Gazette Vol 1 No 4 - The Shealtiel Family Worldwide

december 1995 SHEALTIEL GAZETTE vol i no iv
ORAL HISTORY
From Bosnia to California
In this article Jacob Saltiel of San Diego traces the passage of his family from
the Balkans of the nineteenth century via what was first the Palestinian mandate
then the State of Israel, and so to the United States.
My grandfather, from my father’s side, and
whose name was Avraham Saltiel, lived in Pirot,
Yugoslavia, which is a town near Bulgaria.
According my cousin, Judith, he came from
Bosnia. He had a wife named Tamar, and she
bore him two sons. One was my father,
Meshulam Saltiel, the other was Joseph. My
grandfather was taking care of a synagogue in
Pirot. He was the Gabai. Tamar was ill for a
while. She begged her husband to marry Mazal
after she was gone. My grandfather and
Mazal, long after the death of his first wife,
married and they moved to Sofia, Bulgaria.
Mazal took care of the two sons from the previous
wife, Tamar. Actually, she had been babysitting
them when Tamar was alive. This was
probably when she begged her husband (my
grandfather) to marry Mazal upon her death.
In this state of affairs it so happened that a
Shaliach from the congregation in Jerusalem
came to Sofia. Shaliach is a Hebrew word
which means a representative. That Shaliach
came to know my grandfather. All I know is
that this man persuaded my grandfather to let
him adopt one of his sons. [Mazal and Avraham
had a further two children— Tamar and
Moshe.]
”
My father was very young then, maybe ten
years old, and was brought by the Shaliach,
whose name was Meir Menashe, to Jerusalem.
And that is where he (my father, Meshulam
Saltiel) was brought up and educated. His
adopted father called my father Bechor, meaning
firstborn son in Hebrew, and for a while,
my father was known among the community as
Bechor Menashe. My father became a businessman
and, with another two partners,
owned a store in the Old City of Jerusalem.
That was in the year 1880. The partners were
Pinto and Cassuto. All three were tailors and
merchants. Above the store’s main entrance
was a huge sign for everyone to see. It said
“Menashe, Pinto & Cassuto, Tailors and Merchants.”They
had about six workers, of whom
I still remember two, Benvenisti and Sicron.
There were sewing machines and all the
equipment needed to make suits for customers.
They were located right inside the store on
a Mezzanine floor, which had stairs leading to
it.
My father was also a Chazan. He read the Torah
in public, in the synagogue. He had a beautiful
voice. By this time, he was married to
Sarah Ashkenazi, the daughter of a very
prominent Rabbi of the Old City, Abraham
Ashkenazi. My father and my mother, Meshulam
a.k.a. Bechor and Sarah, had seven children.
Their names were, in descending order of
age, Tamar, Meir, Isaac, Ester, Abraham,
Miriam and Jacob (myself). My father died
from sickness when I was about six or seven
years old. He was approximately fifty years old.
My eldest sister Tamar married Haim Cohen.
My brother Meir married Ester Guini. Ester’s
father was a chief engineer in the municipality
of Jerusalem. His name was Ben Zion Guini.
He emigrated from Paris , France with his wife
and three daughters, Renée, Ester and Marie.
My brother Meir was also working at the Municipality
of Jerusalem as a building inspector.
It was probably through his chief engineer,
Ben Zion Guini, that he married one of his
daughters, Esther.
Meir and Esther had two children named Shoshana
and Meshulam Menashe (after his father
and adopted father). My other brother, Isaac
took over and replaced my father in the tailor
business and, together with one worker named
Isaac Sicron (originally from Morocco), became
partners. During circa 1928, the Mufti of
Jerusalem, I still remember, incited the Arabs
on a Friday in the mosque of Omar, who came
in their thousands to pray. He preached hatred
and ended by saying “Go slaughter the Jews.”
The multitude went into a rampage, killing and
page fifteen