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    Place of birth of my Polish grabnmother
    Poland

    Place of birth of my Polish grabnmother

    I’m from Argentina, and searching for the town of birth of my grandmother. Her name was Elena (Spanish form of Helen) Bom, her parents’ surname were Bom (father) and Rossenthal (mother).
    As I aim to explore deeper on her background (I know my other fourths of my family tree), I need to know which city / town she was born.
    She always told me to be Polish, her passport or travel document was "Russian"and some Argentinian documents stated as birthplace "WISTOPT" or "WISTOPIC" or something similar.

    Any hint about her town of birth, and its current denomination.

    Thanks

    https://www.reddit.com/gallery/1p4vsdh

    Posted by JustTheFactzJPM

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    7 Comments

    5. Fine-Upstairs-6284 on

      Nation says Russia?

      I’m reading it at vistolesk, which sounds like a Russian oblast. Usually Polish cities/provinces don’t end in “esk”

    6. martastephanie on

      Via ChatGPT:

      The name “WISTOFT” on the Uruguayan documents is most likely a phonetic, distorted version of “Włodawa”, a town in eastern Poland.

      At the time of her birth (1906), that region belonged to the Russian Empire, so officials abroad recorded the country of birth as “Rusia”. This means the town must have been located in the Russian partition of Poland, not in Austrian or German territory.

      Jewish immigrants from that area often pronounced Włodawa in Yiddish as “Vlodovt / Vlodavt”, and foreign clerks (German or Spanish-speaking) frequently misheard and wrote forms like:
      • Wlodowa
      • Wlodovt
      • Wlostoft
      • Wistof / Wistoft

      So the transformation Włodawa → Wistoft fits both the pronunciation pattern and the historical context of being registered as “Rusia.”