The Last Jewish Birth in Dulfalva

I've indexed records for many towns for JewishGen.  I feel like I get to know families, as I see their joyful events (marriages and births records) and sorrowful ones (death records) unfold over decades.  Now that records in Ukraine (which has a 75-year privacy law after which records are accessible) include vital events through 1945, I also see when Jewish life abruptly ended in some of these towns.

Last week, I was indexing records from the villages of Dulfalva, Hungary (now Dulovo, Ukraine) and Talaborfalva, Hungary (now Tereblya, Ukraine).  These two adjacent small villages' vital events were recorded in the same books.

The 1940s were tumultuous in the area, with some of the population's Jews being deported to Kamenets-Podolsk in 1941, and the area changed hands many times--from Czechoslovakia to Hungary to local rule to Hungary and then Germany's invasion.  This is reflected in the number of Jewish births each year:  1938 (10 births), 1939 (11 births), 1940 (10 births), 1941 (4 births), 1942 (1 birth), 1943 (2 births).  And then no Jewish births in 1944 or 1945 or thereafter.

Frida Laksz Birth, Dulfalva, July 1943

The final birth recorded in Dulfalva was that of my third cousin once removed, Frida Laksz.  Frida was born on July 19, 1943 to Saja Laksz (aged 38) and Hendlya Fuchs Laksz (aged 40).  Frida was the 6th child born to the couple, with the oldest being 9.5 when Frida was born.

I know Saja was deported in 1944--I have a record saying that his home had been assigned to someone named Laszlo Majer, after Saja's deportation.  Likely Hendlya and the children, including infant Frida, were deported at the same time, almost surely to Auschwitz.  But their paper trail disappears--along with the Jewish community of Dulfalva.

Normally I love doing visualizations of genealogical patterns or trends.  But this trend is just depressing.  Most of these little towns have their own Frida Laksz--the last Jewish child born in that village after years of Jewish presence.  And I'll just keep indexing to try to get each of their short existences recorded.

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