“Every person has a name” Our name is central to our identity. Typically, we take on our father’s surname and some people at the time of committing to a partner, take on a double-barrelled surname representing the surname of both partners. More than a double-barrel becomes clumsy!  But one surname, even if double barrelled, is just a tiny slither of who we are and cannot begin to broadly represent our family history.  There are all the stories that we heard from our parents and grandparents about where we came from and who our ancestors are. Now it is just a “kol dmama daka” – a thin silent voice. Like the words of a song that originated in a specific place with a particular tune – we now no longer know the place nor the words and we cling on to and hum what we think was the tune….

The mathematics are astounding. We each have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents. That is 4 generations. At 15 Generations the number of direct ancestors is 16 384! Unless there are duplications, and assuming each ancestor of ours had a surname, at 16 generations we each have 32 768 direct ancestors and therefore 32 768 different surnames. The Dutch family archives are incredible! Through family members and people on the “My Heritage” site that have researched these, I have managed to trace some Direct Ancestors back through 16 Generations (i.e. my mother’s, father’s, father’s mother’s etc…….. mother and father, taking my children as Generation 1). Some of these people, who were on my mother’s father’s side, were born in the towns of Beja, Belmonte and Porto in Portugal before they were forced to flee at the time of the Portuguese Inquisition. The surnames in this section of our tree include: Alvarez;  Nunes Vaz; Falcao; Gomes; Namias de Crasto; Carilho; Querido; y Simpayo; Belmonte; Monis; d’Aguilar; De Paz; Baruch Sarphatim; Oeb Brandao; y Donaogt; de Oiro; Lopes Dias; Henriques Ferreira; de Cordova; Fidanque; Abenhacar; Pereira; Osorio; Mello; Lopes Jessurun; Texera Cartas; De Meza; Finsi; Saqui ….. The list continues.

This last Shabbat we visited the  Nidhe Israel Synagogue (Synagogue of the Scattered of Israel), in Barbados, which is one of the oldest synagogues in the Western hemisphere. The complex includes the synagogue, a long lost mikveh recently restored, the cemetery with Jewish graves dating back to 1660 and a Jewish Museum. Some Jews who fled Portugal during the Inquisition for Brazil, fled again some for Barbados, when the Inquisitorial persecuting Portuguese captured “Dutch Brazil” in 1654. It was moving to see so many of our family names originating in Portugal having been part of the Community of Barbados. While I have not been able to trace and don’t think we have direct ancestors who lived in Barbados, we do have direct Ancestors, whose forebears had fled Portugal and who lived in the 17^th and 18^th Centuries in Curacao. (De Crasto and Oheb Brandon). (Curacao is also a Caribbean Island).

And then today, Monday 13^th January 2020, we spent at Ile Royale of French Guiana, France’s infamous Penal Colony, (remember the book and film: “Papillon”). One of the three Islands, Devil’s Island is where Alfred Dreyfus was cruelly incarcerated after being unjustly accused of treason in an Anti-Semitic France. Theodor Herzl was so profoundly impacted by the “Dreyfus” case and the accompanying chants of “Death to the Jews” that he became convinced that the only solution is Zionism and a Jewish State. The rest of course is history!

My name is Raymond Treves Schkolne. Treves was given to me by my parents to ensure continuity after all the known males in the Treves family perished in the Holocaust and my maternal grandparents, whose surname was a’ Cohen Treves, had three daughters. Dreyfus is a Jewish surname derived from the town of Trier on the Moselle, known in French as Trèves.  So Treves and Dreyfus is the same name, just as Shkolnik, Schkolne and Skolni are the same name. (My brother David who lives in Israel changed Schkolne to Skolni  – it’s easier!)

Another small piece of the interwoven tapestry, another window into my personal history of which I know so little….

Written by Raymond

Pictures:

1. Aron Hakodesh at the Barbados Shul
2. Tiny Devil’s Island with the one Dreyfus cottage on it
3. Alfred Dreyfus Stone Cottage