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Lajos (Levi) Magaziner (Louis Magaziner)

Lajos (Levi) Magaziner was born in Humenne on July 27, 1860, the son of Samuel Magaziner and Eszter Jacubovits. His name appeared as Louis Magaziner in Vienna and America. Lajos was a manufacturer of windows, window blinds and window shutters. He was also an inventor, creating new systems of jalousie windows that opened with a simple lever or pushbutton instead of the usual crank. Emperor Franz Joseph I was so delighted with Lajos's pushbutton jalousies that he knighted Lajos for the invention and had them installed in the royal palace.

On August 16, 1885, Lajos married Maria Boehm in Budapest. Maria Boehm was born on November 6, 1866 in Nagyvárad (then a part of Hungary; now known as Oradea, Romania). They had six children, four of whom lived to adulthood.

Lajos and Maria visited their daughter Elsa in New York in 1926, and their contact in America was architect Eugene Schoen, whom they described as a friend. Their son Julius also used Eugene as a contact in his 1908 trip to New York, and described Eugene as a cousin. Eugene was the son of Hungarian immigrants, but I haven't found any connection between them and the Magaziners.

Lajos died of heart failure on May 8, 1939 at the age of 78. He was buried at Kozma Utcai Izraelita Temeto, as are many other Magaziners.

Children of Lajos (Levi) Magaziner and Maria Boehm include:

73. Elemér Magaziner (b: 30 NOV 1887; d: 18 MAR 1945)
74. Jeno Magaziner (b: 31 OCT 1888; d: 5 SEP 1889)
75. Julius Magaziner (Gyula Magaziner) (b: 30 JAN 1890)
76. Sandor Magaziner (b: 8 JAN 1892; d: 8 JAN 1893)
77. Elsa Ersi (Erzsebet Magaziner; Elizabeth Magaziner) (b: 20 AUG 1893; d: 22 JAN 1979)
78. Pal Magaziner (b: 1898; d: 28 APR 1945)

Generation #4

Elemér Magaziner

Elemér Magaziner was born on November 30, 1887 in Budapest. He was more interested in intellectual pursuits than in the family blinds factory, but he took over the family business out of a sense of duty. Elemér married Edit Balogh, a much younger woman, and they had two sons, one of whom is still living.

Edit was not Jewish, so the factory was put into her name to protect it from Nazi restrictions on Jewish-owned businesses. Unfortunately Elemér was not so easily protected. During the Holocaust, he was sent to a forced labor camp, where he died on March 18, 1945.

Edit moved to Mexico with their two sons. She remarried, divorced, then married a third time. In 1952, she came to America with her third husband and Elemér's two sons. The boys took their stepfather's surname, though the older son later went back to his original Magaziner name. The family business was later nationalized when the Soviets took over Hungary.

Children of Elemér Magaziner and Edit Balogh are:

1. LIVING
2. George Ivan Schuman (György Iztvan Magaziner) (b: 16 NOV 1942; d: 27 OCT 2001)

Julius Magaziner (Gyula Magaziner)

Gyula Magaziner was born on January 30, 1890 in Budapest. He used the name Julius outside of Hungary. He visited America in 1908, using architect Eugene Schoen as his contact. He identified Schoen as his cousin, but I have found no evidence of Schoen's relationship to the Magaziners.

In 1927, Julius came to America to return the body of Bernath Markovitz, the husband of Lajos's cousin, Sadie Magaziner Markovitz. The ship's manifest indicates that Julius was an engineer. Julius apparently never returned to Hungary. He settled in London, England, where he married a woman named Irene, and apparently changed his name. I don't know if Julius and Irene had any children. Julius was still living in London in 1963, when his sister Elsa told a newspaper that she was planning to visit her brother in England in the spring.

Elsa Ersi Landsberger Faddis Calvert (Erzsebet Magaziner; Elizabeth Magaziner)

Erzsebet Magaziner was born on August 20, 1893 in Budapest. Her family called her Böske, a common Hungarian nickname for Erzsebet, like Betty for Elizabeth. Later, she used the stage name Elsa Ersi (Erzsi is another common nickname for Erzsebet). From an early age, Elsa wanted to be an actress or an opera singer, but her father Lajos didn't approve. For her parents, she attended the University of Budapest, majoring in architecture and philosophy, but for herself, she earned a degree from the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest, studying under Bela Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly.

Elsa fell in love with Ernö Landsberger and married him secretly in Budapest on February 10, 1915. She told her parents after the marriage. Ernö was a much older man, born November 16, 1878, almost 15 years older than Elsa. The marriage didn't last. They divorced on May 8, 1918, and Ernö remarried on November 3, 1921 to Janka Kristina Katalin Löchner a Catholic woman from Berlin.

Elsa had some success in musical theater in Budapest, then set out for Broadway, arriving on the Berengaria on October 27, 1923. She was 30 years old, but claimed to be 26. Later, she claimed to be born in 1900, seven years younger than her actual age. Elsa worked as an actress and singer in vaudeville, the Ziegfeld Follies, and on and off Broadway. She received very good reviews, and some success, but never achieved the level of fame she had hoped for.

On April 2, 1932, Elsa married William Richard Faddis in New York. William was born in Corbit, Texas on October 26, 1907. They had a daughter, who is still living. They divorced in the 1940s, and Elsa remarried to Joseph Fletcher Calvert, a retired private utilities executive. Joseph was an older man, born in Sunderland, England on November 23, 1875. Elsa converted to Christian Science at some point, because a 1963 newspaper interview described her as an active member of the First Church of Christ, Scientist.

Elsa and Joseph moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1958. Elsa probably didn't know that her second cousin, Anthony Balkany (aka Antal Magaziner) was also living in Bridgeport, though Anthony died around the same time that Elsa moved there. Elsa stayed in touch with her brother Julius when he moved to London and visited him there several times.

Elsa's second husband, Joseph, died on January 10, 1965. Elsa died on January 22, 1979. She was 85 years old.

Child of Elsa Ersi and William Richard Faddis is:

1. LIVING

Pal Magaziner

Pal Magaziner was born in Budapest around 1898. He apparently served in Hungary's military in World War I, because his name appears in a book about the 38th K. u. K. Infantry Regiment. Like his brother Elemér, the family blinds factory would not have been his first choice of occupation, but he took over the family business out of a sense of duty. His true love was mountain climbing and skiing.

Pal married Magdolna Rona, who was also an alpine guide, the first female high alpine ski guide. They had a daughter.

During the Holocaust, Pal was taken to a forced labor camp with his brother Elemér. His wife and daughter avoided that fate by assuming other identities, using birth certificates of Catholic people who had died. They were forced to live apart to maintain the charade, but they both survived the war. Pal died of starvation at Mathausen a week before the camp was liberated, on April 28, 1945.

Child of Pal Magaziner and Magdolna Rona is:

1. Marianna Magaziner (b: 10 APR 1924; d: 3 NOV 2003)

Generation #5

Marianna Magaziner Szemes

Marianna Magaziner was born on April 10, 1924, the daughter of Pal and Magdolna. She survived the Holocaust by assuming the identity of a Catholic person who had died, using the Catholic person's birth certificate. This ruse required the young girl to live separate from her mother, but they both survived this way. They were reunited after the war.

Marianna worked in the movie industry in Hungary as a writer and director and won a Golden Dragon award at the Cracow Film Festival in 1965.

Marianna married Mihály Szemes, another Hungarian film director. Mihály was born on July 23, 1920 in Budapest. They had two daughters, still living. Mihály died on October 3, 1977 in Budapest. Marianna died on November 3, 2003.