Eisen Family

About author:

My name is Barbara Domoń and I am 17 years old. I am a student of the Academic Secondary School in Rzeszów, in a humanities and arts – oriented profile. I am interested in literature, film and, of course, history. I took part in the project to find out what life was like for the residents of my hometown in the last century.

Representative of the Eisen Family – Adria Scharf

What does Adria Scharf know about her family from Rzeszów?

Adria joined the project with very extensive knowledge about her ancestors, including a detailed family tree created by one of her relatives. Adria’s family history (that she knows about) dates back to 1839. It was then that Isaac Eisen was born. He was a baker and the owner of a bakery, and with his wife Sima he had six children. The family lived in Rzeszów, but unfortunately the address of the apartment and the bakery have not been preserved for future generations. Sima and Isaac’s second child was Simon Eisen, born in 1868 – he was Adria’s great-grandfather. He lived with his five siblings in Rzeszów until the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the next century, Simon, his wife Rosa, and their daughter Gissele moved to Germany, more specifically to Munich. It was there that their next three children were born: Arthur, Otto, and Edith – Adria’s future grandmother. From Germany, the family emigrated to Austria, specifically to Vienna, where Simon owned a clothing store where tailor-made shirts were made. His children and relatives from Rzeszów helped him run his business. A year before the outbreak of World War II, Edith’s husband, Erwin Scharf, obtained a visa to the United States. This is where Adria’s grandmother’s family finally settled. Initially, they lived in New York, Manhattan, and in 1945 Adria’s father, Peter, was born. Edith was not the only person from the Eisen family who emigrated – between 1938 and 1939, her parents and siblings also left for Vienna. Their departure took place after the Austrian Anschlus, so they managed to leave Europe at the last minute. Despite such extensive knowledge about the fate of the Eisens, there are still gaps in the family history: among others, the exact address of the family bakery in Rzeszów and the stories of Simon’s siblings.

Search effects

Since Adria already had extensive knowledge about her family, additionally enriched by numerous photographs from Edward Janusz’s photography studio, one of my tasks was to confirm the information received from Adria in the State Archives in Rzeszów.

I started checking the dates with the first known ancestor – Izaak Eisen. Documents confirmed that he was born in 1839 in Wielopole (today Wielopole Skrzyńskie) near Ropczyce. He was a baker and in November 1863 he married Sima Korn (who sometimes appeared in documents under her mother’s maiden name as Sima Weisel, which initially caused a bit of confusion during my research). Sima was born in 1842 in Strzyżów. The couple, according to the documents received from Adria, had six children: Elimelech (known as Max) – born in October 1866, Simon (Adria’s great-grandfather) – born in November 1868, Hersch Moses – born in 1870, Mordche (known as Markus) – born in 1872, Leia – born in 1874, and Joel – born in 1879.

While searching through the archives, I managed to find the birth certificate of another Eisens daughter – Frimet, who was not mentioned in any documents provided by Adria. According to the records of births, Frimet Eisen was born on January 25, 1878. Later, she appears in documents only once: in the census of 1880, which may indicate that the girl died in later years. However, without documentary confirmation I cannot state this is true.

Izaak and Sima appear in the Rzeszów census from 1902. According to the document, at that time they lived at Rynek Street 24. The married couple ran a bakery, which was located at the same address. At that time, they lived without children, as they were an older couple already – Izaak was 63 years old and Sima was 60 years old. Thanks to the census of residents of Rzeszów from 1910, we know that the couple changed their place of residence and moved to the nearby Króla Kazimierza Street, where they lived at 8. Isaac Eisen died on January 13, 1911, at the age of 72, and his wife died on May 31, 1914.

One of Adria’s requests was to find any information about the lives of Izaak and Sima’s children. She wanted to know what their lives were like and whether they were able to enjoy the equal rights that Emperor Franz Joseph gave the Jews in Galicia in 1867. Unfortunately, most of the Eisen children left Rzeszów at the turn of the century, which is why there are not many documents informing about their lives in our city.

During my visits in the archives, I found the most information concerning the Eisens’ third child, Hersch Moses, because he had remained in Rzeszów. Hersch Moses married Pesla Schipper and had 7 children with her – 4 daughters (Salcia, Leicia, Fryda, and Golda) and 3 sons (Leser, Saul, Markus). According to documents, Hersch initially held a teaching position, but according to other documents, in 1910 he was already the owner of a laundry. He and his wife were registered at three addresses over the years. In 1902, at Baldachówka Street 8 and Przesmyk Street 4, where Hersch Moses was listed as a brother-in-law. It allows us to believe that this was the address where the Pesla family lived. Eight years later, the couple was listed in documents at the address Nowe Miasto – Zamek Street 24. The addresses from 1902 still exist and I had the opportunity to visit them. Unfortunately, the address from 1910 does not exist at present.

I was not able to find much about the lives of the children of Hersch Moses and his wife Pesla. However, Adria already had information that Lese, one of their sons, was helping his uncle Simon in his shop in Vienna. It means that he also left Rzeszów at some point of his life.  

Leser Eisen was also recorded in the population traffic control books, which were the first documents I found during my search. The document was probably composed by the German authorities after the occupation of Rzeszów in September 1939! It can be concluded by the fact that the document is completed in German and that it contains an entry that Leser Eisen moved to Lviv on September 7, 1939 (the German name of the city is used in the entry – Lemberg).

The last issue I dealt with were family photos from Adria’s private archive. They include photographs from the studio of Edward Janusz, a famous Galician photographer from Rzeszów, whose films are in both the Rzeszów City Photography Gallery and the District Museum in Rzeszów. On the lists of customers of Janusz’s photography studio, which are available at the District Museum, the name Eisen appeared as many as 16 times from 1894 to 1920! Although the list does not indicate what photos were ordered, I managed to compare the photos from the years when the Eisen name appears to some of the photos of the Eisen family that Adria shared with me. My research provided a lot of valuable and new information, but many aspects of the life of the Eisen family still remain unknown.

Summaries

Barbara Domoń

Participating in the project was an amazing experience. Not only did it allow me to expand my knowledge about my hometown, but it also showed me how history still influences the present. The opportunity to visit houses located at addresses found during archive research was special for me. I had no idea how many amazing stories our city hides. Visits to the archive helped me delve deeper not only into the fate of the Eisen family, but also showed how many undiscovered stories can be found in archival documents. The months spent on looking through old documents were sometimes difficult: hard on the eyes and difficult to reconcile with school life, but I was happy to do my job so that Adria could learn more about her ancestors.

Even though I didn’t manage to find out everything Adria asked for, I think the search was very successful and I managed to get completely new information that Adria had no idea about before. First of all, during visits to the archives, I managed to discover the address of the bakery, which remained unknown for years, and learned the family’s home addresses. The greatest discovery, however, is the birth certificate of Frimet – the daughter of Isaac and Sima, about whom Adria had no idea. My cooperation with Adria was very successful. We exchanged many messages and held several online meetings, when we managed to talk not only about the project.

Adria Scharf:

Working with Basia, high school student in Rzeszow, Poland, has been an extraordinary experience.  The student was focused and lovely. I was touched by her interest in conducting research focused on my family, the Eisens of Rzeszow, and I was impressed with the thoroughness of her “detective” work. I was close to my grandmother, Edith Scharf (born Edith Eisen), who I called “Omi.”  Rzeszow is the city where her father Simche (Simon) Eisen had grown up and where much of her extended family on her father’s side had lived prior to the Nazis’ arrival.  

Basia uncovered precious details about the family, for example about the location of the bakery owned by Simche’s parents. The recovery of these details from the past, and the documents and the photos that Basia found, are gifts.

The Eisen family members who survived the Holocaust were those who had left Rzeszow by 1939. Those few who remained in Rzeszow through 1939 were killed. Working on this project has not only been an interesting exercise. It has been a step in healing. I look forward to sharing this recovered history with many other descendents of the Eisens of Rzeszow, who now live scattered across the United States, Australia, Germany, and in Israel. I sincerely thank Grażyna Bochenek and Basia Domoń for this experience.  

Izaak Eisen, great-great-grandfather, baker. Photo courtesy of Adria Scharf.

Sima Eisen, Adria Scharf’s great-great-grandmother, Rzeszów. Photo taken at S. Spritzer’s photography studio. Photo courtesy of Adria Scharf.

Rosa and Simon Eisen, Adria Scharf’s grandmother and grandfather, Kraków, 1893. Photo courtesy of Adria Scharf.

Simon Eisen, Adria Scharf’s grandfather, in the middle, Rzeszów. Photo taken at Edward Janusz’s photography studio. Photo courtesy of Adria Scharf.

Rosa Eisen, Adria Scharf’s grandmother, on the left, Rzeszów. Photo taken at Edward Janusz’s photography studio. Photo courtesy of Adria Scharf.

Original photos: Janet Eisen is responsible for scanning and digitally preserving the photos in this report, from originals saved by Trude Eisen Donat, Rosa and Sima Eisens’s eldest granddaughter.