Proud graduate of microfilm school

Today was my last day in the archives--I can't believe how fast these two weeks have gone by! I woke up a little earlier today to make sure I could get a seat in the reading room, so I was at the archives by 9:30. Since I had looked up online all the records I wanted to see, I had down each record entry number. This meant that instead of moving through each page of the original book as usual, looking for familiar names, I could jump right in the film to the entry I wanted to see. I mostly looked at records from Nachman Birnberg's family and both of his wives' families. About Nachman's family--after seeing records of Nachman's siblings' births, I can confirm that his father, David Salamon, went sometimes by just Salamon or Schlomo, the Hebrew for the same name. I think that with this fact in mind, we can also conclude that the David Salamon born in 1904 to Nachman and his first wife must have been the same Solomon Birnberg that we've known of. About Nachman's wives' families--yesterday, I wrote that it's likely that Nachman's first wife, Dvora Tropp, and his second wife, Ernestyna Tropp, were cousins, since there weren't that many Tropps in the area. Today I looked at Dvora's birth record (born in 1878), and I saw that Ernestyna's father, Baruch Tropp, was a witness to the birth! I think this confirms that the two were cousins. Once again, I couldn't find Ernestyna's birth record, though. I looked at records from 1895-1897, since Papa Joe said that she was born in 1896. Ernestyna's mother had a child in 1897, but it wasn't Ernestyna! I think that she must have been born later, but at the moment we can't know for sure, since I also couldn't find anything online.

After the archives I went souvenir shopping for the first time on this trip so far! That didn't stop everyone from thinking I was Polish, though. Which I guess is better than souvenir shopping as an American tourist. After I bought a few things I stopped at the Kosher store--it's a little store connected to the synagogue that sells mostly canned things, but also sells Challah from the Kosher bakery that just opened up in town. I bought the Challah from there last week, and it was definitely what kept me going through Shabbat. I got another one this week--a perfect snack for my last full day in Eastern Europe! (Last) Shabbat Shalom from Poland!