The Smud FamilyAsk

17 statements, source by source

Facts

What the sources say about this family, one thing at a time. Each fact says who supports it and in what words, with each source's status alongside: a census and a memory do not carry the same weight.

Those found in several sources

Documented

The family came from Ludza, on the Baltic

The documents place the family in Ludza, now in Latvia, until 1846. Rubén, who had not seen those documents, already spoke of a Baltic origin in 1996. Where they lived before Ludza is not known.

  • The Komisaruk family, according to Freedman (February 2020) · documented

    David was born in 1818 in Lutzin (now Ludza), son of Falk, and in 1846 settled in the colony of Novozlatopol as one of the 160 Lutzin families that founded it. Koppel was born in Lutzin in 1839. It also cites the 1850 and 1852 lists of Jews who moved from Vitebsk province to Novozlatopol.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    The Smud family, of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, was settled in Lithuania, “near Riga”. In the mid-nineteenth century, or earlier, strong discriminatory pressure drove its move to Ukraine, where it spread between Karkoff and Berdiansk, as Rubén writes.

People: Falk Zhmood · David Zmud · Koppel Zhmood

Documented

Felix was a butcher

A butcher in Berdyansk according to Freedman, and in Buenos Aires according to Rubén. It was also the Zhmood family's trade.

  • Chaim Freedman's work · documented

    Koppel had a son named Yerakhmiel Falik: from Berdyansk, a soldier and a butcher.

  • The Komisaruk family, according to Freedman (February 2020) · documented

    Yerakhmiel Falik Zmood was a butcher and lived in Berdyansk and Mariupol. It also gives David, Koppel and Moshe as butchers, and says that the husband of Tybel, Felix's sister, made his living as a butcher together with the Zhmood brothers.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    In Buenos Aires Felix worked “as a butcher or slaughterer” with the help of some fellow countrymen of the same origin and in the same trade.

People: Felix Smud · Koppel Zhmood · David Zmud

Family memory

Felix served in the Russian army and deserted to come to Argentina

That he was a soldier is said by Freedman and by Rubén. Only Rubén tells of the desertion. The cavalry account in the 2020 report remains open.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    Felix was “enlisted in the Russian army, taking part in the Russo-Japanese war”. When the war ended he was not discharged, and to be able to travel to Argentina he “had to desert from the army”. He reached Buenos Aires in mid-1905.

  • Chaim Freedman's work · documented

    Yerakhmiel Falik, Koppel's son, had been a soldier.

  • The Komisaruk family, according to Freedman (February 2020) · documented

    He was conscripted into a cavalry unit, became a junior officer, something very rare for a Jew, and on leaving the army turned down the post of starosta of a town. The account carries no source note.

People: Felix Smud · Malke Noel

Documented

Part of the family emigrated to Australia and other countries

Rubén told of it in 1996, and Freedman's report follows those branches: the Zmoods of Melbourne descend from Moshe, Felix's brother.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    In the early twentieth century several members of the Smud family (“brothers or cousins of Felix's grandfather”) emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Argentina, where they spread across the Capital, Rivera, La Plata, Rosario, Mendoza and Entre Ríos.

  • The Komisaruk family, according to Freedman (February 2020) · documented

    Moshe Zmood, Koppel's son, emigrated to Eretz Israel with his family in 1907 and later went back to Russia. Several of his children stayed and later left for Australia, and others settled there too. Shlomo Zmood, David's great-grandson, wrote down the sequence of generations (David, Koppel, Moshe, Shlomo) in Melbourne, in an old book that passed to his grandson.

People: Koppel Zhmood · Moshe Zhmood · David Zmud

Unverified

Descent from the Vilna Gaon

Freedman considers it proven that the Komisaruks descend from the Vilna Gaon. Whether the Zhmoods belong to that branch depends on Khana Reizel being a Komisaruk, and no document confirms it. The 1858 census calls her a daughter of Zalka, which rules out her being Berel's daughter, as had been proposed.

  • The 1858 census · documented

    In household 47/92, David's wife is recorded as “Хана Залкова”, Khana daughter of Zalka, aged 38. It is the only fact about her family of origin: it gives the father's given name and nothing more.

  • The Komisaruk family, according to Freedman (February 2020) · documented

    Genetic testing proved that the Komisaruk family descends from the Gaon. Khana-Reizel, David Zmud's wife, would be the daughter of Dov-Ber Komisaruk and Ester, a granddaughter of the Gaon: a proposal based on the oral tradition of the Komisaruk, Zmood and Grinblat families, who said they came from a common ancestor.

  • Chaim Freedman's work · documented

    Eliyahu's Branches (1997) reconstructs the Gaon's descendants, including the line going up from Khana Reizel, through her mother, to him: the one the 1858 census contradicts.

  • Relationships among the Komisaruk, Zmood and Yovel families, according to Freedman (2020) · documented

    With the full 1858 census, it rules out Khana being Shlomo-Zalmen Komisaruk's sister, since she would then have been recorded as “Berelova” and not “Zalkova”. It proposes, as a theory, that she was his daughter. On genetics, it says only one Zmood has taken a test.

People: Khana Reizel · Dov-Ber (Berel) Komisaruk · Esther Leib · Eliyahu ben Shlomo Zalman · David Zmud

The rest

Documented

Felix and Malke lived in Berdyansk

Freedman gives him as from Berdyansk; Rubén, as the place where the family lived and which it left in 1904.

People: Felix Smud · Malke Noel

Family memory

Malke was rendered as María, Reina or Reina Esther

The documents name her Ester Malka and Malke or Molke; that her name was rendered as María or Reina is Rubén's account.

People: Malke Noel

Family memory

The Noels were Sephardic Jews

It is family tradition. Rubén wrote it down in 1996, and no document confirms or contradicts it.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    The Noel family was “of Sephardic Jewish origin” and lived in Spain, “presumably in Toledo”. With the expulsion it emigrated to Turkey (“perhaps Istanbul or Ankara”) and from there moved to Ukraine, where it settled on the Black Sea coast, in Berdyansk.

People: Malke Noel

Documented

They travelled third class, in the ship's hold

Third class is recorded by the port of Buenos Aires; what the voyage was like is Rubén's account.

  • The 1904 immigration register · documented

    Records them among the third-class passengers.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    Third-class passengers travelled in the ship's hold and had bunks “for all comfort”. Food was scarce; Eide was breastfed, and the older ones ate fruit bought at the ports of call. There were few facilities for washing and passengers were seldom allowed on deck.

People: Malke Noel · Alejandro Smud · Marcos Smud · Aida Smud

Family memory

The Borkum called at Lisbon, the Canaries, Bahia, Rio and Montevideo

Rubén gives these as the ship's usual ports of call.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    The ports of call were “usually” Lisbon, the Canary Islands, Bahia, Rio de Janeiro and Montevideo. At each port cargo was loaded and unloaded and passengers disembarked.

Family memory

The ship was held in quarantine before entering port

Rubén tells of it; the immigration register does not say so.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    On reaching the River Plate the ship “had to remain in the roadstead for the regulation time required by the quarantine” of the health authorities.

Family memory

They lived in a tenement house on Azcuénaga Street

Rubén gives it as something known for certain.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    “What we know reliably” is that some time later the family occupied lodgings, “or shares a tenement house”, on Azcuénaga Street, half a block from Rivadavia. The site was later demolished, and the new building housed the city's Schools Board and, in 1996, a department of ANSES.

People: Malke Noel

Family memory

What Malke and Felix looked like, according to their portraits

Rubén describes two period portraits. The photographs are not in this research.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    In one portrait Malke appears very dark-skinned, with “piercing, lively” eyes. In another, probably taken on the same occasion, Felix appears fair or olive-skinned, with somewhat wavy hair lighter than hers and “a stern, concentrated expression”. He was tall, with a large, sharp nose, and wore a handlebar moustache he kept carefully with moustache guards.

People: Malke Noel · Felix Smud

Family memory

Alejandro and Marcos qualified as bookkeepers

Rubén's account.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    The three siblings attended primary school in the Capital, and Alejandro and Marcos went on to the Antonio Bermejo Commercial School, where they qualified as bookkeepers.

People: Alejandro Smud · Marcos Smud · Aida Smud

Family memory

Alejandro worked in Maciá and Marcos in Aranguren

Rubén's account.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    Alejandro worked in Maciá (Rosario Tala department), in Elías Loyber's general store; Marcos, in Aranguren (Nogoyá department), in a similar business of Jozami Brothers, “first at Casa Gabay”. Around 1926 Alejandro set up on his own, with a general store and grain business facing the railway station.

People: Alejandro Smud · Marcos Smud

Family memory

Alejandro and Isabel's first home was an adobe hut

Rubén's account, which mentions photographs from those years.

  • Rubén's document, October 1996 · family memory

    There are photographs of the first years of the marriage and of their first home, a typical adobe hut with a thatched roof. Aida lived with them.

People: Alejandro Smud · Isabel Loyber · Aida Smud