Approver Comment:
Keep looking and good luck!
--------------------------------------------------
I agree with you that Szyfra and Mordcha were likely Hersz' parents, given their dates of birth and the fact that all three share the same address. A very good conjecture; next time, it would be great if you could walk us through, in the comments, exactly how you came to this conclusion.
I'm very hesitant to say that anyone died either in the ghetto or in Chelmno until I've seen a document that shows me either that (a) the person died or (b) the person was transported to Chelmno or on a date in a range of time when deportations from Lodz were headed for Chelmno. There are situations where we can say that someone may have died in the ghetto; however, a lack of information on that person generally isn't one of them. Hersz may have lived at only one address in the ghetto and survived; he may have moved around in the ghetto, or escaped, or been deported. We simply don't know. We do know that we cannot say for sure that he died in the ghetto based solely upon one database only listing a single address for him.
One of the concepts we try to teach with this site is what we can and cannot know about the history, especially the story of any one person, based upon the records we've been left. Records were destroyed, they were incomplete, they were in different languages, and sometimes they were never kept. (There's a useful discussion of this in the forum: http://online.ushmm.org/lodzchildren/discussion_view.php?ForumPost__ForumPostId=38) A healthy dose of both optimism--that sometimes people survived and we still don't have a record of it--and skepticism--before we rush to assumptions based on what we think we know, we want to see the document--is useful when researching this period. If you have questions, I'd be happy to talk to you more about this; you can reach me at efrankle@ushmm.org.
I'm going to have to mark this stage as invalid for two reasons: first, the assumption that Hersz died, as given in the comments (he may have died, but it was not most likely, and the reason given is not the proof we'd need to say he died), and second the misspelling of his father's name (Mordcha, rather than Morcha). Once you've corrected these, I can approve it.
You're also correct about the change in street names: when German troops first occupied Poland, the street names were changed to German names, then were changed back to Polish names after 1945. The street in question was called Mickiewicza prior to 1939; during the war, it was Richterstrasse, and as you suggest it was changed to Tokarska after the war.
One last thing--I'm curious about your use of JewishGen as opposed to our databases. Both rely on the same set of information provided by Yad VaShem. If you're more comfortable using Jewish Gen, that's perfectly fine; just good for me to know on this end. Thanks!
