In an email from John Loewenhardt, dated 22 May 2013, he wrote:

Dear Mark,
I am researching the families of my four Jewish ancestors in The Netherlands and Germany. In doing so, I became interested in LEIZER (Eliezer?) MELAMED, who was shokhet, ritual slaughterer, in the city of Oldenzaal, Netherlands, 1903-1941. He had married in Oldenzaal on 22 July 1896. According to Netherlands civil records, his parents were Sholem Melamed and Sheine Lewin and he was born on 12 June 1871. The Netherlands records list his place of birth as Poniwitz, Russia, and I have reason to believe that this was Panevežys in current Lithuania.

Do you perhaps have any information on the Melamed family from Panevežys? Should there be any interest in the life of Leizer Melamed after he came to The Netherlands, I will be happy to provide this. I plan to eventually publish a biographical sketch on him on my family website.

With best wishes,
John Loewenhardt, The Hague, The Netherlands
john@loewenhardtfoundation.org

And my response:

Hi John,

Thanks so much for your intriguing email to me (shown below).

I did not have your Leizer Melamed on my tree, but I did have his parents, his grandfather, an uncle, and his siblings!!  Indeed, Leizer Melamed is my father's second cousin!

BTW, I belong to the Panevezys, Lithuania research group, so I have access to many records from Panevezys, Lithuania, but sadly, I do not have the 1871 birth records yet.

I already had some of his family on my tree, but in researching sources, I found even more.

At Jewishgen.org, I found an interesting birth record from Birzai (a small city not far from Ponives).  Liba Melamed was born to Shloma and Sheina Melamed nee Orel.  Shloma's father's name was Izrail Melamed.  Sheina's father's name was Leizer Orel!  Liba Melamed was born on Nov 15, 1875 (29 Heshvan).  It is Record # F35, Microfilm Item # 2205126 / 4; and Archive / Fond # LVIA / 1226 / 1/ 415.  I don't know whether Liba was a male or female, but he/she could well be your Leizer's sibling.

I also found a Zurukh Melamed, born December 3, 1887, to the same parents (Sheine is Sheine Zelde).  Also from Birzai.  It is Record # M62, Microfilm Item # 2270865 / 4; and Archive / Fond # LVIA / 1226 / 1/ 1314.

I also found a Lipe Rivke Melamed, born February 28, 1893, to the same parents.  Also from Birzai.  It is Record # F5, Microfilm Item # 2270865 / 4; and Archive / Fond # LVIA / 1226 / 1/ 1314.

I found a death record, dated October 8, 1891, of Libe Rivke bat Shlomo Melamed, from Birzai, who died of croup.  (It seems like there is some conflict with her birth and death dates)  It is Record # D29, Microfilm Item # 2290697; and Archive / Fond # 422 LVIA / 1226 / 1/ 1961.

In all, Leizer Melamed seems to have had at least eight siblings!

In answer to your question, without a doubt I am interested in learning more about Leizer - how he wound up in the Netherlands, what family he brought with him, and what became of him and his descendants?

All that you told me is now on Geni.com, and I would like to add more as you tell me more.  It would be terrific if you joined Geni.com too, and placed your tree there, so we could combine our tree.

Thanks so much for contacting me!

All the best,
Mark Melmed

PS: According to Geni.com, here is my connection to Leizer:

Leizer Melamed is my second cousin once removed.

Mark Melmed →                             Ned Melmed, my father
→  Israel Nathan Melmed, his father →  Solomon Melamed, his father
→  Izrael Melamed, his brother →          Shlioma Melamed, his son
→  Leizer Melamed, his son

And in another email from John L., written 24 May 2013:

... Of course you may link to my page, go ahead. It is only a preliminary summary of what I have on Leizer. I have written an account in Dutch and will translate it after I return from abroad (until 31 May in Venice). Point is that I have access to the financial account books of the Oldenzaal kehilla, 1911-1932, and so can paint quite an interesting picture of Leizer's work as Shochet. For example, during the first six months of 1911 he singlehandedly slaughtered 165 cows, 83 calfs, 11 sheep and one goat. I aim to make analysis of the account books a big project, involving of course not only the activities of Leizer as shammes and shochet.

From what I know Leizer and his wife Hendrika had no children; I need to check to be entirely sure. The reason why I think so is that when he came to The Netherlands, the civil servant writing his name down wrote it as MelaMMeT. In Dutch civil records I find no other person by this name, only Leizer and his wife. Within the Oldenzaal kehilla (including the financial records), however, his name was consistently written as Melamed.

You find the location of the house of Leizer and Hendrika, Boterstraat (=Butter street) #5 in Oldenzaal here. Their house has in the meantime been replaced by new construction. The mother of my mother came from an Oldenzaal family (family Weijl) of cattle traders and butchers, they must have known Leizer well, no doubt about that.

On 21 September 1942 Leizer died in Monowitz (a satellite camp of Auschwitz) either from typhoid during the construction of the camp, or he was murdered. We'll never know. He was 71. His wife was murdered in Sobibor on 9 April 1943. See also here.

Keep in touch!

Best wishes,
John

John LoewenhardtFoundation.org ~ö~

- Mark Melmed, May 2013

On June 3, 2013, John Lowenhardt sent me a link to his completed homage to Leizer Melamed. Many thanks to John for this wonderful work. The link is: <http://loewenhardtfoundation.org/en/2013/the-last-shoykhet-of-olden...>.

(For convenience, I have copied John's homage here:)

=The last shoykhet of Oldenzaal – II=

3 June 2013 by John Löwenhardt 3 Comments

Homage to Leizer Melamed, 1871-1942

Leizer Melamed (Melammet in Dutch civil records) was thirty-two years of age when in 1903 the Jewish community (Kehile) of Oldenzaal appointed him shames and shoykhet (see glossary below). For almost forty years preceding the Holocaust he was one of the most visible representatives of the declining number of Jews of the old city of Oldenzaal and in towns and villages in the vicinity. He toured the countryside on his noisy motorcycle, a holdall attached to it carrying the halaf.

Leizer was born on 12 June 1871 and arrived in Oldenzaal probably in the mid-1890s. On 22 July 1896 he married a local Jewish girl, Hendrika Gobas. He had been trained as a cooper but in Oldenzaal his main trade and source of income was that of painter-decorator. He kept the shul in tip-top condition and facilitated the religious services on shabes and the High Holidays.

A journal from Ponives to :

Leizer Melamed hailed from the city now named Panevėžys in Lithuania, Ponevez in Yiddish. Over the years and over different languages the orthography of this city has changed to such an extent that it was not at all surprising that from the mouth of Leizer in late-nineteenth century Oldenzaal it was written down in Dutch civil records as ‘Poniwitz, Russia’.(1) During the nineteenth century it was part of the Russian Empire.

In 1884 when Leizer did his bar mitzvah, the city housed over fifteen thousand people, more than half of them Jews. It had a rich Jewish social and cultural life, including a famous yeshiva (now the Ponevez Yeshiva in Bnei Brak, Israel) and an elementary school for Jewish boys funded by the Russian authorities. The Jews prayed in numerous synagogues, including small minyanim and shtiblakh for different crafts- and tradesmen. A Jewish hospital was founded in 1886, funded by wealthy Jews, followed one year later by a Ma’akhal Kasher, a kosher soup kitchen catering to the Jewish soldiers in the local Russian garrison.

During these years the town repeatedly suffered devastating city fires. More than half of its Jews lived in poverty. All of this contributed to a wave of emigrants leaving for South Africa, the Americas and Palestine. The old cemetery of Jerusalem has at least fifteen graves of Jews from Panevėžys, buried between 1866 and 1902. It is conceivable that Leizer left his hometown as one of these emigrants, aiming for South Africa or another country. According to reports, many travelled first to the United Kingdom where they embarked for Africa or America.

We do not know where Leizer meant to go and we do not know how he travelled. But if he traversed Germany by train on his way to Hook of Holland, the German-Dutch border town of Oldenzaal would have been a ‘logical’ place to get stranded. This was and still is the town where trains from Berlin bound for the London ferryboat in Hook of Holland cross the border. Perhaps there was an issue concerning his documents. Perhaps he fell ill? Whatever happened, once in Oldenzaal Leizer had found his Hendrika he never left until in Summer 1942 the Germans forced him on a deportation train to Auschwitz.

Shames & shoykhet

As beadle of the Oldenzaal synagogue, Leizer received an annual salary of eighty guilders, paid in four quarterly instalments. This was one tenth the salary of rabbi Marcus Klein, but he, of course, had no other income. For paint jobs, Leizer was paid separately. One night during the winter of 1921-1922, an explosion occurred in the mikve probably as a result of frozen pipes. Part of the building was destroyed. After reconstruction by a building company from Enschede, Leizer was hired for the paint job. In April 1922, the treasurer of the Kehile paid him 147,50 guilders for this work. The financial damage of the explosion, including 575 guilders for the construction company, amounted to almost thirteen percent of the 1922 annual budget.

As painter-decorator Melamed will have had other clients as well. But he had to make time for what was without doubt his main and most prestigious job, a job that gave him power and respect – that of ritual slaughterer, shoykhet. The picture shows his colleague from the small town of Stedum-Loppersum in the far North of the Netherlands. His name was Joseph Bamberger and in this picture he proudly poses for his fifty-third jubilee in this profession. As shokhtim both Bamberger and Melamed provided additional income to their local Jewish communities. A ‘small economy of the shoykhet’ tells us how.

For each cow slaughtered by Melamed, in 1911 its owner paid the Kehile ‘slaughter dues’ to the amount of 45 cent. The rate for calves was 25 cent and for sheep 15 cent. In later years, Melamed the slaughterer received a flat monthly salary from the Kehile. But in 1911 he was still paid for each animal killed: 35 cent for a cow, 20 for one calf and 15 for a sheep. Thus the Kehile netted ten cent for each cow and five cent for each calf. Melemed’s professional expenses were paid by the Kehile. On 29 June 1911, for example, the treasurer paid him 15 cent for the purchase of stamp ink necessary for authenticating kosher meat.

The numbers were amazing, considering the small size of the Jewish communities concerned. Leizer slaughtered in Oldenzaal itself, but also in nearby Losser, Denekamp and Ootmarsum. The combined Jewish population in this corner of the Twente region was some three hundred in the early twentieth century. During the first six months of 1911 the Oldenzaal Kehile received a total in slaughter dues of 96.80 guilders for 165 cows, 83 calves, 11 sheep and one goat. This amounts to a weekly average of six cows, three calves and half a sheep. The three hundred Jews did not eat all of this kosher meat – quite a few gentile families preferred to ‘buy kosher’ as well, because of its quality and, as we would say today, food safety. Amsterdam provides an indication. In this city ten percent of the population was Jewish. By the time when de German rulers over the Netherlands outlawed shekhita, 31 July 1940, about fifty percent of all meat sold in Amsterdam was kosher slaughtered.

Could he manage, Leizer, this combination of three different jobs? There are indications that as shoykhet he had help. On 10 July 1911 the Kehile treasurer paid an anonymous ‘assistant shoykhet’ the sum of 12.50 guilders for the first half year, just over two guilders per month. Melamed’s average monthly shoykhet income during this period had been thirteen guilders. Adding his shames salary, the Kehile paid him on average around twenty guilders per month, less than one third of the rabbi’s salary. The Kehile’s net income from slaughter dues was a meagre three guilders.

Postscript I, May 2013

A short version of the Leizer Melamed story was posted on this website on 24 May 2013. On the basis of his Netherlands marriage certificate, it stated that Leizer Melamed’s parents were Sholem Melamed and Sheine Lewin. Within hours, the publication drew excited responses from members of the worldwide Melmed family originating in Lithuania. The author was happily surprised to receive emails in which he was told that he had found a missing son of the family. According to John and Mark Melmed in the USA, direct descendants from a brother (Solomon Melamed) of Leizer’s grandfather Izrael, Leizer had seven siblings. They carried the wonderful names of Liba; Lipe Rivke; Tone; Tsesne Leia; Khaia Rokha; Iankel Meir; and Zorukh Melamed. After his departure, Leizer probably never saw them again. During his life in Oldenzaal he will have missed them.

Postscript II, November 2013

Ben van Benthem was nine years old when in about 1939 he met Leizer Melamed. Ben grew up in Oldenzaal, now he lives with his wife Marie in Hengelo. I went to see him to hear what he remembers…

“I was a nine years old boy when the painter Melamed came to paint our house at Hyacinth street. I remember him vividly and when much later I saw a picture of him, I recognized him immediately. What I saw? A man of about my current length, say five and a half feet (1,70 m.). I was young. I can still picture his painter’s outfit, a long white shirt, a coat maybe, reaching down over his knees. That was the painter’s uniform in those days. I have a picture, not of Melamed but of my uncle Gait who was a painter as well. It shows him with three men in the same long white painter’s outfit. It tells you what Melamed looked like.

“And when in the afternoon work was done for the day, he started rolling the shirt from below his knees up to his waist, his jacket went over it, he buttoned it, mounted his bike and rode home. End of the working day."

© John Löwenhardt
The Hague, 3 June 2013

- Mark Melmed, June 2013

Bruidegom: Leizer Melammet
Geboorteplaats: Poniwitz (Rusland)
Leeftijd: 25
Beroep: Kuiper
Vader bruidegom: Sjolem Melammet
Moeder bruidegom: Sjeine Lewin
Bruid: Hendrika Gobas
Geboorteplaats: Oldenzaal
Leeftijd: 28
Vader bruid: Arie Gobas
Moeder bruid: Judickje Marcus
Gebeurtenis: Huwelijk
Datum: woensdag 22 juli 1896
Gebeurtenisplaats: Oldenzaal

Overledene: Leizer Melammet
Geslacht: Man
Geboorteplaats: Poniwritz (Rusland)
Leeftijd: 71
Relatie: Hendrika Gobas
Relatiesoort: Partner
Vader: Sjolem Melammet
Moeder: Sjeine Lewin
Gebeurtenis: Overlijden
Datum: maandag 21 september 1942
Gebeurtenisplaats: Oswiecim (Polen)
geboren 12-06-1871