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.

The LANDAU Monologues in Six Parts (1 of 6)

Part 1 of 6 — Amalie LANDAU

At the beginning of the modern history of genealogy when my brother Don was starting to gather information and prepare family trees with all known information, we thought that our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother was a FRIEDENTHAL; Ernestine FRIEDENTHAL.  Supposedly, this FRIEDENTHAL great great grandmother was from the family of R. Ezekiel LANDAU (1713-1793) of Prague, author of “Noda b’Jehuda”, the name of which is his frequent moniker.  In the 1980s and early 1990s, I did a bit of research trying to find a line descended from Rabbi LANDAU that included FRIEDENTHALs, but without success.  That would have been more or less the state of “knowledge” from the late 1960s or early 1970s until May 1996.

“Less” because at some point, possibly from reading the “Chronique Familiale” by my uncle Andreas FREUND  I was able to correct our knowledge about that great great grandmother with the information that she was Ernestine PERL get. FRIEDENSTEIN, not FRIEDENTHAL.  I think that same source identified our mother’s mother’s father’s father’s was Jakob BACH, a teacher of Jewish subjects in Upper Silesia (Oberschlesien).

In May 1996, my mother, my brother Don and I made a trip to Prague, Theresienstadt, Breslau, Brieg and Berlin.  In Prague, in addition to meeting up with my fairly new friend Mark LUDWIG, violist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and founder and director of the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation, we also met our grandmother’s first cousin Ja’acov BACH (1911-2006) of Tel Aviv (born Karl Adolf BACH in Tarnowitz).  He was on a trip to Switzerland, but he made a side visit to Prague to meet us.  Over dinner, we learned that Jakob BACH’s wife, Ja’acov’s grandmother, our great great grandmother, was Amalie LANDAU, and she was supposedly descended from R. Ezekiel LANDAU.
 
While we were in Prague, we eventually got ourselves to the Old Jewish Cemetery at Zizkov (on Fibichova Street).  It was at the base of the huge television tower that we had been seeing from every vantage point in the city.  The cemetery was closed and surrounded by a metal fence.  One metal post was missing and following our mother, Don and I also went through narrow opening.  We found the gravestone of R. Ezekiel LANDAU, and then made our way back out through that opening.
 
With great great grandmother Amalie, we now had a LANDAU ancestor who was said, in family lore, somehow to be descended from the Noda b’Jehuda, R. Ezekiel LANDAU of Prague.  Initial research on family trees of R. LANDAU again did not reveal a family line that including our Amalie LANDAU.

We had just been on a slight detour at the beginning.  Instead of looking for LANDAU ancestors in our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother's family, they were instead to be found in our mother’s mother’s father’s mother's family.