Goldfoot Genealogy

Nadene Goldfoot                                        

Elijah ben Solomon Zalman Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) The Gaon of Vilna was born on April 23, 1720 and died October 9, 1797 in Vilna, Lithuania. Stanley Goldfoot thought his family was related to the Gaon.  I cannot find proof of this for our branch as  the Goldfoot surname, but it's possible. From 1740-1745, the Gaon traveled among the Jewish communities of Poland and Germany, settling in Vilna and taught and founded his own academy.  He was against the Hasidim in Lithuania.  Once tried to get to Palestine but didn't make it, difficult journey in those days. Vilna's Jews were banished in 1527 by Sigismund 1st at burgher  request, able to return in a few years.  4,000 Jews died in a famine from 1709-1710.  Vilna became a center of rabbinical study.

The farthest I have been able to trace our Goldfoot line is Iones or Jonah Goldfus born in 1730 in Telsiai (Telz), Lithuania, listed in the encyclopedia as Tels, a Lithuanian townlet.
                                                                             

Telsiai, Lithuania on Lake Mastis today.

In Yiddish, the town was called Telz.  It was one of the oldest towns in Lithuania and was on the NW part of this country, called the Zemaitija region.  It is on the shores of Lake Mastis.

Settlement was there by 1450 with a royal estate.  Merchants and artisans began to settle around it.  In 1710 the Swedes invaded the land, and 2/3 of its population were killed by epidemics.  By 1750, a court was established in Telz, helping the development and growth of the town.  Telz was granted the Magdeburg Rights of self rule by King Stanislaw-August in 1791.  "2,500 people lived in Telz in 1797, of them 1,650 were Jews (66%).

 I don't know who Iones's wife was, but Abram and Mark Goldfus were his children, born in about 1752 and 1753.   Abram had 4 children; Iankel "Yankel", Leib, Mikhel and Meyer "Meier".  Mark had 3 children;  Iankel "Yankel", Iosel "Josel," and Ionta.   I wasn't sure who Iankel's father was.
                                                                       

1930's Yeshiva students

  What was life like then?  From then on, how were Jews treated?  Telz was noted for its yeshivah (Jewish school primarily for study of Talmud and rabbinic literature)  which flourished from its foundation in 1881 until World War II.  Lithuania is the country most noted for the growth of the yeshiva in modern times, beginning with the establishment of the yeshivah of Volozhin in 1803.  Others were Tels. Slobodka, Mir. and Kamenetz.   After the war, its surviving teachers founded a yeshivah in Cleveland, Ohio, USA.  Many Cleveland Jews  live in Israel, and were there when I lived there from 1980 to 1985.

Jews started living in Lithuania as early as 1321.  Lithuania  had Karaites ( Jewish sect who rejected the Oral Law)  living in Troki by 1398. By 1495, 10,000 Jews were living in Vilna, Grodno and Kovno.  That large figure must have been helped by the 1492 Spanish Inquisition against Jews when they were compelled to leave Spain or convert to Christianity.  From 1495 to 1502, they had been excluded from Lithuania.

They actually received a charter in 1519 guaranteeing freedom of movement and employment and soon monopolized foreign trade and tax-farming.  By 1566 through 1572, the Jewish badge was introduced and Jews were disqualified from giving evidence in courts.

There was a Council of the Four Lands, had once been 5 lands, and Jews had been a part of it at first, so the formed the separate Council of Lithuania in 1623 when a separate tax- system was established.  Already one can see anti-Semitism  at work separating Jews from Christians.

I and a few other members of my family have discovered through DNA testing including triangulation of matches, to be connected to Rabbi Samson Wertheimer (1658-1724) Worms, Germany.  He lived in Vienna, Austria and Hungary.  Our surname of Goldfus was German Yiddish, so we had a good feeling of our roots after leaving Jerusalem in 70 CE would have been Germany. It was anglicized to Goldfoot while in England.   This is the common route taken by Ashkenazi Jews anyway, going through Germany and France to finally migrate into Russian lands.  There are Gentile Goldfuss found in Germany as well, with a different haplogroup.  Jews would have had names like David ben Moshe, minus a surname until forced to take one by a government, usually for tax purposes and for serving in the military.

From 1795 to 1918 Lithuania was part of Russia. Jews suffered from a famine under German rule in Vilna in WWI and from a pogrom at the hands of the Polish troops in 1919.    Many yeshivot were part of the cultural life here.  Leading rabbis were born.  It was the seat of the Musar movement and a center of Haskalah.  In 1870 Telz had 6,481 residents, including 4,399 Jews (68%), and in 1897 there were 6,000 residents and of them 3,088 were Jews (51%). It was in 1880 that the first aliyah to Israel had happened, and Telz was a big center of Zionism.  Yet at the same time, "the Telz "Yeshivah", which had been established in 1880 by three young men (Avreikhim)-Yitskhak Ya'akov Openheim, Meir Atlas, Zalman Abel- with the help of a German Jew - Ovadyah Lakhman from Berlin - developed and prospered, and after Rabbi Eliezer Gordon was nominated as its head in 1884, it became the main institution of orthodox education. At the end of 19th century it had about 400 students and was counted as one of the greatest in the world. Next to it there was a preparatory class (Yeshivah Ketanah) for boys aged 10-16."

"The local Jews made their living in Telz from commerce, crafts and peddling. In 1841 there were 25 Jewish artisans: 14 tailors, 10 shoemakers and one watchmaker, not counting wandering artisans. Until WW1 there was a strong organization of Jewish artisans, which helped its members with loans for buying raw materials and tools. Among the Jewish merchants there were several who had big businesses of grains and flax and made a good living.  "The story I had received was that a Goldfus dealt in grains and was able to leave Lithuania for this purpose.  "There were also several textile merchants who imported merchandise from Germany, one of them being Ya'akov Rabinovitz." My ggrandfather, Movsha ben Josel Goldfus (Morris) Goldfus b: 1836, was a distiller, a maker of whiskey or wine.  I don't know about his distilling, but my grandfather, Nathan Abraham Goldfus/Goldfoot's wife, Zlata Jermulowske, made her own terrific wine that I tasted at Passover.  It was strong!  Manischewitz wine cannot hold a candle to hers.  I was only 3 at the time.  I'm so glad my Bubba allowed me to imbibe!  She was born in Lazdijai, Lithuania, a real Litvak, black curly hair, brown eyes!  

World War I occurred from 1914-1918.  During this period, 100,000 Jews were expelled or emigrated to the Russian interior.  Poland took over Vilna, Lithuania in 1919 which weakened the Jews politically and socially.

Jews received National Autonomy from 1918 to 1924, and a Jewish national council was established under a Ministry for Jewish Affairs.  The communities had the right to levy taxation under government auspices. In 1923, there were 300 Jewish elementary schools with the majority teaching in Hebrew.  A minority taught in Yiddish.   After 1924, Jewish autonomy was restricted  to religious matters, while the economic position of the Jews deteriorated in the following years.  Our grandfather, Nathan Abraham Goldfus, immigrated to England, then Ireland and finally to the USA starting in 1893.
                                                                           

Jewish Wedding in Telz; all perished in WWII.

World War II broke out in Europe earlier than in the USA's 1941 .  Lithuania's started in 1940.  The Jewish population then was 175,000.  About 25,000 were deported by the Russians from Lithuania and Latvia in July 1940. "The cruelties of first Soviet occupation, of a scale not seen in Lithuania since the Russian Empire rule, led to a widespread despise of the regime in less than a year. For example in four days between June 14 and June 18 of 1941 alone some 40 000 people from educated families were exiled to Siberia and Soviet labor camps (almost half of them 16-year-old or younger, 556 infants under 1 year, families typically separated), most never to return alive. Others were arrested with many later tortured and massacred in places like Rainiai and Cherven."

"The new Nazi German occupation brought a relief from the Soviet persecutions but it had its own target: the Jews. Some of them have fled Europe (never to return), most of the rest were killed (often after a brief life in forced ghetto or a deportation to a concentration camp in German-ruled lands elsewhere). The number of Jews living in Lithuania declined by ~88% by the time of 1959 census."

 The Germans established 2 ghettos in Vilna and 30,000 Jews were killed there by the end of 1941.  Those that had been able to remain in Lithuania were massacred by the Germans and Lithuanians by 1943.
                                                                     

Stanley Goldfoot b: South Africa 1914, died: Jerusalem, Israel 2006 Tall and slender, he could still wear his youthful uniform when I met him in 1981.  We remained in touch while I lived in Israel.  He had become a speaker, an advocate of Israel, speaking to football fields of listeners in different parts of the world.   An amazing man to listen to.

      Leaving South Africa after graduating from his high school yeshiva, Stanley Goldfoot, my 3rd cousin,  immigrated to Palestine and became the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group.  The English holding the mandate called it the Stern Gang.  It was the most extreme of the rebelling Jews against the English before May 14, 1958.  Uri Gobey, also formerly of South Africa, IDF and citizen of Israel, wrote about him:  "He was born in South Africa in  1914. then in 1932, when he was 18 years old, left the good life in South Africa and went to Palestine, after he heard a speech of Ze ' ev Jabotinsky. He joined the Hashomer Hatzair kibbutz. After a short time he was deported, because it was illegal to be in the country. He joined the army of South Africa, where he learned to shoot. Then went back to Palestine in 1939 and joined the Stern Group. Eventually he became an intelligence officer  and worked with Yitzhak Shamir.  He became friends with Rabbi Kahana and drove him around in Israel.  After setting up the state of Israel. He moved to the United States. Then he went back again to Israel  legally in 1956.  In 1964, he decided to establish a newspaper in the English language, because he sensed that the Jerusalem post, " was too leftist. He founded a Zionist newspaper in the English language as "de times ugh Israel", published in Israel, New York and the west coast of the United States. In 1969, he wrote and posted the letter to this incredible new magazine of his, who talks about Jerusalem, in his LETTER TO THE WORLD. He was a member of THE TEMPLE MOUNT FAITHFUL.  and had plans for the 3rd Temple.    He died in Jerusalem in 2006, at age 92.

1959's census found there were 24,000 Jews who had returned after the Holocaust to raise families despite the previous problems there.  Language and finances helped to make decisions, no doubt.  By 1989, half of these had left for Israel.  Those that were left numbered 12,312.

I think that Iones or Jonah as we would call him, would be very proud and have many nakhus from his descendants.  Little did he know who would follow or if any would live to be able to follow.

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia -Lithuania
Preserving Our Litvak Heritage by Josef Rosin, Joel Alpert, Editor by JewishGen, Inc.
http://www.truelithuania.com/world-war-2-in-lithuania-1940-1944-249
http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/telz/Telz1.html