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Name: Mindel
Hilinger
Called by Grandkids:
Possibly Bubbe, but I don't know for certain. I'm not certain she actually met
any of her grandchildren, given she died before her children were married, I
believe.
Birth: About 1851
Death: 1913, London,
England, according to the gravestone record I found for her
Spouse: Leon
Seneft
Marriage: unknown
Children: Elias
(Alex), Jennie, Annie, Jack, and one unnamed son
Parents: unknown
Siblings: none
known
About: Mindel is
a cypher in my family tree, despite being the origin of our surname. Her son,
my great-grandfather, was forced to take her surname when he returned to
Germany to live because Mindel and Leon were Jewish, and married in a religious
ceremony, so their marriage was not recognized by the government, which made
him illegitimate.
I know nothing about her early life, or who her parents
were, nor if she had any siblings. My knowledge of her starts with my
great-grandfather's birth. Mindel and her husband had at least five children in
Galicia, which is an old Germanic state in southern Poland and eastern Ukraine.
I have yet to pinpoint exactly where they lived, but I know they moved while
their children were still young. They settled in London, where her husband was
a Rabbi. I am uncertain exactly when they moved to London, nor why, though I
can guess. Galicia was a very poor country, and by that time, Jews were once
again becoming scapegoats. Not that things improved for them much upon their
arrival in England. Luckily Mindel never lived to the first world war, to see
what was done to her family, or worse, to the second, to see the hate that was
so poured upon her people.
Her gravestone was engraved with "By her loving
daughter Jennie," or something along those lines in Hebrew. I have no idea
where her husband's stone is, if it even exists at all, but I believe he lived
for at least seven more years before dying sometime before Alex's second (and
third—they were twins) child was born.
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