Solomon Peretz Ha Levy Mannsbach (c. 1825-c. 1858)

Jehudah HaLevy MANSBACH

Jehudah HaLevy MANSBACH was born in Olpiny, Poland in 1850 and lived there at least until 1875, when his son Pinchas Elemelech was born. Jehudah died in Judlowa, Poland in 1930. The family of Joseph Dawid MANSBACH also lived in Olpiny in this timeframe. Jehudah raised chickens and sold their eggs. He maintained the mikveh in Judlowa and was was a carpenter or a glazier by trade. He also went by the names Jechiel and Joel. To your right is a picture of him in a long greyish beard, heavy black coat with a meerschaum pipe. It hung in my grandparents’ apartment in the Bronx. We were told that the beard was fake, pasted on in the studio to make him look older and wiser. I think my father inked in his right eye one day.

Beyond the very odd picture of the man in the head-shaking get-up, we had no other knowledge whatsoever about Jehudah or his life. No one thought to ask. Extensive archival information found in the Jewish Records Indexing Project: htpps://JRI-Poland.org tell us quite a bit more about Jehudah and his family. See also that part of this website containing documents from the Polish Archives.

Jehudah's first wife was named Cipporah, after she died he remarried a woman named Malka Fenichel. He had four sons and one daughter with Cipporah and three daughters and one son with Malka.

Jehudah HaLevy MANSBACH died in Judlowa in 1930, age 80—not too shabby for those days.

Cipporah Schenker MANSBACH, the first wife of Jehudah HaLevy MANSBACH:

Jehudah MANSBACH’S first wife was Cipporah Schenker; her father and mother were Isaac and Sima Schenker. Cippporah Schenker was born c.1852 and passed away in 1897. Jehudah HaLevy MANSBACH is buried next to Cipporah in the Jewish cemetery in Judlowa. For future visitors, the numbers may have changed, look for the inscription.

IMPORTANT: Judlowa records show Isaac and Sima Schenker as the parents of Leib Schenker. Leib Schenker was the brother of Cipporah Schenker--Jehudah MANSBACH's wife and the father of Oyser. Thus, Isaac and Sima Schenker were Robert's great-great grandparents.

When Cipporah MANSBACH passed away in 1897 she left six children: Oyser (later Abraham, later Isidore, later Irving) MANSBACH; Israel HILLEL MANSBACH; Izzy MANSBACH, Sima MANSBACH (later Sadie Orner, married to Sam Orner with one child), Feiga MANSBACH (later Feiga Siegfried), and Pinchas Elimelech MANSBACH. All of Jehudah's children with Cipporah, except for Pinchas and Feiga, emigrated to the United States around the turn of the century. Feiga perished in the Shoah.

Around 1900, Jehudah MANSBACH married a second time to Malka Fenichel. Jehudah had a number of children with Malka Fenichel: Cyrla MANSBUCH later Schuman, born in 1906; Lea MANSBACH, later emigrated to the U.S. and, after marriage to Sam, known as Lena Leibowitz; and Hana MANSBUCH (later Wallach), who may have come to the U.S. (calling herself Hana MANBASCH and later Lena Rubinson) or perished in the Holocaust; as well as a son by Malka named Isaac MANSBACH who passed away in Poland around 1920.

After the war, the family of Jehudah Mansbach filed a claim for reparations for the property that was owned by family members that perished in the Holocaust. The claim was unsubstantiated and it was denied.

Judlowa’s school records show that Jehudah sometimes took the name Joel and “Jech[iel]. We also see that Pinkas [Elimelech] MANSBACH, the eldest son of Jehudah MANSBACH, had a school age child named Cyporah and was married to a woman named Lieba Spett. Schenker is confirmed as the maiden name of Cyporah, the first wife of Jehudah MANSBACH. Jehudah's children with his second wife, Malka, are listed as well.

Oyzer MANSBACH, Robert's grandfather in school in Judlowa c. 1905, six lines from the bottom.