Family Names of the Jews of Monastir

By Moisés Hasson Camhi

(Translated from Spanish in the original, with the author's permission, by Isaac D. Nehama)

Monastir is a town which, under the name Bitola, is located in the republic of Macedonia, one of the republics that formed part of Yugoslavia. It is  second in importance, after the capital Skopje. For a long time before Yugoslavia even existed, Monastir was part of the Ottoman Empire, and was for a period of time a provincial capital.

Jewish presence in this region can be traced back to Roman times, however for the purposes of this article we need to go back to the years immediately following the expulsion of the Jews first from Spain (1492) and then from Portugal (1496). This diaspora inside a diaspora, that forms the origin of the Sephardim, led many of them to settle in cities and towns of the Ottoman Empire. In many cases such settlements were sponsored by the same authorities of the Empire who not only welcomed these immigrants, but also wanted them to reside in the regions they had recently conquered and over which they wanted to solidify their sovereignty.

In its golden age, and thanks to its important geographical position at the center of land trade/travel routes, Monastir reached the distinction of being the seat of consulates of twelve different countries. However, in the middle of the 19^th century  began a slow decline, which was not unrelated to the similar decay of the Empire. The jewish emigration reached its peak towards the end of the 19^th  and beginning of the 20^th  centuries. Various statistics show a reduction of jewish presence in Monastir from 8,000 inhabitants to about 3,500 at the start of the Second World War.

During this wider conflict, the Bulgarian fascist authorities who occupied the town handed over all the Jews to German operatives in charge of the so-called "final solution". The Monastir Jews, together with the Jews in the rest of Yugoslav Macedonia , were gathered in Skopje and deported from there to their total extermination in the Treblinka concentration camp, in March 1943.

Thus ended centuries of culture and thousands of lives, and human beings of all ages disappeared from among the living. Before committing this final assassination, the diligent authorities under-took the preparation of  detailed registers with the forced cooperation of the deportees. These documents were recovered by Yamila Kolonomos, a jewish woman from Monastir who, with other youths belonging to various organizations such as Hashomer Hatzair, joined the partisans in the fight against fascist forces. She published them in a book in Skopje. It is from this source that we were able to compile the family names of 3,200 Jews of Monastir.

In the process of migration mentioned above, many "Monastirlis"* were scattered  throughout the world. Many in towns and cities of the region: Salonica, Florina, even as far as Jerusalem; and many others in the new world: United States, Brazil, and Chile.

The objective of this study is to compile the family names of the Jews who formed this community. For this purpose the principal source is the registers of the Jews deported from Monastir in 1943. To this we add a list of the names of Jews who joined the antifascist insurgents, also provided by Yamila Kolonomos in her article on the resistance in Monastir.

Also, we append  the list of 295 Jews deported from the neighboring town of Florina, which we note was the recipient of a massive emigration from Monastir during the First Balkan War (1912). We will use this list also to compare family names. Finally, we extend as a fourth source of family names those that correspond to the Jews who settled in Temuco until 1916 and which appear in the article "Temuco: Génesis de una Comunidad (1900-1916)".

To carry out this work on the family names it became necessary to look into homologous spellings of family names in their modern forms in the western world, for example Kalderon usually became Calderon; Faradschi, Farazi, Farasch became Faraggi; also, the registers contain clear instances of misspellings, depending on which functionary was seated at the typewriter: "Lewi", "Levi", "Livi", instead of Levy; "Ergass" for Ergas, and other similar cases.

Thus, without the process of "normalization" there are150 distinct family names, but when this process is applied, this number is reduced to 104. In the list for Florina there are 21 distinct family names, among the partisans cited by Kolonomos there are 21 family names, and in the article on Temuco until 1916 we encounter 22 family names.

In Table 1 are listed the thirty (30) most prominent family names in Monastir. All told these thirty family names represent 85% of the total of the Jews deported from Monastir.   Corresponding to each family name in the first column, there are entries marked with "Yes" in adjacent columns, indicating the eventual occurrence of this family name in Temuco, among the partisans, and also in Florina (last two columns, where are also shown: the number of deportees, and the number of families involved).

Table 1 - Names of Prominent Families

A high "density"  among the names of prominent families is clearly discernible, that is, they appear in all four source lists. Also it interesting to note that some family names are not exclusive with Monastir, they are to be found in greater numbers in other regions. For example, Levy, Cohen, Hasson, Nahmias. Other names are clearly of Spanish origin, and moreover are to be found also in regions that include present-day Spain: Calderon, Pardo, Alba; and others indicate the influence that Sephardic Jews who emigrated from Italy and France exercised in the Ottoman Empire: Testa, Franco, Sarfati, Pesso. And clearly, there are the family names of hebraic or arabic origin: Camhi, Alboher, Bejakiar, Hassan.

I believe also that one may verify the fundamental Monastirli origin of the Florina community, by noting the same distribution pattern  in a few,  and similar family names while there is a clear correspondence among the more common family names. 

It is also interesting to note that in just nine (9) family names are concentrated more than one thousand persons, and that each family name in that set (Camhi to Cassorla) represents a number
of families ranging from thirty (30) to sixty-nine (69) in the top case (in one of the two family names of the author of this article.)

Interesting results also turn out from an analysis of those family names in the detailed registers that are not among the thirty (30) prominent ones. Thus in the case of Temuco there are four family names that do not appear among the thirty, and these are: Albala, Benquis, Herscovish and Mordoj. With regard to Albala, we believe that it corresponds to the name in Monastir that appears as "Albalak", given that we know precisely the Monastirli origin of this family. As for Benquis that  it corresponds to Jews of Istanbul provenance, and that Herscovish is not a Sephardi. Finally, Mordoj appears to be a case similar to that of Benquis -- it originates from another Turkish region.

Other Temuco family names that are among the deportees, but whose membership is small (between eight and nine), are: Assael, Chame, De Mayo, Franco, Negrin, and Massot. Furthermore the case of Franco represents an appreciable quantity of persons among the deportees of Florina: sixteen (16) persons distributed over five (5) families. This example typifies the principal characteristic of the Jews of Florina: entire family groups that leave Monastir and resettle elsewhere in search of better opportunities.

There are five (5) family names among the Florina deportees that have no presence in Monastir. These are: Bibaz, Castro, Pesaj, Tsiko and Zakin. Each one of them belong to a single family, which allows one to suppose a provenance from another country.

The same situation occurs also among the Monastir deportees. There are forty-two (42) family names representing one unique family. It is possible that this attribute might be due to mispelled family names, as it seems to be in the case of Albujar which may correspond to Aboher. If that is the case, not much is to be gained by adding one or two names to the total in order to identify the total population of the town.

Some of these forty-two family names include: Confino, Jaim, Anaf, Medonza, Albaranes, Rusa, Beraja, Mois, Romano, Varsano, to name a few. It is interesting to note in this regard that some of these names belong to "outsiders", as is the case with rabbi Romano.

The other two large zones of Monastirli emigration that we are not in a position to examine in this article, lacking pertinent data, are those of New York and Salonica. In New York Sephardim of distinct origin tended to form organizations by country of origin. Thus the organization that gathered those who came from Monastir was called "Ahavat Shalom" and was founded in 1907. Already by 1911 it counted close to 120 members, which shows a growing community. The little that we were able to learn about this organization, and other Sephardic groups in this city, is only thanks to the book by Marc Angel, entitled "La America".

In Salonica the congregation of ex-Monastirlis became large enough to form its own Kahal and synagogue, the same that exists even now. Among the many synagogues of Salonica one of the few that survived the nazi barbarism is that of the Monastirlis, which today is the principal one in Salonica. A couple of years ago, a vast quantity of documents relating to the jewish community of Salonica were discovered in Moscow. At this time, these documents are stored in some university. With luck we may some day learn something of the information that these papers contain, and which very probably include data of the Monastirli Kahal.

The complete roster of the one hundred and four (104) family names of the deportees of Monastir is as follows:

                Aladjem, Alba, Albalaj, Albalak, Albaranes, Albenda, Albida, Albiraha, Alboher,

                Albolak, Alborase, Albujar, Alcuser, Alimendra, Alischandra, Alkolb, Almuslino,

                Anaf, Arueste, Aruti, Assael, Baruj, Bejakar, Bejar, Bensalem, Beraja, Calderon,

                Camhi, Cassolrla, Cattan, Chame, Cohen, Confino, De Mayo, Ergas, Eschkenazi,

                Faraggi, Faraid, Farat, Florentin, Franco, Gamlid, Geron, Hassan, Hassen, Hassi,

                Hasson, Homen, Honen, Ichaj, Israel, Jaim, Kamelchi, Katon, Kellner, Kolonomos,

                Kreskis, Leoy, Levy, Mair, Manu, Masai, Mason, Massot, Mayo, Medonza,

                Meschulam, Mois, Mossa, Nahmias, Navon, Negrin, Nehama, Nissan, Nissim, Ovadia,

                Pardo, Pesso, Pessot, Pifi, Romano, Rosilio, Rusa, Russo, Sadik, Sadikario, Sajaria,

                Salomon, Saporta, Sarfati, Schabetai, Schali, Schamu, Schoach, Semae, Yeson, Skajo,

                Sobik, Talvi, Teso, Testa, Todolano, and Varsano.

From a genealogical point of view, having as a family name one of those that belongs to the set of more than thirty prominent families, in an era when records were not very detailed, creates an almost impenetrable barrier to ferreting  possible connections between them and their relatives who emigrated to various cities in the world. Only if, by a stroke of luck, one knows with dazzling accuracy the number and sequence of fathers, grandfathers and uncles -- which is unlikely for the majority of jews that were not in some way distinguished -- is it possible to recognize members of an earlier generation or a relationship between distant cousins.

References

1.        "The Jews in Macedonia During the Second World War (1941-1945)". Collection of Documents, by Zhamila Kolonomos &Dr. Vera Veskovich-Vangeli; Skopje 1986. Also in

www.jewishgen.org

2.        "Temuco:Genesis of a Community (1900-1916)" - Moisés Hasson. Published  in "Toldot"

magazine, issue #12, Buenos Aires, September 2000

3.   "Los Djidyos il la rezistensue a la Makedonija" - Zamila Kolonomos. Review "Los Muestros"

      # 29, December 1997, Brussels

4.   Roster of Jews deported from the Greek town of Florina: www.jewishgen.org

5,   "La America" by Marc d. Angel. Philadelphia, 1982. The Jewish Publication Society of
      America.

 

© Moisés Hasson, 2000. Published in "El Vocero" magazine, Issue 228

June 2000, Santiago, Chile | [email protected]