The Polish MANSBACHs were related to my family, at least that was the theory--but no MANSBACH of Polish ancestry knew any MANSBACH who wasn't in his or her immediate family. The Levite MANSBACH family had lived side by side together in Poland in 1830, no longer knew one another 150 years later. Other than hints in some family documents, there was no way to know for sure whether any of us were related.

Now, in 2019, DNA submissions from several MANSBACHs, confirm that all MANSBACHs who trace their family history back to Poland are related. They seem to share a common male Levite ancestor born around 1770 who seems to have had two sons, one named Jacob the Scribe and a second whose name we don't know. Jacob the Scribe seems to have had a daughter Rachel and definitely had at least one son, "Isak Josef MANZBACH", born around 1830, living in Rzeppenik, Poland. Isak Josef is the earliest documented Polish Levite named MANZBACH.

In addition, Polish archival documents show that two Levite MANSBACHs , likely cousins to Isaac Joseph, named Solomon [Shlomo] Peretz MANSBACH and Joseph David MANSBACH were living in Olpiny, just down the road from Rzepennik. Thereafter, the MANSBACH family in Poland lived in places like Krakow, Tarnow, Rzeszow, Nowy Sacz, Olpini, Biecz, Dombrova and Judlowa. Today, the MANSBACHs live in Mexico, Argentina, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Israel; they have lived long and they have prospered.

Where did the MANSBACHs from Poland originate?
A possible ancestral candidate is someone from a group of men

My name is Robert (Yerachmeal ben Avram Zalman HaLevy) MANSBACH. I started collecting information on MANSBACHs in 1979 by looking up the name MANSBACH in every telephone book in the library. Then, having the benefit of a free long-distance plan and time on my hands, I began to contact every MANSBACH with a telephone to see if they were related to me. In retrospect, this may sound strange.

In any event, after a while and maybe fifty or sixty responses from people named MANSBACH, a distinct dichotomy developed. One particular set of MANSBACHs, including mine, traced their ancestors to small villages in a ten-mile radius, south-southeast of Tarnow, Poland. In addition, all the "Polish" MANSBACHs shared an Ashkenazy-Levite tradition. All other MANSBACHs traced their ancestry to Germany, generally Hamburg, Maden, Worms or Gudensburg and, with one exception (a no longer existent set of MANSBACHs from Hamburg), none of the "German" MANSBACHs were Levites. Thus, the Polish MANSBACHs and the German MANSBACHs did not appear to be related, at least not in recent history.

After 90 Years, a Menorah That Symbolized Defiance Is Rekindled in Germany

A 1931 photograph of a menorah on a windowsill also showed a Nazi flag in the street outside. This Hanukkah the menorah returned to Germany.

By Erika Solomon

Dec. 19, 2022

BERLIN — Rachel Posner, a rabbi’s wife in Kiel, Germany, took a photograph in 1931 that she had no idea would one day resonate with people across the world: It was of her family’s Hanukkah menorah, nine candles framed in a window through which a large Nazi banner could be seen hanging across the street.

“‘Death to Judah,’ so the flag says. ‘Judah lives forever,’ so the light answers,” she scribbled defiantly on the back of the photograph.

Now, 90 years since her family fled Germany with the menorah, it has returned, along with her descendants, to be lit for the first time in the country since the family escaped.

“It was a complicated decision, to come here. I had mixed feelings about going to Germany,” said Nava Gilo, Ms. Posner’s granddaughter.

She and her brother brought the menorah with them from Israel, where the family has made a home since fleeing Germany in 1933, before the country was established. They had never been to Germany and said they never had a desire to go to the place where their relatives had been persecuted or had died in the Holocaust.

Ms. Gilo said that changed for her earlier this year after the mayor of the Posner family’s former hometown, Kiel, wrote to them. He invited them to visit an exhibition about their family’s history — and their iconic photo.

The Posner descendants decided not just to come to Germany, but to bring the menorah with them.

For most of the year, the menorah is exhibited at the Yad Vashem museum in Jerusalem. The family donated it on the condition that it could reclaim the heirloom every Hanukkah.

Its visit to Germany this year, organized by the German Friends of Yad Vashem, began with a trip to Kiel and ended on Monday, the second night of Hanukkah, with the lighting of the menorah on a windowsill at Berlin’s grand Bellevue Palace, the official residence of the German president.

“We are experiencing the wonderful gift of reconciliation,” said the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, at the start of the ceremony. “And today, we see that 90 years after this menorah was last lit in Germany, there is once again a daily Jewish life here.”

He lit the candles alongside Ms. Gilo’s brother, Yehuda Mansbach, who sang the blessings over the candles.

Ms. Gilo said she believed their grandmother understood the power of the photo of the family menorah, but could never have foreseen just how much it would resonate.

The picture was one of 17 photos the rabbi’s wife sent to Germany in 1974, when the Kiel museum put out a call for photographs of Jewish life. Yet it was only two decades later, Ms. Gilo said, that the image began to spread.

Ms. Gilo thought her grandmother, who died in 1982, would be amazed to know they would one day return to Germany with the menorah because of her photograph.

“I don’t think she ever would believe we would be doing this,” she said. “The photo of the menorah is so famous now, and I don’t think she could have ever imagined it would be like this.”

Before lighting the menorah in Berlin, the family displayed its heirloom in Kiel, which is currently offering an exhibition about Jewish life in the city through the story of the Posners.

Despite her hesitancy about coming to the place her grandparents fled, Ms. Gilo said the experience was heartening.

“I especially liked our visits with some schoolchildren in Kiel — so many of them were immigrants, from so many countries,” she said. “And all of them had questions about the photograph. All of them were interested in learning about it.”

The menorah is being used as part of a campaign by the German Friends of Yad Vashem, entitled “Show Light.”Image

The grandchildren of the Posner family in Berlin with Mr. Steinmeier and Ms. Budenbender.

The promoters aim to raise awareness against hate, particularly antisemitism. In his speech, Mr. Steinmeier said he was especially disturbed to see antisemitism and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories again in Germany “in the middle of our society.”

Although Germany is having a reckoning with its Nazi past and the Holocaust, like many other countries, including the United States, it has seen a rise in antisemitic hate crimes in recent years. In 2019, a gunman made a failed attempt to attack a synagogue in the German city of Halle.

Ms. Gilo said the message of her family’s visit to Germany was “to work against hate.”

“We all have to bring the light,” she said. “Everyone has to try to be brave — like my grandmother.”

Above, archival documentation: Isak Josef MANZBACh father of Breindel

LIKELY UPPER BRANCHES MANSBACH FAMILY TREE



                                                                                        Unknown [Mansbach?] born c. 1770

                                                                                         I                                                              I

                                            Unknown {Mansbach?] born c. 1800 Jacob the Scribe [MANSBACH?] c.1800

   I    I

Shlomo Peretz MANSBACH born c. 1820    Joseph David MANSBACH b. c.1820 Isaac Joseph MANSBACH b. c.1820

                           I                                                         I    I

Jehudah MANSBACH b 1850            Shlomo Peretz /Jacob Yehuda    Abraham/Simcha/Shabse/Moshe Jehudah/Solomon

                            I I    I

Oyser b. 1890    I Naphtali, Joel, Samuel, and Shlomo MANSBACH Families

I I I I I

Solomon

I

Robert

with the surname MANSBACH who were also Levites living and buried in Hamburg, Germany between 1600 and 1800. (Having the surname MANSBACH in itself is extraordinary, as very few Jews had surnames prior to 1770). In theory, one of these Hamburg MANSBACHs then emigrated to Poland and was the forerunner of the Polish MANSBACHs. Alternatively, and more likely, a woman named MANSBACH from Germany married a Levite man without a surname--and the children of this marriage in Poland took the mother's MANSBACH surname--a very common practice in those days. DNA evidence indicates that going back to circa 1000 A.D., our MANSBACH direct male ancestor was also the direct male ancestor of the Horowitz rabbinical family, a famous, if not the most famous rabbinical family. The Horowitz family were virtually all Levites, thus, the Levite tradition, confirmed by DNA results, extends in the MANSBACH family for at least 1000 years, if not longer.

What is the derivation of the name MANSBACH itself?

There is evidence to suggest that the name MANSBACH comes from the village named MANSBACH, in Germany. There is another possibility: the derivation of the five final letters of the Hebrew alphabet - mem, nun, zadde, pe, and kaf (מ נ צ פ כ) pronounced MANTZBACH, is discussed in the 7th century Babylonian Talmud. The letters MANTZPACH stood for a group known as "The Watchmen" who were guardians of the Temple in Jerusalem. So where does the name MANSBACH come from? The Talmud, the village of MANSBACH in Germany? The guardians of the Temple? Or, somewhere else?

With the extraordinary assistance of my cousins Joel MANSBACH, Paul MANSBACH, Jack MANSBACH, Barbara MANCBACH, Jane MANCBACH Fletcher, Hanna MANSBACH Weininger, Itamar Kazachinsky, Linda C. MANSBACH, my son, Eric J. MANSBACH, Lars Menk, Jeff Wexler, Russ Maurer and many others, this website contains the information we shared and collected on the people who call themselves MANSBACH!

If you don't have much time be sure to check out the pictures on the About page; we MANSBACHs are very photogenic.