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NEUMANN FAMILY
Neuman (and its variant Neumann) is one of the more common surnames for Hungarian Jews appearing in Ung and Zemplen county records dating from the early years of the 19th century.  The earliest reference to my Neumann ancestors is the inscription on a headstone found in the Jewish cemetery north of Sobrance.  The stone marks the grave of Avigdor Avraham (Viktor) Neuman, the son of Natan Nata Segal, who died in 1865.  The name Segal and the image of the pitcher identify both my great-great-grandfather Viktor and his father Natan Nata as Levites.
The inscription states that the deceased died leaving a wife and son. The son to whom the inscription refers is probably my great-grandfather Miksa (Meier Shlomo haLevi) Neumann, who was born in 1841. Although the record of Miksa’s marriage states that he was an only child that seems unlikely because Viktor was 50 when he died according to his death record. The death record, which is in a register of Jewish deaths from the Szobrancz district found in the Ukraine State archives in Uzhorod, confirms that Viktor died in 1865 but doesn’t provide an exact date or identify his place of birth. Miksa’s mother was Johana/Hani Salamonovits. Not long after her husband Viktor’s death, Johanna remarried a man named Spitz who seems to have died a few years later because the 1869 Census states that she is a widow. Census and death records indicate that both Miksa and his mother were born in Szeretva, which could be either Kisszeretva or Nagyszeretva in the Kapos district of Ung county, several kilometers southeast of Szobrancz. These places were about 4 km apart and had a combined total of 63 Jewish residents in 1877. Now, they are Stretavka and Stretava, Slovakia, and probably look much as they did in the late 19^th century. Next Copyright ©  Vivian Kahn, 2015.  All rights reserved.