LINHARDT BREUER SIMON FISCHMANN MAHLER SALZBERGER Genealogy Page

Abraham SIMON with his wife and children (approx. 1885)
[left to right]: Ida, Regina (wife), Jakab, Geza, Abraham, Aranka & Norbert

Genalogical Sources

Unlike any of my other family lines, the SIMON family has a century-old tradition of family genealogists. In 1901, my grandmother's Uncle Geza began a family history diary documenting the SIMON family back to 1770. Geza's son Zoltan died in WWII ending his direct lineage, but the family genealogical baton was passed to his brother Norbert's oldest son Gyula who passed it on to his youngest sister Magda who, in turn, passed it on to her daughter and grandson, Agi and Tamas.

Thus the primary source of genealogical information is Uncle Geza's Diary which collected the oral history of elders. Geza had no access to public documents and formulated his amazing account based on the oral tradition of the family. By the time Gyula, who was a lawyer, took over stewardship of the family he was able to supplement the history through a massive amount of public documents he collected in the late 1930's. The task of reorganizing the information for this new electronic age fell to Magda, Agi and Tamas.

In that this family history was already so well documented, my contribution is modest, but I continue to work with ant-like diligence to add a few nuggets to the family history and to make it available in English.

Family Origins

According to my grandmother's Uncle Geza's diary, the earliest known SIMON was Nachum SIMON (1770-1850). Nachum was born and died in Topolyhanusfalva in Saros County, Hungary. Hanusfalva is a village off the river Topoly. This town is now in Slovakia and called Hanusovce nad Toplou. "He lived in his own farm as a patriarch, occupying himself with agriculture and cattle husbandry." Nachum and his wife Jitti had three children: Gerson (1796-1874), Pál (1805-1884) and Ózer (who died in Galszecs). Gerson (1796) was born in Gombosovce also in Saros nearby to Topolyhanusfalva to the north. His other son Pál was also born in Topolyhanusfalva in 1904 or Gombosovce in 1810.. Gerzson and his wife Aranka (1796-1874) had a daughter named Regina (1841-1910). Gerzson was an agricultural land-leaser. His wife Aranka's was from a well known family of Rabbi's from Galicia. Pál and his wife Hanna SUSSMANN had a son named Abraham (1835-1906) aka Adolf in Topolyhanusfalva.

At some point Pál was a restauranteur in Homona, but he backed the wrong side in the 1848 revolution and his first wife Hani died. He remarried a woman named Sara and by 1850 he had moved back to Hanusfalva. In 1852 he had another son named Jakab. By 1869, he was reduced to a modest lifestyle working as a day laborer for a peasant farmer back in Hanusfalva. Somehow, the SIMON family began to migrate to Nagyvarad in Transylvania, Bihar County, Hungary (this area is now known as Oradea, Romania) which was an area of both economic and cultural opportunity for Jews. Geza's diary says only: "within the struggles of life by the direction of fate [Abraham] found himself in Nagyvárad. In Nagyvárad, not much later, he met his cousin Regina Simon, whom he made his wife on May 8^th, 1860."

From the Mormon church film on Topolyhanusfalva, we know Pál's 2nd wife Hani died in 1878 in Topolyhanusfalva of a cancer tumor. Pál (1810) is listed as married to Sara (1815) in the 1869 census. Abraham must have moved his father Pal to Nagyvarad after her death, because his father died in his home in Nagyvarad in 1884.

While the SIMON family clearly came from Slovakia, prior to moving to Nagyvarad around 1860, they almost certainly came from Galicia and Poland as did most Hungarian Jews.

Abraham's tombstone lists him as a Levite, which makes him a descendant of Levi, son of Jacob (Israel) and great grandfather to Moses. The distinction of being a Levite can only be passed on from father to son.

Historical Context

Jewish migration from the Pale Settlement (a part of Poland annexed by Russia with a large Jewish population) and Galicia towards Transylvania & the Carpathian Rus started between 1750-1850. The 1735-1738 Jewish Census, lists 61 families in Saros county of which all 61 were of Polish origin. Between 1880 & 1900, the Russians wishing to rid themselves of the Jews on their newly acquired territory, conducted pogroms which caused a flood of immigration southward towards Galicia. Galicia filled with poverty-stricken Jews which caused further migration further southwards towards Hungary and Transylvania. In 1840, the Hungarian Parliament granted permission to Jews born in Hungary or those with legal residence to live where they wanted, own land and establish businesses. In 1848 there was a revolution where Hungary broke away from the Austrian Empire only to be forced back into submission in 1849 by the Russian Army. In 1868, the Congress of the Jews proposed a series of reforms to Jewish institutions and education. The Jewish community split into two separate communities, the Neolog and the Orthodox, made up of those that agreed and disagreed with the reforms. In 1868, public education Act XXXVIII was passed based on proposals by Baron Jozsef Eotvos, the Minister of Religious Affairs. This act was based on two principles: compulsory schooling for all, and freedom of choice of instruction. The act encouraged church sponsored denominational schools (over Hungarian state schools). In 1873, there was a cholera epidemic swept German and took 190,000 lives in Hungary.

Abrahám SIMON married his first cousin Regina SIMON in 1861 in Nagyvarad. Records from the Romanian State Archives confirm that Adolf and Regina SIMON had several children in Nagyvarad: Chaie (1864), Geza (1866), Jakab (1867), Jitti (1869), Norbert (1871), Emilia (1873) and Aranka (1877). In total, they had 7 children of which 5 survived childhood. Abraham taught at the Auspitz Neolog school in Nagyvarad from 1874 to 1900. These records list the SIMONs living at Kapu Str. 68 in Nagyvarad in 1875 and then later moving to the suburb of Varalya in 1877.

(1) Johanna SIMON (1864-1866) aka Chaie . Born & died in Nagyvarad at age of 2.

(2) Geza SIMON (1866), a colorful family character, was a lieutenant of the hussars. Geza was quite a Don Juan. One night he was forced to jump out of a second story window when a jealous husband came home unexpectedly. His leg was badly injured and he had to have several toes amputated. Due to the injury, he was discharged from the Hussars and subsequently became a Tobacco company director. On his wedding day, when Geza married his first wife Aranka, he got a severe cramp in his leg while walking down the isle which everyone took to be an omen for the marriage. Geza later divorced Aranka and married a woman named Ella. No surviving descendants. [Click here to see a translation of Uncle Geza's 1901 diary.]

(3) Jakab SIMON (1867) was a kind-hearted and generous man who dropped out of school after getting in a fight with a teacher. He started as an apprentice in a print shop and eventually became a manager. He married Roza MAHLER, a singer and supposedly a cousin to the composer Gustav MAHLER. The SIMON family did not approve of the marriage since Roza came from a blue collar background. Only his brother Geza came to the wedding. His father Abraham broke off contact with Jakab until his first son was born. Jakab and Roza had 3 boys (Pal, Dezso and Zoltan) and my grandmother Boske. Despite being in management, Jakab was sympathetic to labor and led a general strike against the printer. After the strike, the workers went back to work, but Jakab was sacked. Out of a job, Jakab and his family moved from Nagyvarad to Budapest around 1906 where he got another job in a print shop. Later he opened a small delicatessen which he had close because Jakab was making no money at all since generous Jakab wouldn't dream of charging his friends who hung around all day playing cards at his little deli. Jakab died in 1941 of a broken heart, two years after the death of his wife and the same year his son, the violinist Dezso was run over by a Nazi tank. As my father said mercifully, Jakab was spared the worst horrors of the Holocaust. His descendants live on in US, Hungary and Israel

(4) Ida (Jitti) SIMON (1869) was a public school teacher in Alsórákos, Transylvania. Ida had a difficult and tragic life. She married 3 times. Her first husband was a bookbinder became mentally ill. Her second husband was a retired railroad engineer who died of a stroke at age 55. Her third husband was a top-machinist from Kissebes. Her son enthusiastically enlisted when he was only 18 and died "as a hero" in the WWI war effort. She was later cut off from her family and forced to make a Romanian loyalty vow. The poor woman ended up in Auschwitz. No surviving descendants.

(5) Norbert SIMON (1871) was an building engineer who built roads & bridges and was employed by the state in Transylvania. Originally, he worked in his birth town Nagyvarad, but later he got in a job in Segesvár, also in Transylvania. Norbert built the house his family lived in and had 7 children (the first one died): : Gyula (1899), Lazlo (1901), Jolan (1903), Klara (1906), Iren (1910) and Magda (1913). In 1919, after losing WWI, Hungary was forced to give up Transylvania to Romania. Norbert, who was ethnically Hungarian, wanted to stay within the borders of Hungary. Since Hungary was not accepting Jews, Norbert converted his family to Lutheran and moved them to Budapest. Norbert married open-minded and strong woman named Blanka KONDOR. Blanka believed family came first and did much to instill a strong sense of family in the Norbert SIMON line. Blanka opened a lace shop. She also was a bit of a celebrity. She wrote books and had a newspaper column on tips to women on how to run good households (she would know!). The family prospered through the 20s, but in 1929 the global depression hit. In the early 30s, as series of anti-Semitic decrees put increasing restrictions on work, education and all facets of life. Norbert died in 1939. His descendants live on in Hungary, Austria and Israel.

(6) Emilia SIMON (1873-1875) born & died in Nagyvarad at the age of 2.

(7) Aranka SIMON (1877) was a school teach who married merchant from Kolozsvár. After completing high school at a girl's academy, she assisted her father at the Auspitz. In 1900, she married a merchant from Kolozsvár who was drafted and survived WWI. When the Rumanians attacked Transylvania, the family escaped from Alsórákos, She was cut off from the rest of the family when the when the Oláhs (Romanians) occupied Alsórákos around 1919. Aranka's descendants are the only branch of the family to remained in Nagyvarad (now Oradea).

Religion

Originally, the SIMON family were very orthodox Jews. Abraham's parents were very orthodox and wanted him to study only the bible, not laical subjects like German, Hungarian and arithmetic. With the help of a Rabbi's daughter, Abraham broke with tradition and taught himself sufficiently to become a principal of a school in Nagyvarad. By the time Abraham was in Nagyvarad, he was a teacher for both the Orthodox and Neolog communities. Although Abraham and his family are often referenced in the temple records of the Orthodox temple run by Rabbi Landesberg, Abraham also taught at the Neolog school of Adolf Auspitz and his eulogy was given by Rabbi.Kecskeméty [Reformed].

The SIMON family found themselves in the middle of the conflict between the Hungarians and Romanians. The SIMON's were ethnic Hungarian, but Hungary lost Transylvania to Romania in 1918 as a result of the treaty of Versailles at the end of WWI. Some members, like my grandfather Jakab moved to Hungary prior to WWI and remained Jewish (he even let his mother-in-law move in and keep a kosher kitchen in his household). His brother Norbert was almost stuck in Romania and had to convert his family to Lutheran in 1919 in order to move his family to Budapest. Their brother Geza who was a hussar and later a Tobacco executive managed to get reassigned to Budapest without changing religion and had his children bar-mitzvahed at the Doheny St. Synagogue however he did experience persecution because of his religion after the failed 1918 revolution. Sisters Ida and Aranka got stuck in Romania.

My own grandmother Boske remained Jewish but assimilated by marrying a Catholic (who was actually agnostic). Boske's husband who was a politician converted his whole family to Unitarianism after a falling out with the sisters in his daughter's religious school in 1934. While my father never considered himself as a Jew, it is interesting that his sister immigrated to Israel and became Jewish after escaping Hungary in the '56 revolution.