The ancestry of Marc Bloch (1886-1944)
Bernard LYON-CAEN publishes a well-documented article about the ancestors of Marc Bloch (1866 -1944), a famous historian who founded with his friend Lucien Febvre the Revue des Annales d’histoire économique et sociale that stressed “the importance of economic and social phenomena in the historic development of human societies”. Bloch, in Société féodale, published 1939, upturned the traditional vision of the Middle Ages.
As soon as July 1940, obsessed by the causes and the course of the two World Wars in which he had participated, he writes L’étrange défaite, the strange defeat. The Germans arrest him in Lyon on March 8, 1944 and torture him, before killing him at the age of 57 on July 16, 1944.
The author describes Marc Bloch’s Alsatian genealogy, over 8 generations for his paternal line, the Bloch and Aron, and over 9 generations for his maternal line, the Ebstein and Grombach.
Genealogy of Lion Acher
Pascal FAUSTINI presents the genealogy of Lion Asher, chief-rabbi in Metz (1766-1785), one of the outstanding Talmudists of his times, according to Jewish Encyclopedia. He uses a yet unknown document he has unearthed at the Moselle Archives Départementales: Lion Asher’s probate inventory. He thus helps us discover Lion Asher’s ancestors, mostly rabbis of German origin settled in Eastern Europe, belonging to the families Katzenellenbogen, Wahl and Ulmo-Günzburg. Among his descendants, Pascal Faustini discovers … Marc Bloch.
Corfiote Chonology
Jean-François RENAUD shows great admiration, which we share, for his uncle Georges Jessula, one of our former members, unfortunately passed away in 2004. Renaud writes a sort of log-book of the Jessula family’s crossings from Corfu to Marseilles, to the Far-East, from Italy to Corfu etc. Pictures and family-trees illustrate this sentimental journey.
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MISCELLANEOUS
Our webmaster Georges GRANER shares his discovery of a new Italian-Jewish genealogy website.
“Some surnames declared in the Palatinate in 1808 by Jews of Alsatian origin”, published by Bernhard KUKATZKI in “Pfälzisch-Rheinische Familienkunde” is reproduced by permission.
Bernard LYON-CAEN reports about a family meeting of the Godchaux organized in April 2006 by Jacky Martin-Godchaux in Luxembourg.
