Bilgray Genealogy and Bilgray Family History Information

The surname Bilgray is derived from a single family which adopted the name of the town of Bilgoraj in Poland, in the area of Lublin. It was the custom for a local Count to grant permission to a family in a small village or town, to adopt its name, after Jews were required to declare surnames after 1772. Prior to WW1, this area was in the Austro-Hungarian empire, thus the German spelling of Bilgrei. Families with variations of the name, e.g. Bilgoray, Bilgrai, Bilgorai, Bilgora, Belgray, etc. are all related, as indicated by the research of David Charles Belgray of New York City. He was born in 1932 and in 1956-57 started finding his father's cousins in Europe and Israel, survivors of WWII. His father before he "Americanized" his surname to Maurice Belgray was Moshe Bilgoraj or Bilguraj, born 1892 in Majdan, Galicia, a village near Kopyczynce (now Kopichintsy), in Austria-Hungary. This area is now Ukraine. David Belgray reports finding cousins in twenty countries. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal was a family member, as is the family of Shimon Peres, 9th President of Israel, whose son Chemi is married to a Bilgoray.