Long ago and far away, when I was an editor at Fodor’s in Manhattan, I was in charge of editing a series of business travel guides under the Wall Street Journal imprint. Each of the three volumes–the USA & Canada, Pacific Rim, and Europe–highlighted the major business cities in their respective areas. As project editor, I was tasked with giving the writers covering those cities an assignment letter, which asked the various local businesses, including hotels and restaurants, to assist them in their research. (Read: give them freebies, which they theoretically were not allowed to accept, but that’s another story, which I detail in my memoir.)
Ah, Yarolim, She Is Czech!
The writer that I assigned to cover Prague came back to my office after her trip with a piece of the newly destroyed Berlin wall — as I said, it was a long time ago and I guess she figured she might as well go to Germany while she was in the neighborhood — and some surprising information.
She reported that very often when she showed my assignment letter to people in Prague, they looked at my surname and said, “Ah, Yarolim, she is Czech!”
Who knew?
My father was even more reluctant to talk about his painful past than my mother was. For me, his story began in Vienna, where he was forced to leave his mother and sister behind, and ended in New York City, with a stop at a Belgian labor camp in between. One brother, my uncle Fritz, joined the French Foreign legion and survived the war; the other brother and their mother and sister did not. Except for Fritz, from whom my father was estranged for much of my life, I wasn’t aware of any other relatives, much less of a different country of origin than Austria.
When I started doing genealogical research for this blog, I conducted some desultory searches of the Jarolim family name but I mostly concentrated on my mother’s family. I stored away the Czech name story in the back of my mind until recently, when I decided to go to Tarnow, Poland.
Lostiče: My Father’s Ancestral Home
I have written a lot in the past about Tarnow, ancestral home to most members of the Kornmehl family, stars of this blog. And I will write more when I go, in November.
But before Poland, I am visiting the Czech Republic and the Moravian town of Lostiče, where ancestors going back five generations bear the Jarolim name–and direct bloodline: Joseph Jarolim (1767-1837) begat Markus Jarolim (1790-1854), who begat Abraham Jarolim (1815-1877), who begat Ignatz Jarolim (1866-1919), who begat Paul Jarolim (1903-1974), who begat me. (I had another name briefly when I was married but took back the Jarolim name after my father died, which I suppose didn’t bode well for the marriage. That’s another story, too.)
I will leave you for now with a few teasers:
- I found a third cousin on the Jarolim side who lives in Philadelphia; her great grandfather Samuel and my great grandfather Abraham were brothers.
- I discovered that my grandfather had several siblings that my father never mentioned; I’d always thought Ignatz Jarolim was an only child.
- There is food involved in this story, in this case stinky cheese rather than meat.
- I’ve been pronouncing my name wrong all my life.
