Licht Family History

We believe there were relatives with surnames similar to Skolnick who lived in the town of Luchinits, Ukraine. The Jewish population was estimated to be 1,050 in 1897, and 744 in 1926. The town is 46 miles southwest of Vinnytsa.

Luchinits is near other ancestral towns. Luchinits is 200 miles west of Kopaigerod, Kopaigerod is 41 miles southwest of Vinnytsa, Muravani-Kurylivisi is 30 miles southwest of Kopaigerod, and Chernivitsi is 135 miles southwest of Kopaigerod.

Background

The families descended from the Skolnicks: the Calics, Maltzers, Friedmans, and Lichts were close-knit. The name Maltzer was changed from Calic because the first born of a family was exempt from the draft into the Russian Army. Matlzer was taken from malt, because the family had a beer brewing business in Russia. Otherwise, all the Maltzer descendants would have had the name Calic.

Geneaology and Migration
note: Sluzhttel or slefishel. means minor official.

Khaim (birthdate unknown) and Reyza (b. 1783) Shkolnosluzhtel begot Aron.

Aron  Shkolo, a slefishel, begot Leya  (b. 1834) and Abram (b. 1806)

Abram Shkolnyy, a slefishel, begot Issachar Dov Skolnick (Suchar Ber) (b. 1829 ).   Issachar Dov Skolnick married Iska (b. 1828), and Olga (b. 1835). Abram and Olga had 8 children. One child is Samuel Zalman, who changed his surname to Miller after he immigrated to Pennsylvania. 

Another son is Aron (b. 1834). Aron’s grandsons are Yos, Shaya, Mortho, and Leyvi; grandauters are Dvsya, Feyga, Rukhlya, Leya, and Zlata.

Another head of household is  Mendel Shkolyy, a slefishel married to Charna, with one daughter, Keyla.

Isaacher Dov and Olga nee Skolnick’s daughter Rachel (Ruchel) Skolnick (1856-1910) married Isaac Maltzer (1855-1921).  Their children are Yiska (Etta, Eda) (1874-1933), Ben Zion, Moishe (Morris), and Rivka (Rebecca). Isaac’s second wife is Ethel, nee Kaufmann (1878-1949). Isaac and Ethel’s son is Shyah (SY) (1898-1993). Their children were born in Kopaigerod, Ukraine.

Isacher Dov and Olga nee Skolnick’s daughter Leah Skolnick (1861-1911) married Israel Joseph Friedman (1870-1928). They had 8 sons, including Morris and Sol, and one daughter, Clara. Leah was his 2nd wife; his first wife was a sister of Leah, who died in 1911.  Leah and her mother Olga, went from Lechinitz to  Chernivitsi, Ukraine. Life in Chernovitsi is well documented in the History of Sol Friedman (on this website - see Background, Source Material).

Isaac (Calic) Maltzer and Israel Joseph Friedman are brothers-in-law.

Other Skolnick siblings are Dora Skolnick, who married  David Tabachnick, their children are David, and half-brother Zalman Miller. 

Isaac (Calic) Maltzer had a brother, Yaakov Calic, who had a son, Don Calic, and daughters Chana, Frima, and Dina (who married Sy Maltzer). 

Don Calic’s first wife is Sheina’s sister; their child is Jack Calic. She died in childbirth.  Jack was born in Russia.  He married Fay Magdoff. They lived in San Francisco and operated the F & J Groceteria on Masonic Ave. In 1940, they lived at 2772 Bush St., and in 1948 he lived at 800 Masonic Ave.

Don’s second wife is Sheina, nee Shifler. Their children, born in the United States,  are Rueben, who married Bess Friedman, Silvia, who married Reuven Schwartz, Irving (Yitzchak) (Yitz), who married Judy Schoolman and later Bruria Wisserberg, Fay, who married Sol Friedman,  Shulamit(Shirley)) who married Jack Goldberg. 

Their birth-death dates are: Don (1884-1955) (Eternal Home Colma), Sheina (1888-1991), Jack (1910-1975), Fay (1913-1998), Reuben (1917-2004), Sylvia (1921-1976), Irving (Itz) (1922-2009), Shirley(Shulamit) (1926-    )

Don and Sheina Calic were married June 15, 1910, in Bessarabia, which is now 2/3 in Moldova and the rest is Romania, near the Dniester river. It is near Ukraine.

Sheina Calic was born in Vlad, Bessarabia, Russia. She immigrated to the US on June 22, 1932, from Cherbourg, France, on the SS Majestic. Her last residence was Ungheni, Romania. In 1932, she was living at 1453 Broderick, San Francisco.  She had brown eyes and grey hair, was 5 ft 4 inches, and weighed 110 pounds.

Don Calic was born in Snitkoff, Russia. He immigrated to the US on May 14, 1930, from Ingheni, Romania, left from Cherbourg, France on SS Majestic. In 1931, he was living at 326 Capp St., San Francisco, and was a clerk in a grocery store, had brown eyes and black hair, was 5 ft 4 inches, and weighed 135.

Don went from Snitkoff to Ungheni, Romania. It was a small town with dirt streets and had about 100 Jewish citizens. They grew prunes and made jam, and ate jam on bread.  He went to New York City in 1930 and worked in a laundry for five dollars a week. He was helped by his uncle Moishe Cohn, ate lettuce for the first time, marveled at the N Y subway, etc.

Don went by train to visit his sister Faye and her husband Sol Friedman in San Francisco. He stayed and worked in the Public Food Stores, which had 200 grocery stores (owned by Sam Friedman, uncle of Norm Licht) The chain of stores went bankrupt in the 1929 depression. Don got a loan from the Hebrew Free Loan (Louis Licht was on the Board)  Don first lived on Capp St in the Mission district, in a duplex, the Maltzers upstairs, the Calics downstairs. Then, he moved to a flat in the Richmond district owned by his uncle, Sy Maltzer. Don had a grocery store in a black neighborhood for 10 years. When Yitz went into the US Army, he closed the store and bought an apartment building.

Don Calic and Louis Licht were members of the orthodox Synagogue B’Nai David at 19th St. near Valencia  St. in the Mission district of San Francisco. Later, they both were members of the conservative Synagogue Beth Sholam at 14th and Clement streets in the Richmond district.  Norm Licht remembers when he was a child, on Rosh Hashanah, he was at Beth Sholom Synagogue when  Don Calic and Louis Licht were standing at the front on the bima, Louis chanted the Hebrew words, and  Don blew the shofar. It was a class act. It was lucky Norm was there, because Louis Licht had a row of seats in a row to the right side of center close to the front, for he and his wife and children, not enough seats for the grandchildren who had to rotate their attendance. On the holidays, there was a crowd of people standing in front of the Synagogue, waiting to have room to enter and visit. 

Irving (YItz) Calic  (1922-2009) in 1940 was living at 2772 Bush St. in San Francisco, with his parents, Don, 57, and Sheyna, along with his siblings Jack, 30, Rueben, 22, Sylvia, 20, and Shalumit, 15.  Yitz and Sheina and her husband to be Jack Goldberg were active members of a Zionist group named Histradut Hapzit.                   

After Pearl Harbor, Yitz worked at Kaiser shipyards in Richmond, CA, for one year. Then into the US Army, first to Camp Kila in Sacramento, his shorthand helped a Captain who gave him two stripes, then to Florida to radar school, then to Burma for radar at a dirt air strip for 6 months,  then to Calcutta, India for R&R (rest and rehabilitation). They heard that 2 bombs were dropped on Japan, each killing 100,000 people. They couldn’t understand it; the atomic bomb was a secret weapon. Japan surrendered, he was discharged 6 months later, and went through the Suez Canal to New York.

Yitz went to Highstown, New Jersey, where he lived for two years. It was 30-35 men and women, working with the intent to start a Kibbutz in Palestine, a big house, agriculture, and intellectual discussions. Yitz was a truck driver who took apples and chickens to market.

In 1947, Israel became a state by vote at the UN. He drove 30 people, some on the truck’s roof,  to Madison Square Garden to celebrate.  Israel, with 600,000 people, won the War of Independence against 5 Arab armies that attacked Israel.

In 1948, when the Jewish Agency wanted volunteers, he went to Marseille, France, and then by ship to Haifa, Israel. In Israel, within 2 hours, “he felt he had come home”.  In 1949, he moved to Kibbutz Sasa, where he was a bus driver. There was no water and no electricity. They walked to Tzfat. In 1950, during a polio epidemic, he took a room away from the Kibbutz. Bria came to visit her sister, who was married to another driver, and soon they got married. Bria Wisserberg was a Sabra (born in Israel). She didn’t want to live on the Kibbutz because she didn’t want anyone to touch her future children.

In 1952, Yitz and Bruia went to San Francisco. He became a Greyhound bus driver, His route was from Marin County to San Francisco, from four pm to midnight, home at one am. Their son Yossi was born there in 1953. They saved money, returned to Israel and built a house in Madera, on an 11-acre lot.. Then there was no toilet paper in Israel, so he brought 100 boxes from the U.S..  This home, where his sons grew up and then his grandchildren visited, was the basis for his family’s great contribution to the success of the State of Israel.  

Their son Yossi was born in the US. He has 3 children and 9 grandchildren. Their other two sons are Donnie and Yilan, born in 1961. People asked him how they got such good three sons, and he said,” It was more luck than brains”. Someone said it was “the power behind the throne” – his wife.

Yitz’s mother moved to Israel and lived with them for 20 years.  Norman talked to Yitz on the phone twice when he visited Israel, and Yitz remembered attending Norm’s Bar Mitzvah in S.F., which was in 1940.

Sylvia Calic was born in Romania. She moved to Israel about 1968, met Rueben Schwartz on a Kibbutz, and they married. They lived in Sayvon, between Tel Aviv and Hadera. Their children, Rina and Rami, grew up in Israel, were in the army, then moved to New York City. Rina is a school teacher, and Rami, who changed his name to Daniel Shar, has a computer business and a daughter in Israel. Rena has two boys who work with computers. Sylvia died in her sixties.

Rueben Calic and Bess, nee Bitker lived in San Carlos, CA. They owned a men’s clothing store at Carlemont Shopping Center, Belmont. When Norm and Carolynn would buy Levi jeans there, he would always want them to try them on to be sure their size fit correctly. He and Bess owned an apartment house nearby. Rueben learned how to do maintenance repairs himself, which became a hobby, which was good for the property. Rueben was often seen at Home Depot in San Carlos looking to buy supplies.  Rueben blew the shofar at Congregation Beth Jacob in Redwood City. They had 4 children, Daniel, Richard, and twins Elaine and Loraine. They have 1 grandchild.

Faye Calic married Sol Friedman in 1936, when Sol was 34 and Faye was 22. First, they lived on Capp St., in 1935, bought a house from Joe Lanfeld on Fulton St., in 1950, they bought flats on Heather Ave., in 1969, they bought a home on Laurel St., all in San Francisco. Sol was in the Yiddish theatre, was a founder of Beth Sholom Synagogue, and was on the Board. He was a Mason. He was a participant in a Talmud class and B’nai Br’rith Bible Club. He was a member of the Concordia Club and the S.F. Press Club. He supported the Federation and Israel. They had 2 children, 4 grandchildren, and many great-grandchildren. 

When Shulamit nee Calic Goldberg immigrated with her mother and siblings from Ungheni, Romania, when she was about age 5. They spoke Yiddish in the home in Unghen, Romania; she did not speak English. She did not go to school there. She remembers their small town was next to the Prud River, and her brother Rubin loved to swim in the river. Her father, Don Calic, was strict with his children. She remembers one time he went away to play pinochle. When he came home, she was playing with a skateboard, and he punished her for playing too long.  Once her sister had a birthday party planned, there were no sidewalks, and it rained, and the ground was muddy, so the party was cancelled. In the U. S. she went to grammar school, Presidio Jr High, and George Washington High School in the Richmond district, S.F., from which she graduated in 1944

Shalumit met Jack Goldberg in San Francisco, in the Histadrut Hapazit Israel group. Later they visited their Kibbutz in Israel. She married Jack Goldberg on 29 Feb. 1948. Jack was born and brought up in the early Jewish neighborhood of McAllister and Filmore streets in S.F. He went to Lowell High School nearby. He went to a Jewish school nearby with classmate David Teitelbaum.  David went on to become a Rabbi. Jack got a degree in electrical engineering at U.C. Berkeley, a Master’s at Stanford, and his career was at SRI in Menlo Park.  Shulamit got a Bacheler’s degree in Movement Therapy and worked as an activities coordinator at Sharon Heights Convalescent Hospital.  Jack and Shulamit bought their home in Palo Alto. They had 4 children, 1 grandchild.