In the wake of Murder Most Foul an unrelated researcher at the University of Tulsa archive has identified a photograph of Bob Dylan’s great-grandfather, father of Zigman, grandfather of Abe!
This is the only known photograph of him sent from Odessa police files recently opened to the public. The file reference number is ВІД24051941. The details suggest a charge of vagrancy, begging and illegal busking! The musical instrument is sadly not named, assuming he had one and that his busking act was musical?
The Tulsa archive had asked for any Zimmermans in the Odessa Police files when they were opened to historians last year. אדר צימרמן was known to Dylanologists, but no photograph was known. As is often the case police files and mental asylum files are often brilliant new sources for 19th century research.
The new book Bob Dylan’s Hibbing (2019) lists him on page 118
Eder Zimmerman 1841-1908
Zigman/Zigmond Zisel Zimmerman 1876-1936 Odessa Ukraine arrived USA 1907 salesman shoe store dry goods, “Zusha”, “Ziske”
Anna (Greenstein / Kyrgyz?) Zimmerman 1879 (married Zigmond 1898) Kars Turkey? Odessa Ukraine arrived USA 1910
Maurice Zimmerman 1901-1981 Odessa Ukraine arrived USA 1910
Marian (Minnie) Zimmerman 1903-1996 Odessa Ukraine arrived USA 1910
Paul Zimmerman 1905 Odessa Ukraine arrived USA 1910 salesman Woolin Company then shop
Jack Zimmerman 1909 Odessa Ukraine arrived USA 1910 salesman grocery store.
Abe Zimmerman 1911-1968 born in Minnesota oil company (accountant) then shop
Max Zimmerman 1914-1996 born in Minnesota newspaper then shop
Source : Facebook group EDLIS Café
The wording superimposed on Eder/Edlis’s balckboard is in Ukrainian and it reads:
Edlis Zimmerman
Odessa port police
The first of April
I wonder who added that and when. I would have expected the Odessa port police of the time to be using Russian. And is the naming of great-great-grandfather as Edlis correct? Certainly there is a facial resemblance with Bob.
Isaac Babel’s ‘Odessa Stories’ provides a fascinating portrayal of life among the Jews of Odessa in the early 1900s, including a pogrom of the sort that drove many Jews to emigrate to the United States.
Clever, very! But nine days too late.
Google Translate provides a more helpful translation — not simply “The first of April”, but more relevantly, “April Fool’s Day”. It’s a joke.