Getting to Gittle: Some of the Rest of the Story

When we last met (here) I was celebrating the discovery of Gittle Ett Rothleder's long-sought last name. I was able to link her to Gertrude Rothleder identified in the 1950 census living with her brother Dave Ett and his family. I found that she'd passed away in 1952 and located her grave in Mount Hebron Cemetery. But genealogy leaves no time for dilly-dallying. There certainly are more questions about Gittle.

More of the Story 

Family members who remembered her told me that Gittle lived in Argentina and immigrated to the United States sometime in the 1940s after her daughter died. 

My research found that Gittle lived for almost 20 years in Argentina.

Indexed arrival manifests on CEMLA.com (Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinamericanos) showed that Gittle arrived in Buenos Aires aboard the S.S. Arlanza as Guitla Rothleder on 22 September 1926. She was identified as a widow, born in Zaleszczyki, of Polish nationality, and 50 years old (born about 1875 - consistent with most of the other records we have for her thus far). She had embarked on her voyage from Cherbourg, France.[1]

Why did she go to Argentina when most of her siblings were in New York? By that time the United States had implemented restrictions on those who were allowed to immigrate. But, her decision, likely after her husband died in the Zaleszczyki area, was probably more personal: her daughter, Perla, and Perla's family were already in Argentina.

There was no indexed arrival manifest for Perla on the CEMLA.com website. This is, apparently, not unusual: the records are not complete.

Lucky for our research, the surname Rothleder is uncommon. Alexander Beider's seminal work on Jewish surnames in Galicia indicates the name is from the Zaleszczyki area and several of the adjacent towns and districts in what had been eastern Galicia: Lwow, Stanislawow, Horodenka, Czortkow, Husiatyn, and Tarnopol. He also noted that it means red leather.[2]

JewishGen.org has indexed gravestone records from Cemeterio Comunitario de Tablada (Tablada Cemetery) in Buenos Aires - one of the cemeteries used by Askenazi Jews in Argentina. The index included a young woman named Perla Rotleder Feingold (mis-indexed as Fenigold). Perla died on 2 July 1941. AMIA (Asociacion Mutual Israelit Argentina), which administers the cemetery, provided photos of the gravestone.[3] Unfortunately, the inscription is worn and not all of it is readable. There is, however, a wonderful photo of Perla on the stone.

[Hebrew:] Perel [remainder of name not readable]

[Hebrew date not clear. It might be 7 Tamuz 5701]

[Spanish:] PERLA R. de FEINGOLD

2 - 7 [July] - 1941

39 YEARS

Her husband, children,

grandchildren

While Perla's maiden name is represented by only an R on the stone, clearly, at some point the cemetery had a record that Perla's maiden name was Rot[h]leder. 

AMIA has a difficult history. In July 1994, anti-Semitic terrorists bombed and destroyed the AMIA building, killing 85 people and injuring 300. The bombing also destroyed most of AMIA's 150,000 registrations. The organization could not provide me any clarifying information about the grave.

I was also hoping to learn Perla's father's name. But that area of the inscription is worn beyond readability.

But from this stone we can see that Perla was 39 years old at death - born about 1901 or 1902. She was married to someone named Feingold and had children and grandchildren.

The name Perla makes perfect sense for Gittle's child. Gittle's mother Perl died in 1895. Of course Gittle would name her child after her recently deceased mother (several of the Ett siblings named girls in honor of their mother). We can pursue the surname Feingold with the hope we can confirm that we have, indeed, located Gittle's daughter.

An Argentinian genealogist was kind enough to contact the Buenos Aires Archive to help locate Perla's death certificate. The archive did not find one among their collections. Either someone lost the record or Perla did not die in Buenos Aires. 

What I have learned about Argentinian genealogy research is that record search is not usually very easy. Records for Buenos Aires may be centralized, but areas outside the province are not. I found that to place an order for a vital record from the archive in Buenos Aires either one has to be from Argentina (and provide an Argentinian ID number) or one must visit the archive in person. If the Feingold family did not live in Buenos Aires I would need to figure out where they may have been when Perla died.

While I did not find a passenger arrival manifest in the CEMLA index for Perla Rot[h]leder Feingold, I believe I may have found her husband's. Izaak Feingold was a married 25-year-old when he arrived in Buenos Aires on the S.S. Francesca from Trieste on 4 July 1924. He was from the same community as the Gittle's family: Torskie (or Torske).

There are no birth or marriage records in Jewish Records Indexing-Poland and Gesher Galicia databases for Izaak and Perla (nor for Gittle Ett and Mr. Rothleder). However, owing to record loss in the Zaleszczyki district (of which Torskie was a part), I did not expect to find anything.[4]

Torskie (I visited in 2013), however, was a very small community with only a few Jewish families. In fact there was neither a synagogue nor a Jewish cemetery. My cousin Sally Barath Eisner told me that in the 1920s and 1930s she, her brother Abe, and her parents would walk three miles to the closest synagogue, which was in Uścieczko, for Shabbat and holiday services.

So, the fact that this Isaak Feingold had the same surname as on Perla Rothleder Feingold's gravestone, was close in age to Perla, was from the same community in the old country, and arrived in Argentina two years before Gittle is compelling. Not enough, but interesting.

Gittle's Voyage to the United States

Ancestry.com provided several versions of Gittle's U.S. arrival manifest in 1946. She arrived in Miami from Buenos Aires on 10 June 1946 via Pan American World Airways flight 33612 from Buenos Aires. She was 69 years old, of Polish nationality, and admitted to the United States based upon a affidavit.[5]

She, apparently, did not have a passport. That may indicate that she never naturalized in Argentina. I will check with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service to see what they may have on Gittle in their immigration files. She may not have naturalized in the USA, but she would have had to register as an alien.

We do not know how she traveled from Miami to New York to stay with her brother, Dave Ett and his family in Belle Harbor, Queens. 

Online Trees?

Both MyHeritage.com and Geni.com have online trees for a Rothleder-Feingold family in Argentina. Based on these it appears that Isaak and Perla Rothleder Feingold had three children (all now passed away). Using some clues from these trees I located a grave for Enrique (Tzvi) Feingold in Ashkelon Cemetery in Israel on Billion Graves.

Tzvi Feingold, son of Perla and Yitzkhak, of memory, was born in 1931 and died on 5 Cheshvan 5770 (22 or 23 October 2009).

Yitzkhak is the Hebrew version of Isaac.

In my previous post about Gittle, I noted that one of her father's Yiddish names was Hersch and that the Hebrew equivalent of Hersch is Tzvi. Enrique is the Spanish equivalent of the English name Henry. Enrique/Henry, whose Hebrew name was Tzvi was probably named for his grandfather whose had the Hebrew name Tzvi. 

At least one of the online trees suggested that the two oldest of the Feingold children were born in Galicia, but that Enrique, the youngest was born in La Pampa, Argentina - a province about 850 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires.

I have to consider that perhaps the family lived in one of the Baron Hirsch/Jewish Colonization Association agricultural colonies outside of Buenos Aires. There were several in the La Pampa area. The small amount of reading I have done indicates that Jews from Galicia did participate in Argentinian colonies, especially in the 1920s. So far I have not located evidence of the family tied to a JCA project. I will keep looking.

 

Family Contacts

I think this Feingold family is likely related to Gittle. I have sent messages through MyHeritage's mail system to three of the tree owners. I hope at least one will respond and help answer a few of my questions.

Notes:

1. "Arrival Records," index, CEMLA.com (Centro de Estudios Migratorios Latinamericanos), entry for Guitla Rothleder, age 50, S.S. Arlanza, from Cherbourg to Buenos Aires, arrived 22 September 1926. Unfortunately, Argentinian passenger arrival manifests are hit or miss. Many passenger manifests have been lost. CEMLA only has indices. Originals should be at the Argentina National Archives, but, they are in the process of moving to a new building and are not currently fulfilling record requests. FamilySearch has some digitized Argentinian passenger records (arrival and departure - as far as I can tell). But browsing through all the images on digital film 103972426 ("Lista de pasajeros, AR-AGN-DAI-DNM-LPM-S-0448-edi (Puertos de Ultramar), 1926 Sep" did not locate relevant records.

2. Alexander Beider, A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia (Bergenfield, New Jersey: Avotaynu, 2004), p 456. 

3. Perla Feingold, gravestone, 2 July 1941, Cemeterio Comunitario de Tablada (Tablada Cemetery), lot 50, row 419, parcel 25; photo provided to E. Garber by AMIA (https://www.amia.org), 8 July 2022).

4. I did note some Feingolds in Zaleszczyki in the Residence List books from 1941 (in the JRI-Poland database). But until I determine Isaac's parents names (or at least his father's name), it is hard to know if these people might be related.

5. Passenger manifest, Pan American World Airways flight 33612, from Buenos Aires to Miami, 10 June 1946, passenger no. 10, Gitla Rohtleder [sic], age 69; images, Ancestry.com; citing NARA RG 85, roll 73. I will have to see if I can get a copy of that affidavit - likely from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.