Wednesday, July 15, 2020

The Gutman Sisters - Rosa and Gittel

I know two living descendants of Rosa (1868-1941) and Gittel (1854-?). One is Gittel's great-granddaughter Linda Edelstein of San Francisco. The other is Michele Akerberg of France who is a great-granddaughter of both Rosa and Gittel. Gittel's daughter Masha Migdal married Rosa's son Josef Ackerberg, the parents of Michele's father Leon Akerberg (1914-1987). So Leon's grandmothers were sisters.

Ancestry.com is how Linda and I became acquainted. Her family tree had Gittel Migdal and her husband Shmul Migdal in it. Gittel had many children, who were in both of our trees. Linda did not know that Gutman was Gittel's maiden name or that she was from Kock.

MyHeritage.com is how Michele and I became acquainted. Our family trees overlapped with Gittel and Shmul and descendents. She knew they married in Kock. She also had Rosa Gutman in her tree but had nothing more about when and where she lived or who her parents were. However she had Ackerberg as her married name.

For my part I found many records of the Gutman family of Kock in the Polish State Archives which are online. The 1870 marriage of Gittel and Shmul is one of them. Gittel's parents were Moshe Gutman and Sara nee Tannenbaum. There is no record of Rosa's birth but there is a record of her death, and her husband's, in Warsaw in 1941 at the hands of the Nazis. On the yadvashem web site there is a record of their death which clearly shows Rosa to have been the daughter of Moshe and Sara, thus Gittel's sister. Below is an excert.

https://yvng.yadvashem.org/nameDetails.html?language=en&itemId=1831591&ind=0

"Roiza Akerberg nee Gutman was born in Kock, Poland in 1868 to Moshe and Sara. She was a housewife and married to Herszel. Prior to WWII she lived in Warszawa, Poland. During the war she was in Warszawa, Poland.

Roiza was murdered in the Shoah.

This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed here) submitted by her niece, Neta Avigdor Akhituv

"