The Smud FamilyFrom Ludza to Entre Ríos

Before Smud, the surname was Zmud, and it comes from Žemaitija —Samogitia—, the region of western Lithuania that the Slavic languages called Żmudź. It meant roughly “the one from Samogitia”: a common way of naming someone after the place they came from.

The family lived in Ludza, in the east of present-day Latvia, then part of the Russian Empire. In papers of the period the town appears as Lutzin or Lucin. Falk, David and Koppel were born there, and that is where the 1816 census that would confirm who Falk’s father was should be found.

In 1846 David Zmud left Ludza. Together with other Jewish families from the same area he moved south, to the agricultural colonies the Russian government had opened in what is now Ukraine: the state offered land to anyone willing to work it, and it was one of the few ways out of the restrictions that weighed on Jewish families.

By about 1850 they were settled in Novy Zlatopol, Ekaterinoslav province. That is the source of the oldest document we have: the census of 26 May 1858, which records the whole of household 47/92 —David, his sons and Koppel’s wife— and which, in a single word, “Falikov”, preserves the name of David’s father.

The next generation left the colony for the ports of the Sea of Azov. Felix met Malke Noel in Berdyansk and they married there around 1896; the family lived there, and Alejandro was born there in 1897 and Aida in July 1904. An uncle, Falk, became a merchant in Nogaysk, on the same coast.

In 1899, in the registers of the Mariupol synagogue, the birth of Meyer —Marcos— was recorded. That page names three consecutive generations: the child, his father Falik and his grandfather Kopel. It is the document that, a century later, joined the Russian branch to the Argentine one.

Felix was mobilised in the Russian army and the war with Japan had just begun, so they agreed that Malke would travel first. She left Berdyansk in early August 1904 with Alejandro, aged seven, Meyer, aged five, and Eide, a few weeks old. They crossed southern Russia and central Europe by cart and, for some stretch, probably by train, to the port of Bremen.

In late October they sailed on the Borkum, a German cargo and passenger steamer, in third class, housed in the hold. The ship crossed the Atlantic, calling at Lisbon, the Canary Islands, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo.

The ship docked in the early hours of 23 December 1904. It was high summer. In that month’s immigration register, among the third-class passengers, the surname was written “Smud or Smod”: the first time it appears on an Argentine document, and already in the form it would keep for good.

After customs they were lodged in the Immigrants’ Hotel; later the family rented a room in a tenement house on Calle Azcuénaga. Felix landed in mid-1905 —he had had to desert to keep his promise— and died around 1909, of tuberculosis contracted at the front. Malke died around 1915.

After their mother died, the three siblings moved to the province of Entre Ríos. Alejandro and Marcos had qualified as bookkeepers at the Antonio Bermejo School of Commerce, and with that diploma they found work in general stores: Alejandro in Maciá, Rosario Tala department; Marcos in Aranguren, Nogoyá department. Aida lived in the home of Alejandro and Isabel.

Marcos is buried in Paraná. His gravestone preserves his Hebrew name —Meir, son of Folke— and is, on the Argentine side, exactly what the Mariupol record says on the Russian side. That is where the circle closes.