Nine chapters and an introduction
The history
From a surname that meant “the one from Samogitia” to three orphaned siblings working on the farms of Entre Ríos. Every chapter separates what comes from a document from what the family used to tell.
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About this document
Why it was written, and for whom, and the debt to three pages that a grandson of Felix typed in 1996 and that the archives ended up confirming.
- 01
Where the family came from
Zmud meant “the one from Samogitia”. Everything else follows from that word, from the town of Ludza and from a census taken in 1858.
- 02
The generations before Felix
Falk, David and Koppel: three names that come from real documents, and a marriage that, according to Chaim Freedman, links the family to the Vilna Gaon's descendants.
- 03
Felix
A butcher like his father and uncles, a soldier in the war against Japan, a deserter in order to keep a promise. He died four years after arriving.
- 04
The record that changed everything
How a Mariupol synagogue register, a grandfather's name and a gravestone in Paraná turned out to be the same story told from two continents.
- 05
Malke
Ester Malka, Malke, Molke, María Esther: four names for the same woman. And a Sephardic tradition about her family that no one has yet been able to document.
- 06
The voyage
From Berdyansk to Bremen overland, and from Bremen to Buenos Aires in the hold of a steamer, calling at Lisbon, the Canaries, Bahia, Rio and Montevideo.
- 07
Entre Ríos
Orphaned, and with bookkeeping diplomas, the three siblings find work in rural Entre Ríos: Maciá, Aranguren, Ramírez, Paraná.
- 08
Felix's siblings
Moshe, Pesach, Hinda Ana, Manyik and Tybel. And the branches that left for Australia, New Zealand and the United States in the early twentieth century.
- 09
What we still don't know
Whether Khana Reizel descended from the Vilna Gaon, where Felix was born, why Marcos was born in Mariupol, where the Noels came from and what lies above Falk. Six unanswered questions.