Welcome
Приветствовать
ברוך הבא
to the Birnbaum Grobstein families pages
We hope that you enjoy our pages about all things Birnbaum and Grobstein (with a few Litovskys, Wertheimers, and others).
This site includes stories of family members, and non-family members, data, pictures and information about the places from whence these families came, passed through, and where they lived.
Наслаждайтесь нашими страницами обо всех вещах Гробштейн. Они включают истории семьи, истории индивидуальных членов семьи, информация относительно мест наша семья приехала от и жила.
Enjoy our Birnbaum Grobstein family site!
наслаждайтесь нашей семейной группой Гробштейн!
For an introductory guide an how to navigate this site, and find specific information, please go to Page 2.
For an introductory introductory explanation of the origins of Jewish last names, taken from Origins of Jewish Last Names in Turov, by Leonid Smilovitsky, PhD, The Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center of Tel Aviv University, please go to Page 3.
In German, Birnbaum is a pear tree, einen Baum, der Birnen als Früchte trägt, Birne, a pear and baum, a tree).
It is interesting to note that while the Yiddish word comes from the German, the English word 'pear' probably comes from the German, as well. But, it is the Common West Germanic *pera, which, in turn, came from the Vulgar Latin, pira, the plural of pirum.
Some Jews with the name Ber (בר דב) chose the name, which may explain why it is sometimes spelled as Bernbaum or Berenbaum.
In Yiddish, a tree is בוים boim, which explains the variations ending with boim or boym.
There are other variations on the spelling, such as:
* Barenboim
* Bernboim
* Berenbaum
* Birenbaum
* Birnboym
The name applies to several European towns and districts:
1. a city in Posen district, Birnbaum an der Warthe, today called Międzychód in województwo Wielkopolskie, the historical heart of Poland. The Miedzychód region is known as the "Country of One Hundred Lakes". It is a flat region interspersed with forests and lakes. It was the base of the ancient Polanie tribe, a Slavic tribe from which the Polish nation emerged. It was annexed by Prussia at the time of the second partition (1773), and underwent intensive Germanization. After Germany's defeat in the first world war most of the region was reincorporated into Poland.
2. Kreis Birnbaum an administrative district or kreis in the Posen district
3. a city in Frankenwald Franconian Forest
4. a municipality in Lesach, the Lesachtal valley, in Carinthia, Austria.
5. a district of Gummersbach in Oberberggischer Kreis in North Rhine-Westphalia
6. an elevated plain, Birnbaumer Wald, or Hrušica (planota), on the edge of the Alps in Slovenia, and the southern part of Carniola Krain.
7. a quarter in the Bavarian municipality of Halblech.
8. the German name, Unter-Birnbaum, for the Slovenian city of Dolenja Hrušica.
It is probable that our Birnbaum family, before settling in the Черта́ осе́длости Strefa osiedlenia Pale of Settlement, came from a town farther west, like the town of Birnbaum in Posen. We have not yet been able to trace our Birnbaum family back far enough. Our only link is to those family members who came from Галичина Galicia, which, at various times, was part of Poland and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and is in Ukraine.
We have been able to trace our Birnbaum roots back only a few generations to Тернопіль Ternopil, one of the three main citiies of Eastern Galicia, as the town in which they lived, but we can't be sure that this is the exact place in which they lived, as most Jews lived in small towns in the region, and refered to the largest town in the area as the place from which they came.
There are several other Websites that can be visited for more genealogical information on other Birnbaum families:
* Hazel Dakers' Family History has a Family Tree of the Birnbaums of Zgeirz and Lodz in Poland (Hazel's paternal grandfather) as well as pages dedicated to Hazel's father, Leo Birnbaum, as well as Leo Birnbaum's Obituary.
Contact me