Friedman Family

About author:

My name is Aleksandra Sira and I am a student of English Philology at the University of Rzeszów. One of my main interests is linguistics. In addition, I  like reading non-fiction books, and historical novels. I am also particularly fond of animals. I decided to take part in “My Rzeszów. Our Rzeszów” project because I have always been interested in history. I even wanted to join the project in the first edition, but unfortunately the Covid pandemic ruined my plans. That’s why I am extremely happy that I got a second chance.

Representative of the Friedman Family – Kerry Rosen

What does Kerry Rosen know about her ancestors?

Kerry Rosen’s grandparents, Gitel and Abraham Friedman, were from Rzeszow. Abraham Friedman was a son of Meier Friedman and Keindel Friedman (nee Lustig). He was born on April 25, 1888, in Nowy Sącz. He lived there with his parents and four siblings, and after his father’s death in 1906, Abraham moved to Rzeszow with his mother and four siblings. The male part of the Friedman family was engaged in stonemasonry, particularly in making tombstones for Jews from Rzeszów and surrounding towns. The Friedman family lived in Rzeszów until 1926; their apartment was probably located at Bartosza Street 10.

In 1911, Abraham married Gitel Letzer from Kolbuszowa. Kerry’s grandmother was born in 1884, the daughter of Chaim Zelig Letzer and Roni Letzer (née Frost). The married couple Gitel and Abraham Friedman had 4 sons (Marvin, Joseph, Jerome, and Elias) and 2 daughters (Grace and Pearl). Jerome Friedman was Kerry’s father.

Abraham emigrated to the USA twice. First in 1913, but he returned to Poland a year later for unknown reasons. He emigrated to the United States for the second time in 1920, what appeared to be a permanent choice, settling in Cleveland, Ohio. Two years later, his mother also moved to the US. He received American citizenship in 1926, the same year his wife and six children joined him.

In the late 1940s, Abraham and Gitel moved to Los Angeles, California. Gitel Friedman died in 1958, and Abraham Friedman in 1963. They are both buried in Los Angeles.

Results of the research:

The information Kerry Rosen managed to gather about her ancestors was unfortunately sparse, and at the same time not all of it was certain. 

When searching for information about Kerry Rosen’s family, I had to bear in mind the fact that many Jewish names could be written differently in the documents of Polish offices than they actually sounded in Yiddish. That is why I tried to have different versions of a given name in my head.

As a representative of Kerry Rosen I had started my research by looking through digitized documents on the website of the State Archives in Rzeszów. One result of many hours of work was finding the marriage certificate of Abraham Friedman and Gitel Letzer, the grandparents of Kerry Rosen. This was truly surprising, because the State Archives in Rzeszów currently holds over 9 kilometers of documents, but most of them are not available in digital form. The fact that they digitized the documents I was looking for was truly a miracle. But it turned out well!

The marriage certificate included other documents related to the Friedmans’ marriage, i.e. copies of birth certificates and details about the married couple’s parents. Thanks to these discoveries, I confirmed the date of Abraham and Gitel’s wedding – it was September 3, 1911. The documents showed that in order to marry, Abraham Friedman had to be considered an adult, because he was not yet twenty-four years old. This surprised me so I decided to inspect the matter. To my great surprise, I came across the provision of §21 of the Austrian Civil Code of 1811, which stated: “Those who, for lack of years, for mental defects or for other reasons, are incapable of taking due care of their own interests, shall be placed under the special protection of the law. Such are: the children of seven years; the minors of fourteen years; the minors who have not yet reached their twenty-fourth year of age; also: the mad, the mad and the infirm; who are either completely deprived of the use of reason […]”. Moreover, I learned from the same act that due to the early death of his father, Abraham Friedman had to be under the care of a parole officer or guardian until he became an adult: “persons who are deprived of paternal care and who are either still minors or for other reasons are unable provide information on their own interests, they are granted the act by the guardian or parole officer of special defense.” 

The marriage certificate and other documents concerning the marriage of the Friedmans were the only ones I obtained online. Nevertheless, they are very valuable documents that motivated me to further search. 

Later, I spent a lot of time searching online, and I came across many documents relating to the name ‘Friedman’. As it turned out, a lot of people with this surname lived in Rzeszów in the years 1906-1926, when Kerry Rosen’s ancestors lived in the city. In 1910 there were at least seventy Friedmans in Rzeszów, but they were not related to Kerry Rosen’s family (at least we are not able to verify this).

 The State Archives in Rzeszów has lists of Rzeszów residents created on the basis of population censuses conducted by the Austrian authorities at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Each list contains the following data: archive number, team fonds, reference number, street, orientation number, apartment’s number, conscription number, surname, first names, relationship to the owner of the apartment or head of the family, gender, year of birth, place of birth, affiliation to the commune/county /country, denomination, marital status, colloquial language, comments. Such a list from 1910 included Abraham Friedman, who lived at Batory Street. It is true that Kerry mentioned Bartosza Street, but Batorego Street – as indicated by the plans I found in the archive – was small and narrow, and adjacent to the above-mentioned Bartosza Street. Hence, I believe it might be the same address, occupied then by Abraham Friedman, who was Kerry Rosen’s grandfather. 

I asked the Archives’ office for a digital version of the complete original census  from 1910… and received approximately 1,300 scans! Initially, I was not worried by the number, as I knew the conscription number next to which Abraham Friedman’s name was written – number 432. I was surprised when after the number 431, the number 433 immediately appeared. I thought that maybe the cards were mixed up, so I carefully looked through all the scans in the 430-440 range. However, the number I was looking for was not among them. In the end, I looked through almost 1,300 scans, but I still could not find Abraham Friedman’s data. Worried, I realized that I must have missed the actual scans and started searching through the file again – but still without any results. The scans I needed were simply not there!

It seemed logical that there must have been an oversight on the part of the person who scanned the archived documents, and that the employee probably missed the page I was interested in. Unfortunately, it turned out that the paper version of the 1910 census was simply missing several cards, including the one about Abraham Friedman. Kerry Rosen and I are very unlucky on this one!

Searches for records of the births of the Friedman children also turned out to be fruitless. I looked through birth catalogs from the 1908-1920 range, but I did not find a single entry that referred to any of the children of Abraham and Gitel Friedman, and they had six children. We can talk about bad luck again.

 The next stage of the search was to visit the State Archives in Rzeszów twice and look through a really huge number of books, catalogs and documents that could contain any other information about the Friedman family. I will add that when ordering documents via the online form, I was not aware that I would receive a whole cart of documents, which weighed approximately 20 kilograms in total! My ambition did not allow me to miss any books, so I looked through all of them!

It was only after two and a half hours of work that I found the first clue. How lucky I was! One of the dreams that Kerry Rosen shared at the beginning of the project was the desire to see the school documents of the Friedman children. First I found one report card, then another. Based on the father’s data recorded on both report cards (Abraham Friedman, a stonemason living at Bartosza Street 6) it can be concluded that the data concerns the Friedman children I was interested in. The first document is a report card from 1918/1919 from Maria Konopnicka Primary School in Rzeszów. The report card was issued to Gusta Friedman, born on February 1, 1908, who, based on her grades, can be considered a good student. At first I thought it might be a third daughter of Abraham and Gitel, about whom Kerry Rosen has no information for some reason. However, the Friedman descendant denied that she had a third aunt because she believes that she and her family would have known about the existence of such a person. According to Kerry Rosen, Gusta is probably the Polish version of the name Grendel, and it is simply Grendel Friedman (despite the discrepancy between the date of birth on the report card – February 1, 1908 – and the date of birth known from the genealogical family tree – February 2, 1910). Nevertheless, for Kerry, this aunt is known primarily by her English name, Grace.

I found the second report card in the School Catalog from 1921/1922, published by the Seweryna Duchińska Public School. We learn from it that Gizela Friedman, daughter of Abraham Friedman, born on February 1, 1909, was unclassified due to irregular attendance at school. Gizela is a completely new name, but the father’s data indicate that she is from the Kerry Rosen family. According to Kerry Rosen, both report cards refer to the same person, and the differences in names and dates of birth are the result of a recording error. Maybe that is true, it is hard to tell today. I can only assume that if it is really about one girl – a person called Grace Friedman in the USA – then in Rzeszów she used as many as three names, i.e. Grendel, Gusta, and Gizela, and either she continued her education at a higher school (perhaps a junior high school) or was transferred from one school to another for some reason.

While searching through classification lists from various schools in Rzeszów, I did not find any report cards from the Friedman sons. Based on this, it can be concluded that these were working children who did not attend school. Perhaps the boys were trained in stonemasonry, which was the work of their father and uncles. The conclusion from the search is also surprising, because in the past, more emphasis was placed on the education of sons than daughters, and in the case of the Friedmans it was most likely the other way around. 

The purpose of my second visit to the State Archives in Rzeszów was to look through the catalog called Technical documentation of buildings at Abrahamsberga, Konarskiego, Asnyka, Baranówka, Bartosza Streets (approx. 1918-1939). I ordered this document online because of the reference to Bartosza Street in the title, but I did not have high hopes that I would find anything in it. It turned out differently – I found approximately 50 documents that were directly related to the family I was looking for!

I had to put a lot of effort into deciphering the handwriting and organizing all the documents chronologically. But, as a result, an inconspicuous folder with official correspondence revealed a very interesting story.

What do the preserved documents reveal? In August 1910, Keindla Friedman (Kerry Rosen’s great-grandmother) sent a letter to the Rzeszów municipality asking for a permit to build a storey house. The building was to be built at Bartosza Street in Rzeszów on a building plot belonging to the family. A month later, the commission that surveyed the area found that “the width of Bartosza Street, i.e. the street connecting Lwowska Street with the “nad Mikuśką” Street is 10 m. Admittedly, such a street width should not be allowed.” The point is that the width of Bartosza Street was so small that initially the commission stated that “there could be no way of building it.” Later, however, the commission proposed two solutions. One of them was closing the street – but this was ruled out because other residents would not be able to get to their plots located in the further part of Bartosza Street. The second solution provided a building permit due to the fact that “the street does not add any communication value to Batorego Street, which is 20 m away.” Ultimately, despite initial objections, the commission issued a building permit for the house.

What is worth mentioning is that Bartosza Street was located in the area of Lwowska, Fredry, and Batorego Streets. In 1931 it was described as a side street from Lwowska Street running to Fredry Street. Today this street no longer exists in Rzeszów.

In 1911, city officials, probably due to the unfavorable location of the Friedmans’ plot, ordered a land exchange: the city municipality gave the Friedmans 16 m2 of the plot they needed, and in return, the family gave the commune 13 m2 of another plot, paying an additional 66 koron (currency at that time).

However, before the construction of the house could start, the Friedman family had to meet many different conditions. This included, for example, the construction of a stone sidewalk next to the building in accordance with the guidelines of the Municipal Building Department, but also providing insurance for people working on the construction site. For this purpose, Abraham Friedman had to go to Lviv (170 kilometers from Rzeszów!) to the Workers’ Insurance Institution.

The first half of 1912 was marked by official controls for the Friedman family. Committees constantly appeared on the construction site to monitor the progress of the work. I am very surprised by the number of inspections that took place at the beginning of the 20th century. Within three years, the Friedman family had at least ten official visits, and in 1912 alone there were as many as five.

 In July 1912, at the request of the Friedmans, an inspection of the house took place, on the basis of which a permit to live in the building was finally issued. However, the family received safety guidelines, including: installing metal sheets next to the stoves and paving the yard. Subsequent inspections showed failure to comply with these orders, and at the beginning of January 1913 Keindla Friedman was ordered to pay a fee of 20 korons or be sentenced to two days in prison. It is unknown whether this punishment was enforced, but a document from April 1913 states: “Abraham and Keindla Friedman did not comply with the order of October 6th 1912. […] the yard is unpaved, there are no metal sheets nailed to the floor next to the stoves.” From the rest of the report, I learned that they probably had additional unregistered tenants. Unfortunately, I have not found any documents that would prove the end of the case and the implementation (or not) of the prison sentence.

Unfortunately, I did not find any documents about the stonemasonry of Abraham Friedman and his brothers. This is only mentioned in the above-mentioned report cards, while information from Abraham’s granddaughter shows that it was a very famous stonemasonry company and the Friedman brothers made matzevot not only in Rzeszów cemeteries, but also in necropolises in nearby towns. Perhaps the Jewish cemetery at Rejtana Street in Rzeszów, where some of the tombstones have been preserved, contains tombstones made by the Friedman company, but – as far as I know – they were not signed by the contractors, so they cannot be identified.

Summaries

Aleksandra Siry

At the very beginning of the project, I was worried about searching through the archive and whether I would disappoint Kerry Rosen. I was unsure whether I would be able to find any documents concerning the Friedman family. Luckily, every step I took in my search brought to more or less fruitful results. Each document I found gave me a lot of satisfaction and a sense of purpose. Ultimately, I’m very happy with what I found out. The whole project taught me patience and encouraged me to conduct archival research, this time regarding my family. I am very happy that I could take part in the project. I met wonderful people, participated in interesting meetings, and gained a lot of new experiences that will certainly be useful in my future.

Kerry Rosen

I applied to be a participant so I could learn more about my family’s history in Rzeszów. And I did. I can say that it has been a most rewarding experience. Working with Aleksandra and Grażyna has been a real joy! Thank you to the entire project team for what they are doing for the descendants of Rzeszow’s Jewish community.

The Friedman Family, from the left: Jerome (Kerry Rosen’s father), Pearl, Keindla, Marvin, Gitel, Elias, Grace, Joseph. Poland (Rzeszow?), 1922. Photo courtesy of Kerry Rosen.

Abraham and Gitel Friedman, grandfather and grandmother of Kerry Rosen. USA, 1945. Photo courtesy of Kerry Rosen.

Plan of the facade of the Friedman house. Document from the collections of the Public Records in Rzeszów.