HUNGARY : Tracing a family - where to begin ? - HALAM

[gbrowne]

Hi Roy,

Once again, some excellent information.  Thanks very much for that.

Also thanks for taking a quick look at the LDS Hungarian births.  I must admit when I looked I was a bit stumped by how difficult it is to read the Hungarian language.  Not even knowing the Hungarian for 'father' or 'surname' it looks like I might have to do some research before I can research

Yes, I have tried the FreeBMD and the Ancestry England & Wales, Marriage Index 1916-2005, but no match.  Very few Halams at all in fact.

I wonder if they were fleeing Hungary as you say.  I remember originally my late father telling me that he thought Anna might have been French.  Now we know thats not the case, but I wonder if they were married in France before returning to the UK - I assume this would give her entry rights into the country.

The new LDS search for France only goes up to 1924 unfortunately, so can't check that theory out at the moment.

Looking further into the Buxton Dodog connection, it turns out he was her solicitor (I found an announcement of the death in the online London Gazette, giving his professional address in Buxton and a date by which any claims should be made).

Thanks for the pronounciation guide - at least I can address him properly now if I get to find a phone number, though if he was just her solicitor from 20 years ago, I imagine he's probably long forgotten all about her family details.

Geoff.

[Roy G]

Hi Geoff
I had a look at Hungarian death notices too.  No Halams, only a couple of Halamas with nothing there to suggest a tie to your Anna.  Let's hope the solicitor remembered her.  Given the opportunity to natter in their own language, Hungarians usually overflow with an excess of hospitality and remeniscences about the home country and the former regimes, so its highly probable. 

I think the LDS have a small spreadsheet giving basic Hungarian words commonly used in family history research.  If the trail leads you out of Budapest however, new problems arise.  Hungary only shrunk to its present size in 1920, before that you had Greater Hungary or, the Austro - Hungarian Empire.  You may therefore find that the parish records from towns and villages that were in the parts of the former Empire that have been lost, are now deposited in the capital cities of the countries that gained them.  So you may also need German, Slovac, Romanian, Ukranian, Serbian, Croation, perhaps a little Italian and Latin, oh!, and also to be able to read and understand Hebrew. 
As you may therefore gather, researching your family history out here is a series of challenges and set backs, but with every snippet of new info comes a great deal of personal satisfaction. 

Send me a personal message letting me know how you get on with the solicitor, and if you still want a few pointers, I'll come back with my Hungarian e-mail address so that we can chat privately.
Roy G
I wonder whether you can access the passport details of a deceased person in the UK?

[Roy G]

Me again. 
Looking for something else, I came across the order of the Hungarian Alphabet which may help you locate a family name in the few indexes you may come across. 

A Á B C D E É F G H I Í J K L M N O Ó Ö Ő P Q R S T U Ú Ü Ű V W X Y Z

Note, you have to exhaust all the 'A' s before you get to the 'Á' and things can get rather chaotic if the name you seek has an 'O' or 'U' in it, for if you do not know if the name has an accent or not, you have to search each version.
Roy G

[gbrowne]

Thanks for this Roy.
G.

[Roy G]

Hi Again
I know it is quite a time since we were last in contact, but I came across a reference that just 'MAY BE' your Anna.  I have to write "may be" because although the birth year is correct, the actual birthplace (Zeliska  Cz) and birth date differs. However, if you were right that Anna may have come from a camp for displaced persons, the circumstances, could easliy fit. 

Page 4 of the following website has a mention of an ARANKA HALMAI (Aranka is aka Anna and HALMAI may be a surname variation rather than typo).    http://www.gyorjewish.org/newpage45.htm   

The supporting text supplied by the individual who found the document during his own research states that, 
"On the 31st July 1944 a transport with 530 Hungarian women on board left Auschwitz, for a slave labor ammunition factory in Lippstadt.
      Adding later
"Almost all of these women were liberated on the 1st April 1945 at Kaunitz Germany, while on a death march to Bergen-Belsen."

If you look page 4 and decide it could be your Anna, note that she also appears to have a younger sister with her.

Regards Roy G

[gbrowne]

Hi Roy,

Wow !  Thanks so much for that information - really appreciate you remembering my search after all this time.  As you know, I have absolutely no experience of searching in records abroad, but what you have found certainly appears to be a pretty reasonable match for Anna, though the birthdate is worrying.  Would you say her name was a very common one at that time ?

I'd like to think that perhaps as more inforation comes online I will be able to follow this up in the future.  As always, solving one question raises several more )

Thanks again Roy.

Geoff.

[Roy G]

It is an unusual name Geoff, and I originally thought that Halmai may have been a typo.  I subsequently discovered that there seemed to be a few more Halmais than Halams, making a typo less likely.  My experience with these lists is that they are prone to errors or generalisations, perhaps because they were just given to a junior clerk to do.

Of course I can't say it definitely is your Anna (Aranka), but I thought you'd like to know, just to put it amongst your possibles.  If nothing else, it could give you some idea what was happening to some girls of about her age.   I have recently been reading that some others just into their teens were put into brothels and just used. 
Regards Roy G

[gbrowne]

Thanks again Roy,

As you suggest, I have added this new information to my records.
Tough times eh :O(

Cheers,
Geoff.