Moshe Shmiel Moses Samuel was married twice, first to Rivka Schonfeld around the time he appears to have had a partner judging by births of children. That partner was Júlia Altmann. His second wife was Sali Kati Fried. They lived in House #129 Verbó, Nyitra, Hungary now Vrbovė, Nitra, Slovakia. He died March 14, 1857 in Vrbové. Rivka Schonhaufer died in 1825. Sali Kati Fried died 1878 also in Vrbové, now Slovakia.
Moshe Shmiel Herzog and Sali Kati Fried were the parents of Simon Herzog born 1830. Moshe Shmiel and Sali Kati Fried were Mariette (Mimi) Reed's and John Schwarz's great great grandparents.
The Jewish Synagogue of Verbó was built in 1883, years after Moshe Shmiel passed away. It is seen in the cover photo. However, some of the siblings of the next generation were surely associated with it.
Vrbové (German: Vrbau (modernized: Werbau); Hungarian: Verbó) is a town in the Trnava Region of Slovakia. It had a population of 6,217 circa late 20th century. The town features an originally Gothic church from 1397, an Evangelical Lutheran church from 1928-1929 (on the site of an older Protestant church of 1784), ...an oriental-style synagogue from 1883 ( built after the Holzers left), and a modern St. Gorazd Church. The first written reference to the town stems from 1332; it was part of the Cachtice Castle domain at that time. Vrbové received its town charter in 1437, and was devastated by Turkish troops in 1599. The town was famous for its grain markets, promoted mainly by Jews, who made up a large part of the town's population. In 1910 the total population was 4808 -- 2220 Catholics, 1639 Lutherans and 944 Jews.
Slovakian Jewry grew in the 18th century as the Familiants Law and residence restrictions of 1726–1727 compelled many Moravian Jews to move to Slovakia, where they settled, mostly near the western border. Jewish communities flourished and established new centers of Jewish learning, including Hasidic enclaves in Pressburg and Vrbove, among others. The most prestigious yeshivah, in Pressburg, owed its status to the leadership of the Hatam Sofer: Rabbi Moses Sofer (1762—1839), scholar and zealous adversary of the Enlightenment. Two main social processes crystallized in the Jewish community in the first half of the nineteenth century: the battle for political rights and the Kulturkampf (culture conflict) that pitted Orthodox religious conservatism against a rising trend of modernization and ritual reform. The Orthodox adherents, mainly from Slovakia and Burgenland, had their center in Bratislava, while the chiefly Hungarian supporters of reform drew guidance from Budapest. Communities split into three factions: Orthodox, Neolog (Reform) and the small, minority “Status Quo Ante” faction that asserted a detachment from the schism. Clearly, the Holzer-Hochstadter families were of the Neolog faction, moving to Budapest to join the Dohány Neolog synogogue.
As of the beginning of the 21st century, Vrbove is a quiet little town with shops and a park where people go to relax. Its claims to fame are its oblique clock tower, synagogue, and the birthplace of "the King of Madagascar," Moric Benovsky. Vrbove is infamous for its past as a Jewish ghetto. During World War II, the entire town of Vrbove was a ghetto for the Jewish population for the Piestany province of Slovakia. The ghetto was liquidated by the Slovak Nazis known as the Hlinka and the German SS and most of the Jewish people were deported to... Auschwitz. The only remnant of Vrbove's Jewish history in Vrbove is the synagogue in the main square.
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