The various forms of the family name Hillman in Eastern European countries would seem to originate almost entirely from the Jewish family name Hillman.
Look for the name Hillman in an encyclopaedia and you will almost certainly be directed to an article on the life and activities of one Sidney Hillman. You will not, sadly, be directed to the marque of Hillman cars, nor to the brief rise and fall of Hillman’s Airways. This is the way of life – a trades unionist in the USA is more newsworthy than a whole range of family cars that are now collectors’ items in many parts of the world – including the USA – or of an early airline developed from a bus company that went on to be incorporated into one of the giants of today’s airlines – British Airways.
Sidney Hillman[1] does provide us with a useful link however – the Hillman family name amongst Jews is almost certainly a case of “parallel evolution” – borrowing a term from the biologists – where the same name has arisen almost certainly in complete isolation from all the other origins postulated for Hillman. Sidney Hillman was born in the Lithuanian village of Zagare in Russia on 23rd March 1887 to parents Schmuel Hillman and Judith Paikin. After attending Jewish seminary for only a year at the age of 14 he then became involved in the trades union movement in Lithuania (at 15 years old?!) and was then involved in the Russian Revolution in 1905 (when he was 18 years old). The revolution failed and he was forced to flee the country to Manchester, England, where he lived for 2 years before emigrating to Chicago in the USA.
His full story is told elsewhere, but the point is this – on first hearing of the man I assumed that he had arrived in the USA with some unpronounceable east European name and that either he or a tired immigration officer had changed it to the more user-friendly Hillman. Not so – Sidney Hillman was a real Hillman from birth in a Jewish family in Eastern Europe.
Further surfing of the web and telephone discussions with UK Jewish Hillmans led to the realisation that there was a whole “tribe” of Jewish Hillmans out there, in UK, USA and other countries including their original east European locations. A number of people responded to my request for their views on the origins of the Jewish name Hillman and its variants. I have attempted to summarise their information in the table below.
It is a complex picture and again points to likely multiple origins for the name even amongst Jews. Jewish surnames have only been in use from relatively recently, taking over from a patrilineal naming system in around the late 17th century.
The Jewishgen site[2] indicates probable primary and secondary origins from which people are researching their Hillman ancestors (Table 1):
Table 1 Research Locations for Jewish Hillman families (JewishGen site)
Given that Jewry originated in the Middle East, perhaps Israel should be seen as the primary source, with East European countries as secondary and all others as tertiary? Given the history of Israel in the past century, it has perhaps become itself a tertiary location for any Hillman persons there today. The family name has probably only arisen relatively recently, given the adoption of fixed family names from a patrilineal system not until around the 17th C. Whatever the case might be, it is a clear indication of the varied origins of the Jewish form of the name Hillman across a broad swathe of Eastern Europe before the major 18th and 19th C perturbations involving Jews, and of the diaspora that followed these.
3.9.1 Hillman as a Jewish family name
It is almost certain that the Jewish family name Hillman has a source in the Jewish culture of East European origin totally unrelated to other origins of the name. This was either:
- From the German Helfman (East European Gelfman – helf means to help) – he who helped or was the Barber or Surgeon
and/or
- A “Calqu” (“to model another words meaning on that of an analogous word in another language”[3]) for the Hebrew name Schmuel (the Prophet Samuel), in a renowned Rabbinical family which spread from Poland, through present-day Germany to France and then the USA in the 19th and 20th Centuries. The Hebrew for the prophet Samuel in the Bible is “Hanavi” (the prophet), and this was translated into German as Helman (“clear thinker, someone who could foresee the future” – clairvoyant, prophet). The origin may have been Schmuel Heilperin, born in Krotoszyn in today’s Poland, and who died in 1763, in Metz, France.
Surnames were not fixed in Jewry until well into the 17th and even 18th century, and liable to frequent changes and reversals.
The information below has been provided by personal contacts (pers. comm.) and has been mapped with some movements (Figure 1). Other movements were to the USA, UK, South Africa and Israel.
Table 2 Variants for the Jewish family name Hillman
Figure 1 Hillman origins in Eastern Europe
Table 3 Similar Jewish names probably not derived from any of the above
Craig Hillman (pers comm) suggested two origin groups for the name Hillman:
- Lithuania (Russia) – the more famous Hillmans
- Galicia (south-eastern Poland/western Ukraine)
Generally Russian variants start with a G, German with an H.
It is clear that there are a number of main facts in the evolution of the Jewish use of the name Hillman as a family name:
- The Hebrew word Hanavi means a prophet, which was translated as Helman in Germany meaning a clear-thinker, or clairvoyant. This may have been taken on by members of recognized Rabbinical families with a reputation for prophesy.
- Helman might also refer to a person of clear complexion and/or light-coloured hair, and this may also have been applied in the distant past to people from Scandinavia with no Jewish connections at all?
- The East European word “Gel” for yellow, perhaps referring to light-coloured hair, as above. The Russian G became an H in Germany.
- The German words “Helf” and “Helfman” referring to the Barber’s, or Barber/Surgeon’s helper being taken on as a family name by people who had such a role in the community.
- Someone who lived in or was somehow related to the location Heilbronn, in the German province of Wurtemburg, and thus was known as Heilmann.
None of the above explanations comfortably provides for the apparent east European, rather than German origin of the name in Jewry, and further research is clearly required as to the etymology of the Jewish Hillman, especially from Eastern European countries.
Beit Hatfutsot[4] firmly places the derivation of the name Hillman from the German – Hellman – meaning “bright, clear man” or “seer, prophet” in Yiddish – the German-Hebrew “dialect”.
3.9.2 Significant Jewish Hillmans
The following examples may shed some light as to the adoption of the name Hillman by Jewish families at some point in the not-so-distant past.
Mordechai Hillman[5], of Bushtyno, Poland, was born in 1902. He died in 1944 – as did so many of his Jewish counterparts – at Auschwitz Extermination Camp in Poland, aged 42. His parents were Bernát and Zelda Hillman. His wife was Margit Hillman (née Goldstein), their children were Akiva, Bari and Yisroel Ber Hillman. In normal life Mordechai had been a merchant and mill owner. He is but one example of many Hillmans from Eastern Europe who undoubtedly became victims of the Nazi regime during the Holocaust.
Eilat Gordin Levitan[6] has presented extensive notes and photos of the Rabbi Shmuel Yitzchak Hillman (1868-1953). Born in Kovno (the modern Kaunas, W of Vilnius, Lithuania) he was a descendant of Rabbi Shmuel Hillman (or Helman) of Metz in France.He was sixth generation descendant of Knesset Yechezkel of Altona, Hamburg and Wansbeck, all in Germany. This suggests that at some time in the previous century the name Hillman had been adopted – in Germany? – as a fixed surname. There are also links with Jewish family members in Padua, Italy.
Shmuel Yitzchak Hillman, also known as Dayan Hillman, during the course of his studies and service as a Rabbi, lived and worked in Lithuania, Germany, Belorussia, Poland, Scotland, London, and finally retired to Israel where he died. It is likely that a renowned religious scholar would travel more extensively than an ordinary Jewish family member, but it does indicate how widespread the Jewish communities were at that time and are still today. He wrote widely on religious subjects.
One of his sons – David Hillman – became a skilled painter and stained glass artist, with window works in synagogues in England and Israel, and was also a Rabbi. David Hillman’s son – Ellis Simon Hillman – was a London Labour Councillor and once a Communist Party member.
One of Schmuel Hillman’s daughters – Sarah Hillman – was married to Chaim Herzog, first president of Israel.
Sidney Hillman (see above) was Schmuel Hillman’s first cousin.
Another leading figure in the USA labour movements was Bessie Abramovitz Hillman, born in Poland. Not a Hillman by birth, she was married to Sidney Hillman.
Jewish Hillmans have links with Africa too. There are some ancient Jewish links with Africa, not least the possibility of the lost tribe in Ethiopia – the Falasha. No Hillmans there that I am aware of, but Louis Hillman, reputedly also of the Rabbi Schmuel Hillman line, fled Russia due to his involvement in the 1905 Student Revolution – precursor some think to the 1917 Russian Revolution[7]. He travelled to Johannesburg, South Africa to join Hillman relatives there. He moved on to better opportunities in Namibia, where his native tongue German from Bauska – administered by Germans – proved useful. However, considered a spy and draft evader after his activities in Russia became known, he was condemned to be hung. His three brothers also by then in Namibia, somehow managed to snatch him from the scaffold and get him back to Johannesburg. They then moved to Panama to work in Jewish-owned tanneries, and eventually saved enough to reach their “Mecca” – the USA.
I am grateful to the following correspondents who provided their views on the subject:
Edward Gelles, Craig Hillman, Harold Hillman, Jon Hillman, Caroline Josephs, Sidney Lightman, Yeshaya Metal, David Newman, Esther Peled, Ann Rabinowitz, Bruce Reisch, Harold Rhode, Lee Schlesinger.
Sources:
[1] www.hillmanfoundation.org/bio-hillman.html
[3] Webster’s New College Dictionary.
[4] Beit Hatfutsot. https://dbs.bh.org.il/familyname/hillman
[5] https://www.geni.com/people/Mordechai-Hillman/6000000014453946739
[6] http://www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/kurenets/k_pages/hillman.html
[7] Ann Rabinowitz. 2009. Vignettes from Africa. Jewish Affairs, Johannesburg, S Africa. 59(2)