Family genealogy
My paternal families
This map dates from the 1850s.
The triangle, where lived my paternal family, is clearly visible:
Czalczyn-Olszowka and Lopuszno.
In the 18th century, Lopuszno developed and became the Jewish center of this small Jewish district.
According to the civil registry records, most of the Czalczynski generations from 1768 until my grandfather (1883) will be located in Olszwka, a colony dependent on Lopuszno.
All My paternal family originates from the Kielce region, in south-central Poland.
In this region, there are Jewish communities that had developed since the 14th century, for some of them.
The city of Kielce, under the jurisdiction of the bishops of Krakow, had received from the king, in 1535, the privilege of "non tolerandis Judaeis". As a result, they settled in smaller towns like Checiny and Malogorszcz and especially in the surrounding sthetl.
I had the chance to interview my father about his life in Poland , from his childhood until his departure in 1946.
He survived the Holocaust there without being deported. During 1943-44, he was hidden in an attic belonging to Polish farmers. He broke definitively with that country after the Kielce pogrom in July 1946.
His younger half-brother had been requisitioned to work as a "slave" in a munitions factory in Skarzysko-Kamienna, 90 km from their home in May 1941. He was released from Buchenwald in April 1945.
This is the region where our families lived.
West of Kielce:
- for the Czalczynski family around Lopuszno,
- for the landschaft around Jedrzejow and Miechow see Krakovie.
Regarding Klimontow the sthtetl where the Landschaft's family lived) , I long believed it was in the Sandomierz region, but finding no trace of it, I explored the area around Jedrzejow and finally found a small sthetel below Sedsizow, about twenty kilometers away.
Having done research on the two Landschaft families on his mother's side and the Czalczynski family on his father's side, I was able to establish that their settlement in their region dates back, at a minimum, to the beginning of the 19th century for the Landschafts and to the middle of the 18th century for the Czalczynskis.
My father remembered that his mother's family came from Russia, certainly at the time of the establishment of the Settlement Area created by Catherine II in 1791), at the very end of the 18th century.
The surname Czalczynski is derived from a small hamlet called Czalczyn, located 5 km from where the Czalczynski family had lived since 1768 and 4 km from my father's birthplace in Lopuszno.
Why do we bear the name of this Polish hamlet?
In our family, this was a common practice; Strawczyn and Maslow are shtetls in the same region.
I have observed that the surname "Czalczynski" was not only given to Jews.
We find Czalczynskis, from 1654 and, unusually, at the time of the Napoleonic Russian campaign (1810-12) many French first names (André, François...) were given to newborns "with" the surname Czalczynski.
Something to study for later.
My father was very attached to his families and when he had children in France, he was keen to perpetuate the tradition of passing down first names:
- My name is Danielle-Perla: Perla was her mother's name;
- my sister's name is Catherine-Fanny: Catherine was the closest to the sound of Kasril, her father's name and Fanny the name of her stepmother who raised her Fajgle=Fanny in French.
