My name is Lea Haber Gedalia and I was born in Israel in 1953. I live in Jerusalem with my husband Nahum Gedalia who was born in Beograd Serbia in 1948 and works at Hadassah hospital.

We have 3 boys. I have a PhD from the Hebrew university on "Collectives identity change".

My mother Amalia-Malcia-Malka Ellenberg-Derfler was born in Czernowitz in 1933 [or perhaps 1930]. Her mother was Lea Scharf from Putila, born in 1900 daughter of Meite Gartner Freidman and Shlomo Kalman Klonimus Scharf. Her father was David Derfler Ellenberg who was born in 1900 in Czernowitz to Yechiel Michael Leib Derfler born in Luzan Bukovina and Bat Sheva Ellenberg born in Zablotow.

My grandmother Lea died in 1938 and my mother was sent to her grandmother with whom she was in the Ghetto and together the two of them were deported to Transnistria-Sharograd. When her grandmother died of Typhoid and hunger she was taken by an aunt and together they returned to Czernowitz for 2 years and than moved to Bucharest and she was put into an orphanage. Her father was recruited by the Red army but she never  heard from him until he arrived in Israel in 1951.

In the Orphanage she and a group of youngsters joined GORDONIA youth movement and made aliyah in 1946 aboard the ship "Medinat Hayehudim". This ship was sent to Cyprus and only by the end of 1947 they arrived in Atlit and from there sent to Meshek Poalot in Petach Tikva. After a while she met my father, Shraga Haber, who was born in Hirlau Romania and arrived in Israel by train in 1944.

I am interested in genealogy for many years and currently involved in the Israeli Genealogical Society as general secretary. I am fluent in Hebrew, English, French, I can speak Romanian and some Spanish and I understand Yiddish. While my very few second cousins speak German, my father was very much against me learning this language while my grandfather was still alive.


p.s. Families from Bukovina married into Scharf and Ellenberg-Derfler are:  Hocfelzen, Wachtel, Sterenberg, Goltz, Brenner, Hacker, Halperin, Lubich, Rosenzweig, Teitler