 West Walnut Street, 1990

Three generations under one roof at the Feig home on *33 West Walnut St, Long Beach, NY,* in 1990. **Tatty (Menachem)** stands at the top, holding his infant son **Eli**. To his right is **Zeidy (Sam · Laci · the surviving son of Tiszadob)**, smiling. Below them, **Bobby (Irene Weisz Feig, surviving daughter of Apagy)** is seated with two of her older grandsons — **Yitz (Yitzchak Yosef)** and **Yehudah Leib**. Of the four older people in this photograph, two are Holocaust survivors: Bobby (Bergen-Belsen, then recovery in Sweden) and Zeidy (Tiszadob — survived Auschwitz). Every grandchild visible here exists because they both made it through.

Bobby, Imre, and Aunt Esther in Chicago, 1984 — F · family photograph

Bobby, Imre, and Aunt Esther · Chicago 1984

The three siblings — Bobby (Irene), her older brother Imre, and the aunt who had crossed an ocean a half-century earlier to start the chain — together in Chicago in 1984. Aunt Esther's letter that became the foundation of much of this archive was written four years before this photograph was taken.

Laci and Irene memorial plaque — F · family record

Laci and Irene · the memorial plaque

Laci Klein Feig (Zeidy) — Mordechai Elazar ben Menachem HaKohen — died on 27 Elul 5750 (17 September 1990). His wife Bobby followed twenty-three years later, on 7 Iyar 5773 (17 April 2013). They are remembered together on this plaque.

Matzeiva of Zeidy Laci Klein with granite memorial plaque commemorating his Klein family murdered in the Holocaust — F · family record

Zeidy's matzeiva · with the memorial for those without graves

The matzeiva of **Zeidy Laci Klein** — Mordechai Elazar ben Menachem HaKohen — who died on 27 Elul 5750 (17 September 1990) in Brooklyn and is buried in Deans, New Jersey. The granite plaque set into the base of the matzeiva names the members of his family from Hungary who were murdered in the Holocaust and have no grave: his father **Emanuel** (Menachem ben Yitzchak Yosef HaKohen), his mother **Lina** (Milkah bas Pinchas HaKohen), his brother **Avrohom Chaim** (lost on the Don River), and his sister **Ilona** — Devorah bas Menachem HaKohen — who never married. Their names rest at the base of his stone.

Yitzchok Yosef silver becher cup — F · family heirloom

The becher of Yitzchok Yosef

A silver kiddush becher engraved יצחק יוסף כ״ץ קליין — Yitzchok Yosef K”Z (Kohen Tzedek) Klein — the cup of the great-great-grandfather who taught at the Mád yeshiva. The attribution comes down from Zeidy, who told his son Tatty whose cup it was; the engraving itself carries the name and Kohen status, without a patronym. By family account, the becher reached Zeidy through his first cousin — the childless son of Menachem’s sister and her husband (surname Guttman), a grandson of Yitzchok Yosef just as Zeidy was. The cousin settled in Israel; having no son of his own to carry it, he gave the Kohen cup to Zeidy, who did. From Zeidy it passed to Tatty (Menachem Feig), and on. *The cousin’s given name, his mother’s name, and the Guttman given name are not yet documented.* One of the few physical objects from the prewar family to reach our hands.

Imre Weisz at a late-1980s simcha with his Feldman-side cousin Herbert Hershel Feldman and Herbert's wife Sylvia Perlman — F · family photograph

Imre Weisz with his Feldman cousins · late 1980s

A late-1980s simcha. **Center: Imre Weisz** — Bobby's older brother, "Feter Isaac," who came out of Hungary in 1957. **Right: Herbert "Hershel" Feldman** — born 1930 in Chicago, the fourth and youngest son of Sam Feldman (Bobby's maternal uncle who crossed alone from Fiume in 1907 at age sixteen). **Left: Sylvia Perlman** — Herbert's wife, born around 1932 in Cook County, Illinois. Imre and Herbert are first cousins on the Feldman line: Imre's mother Regina and Herbert's father Sam were brother and sister, both children of Elias Feldman and Miriam Grósz of Apagy. The two cousins grew up on different continents and only met in America.

vii.

2000s–today · The Living Family

The grandchildren · the great-grandchildren · the family Bobby and Zeidy left behind

The youngest images on this site. Tatty Menachem and his siblings have grandchildren of their own now. The names that walked off the trains in May 1944 are spoken at every wedding, every bris, every Shabbos table. This is the family Bobby and Zeidy made possible.

Irene and Michal at Purim, 2010 — F · family photograph

Irene and Michal · Purim 2010

Bobby with her granddaughter Michal at Purim, three years before Bobby's death. Michal would later record the 2014 testimony interview with Tatty that anchors much of the historical record on this site.

Bobby (Irene Weisz Feig) showing her grandson Yitz the famous 1922 Apagy photograph: her parents Lipot and Regina, her brother Imre, her grandparents, and the Feldmans from across the street. — F · family photograph

Yitz and Bobby — the 1922 photograph

**Bobby (Irene Weisz Feig)** seated with her grandson **Yitz (Yitzchak Yosef Feig)**, holding the framed 1922 Apagy photograph — her own father **Lipot**, her mother **Regina (Feldman)**, her grandmother, her older brother **Imre**, and the Feldman household from across the street. Bobby is the only person in the framed photo who survived 1944. Three generations folded into one frame: the world before the rupture, in Bobby's hands; Bobby herself, who carried it out of Bergen-Belsen; and Yitz, the great-grandchild who exists because she survived.

Frumie's engagement, Philadelphia — F · family photograph

Frumie's engagement · Philadelphia

An engagement in the next generation — the family's continuing forward, the chain that Aunt Esther's first crossing in the early 20th century made possible.

Women's simcha gathering — cousins from the Weisz and Klein sides of the family at table 4 — F · family photograph

Cousins gather · women's simcha

A women's table at a simcha — cousins from both sides of the family at table 4. Three of those pictured can be named with certainty: **Rosie Weisz** (married to George Weisz, Imre's son), **Frumie Feig** (Tatty's wife), and **Rivky Feig** (Tatty's sister). The remaining women are cousins from the Weisz and Klein sides whose individual identifications are not yet recorded — the Engelman branch is notably absent. If you can identify any of the others, please tell us.

Rivka 'Rivky' Feig with her husband R' Laibe Schwartz, November 23, 2014 — F · family photograph

Rivky and Lieby · November 23, 2014

**Rivka "Rivky" Feig** — Rivka Rochel bas Mordechai Elazar HaKohen — with her husband **R' Laibe Schwartz** on 23 November 2014. From this marriage came the seven Schwartz children — the next generation carrying the names of those who came before. Rivka died on 28 Cheshvan 5785 (29 November 2024), ten years almost to the week after this photograph was taken.

Rivka's wedding with Bobby and Zeidy — F · family photograph

Rivka's wedding · with Bobby and Zeidy

Aunt Rivka — Rivka Rochel bas Mordechai Elazar HaKohen, named for her great-grandmother Roza Grósz — at her wedding to R' Laibe Schwartz, with her parents Bobby and Zeidy. From this marriage came the seven Schwartz children. Rivka died on 28 Cheshvan 5785 (29 November 2024).

This gallery is incomplete by design. As more family photographs surface — from Sandra in Florida, from cousins in Chicago, from the Feldman descendants in Mobile and Selma, from Tatty's archive — they will be added here. If you have a photograph, a document, or a memory that belongs in this walk through time, please tell us.