Cousins in Europe: how the Felders of Czernowitz are linked to the Schilder sisters of Chicago

On 21 February 1948 the Schilder Cousin Club met in Chicago and voted to send “$20.00 apiece … to Cousins Elias, Max & Fritzie in Europe.” A year earlier a letter had come from “Elias Shilder”, telling the club that “there are 4 of our families existing still in Europe who are Shilders & are in need.” The minutes also mention a “Willie”.

The cousin club was founded by the descendants of three sisters from Czernowitz: Anna, Bertha and Goldie Schilder. Bertha was my great-grandmother. I’ve read the minutes book many times. I knew that Fritzie was Fritzi Roll, whom my family knew in Israel, but I didn’t know who Elias, Max and Willie were, or how any of them were related to us. None of them were Schilders. This autumn I found out who they were and how the two families are connected.

The Schilder sisters

Anna, Bertha and Goldie were daughters of Chaskel Baruch SCHILDER and his wife Ziwje. All three came to Chicago, and all three were buried by the Lomzer society at Waldheim Cemetery in Forest Park. Bertha married Leon MITTMAN; their son Bernard was my grandfather.

Their mother Ziwje stayed in Czernowitz. She died there on 27 November 1907, at Kürschnergasse 9. Her gravestone in the old Jewish cemetery calls her “a modest woman, Mrs. Tzivya, the daughter of master and teacher Rabbi David ha-Kohen.”

The Felders

Elias, Max, Fritzie and Willie were the children of Samuel FELDER, a tailor in Czernowitz, and Czarne ADLER. Their parents married in the city on 23 July 1901. The marriage register describes the groom like this:

“Schmiel Felder, born in Bojan, tailor, living here, Russischestraße 15, son of the late Gerschon Wolf Felder and of Ziwje née Schilder, of Czernowitz.”

So Samuel’s mother was a Ziwje Schilder of Czernowitz, the same name as the Chicago sisters’ mother. At the wedding, Samuel and Czarne declared their four children legitimate. Like many Jewish couples in Bukovina, they had married under religious law years earlier and registered the marriage with the state later.

The four children:

• Wilhelm (“Willie”), born 4 November 1891. He trained as an engineer, married in Vienna in 1922, and had a son there in 1925. In 1942 he was listed in a census of Jewish men in Bucharest. I don’t yet know what became of him.
• Elias, born 7 August 1894. He became a lawyer, Dr. Elias Felder, and married Margareta (Grete) ELLING in 1930. He was very probably the “Elias Shilder” who wrote to Chicago in 1947. He died in Israel on 4 September 1980 and is buried in Holon. His gravestone names his father: Shmuel.
• Max, born 8 November 1897, a clerk and later an office chief at Czernowitz city hall. He married Binca PISTINER in 1930. In 1942 he was sent to forced labour; in 1947 he and Elias were living in Vaslui, Romania.
• Frieda (“Fritzi” to the family, “Fritzie” in the minutes), born 2 June 1900. She married Baruch ROLL in 1925. After the war she was in Vienna, and she later settled in Israel, where she died in 1981. Her daughter Yutta’s family lives in Israel today.

Samuel and Czarne lived through the war in Czernowitz. In 1942, both aged 73, they were on a list of Jews who were not to be deported to Transnistria.

My family lived in Israel in 1973, when I was nine. I remember Yutta, Fritzi’s daughter. My older brothers and my mother remember Fritzi herself. I’m sure my parents knew the Rolls were cousins, but I don’t remember hearing that word at the time, and I doubt anyone knew exactly how we were related. In 2021 Yutta’s son A. told me about his grandparents, Baruch and Frida Roll, but he didn’t know Frida’s maiden name. It was Felder.

What ties the two families together

Four pieces of evidence point to one family:

1. The 1901 marriage register names Samuel’s mother as “Ziwje née Schilder” of Czernowitz.
2. The cousin club minutes. The Chicago family called the Felders “Shilders” and “cousins” in 1947 and 1948, and sent them money as they did their other European relatives. That is family memory, written down at the time. It shows they knew the Felders were relatives. It doesn’t show that anyone knew exactly how.
3. Bertha’s death certificate (Chicago, 25 December 1928). Her son Ralph gave her mother’s maiden name as “Zevie”, a form of Ziwje. He didn’t know her father’s name.
4. Anna’s death certificate (Chicago, 3 March 1934). Her son Soll gave her father’s name as “David Felder”, born in Czernowitz. He didn’t know her mother’s name. David was the name of Ziwje’s own father, and Felder was the surname of Samuel’s father. Soll may have mixed up two generations, or two husbands. In 1934, Anna’s own son linked her with the Felder name.

If all this is right, Samuel Felder was a half-brother of Anna, Bertha and Goldie: same mother, different fathers. Frieda and my grandfather Bernard were half first cousins, and A. and I are half third cousins.

The puzzle that’s left

The dates are a problem. Samuel was born in Bojan in 1868. Goldie was born in Bojan too, also in about 1868; the age she gave on her 1914 passenger list puts her birth between February 1868 and February 1869. If both dates are right, Ziwje had children by two different men within about a year of each other.

The sisters’ father is a puzzle too. Bertha’s gravestone calls her father Yechezkel Baruch HaCohen (Chaskel is the Yiddish form of Yechezkel). Goldie’s stone, partly hidden by a portrait, seems to say the same, and her 1937 death certificate gives her father as “Chas Boruch Schilder”. So “David Felder” on Anna’s certificate is the odd one out.

One of the ages may be wrong; ages in these records often are. There may have been two women named Ziwje. Or the clerk in 1901 may have written down something the family told him that wasn’t quite right. Ziwje’s own death record calls her a baker’s wife but also “single”, which suggests a marriage under religious law only, never registered with the state.

What might settle it

• Anna’s gravestone. Find a Grave has no photo of it. If it gives her father’s Hebrew name, it would show whether her family remembered him as Yechezkel Baruch or as David.
• Samuel’s birth record. The Jewish birth registers for Bojan before 1886 don’t seem to have survived, or at least haven’t been filmed.
• The Sadagora district marriage index, which covers Bojan. It already gave me Goldie’s 1888 marriage; I haven’t yet read its pages for Felder and Schilder.

If you’re a member of the Moore, Roll, Felder or Mittman families and have letters, photographs or stories about Samuel Felder, his mother Ziwje, the cousins in Chicago, or Fritzi and Yutta in Israel, I’d love to hear from you.

Sources: Czernowitz Jewish metrical books (FamilySearch); the Schilder Cousin Club minutes book; Chicago death certificates (FamilySearch); Gravez and JOWBR gravestone records; Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names; Die Stimme (DiFMOE digital library). Names link to each person’s page in the Reunion family tree.