No records have yet turned up that document the birth or birthplace of my great-grandfather Moshe Gershon Berkovics or identify his parents.   Based on the age of Moshe Gershon’s oldest known child and the customs of the times, he was probably born about 1850 and his wife Shprinze Grosz was likely a year or two younger.  According to the information inscribed on a gravestone in the Jewish cemetery in Orasu Nou, Shprinze’s father was named Yechiel.  There were several Grosz families in Avas  Ujvaros and Avas Felso Falu (now Negresti Oas, Romania) that may be related but no records have yet turned up indicating which Shprinze Grosz married Moshe Gershon Berkovics.

Moshe Gershon and Shprinze had eight children who lived to adulthood.  My grandmother Zlate (Lottie), born on May 15, 1878, was probably the third of the Berkovics children.  Chana Sheindel (Jennie), the oldest, was born in 1874, Dovid Leib (David) in 1876, Mihaly (Max) in 1884, Zalman Leib (Lajos or Ludvik) in 1885, Shlima (Jolan or Juliana) in 1886 or 1887, Hani (Anna) in 1888 or early 1889, and Sussa Malka (Szerena) in 1889.

                                                    

Like the vast majority of Hungarian Jews, the Berkovics family probably emigrated across the Carpathian Mountains from Galicia (see map at right) in the late 18th or early 19th centuries.  In 1785-87 there were fewer than 2,800 Jews in all of Szatmar megye (county).  By 1828, the county’s population was close to 7,000 and there were six Jewish families among the 99 households living in Avas Ujvaros, a small community in the eastern part of the county, where the family eventually settled.  There was no Berko or Berkovics. living there in 1828 but there was one Berko enumerated among  the 74 households in Vamfalu (now Vama) just seven kilometers from Avas Ujvaros.

By 1848, there were four Berko households in Vamfalu, 3 in Felsofalu, and one in Sarkoz, all places in the area that are associated with the family.  The name Berkovics doesn’t appear at all in the 1848 Census from this part of Szatmar megye suggesting that households were still using patronymics (i.e. son of Berko) rather than more contemporary surnames. 

Moshe Gershon Berkovics was a carpenter and glazier. The whole family reportedly helped with the work of installing windows. Moshe Gershon died in 1889 or 1890, about the time Sussa Malka (Szerena), his youngest child, was born. After his death Shprinze married Velvel, her husband's brother, whom the grandchildren called Feter Velvel or Uncle Velvel.

According to one source, the Torah (Deuteronomy 25:5-10) requires that a man marry his deceased brother’s widow.  In fact, according to Biblical scholar Judith Romney Wegner, the matrimonial union (called "sororate") was automatic and no marriage ceremony was required  if the deceased had died without producing a son.  But if the deceased brother 'had' produced a child, Leviticus 18:16 (which prohibits sexual relations with one's brother's wife) was interpreted to 'forbid' a surviving brother to marry the deceased brother's widow.  If Velvel did, in fact, marry his brother Moshe Gershon's widow, he did so in violation of Jewish law because his sister-in-law and deceased brother did have several sons. Go figure!

Ernest (Pityu) Roth, son of Szerena Berkovics and Miksa (Max) Roth, was born in Orasu Nou in 1921 and lived there until the late 1920’s when his family immigrated to the United States.  Ernie described his grandmother Shprinze as a very smart woman.  After her husband died, she supported her family by selling watermelons and other fruit at the market. She also knew how to apply leeches to help sick villagers, a skill reportedly passed on to her daughter Lottie. After Lottie married and moved to Sziget, Shprintze sent Sussa Malka to live with Lottie so she could attend high school because there was no school for girls in Ujvaros.

After World War I, Hungary ceded all of the lands south of the Tisza River, including Szatmar County, to Romania.    Conditions grew increasingly oppressive as the Romanian government ignored and then contributed to growing anti-Semitism. By the late 1920's, only two of the Berkovics children--Shlima and Zalman Leib--and their families were still living in the land of their birth. As far as we know, there are no members of the Berkovics family living in Romania today.

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                                    Updated 15 March 2008    

Shprinze Grosz Berkovics (left), her daughter Szerena (Sussa Malka), and her brother-in-law Velvel (Moshe Gershon’s brother) c. 1913

Avas Ujvaros is on the lower left of this 1910 map.  Vamfalu (Vama) is to the east and south of Avas Felsofalu, now Negresti Oas, Romania.  The Jewish stars mark the location of Jewish cemeteries.