page_title: Jolie Gabor
section_title: Family
hierarchical_section_title: Jolie Gabor / Family
caption_attribution_description: This is the birth record for Jolie Gabor.
context_page_description: Jolie Gabor, Countess de Szigethy was a Hungarian-born American jeweler and socialite, known as the mother of actresses and fellow socialites Magda, Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor.
context_section_description: Jolie Gabor was born Janka Tilleman on September 30, 1896, in Budapest, Austria-Hungary. Her parents were Jona (or Jónás) Hersch Tilleman (son of Schie Tilleman and Scheindel Grossman) and Franceska Chawe Feige Tilleman (née Reinharz, Reinharcz, or Reinhartz; daughter of Eiseg Reinhartz and Dorottya Stein); both of Jolie's parents were of Galician (then part of the Austrian Empire, present-day in Ukraine) Jewish ancestry. The Tillemans were jewelers who owned a jewellery shop known as "The Diamond House". His father changed his forenames to József. The Tilleman family's Jewish descent was also cited by a surgeon, Dr. Laszlo Tauber, also Jewish, and a family friend and neighbor of the Gabors in Budapest.
  The Reinharz family of Gabor's mother had established jewelry shops in Vienna; her mother's uncle helped the Tillemans open their jewelry business, "The Diamond House", located at Rákóczi utca 54. in Budapest. Franceska (Josef Tilleman's widow), briefly married a medical doctor and general physician, Dr. Miksa Kende (né Kohn), son of Mór Lipót Kohn and Resi Kohn.
  Jolie Gabor was the aunt of Annette Tilleman (b. 1931), daughter of Jolie's brother Szebasztian Tilleman, and wife of Hungarian-American U.S. Representative Tom Lantos (née Lantos Péter Tamás, in Budapest), the first, and to date only, Holocaust survivor to serve in either house of the United States Congress. Szebasztian Tilleman (or Tillemann as his branch of the family style themselves) and his mother, the Tilleman matriarch Franceska, were killed during an apparent Allied bombing raid on Budapest in 1944.
  Addressing her birth forename, usually reserved for Hungarian males, Gabor stated, "My parents were so eager to have a son they named me Jancsi, which translated comes out Little John or Johnny". Her birth certificate indicates her birth name was "Janka" which can be also a male or female name. The third of five surviving children, Gabor's siblings comprised three sisters and one brother: Dóra, Eugénia ("Zseni" or "Janette"), Rozália ("Rosalie" or "Rozalie"), and Sebestyén (or Szebasztian; nicknamed "Seb"). A sister, Sydonia, died shortly after birth in 1895. Jolie's other sisters are all believed to have survived the war. Rozália emigrated to Australia with her first husband, Emmanuel Reiss. Dóra returned to Hungary, where she and her husband, Hugo Klein, died. Eugénia married Armin Arvay; the surname later anglicized to "Harvey". 
  Although born in 1896, Gabor claimed to have been born in 1900, once jokingly stating that she had lied so much about her age she did not remember her actual birth date. Her obituary in The New York Times gave a birth year of 1900. On a ship's passenger manifest dated December 30, 1945, Gabor gave her age as 45 years and two months, which would make her year of birth 1900. Her birth certificate, however, confirms her birth year to be 1896. Author Dominick Dunne stated, in 1995, that Gabor was believed to be 109, which would mean a birth year of approximately 1886. The 1987 edition of Biographical Dictionary, however, cites Jolie Gabor's complete birthdate to be September 29, 1896, as does the 1959 International Celebrity Register.
caption: Birth Record for Janka Tilleman
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