(Silberstein, Silverstein, Zylbersztajn, Zylbersztejn, Gordon and Gromadzyn Surnames)

Based in Mlawa, Poland

My genealogical database (including all my Silberstein families)

The Silberstein photo gallery.

A map of and some photos of Mlawa

The Silberstein name is well known. However, there are Silbersteins from all over 19th century Europe, with no necessary relation between them.

I used to shrug off persons looking for a relation to my family when I would find a spelling different from my Silbersteins. Later, I learned of an entire branch of my Silberstein tree that changed their surname to Silverstein. Many of their younger descendants don't even know of the "original" spelling of their name.

Recently, while searching Ada Holtman's wonderful Memorial Home Page for Jewish Mlawa (dedicated to the memory of the over 7,000 Jews of Mlawa, Poland who perished in the Holocaust), I discovered that my surname is listed as "Zylbersztajn" or "Zylbersztejn." Come to think of it, the local (Germanic—Yiddish or Polish) pronunciation of the name really is transliterated with a "Z." "My" spelling is only another transliterated form of the original that is based in the Yiddish form for "silversmith."

It appears that the "original" surname was Zylbersztajn or Zylbersztejn in Mlawa, Poland. That is how it appears transliterated in the documentation that comes from Mlawa, and is available on the "Jewish civil records of the town of Mlawa in the Mlawa Archives project" page of the JewishGen organization. Their explanation of transliteration technique is as follows:

"Names in the post 1867 indices for the Polish State Archives project were entered in the original Cyrillic letters and converted to Latin characters using a special system under test. Therefore, some surnames may be appear with transliterated spelling which are different from those "Polish spellings" researchers are familiar with. They include:

   W's appear as V's   -  example:  VIDELEC instead of WIDELEC
   H's appear as G's   -  example:  STEINGAUZ instead of STEINHAUZ
   Extra "Js" in name  -  example:  FJEJGJELMAN instead of FEJGELMAN, FOGJEL'MAN instead of FOGELMAN"

(The third example applies to us.)

In searching my Chertoff roots, I discovered the diversity of transliteration and the mistakes and/or misunderstandings in transliterating that can separate families for generations

Now, you can go to my genealogical database (including all my Silberstein families).

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This site was last updated 15-02-2005

© 2003, Moshe Chertoff