For years the research was stuck at the same point. Everything from 1904 onwards was known —the ship, the arrival, Entre Ríos— and absolutely nothing before. Who Felix’s father had been was an unanswered question.
The answer came by an unexpected route: not by looking for Felix, but for his son.
Marcos’s birth record
The State Archive of Donetsk Oblast holds the registers of the synagogue of Mariupol, a port city on the Sea of Azov. In the register for 1899 there is a birth record that says, in summary, this:
- Surname
- Zhmud
- Name
- Meyer
- Father
- Falik
- Paternal grandfather
- Kopel
- Mother
- Ester Malka
- Maternal grandfather
- Meyer
- Date of birth
- 25 January 1899
- Place
- Mariupol
State Archive of Donetsk Oblast · ДАДнО, fond 211, opis 1, file 19, record M13. Fond 211 holds the records of the Mariupol synagogue, Mariupol district, Ekaterinoslav province.
That Meyer is Marcos Smud. And that record, in a single line, names three generations: the child, his father and his grandfather. The grandfather was called Kopel.
How we know Meyer is Marcos
Not because the names look alike. Marcos Smud is buried in Paraná, and his gravestone preserves his Hebrew name: it calls him Meir Smud, and names his father as Folke. In other words, on the Argentine side the gravestone says the same thing the birth record says on the Russian side —the son was called Meir, the father Folke— but with the surname already in its Spanish form.
In addition, family tradition in several branches always gave Meyer as an alternative name for Marcos in more genealogical contexts.
Then there is everything else: the date of birth matches the age Marcos always gave in Argentina, the mother’s name matches, and there is no other Meyer with the same combination of parents and dates in all the documentation consulted.
Confirmation from the other side
Many years earlier, and with no connection to the Argentine branch, the researcher Chaim Freedman had reconstructed the genealogy of the Zhmood family in the Ukrainian colonies. His work records that Koppel had a son named Yerakhmiel Falik. And it describes him: he was from Berdyansk, had been a soldier and was a butcher.
That son of Koppel —from Berdyansk, a soldier, a butcher— and the Felix Smud the Argentine family remembered —from Berdyansk, a soldier, a butcher— are the same person. The Mariupol record is what made it possible to close the circle.