The Belgian Myth

We have all believed that our grandmother Cecile was born in Belgium. She spoke French at home and all of her children had French names. She met and married Henry Reichman in Belgium and bore three children there. Cecile listed Belgium as her country of birth on the ship manifest when she immigrated to the United States. She listed Belgium as her birth country on her naturalization papers as well. However, there is much proof that instead, Cecile Jelen was born in Czyzew, Poland. I know that some of you will never accept this as fact!

I have been unable to locate her actual birth record as of yet. Jewish Records Indexing – Poland (JRI-Poland) is in the process of filming all Jewish records that were not previously done by the Mormons. Czyzew is one of the towns that still have records to be filmed. Warsaw, where our grandfather Henry Reichman was born, is even further behind in getting records filmed and indexed. However, I have found some alternate documents that I think are pretty good indications of Cecile’s birth place.

The breakthrough occurred around 1 ½ years ago when I made my first trip to the Mormon’s Family History Library in Salt Lake City. I was having no luck with the Polish records and turned to see what might exist in Belgium. I struck gold when I found, among a series of records that were kept on foreigners living in Antwerp, Belgium, the actual file for our great-grandparents Issac and Rachel Jelen! It was a fifteen page document that included, among other things, a copy of Issac’s birth certificate from Poland. Alas, Rachel’s certificate was not in the file. However, there were detailed forms that both Rachel and Issac filled out. Included was information on their parents names (including mother’s maiden name), and on Rachel’s form, information on her children including name, birth date and birth place. According to this form, Cecile was born in Zizef, Russia. Zizef is the phonetic spelling of Czyzew. Her brother Simon was born in Bialystock, which is just northeast of Czyzew.

OK, so I thought, maybe Rachel told Cecile that she was born in Belgium and since she was only around 4 years old at the time, our grandmother grew up believing that was her birth place. This theory fell apart when I found additional evidence of Cecile’s Polish birth place in the birth certificates of her own children. Germaine, Felice and Simone’s birth certificates all say their mother “…Celine Jelen (was) born in Isiziva, Lomza Russia….” Probably no one could figure out how to spell Czyzew and Poland was then part of the Russian Empire.

Our grandmother listed Belgium as her place of birth on both the ship manifest when she immigrated to the United States, as well as on her naturalization papers. At first, I thought maybe that was because the U.S. was limiting immigration from Eastern Europe, but this makes no sense because our grandfather Henry listed Poland as his birth place on every single document. Why would it be more risky for our grandmother to list Russia/Poland? Interestingly though, on Henry’s Petition for Naturalization, he listed his wife’s birth place as Russia!

I would love to hear anyone’s theory as to why our grandmother, but not our grandfather, disavowed Poland as their place of birth. It’s a real mystery to me! Any thoughts?