Móricz (Mózes) Klein

The family lore about Mozes Klein, as recounted by David Deutsch, who heard it from his grandmother, Natalia Hollo (born Fürst):

My mother's mother was Natalia Fürst. Her parents (my greatgrandparents) were Malvina Hirschfeld and Moritz (Mor) Fürst. These two were supposed to be what today would be called a "power" marriage: Malvina was from the Hirschfeld family, who were founders and leaders of the Vac Jewish community. Her husband, Mor Fürst, was from the Fürst family from the Nagyszombat (today, Trnava in Western Slovakia) area, who owned large landholdings in that area (very unusual for Jews during that time, as landownership had been previously forbidden or restricted to most Jews). More on the Fürst family in a moment. Let me focus first on Malvina's family.

Malvina's parents were Adolf Hirschfeld and Nina (Anna) Klein. Nina had the following parents: Mozes Klein and Maria (Mirjam) Fischer. Mozes's story is quite interesting.

The family legend refers to him as "Moishe Nenetz from Lukanénye" (this refers to the town he lived in, the now-Slovak town of Nenince, which was formerly called (in Hungarian) Lukanénye, and Nenetz in German.) But his real name was, in fact, Klein. So his town was referenced twice in his nickname.

The legend says that he was a very poor, itinerant cloth peddler, who went from village to village in what today is Slovakia and the Czech Republic, but in those days it was part of Hungary. Although he was poor, he had one important advantage: He was reputed to be incredibly handsome and appealing to the ladies.

The story continues that one day, Moishe [Moricz] made a stop in the courtyard of a castle to sell cloth to the servants. The Count (Graf) was in Vienna or elsewhere on business. However, the Countess was in the castle. She looked out the window, saw Moishe, and immediately suffered an infatuation. She instructed her servants to bring Moishe to her rooms, and supposedly Moishe and the countess spent a weekend together. In gratitude for the time they had together, the Countess gave Moishe 1/2 of all her fancy clothing (dresses, silks, etc.). This gift was worth a great deal of money. Moishe sold the dresses, and started a business. He was so incredibly successful that he converted his good luck into an enormous fortune, and became (supposedly) a very rich man. I am getting ahead of the story a bit here, but suffice it to say that, so rich he was, that when he died his fortune was divided into equal sixteen parts (one for each of his surviving grand-daughters), and even a 1/16 portion was an enormous fortune. [NOTE: The original story, as told by my grandmother, said the fortune was only divided among 16 granddaughters, but my recent research has uncovered 23 heirs, several of which were male descendants. Many, however, were, indeed, granddaughters.]

Moishe's daughter, Nina (my great-greatgrandmother), as the daughter of a now very rich man, was married into the Hirschfeld family, which was (as explained earlier) one of the most prominent Jewish families in the region at the time. The other children were similarly paired off into important Jewish families.

Adolf and Nina had several children. One of them, Malvina Hirschfeld, was my great-grandmother, who was one of Moishe's inheriting grand-daughters.

Now I move on, for a moment, to the Fürst story: As mentioned earlier, Malvina was married off to a rich family (Fürst). The man she was married to (Mor) was the son of a family that was described as "landed gentry." The family story was that the Fürsts had lived in the same village (Totujfalu --- note . . . this is different from TAHITOTujfalu, the village near Vacz/Vac where the Hirschfeld family originated before Vacz) for generations, and owned a great deal of land in the early 1800's. Malvina moved away from Vac to live with her husband in his home-village near Nagyszombat/Trnava. Unfortunately, Moritz's father, Adolf, died young. The Fürst family fortune was left to Moritz when he was very young and immature, and Moritz was irresponsible: He spent money very quickly and in great quantities. He gambled and was extravagant.

The story says that he lined the road from the gate to the house with champagne bottles. It is also said that he drove a carriage with 16 (sixteen) horses! In any case, in a relatively short time, he went bankrupt. He fled in disgrace, with his wife and two children (my grandmother and her brother), to America in 1908, and lived in poverty in New York 's lower East Side ghetto for six years or so. [NOTE: Subsequent research suggests the poverty was not quite so extreme, but the disgrace was unquestionable.]

A couple of years after settling in New York, Moritz received a telegram, informing him that Malvina's very rich grandfather (Moishe Nenetz (i.e. Mozes Klein) had died, leaving Malvina her 1/16th [now we know it was a 1/23rd] share of his fortune. In response, Moritz declared they were rich again, packed up his family and sailed back to Europe and then Vienna, thinking he could go back to his extravagant lifestyle. Unfortunately, World War I began shortly thereafter. Moritz was drafted into the Austrian army, was captured by the Russians and sent to Siberia. The inherited fortune gradually disappeared during the war and the bad years that came after, as Malvina used it to survive the war and the bad economy after the war.

There is a bit more to this story, including how in the late 1960's my mother and Grandmother came across, by accident, another one of the other granddaughters of Moishe Nenetz, on an island half a world away from Hungary, 50 years later! We've lost touch, unfortunately.

Mozes/Moishe lived to be quite old (well into his 90's). At around the turn of the century, a big party was held in Balassagyarmat, an event that supposedly made it into the papers. It may have been to celebrate his 90th birthday. I am told the party was covered by various newspapers, and Mozes' many children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren gave him a yarmulke made of gold thread. I am currently attempting to get my hands on that newspaper article(s).

In addition to locating that newspaper article, I am also trying to locate ALL the descendants of the 23 heirs. I have obtained a reliable copy of the list of 23 heirs, and I have posted this as the primary image for this profile to help making a connection with Mozes Klein's descendants. If anyone reading this feels she or he might be one of the descendants, please contact the manager of this profile. Thus far, I have located only the following descendants:

1.) Nina Hirschfeld's children: These make up 7 of the 23 entries on the list, and includes my own branch of the family tree. The first entry is for the widower of Nina Klein (my great-great grandfather), so it is not a separate line of descent. Of the other 6 there are still a few which I have not yet located: Erno Hirschfeld's daughter's, Roza's, descendants, who live in the New York area; also Etelka Grosz (nee Hirschfeld) had descendants who survived the Holocaust (Rozsi Grosz, who married Erno Reisz, passed away in 1975, and had two sons who would be in their 80's today).

2.) The descendants of Leonora Klein (married to Markusz Binetter). One Binetter descendant intersects by marriage with another of the heir descent-lines (Schmiedl).

3.) The descendants of Mozes Klein's youngest surviving son, Jakab Klein. I have recently established contact with his descendants.

4.) It is possible that there will be survivors descended from Netti Klein (married to Moricz Schmiedl), and Franciska Klein (married to Beno Silberfeld of Gyongyos), and mybe even other children of Mozes Klein. These branches include persons which appear to have survived the Holocaust, but we have never been able to contact the survivors.

Interestingly, several surnames from the heirs' list intersect repeatedly: Dach, Schmiedl, Binetter, Link. These families intermarried with each other and also with the Klein family descendants. For instance, in the Binetter family, once can see Binetter and Klein descendants married to Dach and Schmiedl, in addition to the Klein children who married into those families.