Moses Raffalovich

known as Moses Rafalovich of Mohilev (Mogilev Podolski) on the Dniester River, where he and his brother built warships for the Czar.

"The first to bear this surname was Moshe Parnes, son of Rafael, ship builder for the Russian Army, when in 1783 during a visit of Catherine the Great, the empress would have bestowed upon him his patronymic Raffalovich, replacing the surname Parnes that was used till then." Reference: Asher Salah, Quest 2106 https://primolevicenter.org/printed-matter/from-odessa-to-florence/ who referenced Comparetti, In memoria di Elena Raffalovich, 15-16.

The Raffalovich Clan

By David Pitt, Wednesday 14 September 2011 - 11:08 :: Good

One day Catherine the Great is said to have commented: “Raphael’s sons are just like the father”. She was referring to Raphael Parnes and his son Moses, and his son Soloman. From that day on all of Parnes’s descendants were called Raffalovich and a family name was born. ‘Vich’ in Russian simply means ‘son of’ and sometimes the name is spelled with one f and other times two. Originally they were from Mogilev, then on to Nikolayev, and finally expanded to Odessa. Two strong legs formed the foundation of the Raffalovich fortune – ship building and banking. Moses and Solomon were responsible for developing the ship building. Solomon came to Nikolayev in 1825 and by 1836 won bids for two ships for the Russian Navy. Several more (about 20 in total) followed and essentially they built the entire Black Sea Fleet over the next 20 years. These were capital ships – mostly 84 guns – and I think quite profitable to Raffalovich fortunes. The Crimean War (1853-1856) did not go well for the Russian and in the Siege of Sevastopol they actually scuttled their own fleet as block ships. They of course stripped the canons to reinforce their own batteries on shore. The Treaty of Paris in 1856 provided that forthwith there would be no Turkish or Russian naval or military arsenals on the Black Sea. That treaty stood till 1871 by which time the Raffalovichs had mostly abandoned shipbuilding. Their fortunes now however were continuing to expand in banking. The banking end was most associated early on with Abraham Moses Raffalovich and/or A.D. Raffalovich in the 1830’s in Odessa. Later the focus shifted more to Paris and Arthur Raffalovich the son of Hermann was the key figure here. The bank was headquartered in Odessa with branches in St Petersburg, Paris, London, the Netherlands and other European capitals. Of course ship building started some of the banking connections but other major areas of interest for the Raffaloviches were the railroads, grain, mining and trade. A key association was with Catherine the Great through her lover, consort and statesman Prince Potemkin in the Ukraine. It was Potemkin who founded Nikolayev in 1789 around the only building there – a shipyard. Two other important contacts were Sergai Witte and Count Shuvalov. Then, as now, bonds and loans were an increasingly important element. Huge sums were involved in the ‘Emprunts Russes’ in France – 15 billion gold francs between 1887 and1913. In 1996-97 a Franco-Russian Diplomatic Agreement with a payment of 400 million dollars suspended trading. Arguments continued at least through 2010. The other side of the coin has to do with disaster, dispersion and discrimination. Pogroms and massacres, particularly in the Ukraine, were endemic. Major virulent episodes occurred in 1859, 1881-84, 1919 (Kiev) and 1941. It was Stalin who said something like: “One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic.” With Stalin and Hitler we were talking multiple sets of statistics. Most often the Jewish people bore the brunt. In the 1970s to 1990s most of Odessa’s surviving Jews emigrated either to Israel, the U.S., France or some other Western country.

September 8, 2011 / The Raffalovich Clan / FHPF, BK 1, #42 / OC Pg 111 © 2011 / CIP # 1218, Sept 14, 2011 / KD NA / FHPF GD / YP File 296/9

• Reference: MyHeritage Family Trees - SmartCopy: Nov 11 2017, 23:09:16 UTC