My Scottish Clan

In 1938, on Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, my grandfather, just 19 years old, was severely beaten by the Nazi's.  He ended up in the hospital, but he was one of the lucky one's because on that night as many as 30,000 Jews, his parents, grandfather and sister among them, were sent to concentration camps.  My grandfather and seven of his brothers and sisters were able to obtain tickets to England and left shortly after Kristallnacht.  They were lucky to get out and lucky to be alive.

Like many other refugees, my grandfather, his brothers and one of his sisters, joined the British Army where he became an interpreter and interrogator.  The British government, or whoever was in charge of these things, feared that if the Nazi's were ever able to capture army records, they would be able to see that refugees were fighting for England and so they changed all Jewish sounding names in to Anglo-Saxon names.  My grandfather, Leo Buchbinder, became Leo Buchanan.  While others reverted back to their given names after the war, my grandfather kept the name Buchanan, mostly because he thought it would be more trouble than it was worth to change it back by that point. 

In 1947 when my grandfather came to New York and married my grandmother she became a Buchanan too.  So my German-Jewish refugee grandparents with their thick(ish) German accents were Ruth and Leo Buchanan.  My mother and aunt, until they were married, were Evelyn and Judy Buchanan.

If you don't know, the surname Buchanan is one of the oldest and most well known in Scotland.  The Buchanan's even have their own plaid!  So that became a running joke in our family, the idea of us having Scottish heritage.  When my parents travelled to Scotland on their honeymoon my mother even brought back a Buchanan plaid kilt and both me and my brother came home from the hospital in Buchanan plaid blankets!

Hmmm maybe that's where my affinity for Scottish men comes from...

Picture 1 is of my grandfather and one of his brothers in the Army.
Picture 2 is an article from a newspaper in the UK about my grandfather and his siblings, though they incorrectly called him Leon instead of Leo.
Picture 3 was taken when my grandfather was stationed in Scotland.

Picture 4:  My grandfather and his brother in uniform       
Picture 5:  My grandfather's enlistment papers                          
Picture 6:  Army rations book

  

Picture 7:   Indentification papers                        
Picture 8:  Official name change documents              
Picture 9:  Instructions for interrogators on what questions to ask German soldiers

 
Picture 10:  Army unit
Picture 11:  Soccer team

  

Picture 12:  My grandfather with three of his brothers in England        
Picture 13:  My grandfather, Leo Buchanan

So They Are Never Forgotten

Today is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It is common practice on this day that the names of Holocaust victims are read, much the same way as you've seen on September 11th.  It's simple and poignant and important.  So, in honor of Yom Hashoah, here are the names of my family who died during the Holocaust.  May they never be forgotten.

My great grandfather:  Solomon Buchbinder
My great grandmother:  Sarah Sauerman Buchbinder
My great aunt:  Berta Buchbinder
My great great grandfather:  Schaja Buchbinder

The First Find

In reality this happened a month (or more) ago, but as I am so bad about updating let's all pretend that I've just discovered this now.

When I began this quest to find out more about the Lander family, I was prepared for a difficult and arduous process.  After all, my family has always assumed that the name Lander was given to us at Ellis Island.  Lander is a really non-descript name, not easily identifiable to any culture, but certainly not Jewish.  Lander does however, sound close to plenty of fairly common Jewish names; there's Friedlander and Lender, Langer and Lanman.  So, I was sure, one of these more common Jewish names had belonged to my ancestors.

My first stop was to visit ellisisland.org, which is free and allows you to access records easily.  I thought that they might have records of both the names that passengers came with as well as what they were changed to.  Though I felt it to be a long shot, I used what little knowledge I had about my father's grandfather.  That, like my father, his name had been George and that someone on that side of the family had come from Austria. 

I hit the search function and entered "George" where I was asked for a first name and "Lander" where I was asked for the surname.  I set the gender to male, clicked the search button and prayed.  The results came back with a few George Lander's, but they had all come from England and their ages and years of arrival would've made it impossible to be my grandfather's father. I was disappointed and was about to close the page when a thought came to me, "why not simply put the letter 'G' in the first name field," and so, I did.

This time I got a slightly broader list of names and right on the top of the list I noticed a name, "Gedalje (pro: geh-dahl-ya) Lander."  My father's hebrew name is Gedalje, could this be my great-granfather.  I clicked on the records and they confirmed that Gedalje Lander was from the Austro-Hungarian empire and that he was 15 when he arrived in 1903, which would have made him the right age in 1913 when my grandfather was born.

It made perfect sense.  He must've come with the first name Gedalje and anglicized it to George at some point.  In Jewish culture a baby is always given the Hebrew name of a deceased relative so in this case my father, unbeknownst to him, had been given his grandfather's given name, which is Hebrew, as his Hebrew name and the name he went by in America, George, as his English first name.  I felt my whole body tingle with excitement at the find!

Then I noticed a button off to the side labeled, "view original ship manifest."  The original, handwritten passenger lists had been scanned in and was available for viewing.  Now I was doubly excited, if this manifest originated at the ships departure it would have my great grandfather's last name before it was changed.  I was brimming over with excitement as I clicked the button.  The handwritten document popped up and here's what it said, "Gedaljah Lander."  It seems that all of our speculation had been wrong, though it may have been changed at some point in Europe, my great grandfather had come to America with the surname Lander!

My great grandfather's name is on the eighth line down