The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (2 of 6)

Part 2 of 6 — Haskel LANDAU & Nesche LANDAU

In 1996 when I first learned about my great great grandmother Amalie LANDAU, I had known about the Mormon’s huge microfilm archive of European records for many years, but I ignored it because I could not imagine that that collection could have anything relevant for research on Jewish family history.  Of course, I was wrong about that.  For their own reasons, the Mormon’s amassed a huge collection of birth, marriage and death records, residents’ books, census records, etc, including records from Jewish communities all over Europe.  In 1998, I finally started to look at these materials, starting with Breslau records, but quickly moving on to other towns in Silesia and in Posen Province — Brieg, Myslowitz, Kempen, etc.

The first new information came from the birth entry for my great great aunt Regina BACH (who later married David RITTER) in Myslowitz Jewish community birth records.  That 1864 entry not only had Regina’s birth date and parents Jakob BACH and Amalie LANDAU, but for some reason also included how long Jakob and Amalie had been married (4 years; actually, in their 4th year), Amalie’s age (26; b.ca.1838) and, most interestingly, that Amalie was from Kempen and that her father was Haskel LANDAU.

That, of course, led to review of Kempen Jewish community records.  There were eight birth records for children of a Haskel LANDAU and his wife Nesche LANDAU geb. LANDAU:  Taube (1825), Israel Jonas (1827), Juda (1830), a stillborn son (1832), Elke (1833), Zorel (1834), Jette (1836) and Samuel (1842).  Amalie’s name did not appear in that set of births from 1825 to 1842.  Still, since it seemed unlikely that there would be two Haskel LANDAUs having children in Kempen at the same time, I concluded that this Haskel was probably Amalie’s father, and, therefore, that Nesche LANDAU was her mother.  These were my new great great great grandparents.

With both of Amalie’s (presumed) parents being LANDAUs, the search for a link back to the Noda b’Jehuda had twice the chance of success; but still, a journey of a 1000 (or a few) generations starts with finding the parents.