ABSTRACTS of issue 122
Pierre-André Meyer
The Ettinghausen Family
Based on family stories related to his great grandfather Sigismund Ettinghausen (1838-1918), a gem dealer in Paris, the author reconstructs his lineage. Among his offspring he finds personalities as different as Walter Eytan, a former Israeli ambassador in France, or the sulfurous writer Maurice Sachs both "born" Ettinghausen. Three Jewish householders in Frankfurt neighboring town of Höchst initially adopted the surname "Ettinghausen" in 1822. These protected Jews (Schutzjuden) of the Dukes of Nassau before Höchst was united to Prussia in 1866 fostered three family branches which gradually separated; one chose to emigrate to Paris where it became part of the Jewish secularized bourgeoisie, the other two remaining in Germany in a more open society. The advent of Nazism led to the extermination of the German Ettinghausens though some of them managed to emigrate to the United States. There are no longer any Ettinghausens in Höchst today but an Ettinghausen-Platz inaugurated in 2008 recalls the family.
Yolla Polity
The Jews of Sidon through the Jewish Community council records (1919-1975)
The recently classified and digitized Youssef Melhem Politi's collection of the Jewish council archives of Sidon, Libanon, provides extensive information about the history and the internal organization of this poorly documented and now vanished community. The records are available for consultation at the Library of the Alliance Israelite Universelle (AIU) in Paris - supplementing the Alliance own archives relating to their school in Sidon.
In addition to the council meetings rolls, correspondence and ownership titles Youssef Melhem Politi's collection includes many lists of voters, stamps and signatures. These may provide descendants of Sidon Jews with important genealogical data about their families.
Françoise Darmon
About Francine Camus Jewish lineage
Albert CAMUS' wife Francine FAURE had a Jewish grandmother named Clara TOUBOUL. In 1887 at Oran she married Charles Alfred ALBERT, a young civil servant born in the Loire-Atlantique. Researching the writer's wife's Jewish ancestry led us among the great Jewish families of Oran and Algiers and their matrimonial relations with non-Jewish families and with Jewish people who came from Lorraine at the beginning of the French conquest of Algeria.
Pamela Weisberger
Investigations in Galicia and Poland ; unique unusual resources
Presentation of a new web site for Galician Jews ; Gesher Galicia.
Eliane Roos Schuhl
A Hebrew matrix seal with a wolf for Benjamin
A seal showing a wolf surrounded with the Hebrew name Benjamin son of Abraham brings us back to Southern France in the 13th-14th centuries.