Meeting Sephardic Cousins

For privacy’s sake no names will be mentioned in this post.

Having grown up in America I never felt any connection to the Holocaust. By this I mean I never felt like it really affected me, as a little kid it just seemed like something that had happened in the past which I learned about in school. As I grew older I realized more and more the impact it had on me but I still didn’t feel like my family was affected, my ancestors had all immigrated to America before the First World War. By the time I was in High School I knew that by being Jewish I had to have some family connection to the war and became curious about my genealogy.

                I poked around my ancestry for a few years but it wasn’t until the summer before my senior year in college that I truly began my genealogy research. I really began tracing my ancestry by using the information I found on websites and putting the trees together into my own tree, which is where I found the first names of my relatives murdered in the Holocaust. I was astounded by how quickly it went from finding just a few individuals to finding whole branches of my tree seemingly wiped out, spending hours putting name after name of cousins who didn’t make it through the war. Some of these cousins being as close as 2^nd cousins twice removed. I soon learned this is common in almost every Jewish person’s tree. 

Then I made one of my most astounding discoveries, I found cousins whose ancestors survived the war. After I emailed them they explained to me that my email was like being contacted from the dead. They thought that they were the only part of the family left, having never known any family but their own. Our relation was slightly distant, 5^th cousins once removed, but the similarities were uncanny. I then began a quest to enter as many relatives into my digital tree as possible, in the hopes that I could connect to more relatives who had survived the war.

 Now I am not only in contact with thousands of relatives of mine throughout the world I have also helped dozens of families find their ancestry and connection to my tree. Some having tried for years and years to find their ancestry which was lost in the war and often kept secret by the few survivors who were stained by their experiences, some even hiding that they were once Jewish.

What could be the next best step in my research? Meet them! I mentioned the idea to almost every relative I had contacted. But being stuck at school I spent my time connecting other relatives with each other to meet. My sister stayed with 5th cousins of ours in England and a 4^th cousin once removed of mine visited some of our shared 4^th cousins while staying in Israel. I was able to visit some of my close relatives I had never met before (although I did meet some as a baby); two 1^st cousins twice removed, one of their wives and a 2^nd cousin once removed. 

I was then contacted again by the cousins who I had found whose family had survived through the war. They were visiting the states from Amsterdam for two weeks and would be traveling around the coast. Now that they were in contact with cousins they were hoping to meet some. Their itinerary showed they would be in the capitol, which is only 5 hours away. I had to go. 

My sister, my brother-in-law, and I met our cousins at the National Mall. I was the first to meet them.  There was a father, a mother, and three brothers. The father looked strikingly similar to my uncle in build and facial features. He looked me in the eyes and told me he knew my eyes, they were the same as his fathers. As I introduced myself to the brothers I was dumbfounded by how odd it felt to look them each in the eye. Then I realized it’s because I knew their eyes as well. Then they met my sister and the similarities just kept showing themselves. We then headed to dinner and everyone was quickly captivated in conversation.

They had brought photographs and documents to share. As well, I explained our relation in more detail and spoke of what I knew about our family. They shared the knowledge they had learned from their travels throughout Europe, coming across people and places which could hold clues to tracing our shared ancestry generations further back in time. They also shared stories about how their grandparents had survived the war, sometimes by luck and other times through wit and cunning. After a few hours we decided it was time for bed but our meeting was not done and we would see each other for breakfast. The next day we spent hours once again held in conversations about everything: family, life at home, music, history, hobbies, food, and travel. The topics were endless. 

Of course plans are now in the works for future visits with them. I also hope to travel and meet my relatives around the world, learning the story of my family’s diaspora throughout the world.

Records from Beth Haim at Ouderkerk aan de Amstel

One of the greatest online sources for people researching their Sephardic ancestry in Amsterdam are the records for Beth Haim of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel. Beth Haim is the oldest Jewish cemetery in the Netherlands, being purchased in 1614 by the Jewish Community of Amsterdam. Most Sephardic Jews from the Jewish Community in Amsterdam were buried at Beth Haim cemetery. The records from Beth Haim have a lot of great information and can really help you expand your tree, especially once you learn how to manipulate the search system.

The URL for the directory is http://www.dutchjewry.net/pig/pig_list.php (has been updated to this link). I would suggest bookmarking this website so you don’t have to scroll through the stenen archief website looking for the directory. At the top of the page there is a scroll bar for Taal, which is Dutch for Language. The directory is in 3 languages; Dutch, English, and Hebrew. Most of the documents are written in Dutch with a little Hebrew spread throughout. Many of the dates are listed according to the Jewish Calander, but Jewish Gen has a great tool to translate the dates to the Western calendar at http://www.jewishgen.org/jos/josdates.htm.

Now the key to manipulating this directory is to learn about Sephardic surnames and their history. To get the basics on naming traditions and common surnames and their variants you can check out some pages provided by Sephardic Gen; http://www.sephardicgen.com/nameorig.htm and http://www.sephardicgen.com/yohasin.HTM. Many of the Sephardic Jews who settled in Amsterdam had stayed in Spain or gone to Portugal in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, often pretending to be Catholic while still secretly practicing Jewish customs. Since they needed to seem less Jewish, many of these families used Spanish and Portuguese surnames but changed them back to their Jewish variants once in the Netherlands.

Another common occurrence in Sephardic surnames is the double surname. These double surnames were often created with the marriage of two families, often tracing back to pre-Inquisition Spain. This is actually an important factor when accessing the database because the records are listed according to two family names. For males and unmarried females the column for #1 family name is the first name of their surname and the column for #2 family name is their second surname if they have one. For married females and males with listed aliases the #1 family name is their married surname or proper surname and the #2 family name is their maiden name or alias surname.

For an example I will use Abraham Nunes Vaz (1799-1863). Similar to how one is called up to read the Torah, the column for the first name lists the name of the person and their father. Abraham’s father is Jacob, so Abraham is listed in the first name column as Abraham v. Jacob (meaning Abraham van Jacob, also Abraham son of Jacob). To search for him the best thing to search for would be his most uncommon name in all three of his names. Since his surname will be split up separately we can search for either Nunes or Vaz, but do not search for Nunes Vaz because it will only come up with Nunes Vaz members with another married name or alias. Something to note is the illiteracy of the world before modern times. Many people didn’t know how to spell their own names, let alone their surnames, so documents will have little changes such as Nunes Vas or Nunes Vaaz or some other variant because the record taker guessed at the spelling. In our case we can see Abraham listed at the bottom of page 5.

Once you click the view button a new tab will pop up in your browser with all the basic information on the record along with a little picture of the document. Just click on the picture to view the full size document. The document is pretty straight forward to understand and usually only requires a little knowledge of the Dutch language to interpret.  At the bottom of this blog I will include a reference list for common terms in these documents. 

For Abraham we can see that he had 2 wives; Sara Lopes Dias and Rachel Henriques Coelho. As we can see in Abraham’s record, the Beth Haim documents usually distinguish the surname from the proper name by putting the surname in all capital letters. We can also see that Abraham had at least 12 children, but not all of the children are always listed. If he had children with both wives there will usually be a distinction between each set of children, but it is always good to check the marriage date or even death date of the last wife against the birth date of the children to distinguish mothers. Children are usually listed in the records for father but have been be listed in the mother’s records from time to time.

There is a lot of other information which can be found in these records; including parent’s names, spouse’s parent’s names, biographical information, names of other relatives (cousins, aunts, etc.), birthplace, immigration information, occupation, and many other random tidbits. Some of these records also include photos of the tombstones or links to more information about the person. If this is the case then it is likely that person was prominent in some way and could even be in one of the books written about the cemetery. For more information on the cemetery itself you can visit their website at http://www.bethhaim.nl.

Reference Terms:

Aantekeningen - Notes

Alias - Other names

Begraven – Date buried

Dochter – Daughter

Geb. – Birth date

Geh. met - Married to

Geslachts naam –Family name (married)

Geh. – Marriage date

Gev. - Dead of birth

Moeder – Mother

Naam –Name

Taal – Language

Vader - Father

Zerk – Tombstone

Zoon - Son

Origins of The Henriques Pimentel Family of Amsterdam

Record from Beth Haim cemtery in Ouderkerk

For David Henriques Pimentel

The Henriques Pimentel family of Amsterdam traces its roots to David Henriques Pimentel (1631-1696) and Abigael Henriques Pimentel (?-1701). It is unknown where David or Abigael were born, but their son Emanuel was born in Malaga, Spain in 1657. When the family came to Amsterdam Emanuel changed his name to Isaac because he could be outwardly Jewish without fear of persecution.

In 1674 Isaac received a declaration signed on behalf of the King of Spain Charles II that Isaac was entitled to use the ancient arms of Pimentel. This is quite interesting because it would indicate that Isaac had proof of descent from the House of Pimentel. A distant relative of mine through this lineage had a copy of the document and said that David Henriques Pimentel was the grandson of the 8^th Count (5^th Duke) of Benavente, Juan Alfonso de Pimentel.

Portrait of Juan Alfonso de Pimentel

Juan had many children from 2 marriages, but it is unknown which son David descends from. It is also unclear when the names Henriques and Pimentel were put together. While it could be that David’s mother was an Henriques or Enriquez, we can find two instances in the House of Pimentel where an Enriquez was married in; The 2^nd Count of Benavente, Rodrigo Alfonso Pimentel married Doña Leonor Enriquez de Mendoza.  The 6^th Count of Benavente, Antonio Alonso de Pimentel married Luisa Enriquez.