Introduction: My Family’s Immigration Story is not one, but several stories about moves from country to country and continent to continent.
I have spent many years learning about my family and where we came from, going back further than I ever imagined. There are gaps in my knowledge where I can only guess at the facts. In those cases I write, “It is possible…” Otherwise, everything written here is true, as far as I can tell.1
This section describes my grandfather Zwickel’s experience immigrating to America at the beginning of the 1900s. It includes descriptions of some of the agencies that were available at that time to help new immigrants to the US.
The next section traces my family history of migrations before they came to the US and goes farther back in time before the written record.
The final section is a description of my own immigration experience moving from the East Coast to the Midwest.
About names
The earliest records of Zwickels in Eastern Europe only go back to the early 1800s. Before that, Jews were identified by patronyms—as the son or daughter of their fathers. Men were given at least one Hebrew/Biblical name that was used when they were called up to the Torah (Old Testament) in the synagogue, during official religious ceremonies, and on a marriage contract.2 A second name, Hebrew or Yiddish, was often added to help identify a particular individual.
A family legend has it that one of our Zwickel ancestors, desperately trying to avoid serving in the Russian Tsar’s army, slipped across the border from the Russian Pale of Settlement into Galicia in Austria-Hungary.3 He is supposed to have been hidden in a wagonload of beets (or to have had a shock of dark red hair). In either case, when he emerged from his hiding place, someone called him a “Zwickl” and the name stuck. Zwickel was a common local term for “beet”. There may be some truth to that: the Russian (and the Ukrainian) word for beet is свёкла pronounced “Tzv’kl”.4
About Yiddish, Hebrew, and English
The everyday language of Eastern European Jews was Yiddish, derived from Aramaic/Hebrew and German. Hebrew was reserved for prayers and for studying the Torah.
Hebrew is the language of the bible and of modern-day Israel. Jews in Roman Judea spoke Aramaic, which is similar to Hebrew.
Yiddish is the language that evolved from Aramaic and German roots in Europe in the 800s. Jews in Eastern Europe used Yiddish as their everyday language, but many could also speak to their neighbors in Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, or German.
Many transliterations from Polish/Yiddish are inconsistent. For the sake of consistency, I have followed the YIVO system of Yiddish transliteration.5 Place names may be given in several different languages with different spellings. The Zwickels lived in an area that, at various times, was part of Poland, Russia, Ukraine/Ruthenia, Galicia6, and Austria-Hungary. Consistency is elusive.
➢Translation: converting the meaning of words from one language to another {for example, Zev in Hebrew means Wolf in English}
➢Transliteration: writing or printing a letter or word using the closest corresponding letters of a different alphabet or script: {for example, זאב in Hebrew is written as Zev in English}
1. My Zwickel Family’s Immigration story
My parents were second-generation Americans. Both had advanced degrees and both were teachers. My father, Arthur Lawrence Zwickel, served in the US Navy during World War II and remained in the Navy Reserves until he retired.
► Arthur Lawrence Zwickel (1915-1989) was the youngest child of Sam Zwickel (1866-1946) and his second wife, Anna Groshaus (1882-1962)7
►►Sam Zwickel was the seventh child of Isaac Kalonymos Zwikel (1819-1897) and Tsirl Khana Orgel (1813-1890). Isaac’s father was:
► ► ► Isaac Kalonymos Zwikel was the son of Wolf and Rosa Zwikel. He lived in a town called Założce.
► ► ► ► Wolf and Rosa Zwikel reportedly lived in Dubno, Ukraine. That is as far back as the official written records of Zwickels in Europe go.
From Austria-Hungary/Galicia to Brooklyn
My grandfather Sam Zwickel was born and grew up in a town called Założce, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now in Ukraine. Sam lived in nearby Milno (Myl’ne), his first wife’s hometown. The nearest city of any size was Złoczów (also called Zolochiv, or Zolochev (Ukrainian: Золочів, German: Zlotsche), between Lwow and Tarnopol in the west of modern-day Ukraine.8 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zloczow>
Leaving Galicia
A combination of “push” and “pull” factors led Sam Zwickel to emigrate to the US. Major factors pushing people like Sam to leave Galicia were food shortages, poverty, overpopulation, disease, discrimination, and lack of opportunity. The pull of the US came primarily from the information Sam received in newspapers and in letters from his siblings, who had already emigrated to America. He also lived near a road taken by a steady stream of Russian Jews passing by on their way to a better life.
Food shortages, overpopulation, disease, and poverty
Most people living in Galicia were subsistance farmers and nearly all of the crops or livestock raised were used to feed and care for the farmer’s family. People had almost no cash to buy tools or other items. Because they used primitive farming techniques, unchanged since the Middle Ages, agricultural productivity in Galicia was the lowest of all the provinces of Austria and one of the lowest in Europe.9
Making it worse were a lack of good land and a growing population, resulting in the steadily shrinking size of the farms. Over 70% of Galicia’s population were farmers and about 40% of Galicia belonged to one of the latifundia.10 Some land was cleared and some marshes were drained, but not enough to support the growing population. In the second half of the 1800s, the amount of farmland increased by about 7% while the number of people doubled. In 1899, 80% of the farms had less than 5 acres, and many farmers were not able to grow enough food on their plots to support their families. Overpopulation in Galicia was so severe that it has been described as the most overpopulated place in Europe and there was no way out. The farmers were said to be stuck in lives of “illiteracy, usury, and alcoholism”.11
The Jews of Galicia lived under very difficult housing and health conditions. Famines in Galicia, resulting in 50,000 deaths a year from malnutrition, were frequent and have been described as endemic.12
Cholera epidemics spread to Galician towns in 1873 and 1894 and the people, already weak from lack of food, died by the thousands.13
City life in Galicia wasn’t much better. About 60% of eastern Galicia's Jews lived in cities and towns.14 Neighborhoods were often dirty, crowded, and dark. With their immune systems weakened by an unhealthy diet, diseases like tuberculosis, scarlet fever, diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, typhoid fever, and dysentery spread and killed people. Modern medicine—with its understanding of infection, sanitation, nutrition, and hygiene—didn’t reach Galicia until the late 1800s. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 1900s that the health service eliminated smallpox by vaccinating infants.15
Even in the capital city of Lwow there were only a few paved roads and streets by the late 1860s. A majority of city streets were paved with dirt, sand, and, when it rained or snowed, sticky mud. Country people, unaccustomed to city life, were choked by the stench of open sewers and gutters.
Life in Austria-Hungary was hard, and life in Galicia was worse, so many thousands decided to leave. Between 1881 and 1910 most of those emigrating from Austria came from Galicia, including 236,504 Jews (about 85% of all Jewish emigrants from Austria and 30.1% of all emigrants from Galicia).16
Discrimination and Anti-Semitism
Full citizenship rights were given to Austro-Hungarian Jews in 1867, but anti-Semitism was widespread in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially toward the end of the 1800s when people started believing “scientific” ideas about superior races.17
Many non-Jews had a hostile view of Jews as heartless exploiters and servants of the Polish nobility and landowners, even though most Jews lived in poverty, just like their Ukrainian neighbors. Anti-Semitic ideas became part of politics, and Jews were excluded from social life. Nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism led to anti-Jewish aggression and to riots against the Jewish population.18
In 1893, an economic boycott of the Jews in Galicia was proclaimed at a Catholic convention in Cracow. The boycott lasted until the First World War. The Galician authorities tried to create a Polish middle class by keeping Jews out of trade and industry. Jews had to get special licenses for peddling, old-clothes trade, transportation, running an employment agency, or owning pharmacy. If one sold imported goods and spices, oils, and paints he had to get “proof of capability” from the local administration. Another law regulating veterinarians limited Jewish participation in the cattle business.19
Things were bad in Austrian Galicia; however, compared to conditions on the Russian side of the border, the Jews of Galicia were treated fairly well.20
The Pull to America
Probably the storngest pull that drew my grandfather to America was the success of the four of his siblings who immigrated before him. His siblings were:
► 1838-1915 Wolf Zwickel (Zwicker) immigrated to US; Wolf was a tailor. He fathered 7 children
► 1842-1920 Yudah Hirsch Zwikel did not immigrate; 5 children
► 1844-1896 Majer Zwikel did not immigrate; 2 children
► 1851-1902 Abraham Zwickel immigrated to US; 9 children
► 1858-1931 Jüte Ruchel Zwikel Lind immigrated to US; 4 children
► 1858-1940 Leyzer ‘Louis’ Zwickel immigrated to US; 9 children
► 1867-1937 Oizer ‘Abe’ Oscar Zwickel immigrated to US; 7 children
► 1871 -1939 Zelig Yussel ‘Berisch’ Zwickel did not immigrate; 12 children21
Those who went before undoubtedly wrote letters to family members back in Galicia. The letter writers played up the positive aspects of immigration and downplayed the negative. They probably included a request for the recipient to emigrate and join the writer in America, “if you were here, then joy would be complete.”22 Hansen writes, “The arrival of a letter was a community affair. Neighbors assembled, the schoolmaster was pressed into service, and the letter was read. Often copies were made & sent to other communities.”
Not only did the letters contain information and advice, but some included tangible evidence of the more abundant life in America: a bank note, an order on a commercial house, or a ticket—prepaid—for passage. These gifts gave birth to a mythic figure in the history of immigration, that of the “rich uncle in America” who could take care of everything.
Letters from America were overwhelmingly positive and encouraging, partly because it was hard to admit just how difficult life was, and partly because the immigrants usually put off writing until they had overcome the initial difficulties of adjusting to life in America.23
It is possible that Sam knew about one of his brothers who’d emigrated and now lived in a tenement on Rivington Street in New York, a street of brothels, gambling halls, and drug houses. Maybe Sam also knew that the son of another brother had gotten in trouble with gangsters and gamblers in New York and had to flee to Canada. Even if Sam did get negative news from his brothers and sister, it didn’t prevent him from emigrating himself.
The Journey Begins: On the Road to Bremen
Sam Zwickel’s hometown was Założce.24 It is about 23 southwest of the town of Brody, where, in the 1880s, thousands of emigrating Jews crossed the border from Russia into Austria on their way to the west.25
Założce is a very small town. In 1890 there were 988 houses and 6,928 inhabitants in Założce, of which 2,502 (36%) were Jews.26 Between 1890 and 1910, many in the Jewish community emigrated and the number of Jews decreased by 435 while the number of Christians increased by 782. In 1899, Sam Zwickel lived in another town to the east of Założce called Milno (Myl’ne), the hometown of his first wife, Züssel Knopfholz (1871–1905?).
It is 850 miles by road from Milno to Bremen. Even if his brother Leyzer in America sent him some money for the trip, Sam probably didn’t have enough to take the train27 part of the way, so it is likely that he walked.28 The trip would have taken him west to Lwow (Lviv) and Krakow, then northwest to Wroclaw. He then left Poland and entered Germany, either going via Berlin or via Dresden and Leipzig. He would have followed the River Weser north to the harbor at Bremen, where it empties into the North Sea.29
Few roads in Europe in the late 1800s were paved and some may have been little more than cowpaths. Sam Zwickel left Bremen in February, so he was probably on the road during the winter months, dealing with snow or freezing rain. With luck, he may have traveled 20 miles per day so it would have taken him 42 days to get to Bremen.30
In Bremen, Sam would have tried to buy a ticket on the first ship going to New York, so he could avoid having to pay more than he had to for lodging in the seaport. A number of dormitory-style buildings in Bremerhaven were operated by the shipping lines just for passengers waiting to leave.31
From Europe to America
Sam Zwickel sailed to New York on Feb 14, 1898 from Bremen, Germany32 on the SS Friedrich der Grosse and arrived on Feb. 25, 1898 at 12:30 p.m. He gave his name as Zwickel, Sam. Abrah. age 32, from Milno, Galicia, and said he planned to stay with his brother (probably Leyzer) in Brooklyn, NY.
He traveled in steerage.33
Sam’s wife, Züssel Knopfholz Zwickel, sailed from Bremen, also on the SS Friedrich der Grosse, on June 17, 1899 with her three daughters—my aunts Tsirla (Celia) age 7, Sara (Sophie) age 3, and baby Rosa (Rose). They arrived in New York on June 28, 1899. Züssel had married Sam when she was 16. When she arrived in America, she was 28 years old; she would live to be 34.
SS Friedrich der Grosse (Friedrich der Große), was a Norddeutscher Lloyd liner built in Germany in 1896 and designed to carry freight and, in a separate area, as many as 2,400 passengers.34
Many people today have sailed on cruise liners, so it is interesting to compare the SS Friedrich der Grosse with the popular modern-day cruise ship Carnival Liberty:
Crossing the Atlantic in mid-winter was a risky business. Fog, snow, and ice made the trip hazardous. Photos of SS Friedrich der Grosse appear to show seven lifeboats hanging from davits on either side of the ship. It seems unlikely that there were enough lifeboats for all the passengers and crew. In 1912, HMS Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg in April and 1,500 people died because there weren’t enough lifeboats.
Culture Shocks
Założce and New York City in 1900
Założce in 1900 was home to 7,315 people, of whom 2,397 (33%) were Jews. Sam Zwickel and his family were living in Myl’ne, which today has about 900 residents. It is difficult to say just how large it was in 1899, because records are hard to find and because the population of Ukraine as a whole has changed so much.35 Both Założce and Myl’ne were, and still are, small farming towns.
When Sam Zwickel arrived in New York City it had a population of 3,437,202, about 470 times as large as Założce. Nearly 37% of those living in New York in 1900 were foreign-born immigrants. For a young man like Sam, from a small farming community, it must have been a shock to find himself among so many people.
Before the immigrants got off a ship in New York, U.S. Customs officers would come on board to check bags for dutiable goods or contraband. Then the passengers went by small steamboats to Ellis Island. Sam’s papers, assuming he had some, would have been checked by an officer who spoke Yiddish and could read German36 (the language of Austrian passports and visas) to see that the information matched the ship’s manifest. In the Registry Room, Public Health Service doctors examined the passengers to see if any of them wheezed, coughed, shuffled or limped. The doctors checked each immigrant for 60 symptoms of disease, looking for signs of cholera, favus (scalp and nail fungus), tuberculosis, insanity, epilepsy, and mental impairments. The disease most feared was trachoma, a highly contagious eye infection that could lead to blindness and death. Sick immigrants went into quarantine, and those with chronic conditions were sent back to their home countries.37 For most immigrants, the whole process took only a few hours. Then they took another boat to a pier in Manhattan.
After his release from Ellis Island, Sam would have found his brother Layzer in Manhattan and gone home with him on the subway to the Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn, home to 1,167,000 people.38
The Language Barrier
Sam Zwickel’s mama lushen, or mother tongue, was Yiddish and like nearly 75% of Jewish immigrants, he was literate.39 In the Jewish neighborhoods of the Lower East Side of Manhatan and in Brownsville, Brooklyn, Sam would have been able to read the signs written in Hebrew characters and to understand the Yiddish that was spoken all around him. In New York he would have found stalls and shops selling Yiddish newspapers and books.40
Everywhere else, people spoke English, Spanish, Italian, German, Chinese, and dozens of other languages, none of which Sam Zwickel knew. Learning English was critical for new immigrants if they wished to become naturalized citizens, especially after The Naturalization Act of 1906 required that all immigrants speak English to become naturalized citizens of the U.S.41
I don’t know if Sam was one of the many new immigrants seeking citizenship who attended night classes to learn English, civics, and American history. These classes were given at institutions (some of which still exist) such as the Educational Alliance https://edalliance.org/ and the University Settlement https://www.universitysettlement.org/us/ on the Lower East Side.42 Sam Zwickel became fluent enough in English to be naturalized in 1904.
New technology in the big city
Photos of New York City in 1900 show busy streets filled with people, carriages, cable cars, and horsecars. New technology was evident everywhere. Modern, overhead, elevated trains carried passengers uptown, downtown, and crosstown. Plans were underway in 1900 to operate trains underground in a subway system that would connect the entire city. In Brooklyn, electric-powered streetcars called trolleys were carrying passengers across the borough to the entertainment center and beach at Coney Island.43 By 1900, electric lights had replaced gaslights and lit the streets and buildings at night. Theaters, in English, Yiddish, and other languages, presented live shows and “moving pictures”.
It was a far cry from the small towns of Eastern Europe.
New Foods
The nutrient-poor diet of Eastern Europeans revolved around potatoes, cabbage, and root vegetables plus bread and some dairy products. Meat was expensive and rare. Many Jewish families ate meat once a week—they may have had chicken for the Sabbath dinner. By 1900, Americans in cities like New York were eating more meat, poultry, and fish, thanks to refrigerated railroad cars and a good transportation system.
New York, as a major international port, received food from all over the world and immigrants were able, should they choose to do so, to taste imported delicacies. In fact, New York was one of the first American cities to have shops specializing in fine, unusual, or foreign prepared foods—the delicatessen. Because the Zwickels kept a kosher home, they did not buy foods that were not in accordance with Jewish religious law.
Sam Zwickel: becoming an American
When he landed at Ellis Island, Sam was 32 years old, married, and he reported having no money in his possession. He was apparently counting on his older brother Layzer to take care of him until he could get on his own two feet.
Layzer44 Zwickel came to the US in 1884. He and his wife Breina “Betty” had eight children when his brother Sam arrived. He Americanized his name to Louis and worked selling dry goods. A few years later he owned his own butcher shop in Brooklyn.
Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York
Unlike many Eastern European Jewish families, the Zwickels did not spend any significant time living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The Zwickels made their homes in the 1890s and 1900s in the newly-developed section of eastern Brooklyn called Brownsville, “looking for ‘lower rents and a more healthful country environment”.45
Brownsville, before it became an urban area, was a rural town. It was too far from Manhattan for wealthy people, but developers found it a good place to put up large housing projects for those of lesser means. The opening of the subway from Manhattan to Brooklyn, of the Williamsburg Bridge in 1903 and the Manhattan Bridge in 1909 all made Brownsville attractive to people who wanted to live in Brooklyn and work in Manhattan. After the subway reached the area, convenient transportation, new multi-family housing, storefronts, and garment factories attracted newcomers. In 1890, about 4,000 Jews lived in Brownsville; by 1910–1920, the Jewish population soared to 250,000-300,000.46
Brownsville had more than 70 Orthodox synagogues, several Yiddish theaters, and many competing groups of pro-labor, socialist, communist adherents trying to out-shout one another in the streets.
Brownsville was not heaven. Originally an area of flood-prone marshes, it was tough on the nose: the area had been used as a dump and awful stenches wafted north from nearby glue factories. The streets were crowded with wagons and pushcarts and often covered with horse manure. Brownsville’s wooden structures were prone to fire and the streets flooded in heavy rains.47
Sixteen months after Sam came to the US, his wife Züssel48 and three daughters arrived.
One year later, the 1900 United States Federal Census showed Sam and “Sarah” Zwickel [Swickel] living at 238 Powell Street in Brooklyn, New York. Sam had been working as a “Pedler - hats for 3 months”. Both Sam and “Sarah” told the census taker that they could read and write, but not English.
In the 1902 New York City Directory, Sam was still living with his brother Louis and is listed as an awningmaker, probably for the new shops in Brownsville that wanted awnings to protect their wares and for advertising.
By 1904, Sam had moved to Belmont Avenue and was in the business of selling hardware. In the 1905 New York State Census, Sam and his wife “Sala” were living on Belmont Avenue in Brownsville and they had 6 children—the three girls who arrived with Züssel and two sons and a daughter who were born in Brooklyn.
That same year, Züssel died.49 The oldest daughter, 15-year old Celia, took charge of her siblings and continued to do so until Sam married Henche Groshaus a few years later.
Naturalization
Sam Zwickel applied for naturalization in 1904, just 5 years after he entered the US. Although the ship’s manifest shows he landed in New York on Feb. 25, 1898 , on his Petition, he claimed to have arrived in 1897, he may have altered the date to meet a requirement that he had been in the US long enough to become a citizen.
Sam Zwickel’s family
Sam married Anna Henche Groshaus after the death of Züssel. Sam and Anna had six children—four died in infancy, one died at five years old, and my father was the only one who survived to adulthood.
Sam bought a building in Brownsville and opened his own housewares store. He made enough from the store to support his family and remained an observant Orthodox Jew until the end of his life.
Help for Immigrants
My grandfather had brothers and a sister who had immigrated to America before him, so he had a support network when he arrived and probably didn’t need a lot of help from social service agencies. In the early 1900s, the government did not provide social security, medical care, unemployment insurance, pensions for widows and orphans, or other social services. People in need had to rely on private charities for help.
Had Sam Zwickel needed assistance, there were places he could turn to for help, such as the Hebrew Educational Society, the Landsmanshaft association of immigrants from his hometown, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.
Hebrew Educational Society (HES)
One organization had deep roots in Brownsville and would have been helpful to a new immigrant like Sam Zwickel. Jews living in New York and Brooklyn started the Hebrew Educational Society (HES) in 1899 to help poorer, more recent arrivals assimilate. HES offered lessons in English and citizenship, with the goal of “teaching [Jewish immigrants] valuable lessons in thrift, manners, and citizenship.…Despite the condescending intentions behind many of the programs, Brownsville participants responded favorably.”50 HES also gave 7,000 volumes to start the first public library in Brownsville in 1905, which was an important source of information and recreation.
HES today https://www.thehes.org/ continues to serve “more than 1,200 people daily, which accounts for more than 300,000 annual visits. We are the area’s major source of educational, recreational, cultural, fitness, sports, and social-service programs for area residents and we annually provide services to more than 8,500 participants. The H.E.S. serves the diverse populations living in Southeast Brooklyn including Jewish and African- American families and a large population of immigrant families from the Caribbean, Asia, Israel, and the former Soviet Union.”51
Landsmanshaftn
Landsmanshaftn were associations formed by Eastern European Jewish immigrants from the same hometown.52 Many synagogues in New York developed around landslayt (groups of Jews from the same Eastern European towns) and often operated as mutual-aid societies. Over time, groups of Jews from the same town in Europe formed officially registered landsmanshaftn and most were connected to synagogues, unions, extended family circles, or fraternal orders.53
Considering that one quarter of the Jews in New York belonged to a landsmanshaft, it is probable that Sam did, too.54 In New York, at least two landsmanshaftn were started by men from Złoczów. One was the Zloczower K. U. V.55 It had 192 members in 1918 and was located on the Lower East Side of New York. The Secretary was Jonas Zwickel, a distant cousin.56
The landsmanshaft offered help learning English, finding places to live and work, connecting to family and friends, insurance, disability and unemployment insurance, and subsidized burial. For immigrants coming from European monarchies, the landsmanshaft was an introduction to how a republican democracy works. At landsmanshaft meetings the immigrants learned about as voting for officers, holding debates on community issues, and paying dues to support the society. Meetings were often conducted and minutes recorded in Yiddish, a language all members could understand.57
Members paid regular dues, and, if they lost their jobs, became too sick to work, or died, the society paid the member or their family a benefit to keep them afloat. When the funds were not needed to support members, landsmanshaftn frequently invested the money in funds that supported the Jewish community in others ways, such as Israel Bonds.
Jewish immigration slowed and stopped almost entirely after 1924, so most landsmanshaft functions declined. One role they continued to play was maintaining ties to life in Europe. For example, the Złoczów landsmanshaftn often sent money to relatives left behind in Galicia.58
One non-religious landsmanshaft that was active in Brownsville became The Workmen’s Circle, or Arbeter Ring in Yiddish. It was started in 1892 as the Workingmen’s Circle Society by a group of progressive-minded immigrants from Eastern Europe. The group was a socialist, mutual-aid society that promoted Jewish community, Yiddish language, Jewish education, and Ashkenazic culture.59 The Workers Circle, as it is now called, continues to fight for social justice https://circle.org/who-we-are/our-history/.
Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, according to its website at https://www.hias.org/, started in 1881 to help Jews fleeing pogroms (anti-Semitic riots) in Russia and Eastern Europe.60 HIAS offered meals, transportation, and employment assistance to new immigrants.
As the influx of Russian Jewish refugees grew, HIAS “stationed a representative on Ellis Island, starting in 1909, in order to assist arriving Yiddish-speaking immigrants. These people were guided through the immigration process, were represented by HIAS in cases where they were denied entry to the U.S. on grounds of illness, insanity or were liable to become a public charge and finally, were put in contact with relatives or sponsors in the U.S.”61
More than 140,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union were helped by HIAS in 1979 and in the late 1980s and reunited with their relatives.62
HIAS today offers assistance to non-Jewish refugees, including people from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Hungary, Iran, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Tunisia, Vietnam, and the successor states to the former Soviet Union. Most recently, HIAS attorneys have been helping refugees from Latin America seeking asylum in the US.63
Educational Opportunities
Sam Zwickel enrolled his children in the public schools in Brownsville, where a new curriculum stressed learning English, civics and citizenship, science, physical education, and mathematics. The three older Zwickel girls were among a huge number of children of immigrants who arrived in New York between 1880 and 1900. The New York public schools in that era were terribly overcrowded and poorly prepared to teach children from poor, non-English-speaking families.64
Before 1898, when William H. Maxwell became school superintendent, all immigrant schoolchildren who entered speaking no English were automatically placed in first grade regardless of age (Kindergarten was one of Maxwell’s innovations).
By the time the younger Zwickel children enrolled, a reform movement had begun to change the public schools for the better and they became a major resource for helping immigrants assimilate. Maxwell started a special program (called "steamer classes," named for the immigrant passenger ships) to teach English to immigrant children as soon as they enrolled in school. The program featured English-only classes. Children who could already read and write in their native language seemed to learn English faster. After about six months in a "steamer class," immigrant children were moved into a regular grade level class.65
The reforms didn’t solve all the problems in the New York public schools. A report in 1913 found serious overcrowding, half-time classes, and widespread truancy.
Sam’s children did better than many. On the whole, Jewish children were less truant, less likely to be held back a grade, more likely to earn high grades, and more apt to remain in school through the eighth grade than children of other immigrant groups. (8th Grade was the last year of grade school; high school was not mandatory and there were few of them available) One reason for the success of Jewish students in school was a cultural tradition of literacy and learning. The Jewish newcomers had a saying: “Land on Saturday, settle on Sunday, school on Monday, vote on Tuesday.”66 The pressure to help support the family, as well as the availability of many unskilled jobs, made work, not school, the route to success for many in America.67 Education was important to the Zwickels and two of Sam’s children grew up to become schoolteachers.
In addition to attending public school during the day, many Jewish children were expected to learn Hebrew and to study Jewish law. Jewish boys attended after-school and Sunday Hebrew schools to prepare them for participation in religious rituals and in the synagogue. Girls got some religious education, but not as much as the boys; they focused on preparing for their future adult roles as keepers of kosher homes and parents.
The end of the written record
The farthest back I can trace my Zwickel family in Galicia is the record of the death of my great-grandfather, Eizik Yitzhak Kalonymus Zwickel.68 His parents were listed as Wolf and Rosa Zwickel who resided in Dubno69, in Russia, about 45 miles northeast of Załośce. This is the only reference I found to Wolf and Rosa. The record of Eisik’s death indicates he was born in 1819, about the time that Jews living in Galicia and Russia were ordered to take family names and before they kept written records of births and deaths.
It is possible the Zwickels may have originally come from Russia, but while the name Zwickel can be found in many towns around Załośce and Zolochev, it does not appear in any of the records of Dubno.
Eisik (1819–1887) and his wife Tsirl Chana Orgel (1813–1890) lived in Załośce, Galicia, an area both Zwickel and Orgel families were already established. Tsirl Chana’s parents were Abraham (1797–1848) and Chaya Orgel from Załośce.
2. Before the Written Record
Written records from Galicia allowed me to trace my family back to the early 1800s, when Jews began to adopt family names. Three things made it possible for me to trace my Zwickel ancestors back before the time they had a family name and started keeping written records. The first was a DNA test, the second was knowledge of Jewish history, and the third was a name.
The DNA test - Haplogroups
When a man has a DNA test, the results make it possible to trace his ancestry on both his father’s and his mother’s sides.
My Zwickel paternal haplogroup is Q1b, more specifically Q-M378, which is a subgroup found in about 5% of Ashkenazi (northern European) Jewish men. {from https://www.familytreedna.com/groups/jewish-q/about/background}
My maternal DNA haplogroup is K1a1b1a, which is considered specific especially to Ashkenazi Jews, whose roots lie in central and eastern Europe. About 1.7 million—about 20% of the Ashkenazi living today—share the K1a1b1a haplogroup. Experts say this suggests that K1a1b1a arose in the Near East some 2,000 to 3,000 years ago, and that everyone who shares it today may have shared a common ancestor as recently as 700 years ago.
My DNA test concluded that on both my father’s and my mother’s sides, my ancestry is 98.5% Ashkenazi Jewish.
The Name Kalonymos
The second clue to understanding my family history came from the Find-a-grave.com website, where I found several Zwickels buried in Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, including the graves of my grandfather Sam Zwickel and his first wife Züssel.
The site had a photo of their tombstones, side by side. Sam’s tombstone contained a surprise. The tombstone says my great-grandfather’s Hebrew name was Shmuel ben Yitzhak Kalonymos. Shmuel is Hebrew for Samuel. ben is “son of”. Yitzhak is Hebrew for Isaac. The name Kalonymos was a mystery.
In the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition, children are named for deceased relatives. This re-use of given names is one way to trace family history and to find connections. Eastern European Jews went by a given name plus a patronymic—thus my grandfather’s name (in English) was Samuel son of Isaac Kalonymos. If he were called to read a prayer in the synagogue, he would be called by his Hebrew name, Shmuel ben Yitzhak Kalonymos. In his daily life, he would be called by his Yiddish name, Shmeel. He also went by Sam.
There are other Yitzhak Kalonymos Zwickels in my family—my uncle Isadore Zwickel’s Hebrew name was Yitzhak Kalonymos as were sons of my great-uncles Wolf Zwicker and Layzer Zwickel.
What is Kalonymos?
It turns out that Kalonymos is Greek for “good name”. Kalonymos was not originally a family name but a “kinnui” (כנוי)—a nickname, epithet, or special form of address. It is not clear what the kinnui Kalonymos refers to; it may mean that the named person has a good reputation, that he or she is “honorable, sincere, and honest”. Or it may mean the person has some special religious connection to God.
Over time the Greek name Kalonymos became a family name and there are written records that mention members by name, including many rabbis from the 2nd century CE on.
The first recorded Kalonymos in Europe was a scholar who appeared in Italy in the 700s. Because Kalonymos (Kαλώνυμος) is Greek, he probably came to Italy from Greece or from a Greek colony in Asia Minor.
Records show a Kalonymos living in Oria, Italy, in the Puglia/Apulia region (the southeast corner of the Italian “boot”). In the 800s, many other members of this Jewish family show up in written records, some of the most prominent living in Lucca in Tuscany on the west coast of Italy.
The Kalonymos family was extraordinary—the reason we know about them is because members were influential Rabbis, scholars, lyricists, composers of liturgical poetry, and powerful political leaders of the Jewish community. Historian Michael Bernet says, “half of the piyutim (poem-prayers) of the Ashkenazi Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) service were written by members of this family.” They were important enough to have their own page on Wikipedia and entries in the Jewish Encyclopedia, Encyclopaedia Judaica, and Encyclopædia Britannica.
Encyclopaedia Judaica says, “Two major events stand out in the [Kalonymos] family’s history: the migration of the family from southern Italy to Germany in the ninth century, and their leadership of the Jews in Germany during the Crusades, especially during the massacres of 1096 (during the First Crusade) and the subsequent upheaval of the 12th and 13th centuries, when they migrated to Eastern Europe.
A member of the Kalonymos family was invited by the Holy Roman Emperor in the 880s to head the Jewish community at Mayence (Mainz). This movement brought several thousand Jews who had been living in tiny groups in Italy and France to cities in Ashkenaz— Mainz, Speyer, Worms, Frankfurt, and Cologne—where they formed larger communities and began creating a new form of Jewish religious observance.
One of the earliest known members of the Kalonymos family, brought with him to Europe the old Yerushalmi (Jerusalem) Jewish rituals that eventually became Ashkenazi Judaism. He urged the European Jews to adopt the Yerushalmi rituals, which he claimed were more authentic than the Babylonian ones they were using. When Kalonymos was challenged, he produced a document, which still exists, explaining that the Yerushalmi rituals were authentic because he could trace their origins all the way back through the generations to the time of the Babylonian Exile (722 BCE). Modern-day Ashkenazi Judaism includes elements of both Jerusalem and Babylonian practice.
The DNA test - Ethnicity Estimate
Having had a DNA test, knowing the history of the Ashkenazi Jews, and having discovered the story of the Kalonymos family, I still wanted to find evidence to support the idea that the Zwickels are part of this illustrious family and that we can trace our history back many hundreds of years.
I chose to share my DNA test results with MyHeritage. They compare various SNPs in their databases to create an “Ethnicity Estimate” According to this Ethnicity Estimate, I am 81.4% Ashkenazi Jewish, 10.9% Greek, 4.8% Italian, 2.2% Middle Eastern, and 0.7% Iberian.If this is at all accurate, it demonstrates a clear connection between the Zwickels and the Kalonymos family, which emigrated from the Middle East to Greece, from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to Ashkenaz, Germany—all over the course of 2400 years or so.
3. My Immigration Experience
A lot of evidence connects the Zwickel and Kalonymos families, but the Zwickels of Zolochev have no illustrious history to compare with the Kalonymos family. The Zwickels, since immigrating to the US in the 1800s, have produced people who stand out in their fields: education, business, law, and music. This is where my story begins.
I have spent the past few months reading about immigrants to America as part of a project I have been working on for DMRS-El Paso. Over time, the stories of the newcomers started to resonate with me. I thought I recognized the experience of disorientation, disconnection, and depression that I read about in accounts of the immigrants as similar to what I had gone through when I moved from my childhood home in Brooklyn to Wisconsin. More recently, I experienced these effects more intensely when I first visited China.
The dislocation of immigration affects people in different ways. Much depends on language and culture. I certainly had an easier time adjusting to living in the Midwest than my grandfather had adjusting to life in a new continent. It is not easy to adapt and some people never succeed. Historians think that as many as 20% of those who immigrated to the American colonies and the United States turned around and went back to their home countries.
My immigration: From Brooklyn to Wisconsin
After he married my mother in 1948, my father left Brownsville and moved to a better neighborhood in Brooklyn, where I grew up. In the post-WWII era, I was one of millions of baby boomers who flooded America’s schools in the 1950s and and seized control of the culture in the 1960s.
In 1976, I left Brooklyn and moved 1,000 miles west to Middleton, Wisconsin to attend graduate school at the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Social Work. The most difficult parts of this migration were: moving from the East Coast to the Midwest, leaving the Jewish culture in which I’d grown up, and becoming a professional social worker.
New York City to Madison, Wisconsin
Moving from a city of 7½ million people to a much smaller city of 170,000 in the midwest was disorienting. New York City in 1976 was a lively, multi-cultural world-class city and I felt very much connected to the culture. We went to the Broadway theaters, ate in famous restaurants, visited great museums, and commuted by subway and bus. New York was a fabulous place to live. It was also in the middle of an economic recession and beginning to see the effects of urban decay and narcotics trafficking. For these and other reasons, I was ready to move.
I was admitted to grad school in Madison and we flew to Wisconsin to see what it was like. The Madison area made a good first impression—the apple and cherry blossoms were in bloom. The cost of living was much lower than New York. We decided that we could make ourselves comfortable, at least for the two years it would take me to earn my MSSW degree. When we arrived in Wisconsin, we intended to return to New York when I graduated.
We moved in to an apartment complex and I soon learned that the “rules” in Wisconsin were different. In New York, you are expected to tip everyone who performs any kind of service for you. In Wisconsin, I was surprised to find that you are not expected to tip the guy from the phone company who hooks up your telephone. Or the building manager. Or the movers who carry in your furniture.
I was a bit wary of the infamous Wisconsin winters when I emigrated from New York. I went to college about 150 miles northwest of Brooklyn in a part of New York State that usually gets a lot of snow and has cold winter temperatures, so I thought I would be able to adjust to Wisconsin. The first winter we lived in Wisconsin the area had a few days of record low temperatures—way below zero and windy. The second winter we had a record snowfall. I learned to hunker down and wait out the storm. I wore layers and waited until the wind died down to dig out my car. Even our dog got used to hopping through the deep snows.
People in New York, and Brooklyn in particular, have a reputation for being loud, brusk, and opinionated, sometimes to the point of rudeness. In Wisconsin, people were friendly and polite. I learned, from a grad school colleague, that I was not making a good first impression. One day, a fellow student asked me, “Steven, how come you are angry all the time?” {Another lesson for me: It is considered OK for social workers to ask personal questions like this.}. I denied being angry and insisted that I was enjoying my time in Madison and in grad school. I was told that, because I spoke in a loud voice, I talked fast, and I gestured a lot with my hands, people in Wisconsin saw me as angry. I tried to explain that that’s how people in New York talk, “Eight million people talking at the same time; you have to get your words out fast and loud and move your hands for emphasis.” I had to adjust if I wanted to fit in.
Members of my family did not drink a lot of alcohol and I don’t think I ever saw anyone drunk until I went to college. We didn’t have a “local tavern” and my parents never brought beer home from the supermarket. I was very surprised at the drinking culture I found when I moved to Wisconsin, where “going drinking” is considered a regular social activity. It took me a while to realize that attitudes towards drinking, getting drunk, and abusing alcohol were completely different in Wisconsin. Almost ¼ of the people in Wisconsin are binge drinkers whose drinking affects many aspects of life in the state. The percentage of the population in Wisconsin that is alcohol-dependent is much, much higher than that of New York. Unfortunately, the UW-Madison School of Social Work did not require students to take any courses related to alcoholism or drug abuse. It wasn’t until I was in practice that I realized the vast extent of the problem—it affects not only the user, but his or her family, coworkers, employers, law enforcement, the court system, and the healthcare system.
Living among the gentiles
My family was not Orthodox, but we did observe the important Jewish holidays. And being Jewish in New York means you are part of a fairly large and influential minority group. Most of my friends were Jewish although my public school classes had both Jews and non-Jews. So many of the students and teachers in New York were Jewish that the public schools were closed for the major religious holidays. It was kind of like being in a Jewish cultural bubble outside of the culture of the gentile majority of Americans. I never learned any Christmas carols, decorated a tree, or eagerly waited for Santa to visit. Easter and Christmas were holidays for other people.
Although my parents and grandparents all knew Yiddish, I never learned to speak it until I was in my 60s. My parents, both schoolteachers, were adament that I should speak and write proper English. When I asked my father to teach me some Yiddish, he refused. “That’s the language of the old country. Focus on English and learn Hebrew, because that’s what is used in Israel and in the synagogue.” But it was impossible not to pick up a few words of Yiddish in New York, where everyone, regardless of who they were or where they came from, seemed to use them. In Wisconsin, I found I had to translate some words into English before I spoke.
In some ways, emigrating to Wisconsin was like moving to a foreign country. New York shut down on Jewish holidays; in Wisconsin no one seemed to know what a religious holiday was. In December, people in Wisconsin kept wishing me a “Merry Christmas.” Didn’t they realize that not everyone celebrates that holiday? I stopped getting offended at this when I realized they were well-meaning and being “midwestern” friendly.
I tried to maintain my connections to Brooklyn and New York, but while I continued (and continue) to feel a strong bond with my Jewish heritage, I tried, but did not feel connected to the Jewish synagogues in Wisconsin and, over time, I stopped being observant. In moving from New York to Wisconsin I lost my sense of being part of a Jewish community.
Social work as a career
Starting graduate studies in social work after three grueling years in law school required a major shift in my thinking. Grad school was not at all like law school. Studying law required memorizing rules—thousands of them—the reasons for those rules, the exceptions to the rules, and the exceptions to the exceptions. Grades were based solely on final exams, so you got no feedback at all until after the semester ended. In New York, law students also have to worry about taking the state Bar exam—a major hurdle to becoming a practicing attorney.
Learning to be a social worker meant shifting from working with rules to learning how to work with people. As someone who was older (five years out of college), as a New Yorker, and as someone who already had an advanced degree, I was an outsider. In 1976, it also meant that I would be a man working in what was traditionally a woman’s field, another factor that made me an outsider. Becoming a social worker meant that I had to lower my income expectations. Social workers, even agency administrators, make a fraction of what lawyers make.
The biggest change for me in becoming a social worker was learning to talk openly about feelings. My parents’ generation had gone through the Great Depression and World War II and they had done so without complaining out loud or discussing their emotions. I had to learn to talk about how I felt without worrying about being discounted or mocked. It took me a long time before I felt comfortable opening up to others, but I think it made me a better social worker and a better person.
3 “On 26 August 1827, [Tsar] Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855) issued his Ustav rekrutskoi povinnosti (Statute on Conscription Duty) making Jews in Russia liable to personal army service and canceling their prior privilege of providing money ransom instead of conscripts…” <yivoencyclopedia.org>
4 ANU Museum of the Jewish People [Beit Hatfutsot] “ZWICKEL Origin of surname” <https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e224496/Family_Name/ZWICKEL>
5 YIVO Transliteration Chart available online at <https://jart.biu.ac.il/files/jart/forms/yivo_transliteration_chart.pdf>
6 Galicia (pronounced Gal-eetz-ee-ya) comprised southeastern Poland and western Ukraine.
10 Latifundia (magnate estates) Latin term for huge landed estates covering dozens of towns and farms owned by the wealthiest and most powerful members of the nobility; a Polish magnate latifundium (singular) would include agriculture, mining, fishing, mills, brewing, and commercial establishments. The laborers on magnate estates were called serfs.
17 Beit Hatfutsot: the Museum of the Jewish People. Jewish Communities of Austria “After 1867— After the Emancipation” 2016 https://www.bh.org.il/jewish-spotlight/austria/modern-era/history/after-1867/
18 Fritz, Judith [translation: David Wright] Antisemitism: A historical definition https://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/antisemitism-historical-definition
“Around the turn of the century anti-Semitism entered the political agenda and became part of the ideological programme and guiding principle behind political activities. It was based on an ideology that stigmatised Jews as “different” and as a threat to society. In this, the 1880s represented a reversal of public opinion. Antisemitism became a social movement that increasingly dominated the everyday life of Jews. The change was advanced by an anti-Semitic rhetoric that mobilised the people against the Jewish population, propagating an anti-Semitic world view and supported by more and more circles of society.This change of mood took place in all the countries of central Europe. The disproportionate distribution of the Jewish population in certain fields of the economy and society was used as an argument for an anti-Semitic stance, and Jews were presented as being the cause of social problems. … Antisemitic agitation was also expressed in word combinations such as "stock exchange, department store or money-Jews". At the same time, the exclusion of the Jews was pursued on the basis of nationalist arguments. Despite decades of assimilation, Jews were categorised as "aliens" by the increasingly powerful anti-Semitic movement of the end of the 19th century.”
19 Wrobel, Piotr “The Jews of Galicia under Austrian-Polish Rule, 1867-1918”. (1994 Austrian History Yearbook, 25) pp. 97-138.
20 Jewish life in Tsarist Russia:
Russian anti-Jewish feeling dates back to the middle ages. Tsars, like Ivan IV (the Terrible) considered Jews to be the enemies of Christ. When Ivan's army occupied the Polish city of Polotzk in 1563, which had a large and prosperous Jewish community, all local Jews were ordered to convert to the Orthodox faith. Those who resisted were either drowned in the Dvina River or burned at the stake. Russian rulers limited the areas in which Jews could live, the professions they could engage in, and the property they could own. Russian Jews were restricted to living in that area called the Russian Pale and were not permitted to settle in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.
The worst facets of Russian anti-Semitism were forced conscription, limited marriage licenses, and viscious progroms.
Quotas set by the Russian Army led to Jewish boys being kidnapped and drafted into the army as young as 12 or 13 to serve for 25 years. Many were forced to convert to Christianity. {Leeson, Dan “Military Conscription in Russia in the 19th Century” <http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/ru-mil.txt> }.
Restrictions on the number of marriage licenses issued to Jews were designed to limit the number of Jews living in Russia. These were painful because they prevented young people from fulfilling the Biblical command to “Be fruitful and multiply.”
Pogroms were mob attacks on Jewish communities that included looting, rapes, and killings. The first extensive pogroms followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. Although the assassin was not a Jew, and only one Jew was associated with him, false rumours aroused Russian mobs in more than 200 cities and towns to attack Jews and destroy their property. Pograms became more common with the encouragement of Tsarist authorities. <https://www.britannica.com/topic/pogrom>
21 Zelig may have been Yudah’s son and not his brother.
22 Hansen, Marcus. L. The Atlantic Migration; (1940, Harvard University Press/2001, Simon Publications) p. 152
23 Hansen, Marcus. L. The Atlantic Migration; p. 154
24 Also known as: Zaliztsi, Zalozhtsy, Zilozitz, Zalozhtsy-Stare, Zalozhtse, Zalos'tse Stare, Zaliztsy, Zaloscie, Zaloshts, Zalozhtza, Zalozitz, Zalozci. http://www.geshergalicia.org/towns/zaliztsi/. Some members of the extended family lived in Zolochev (also called Zlozcow)
25 Travelers leaving Russia for Austria and other parts of Europe, went through a “time warp”; Russia was almost two weeks behind the rest of the western world. The modern (from 1582) Gregorian calendar was implemented in Russia on 14 February 1918. Thus, Wednesday, 31 January 1918, was followed by Thursday, 14 February 1918, dropping 13 days from the calendar.
26 http://kehilalinks.jewishgen.org/zalosce/PGS_Zalozce.htm entry for Założce
27 Apparently “special trains and reduced rates” were available to emigrants heading to Bremen. Hansen, Marcus. L. The Atlantic Migration; (1940, Harvard University Press/2001, Simon Publications) p.291
28 A lengthy description of the journey to the seaport can be found in Howe, Irving World of our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. available online at https://archive.org/details/worldofourfather00irvi pp36-39.
29 Modern-day walking directions (Google Maps) avoid the cities (except for Berlin) and follow a more direct route, which is 800 miles long and is estimated to take 261 hours. <https://go.wisc.edu/52vfp3>
30 Sam was an observant Jew, so he may have avoided traveling on the Sabbath, that is from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. That would have added another week to his trip.
31 Hansen, Marcus. L. The Atlantic Migration; p.291
32 By 1898, ships carrying emigrants from Bremen were sailing on a regular schedule, leaving on the first and fifteenth of the month. Sam’s ship may have left a day early either because it was sold out or the captain wanted to take advantage of the tides. Hansen, Marcus. L. The Atlantic Migration; p.291
33 Steerage is not where cattle were transported. Steerage is the lower deck of a ship, where ropes and steering tackle ran through the space to the rudder. Steamship steerage decks were the lowest cost and lowest class (usually 3rd) of travel for immigrants to America. More on traveling in steerage can be found at The Immigration Commission: Steerage conditions, importation and harboring of women for immoral purposes, immigrant homes and aid societies, immigrant banks United States. Washington : US Govt. print. off., 1911.<https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo1.ark:/13960/t81j9zn3s>
34 Howe, Irving World of our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. available online at https://archive.org/details/worldofourfather00irvi Ch. 3 The Ordeal of Steerage
35 wikipedia.org entry for “Demographics of Ukraine”. Ukraine’s population declined during the 20th Century (because of wars, revolutions, famines) and continues to decline in the 21st (“The country's population has been declining since the 1990s because of a high emigration rate, coupled with high death rates and low birth rates. Life expectancy is falling, and Ukraine suffers a high mortality rate from environmental pollution, poor diets, widespread smoking, extensive alcoholism and deteriorating medical care”).
36 Contrary to a popular myth, immigrants’ names were not changed at Ellis Island. An immigrant who wanted to adopt an “American” name did so when applying for naturalization.
37 Immigration and Deportation at Ellis Island <https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/goldman-immigration-and-deportation-ellis-island/ >
38 1900 United States Census
39 Kessner, T. The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City, 1880-1915. (1977, New York: Oxford UP). Several letters written by Sam Zwickel in Yiddish are in my possession. SBZ
40 By 1905 there were seven Yiddish daily newspapers in the United States and countless weeklies, and New York was the largest Yiddish book market in the world, reported in: Bernheimer, Charles Seligman, The Russian Jew in the United States: Studies of Social Conditions in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, with a Description of Rural Settlements. (1905, Philadelphia: J. C. Winston Co.)
41 US Customs and Border Protection “History>Timeline” <https://www.cbp.gov/about/history/timeline/timeline-date/june-29-1906>
42 Bein, Jackie “Becoming a Citizen in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries” (November 2, 2016; Museum at Eldridge Street) <https://www.eldridgestreet.org/history/becoming-a-citizen-in-the-late-19th-and-early-20th-centuries/>
43 The Brooklyn Historic Railway Association “History of the Streetcar” <http://www.brooklynrail.net/info_streetcar.html>
44 Layzer is a nickname for Eliezer {Hebrew for “help of God”} Breina is Yiddish for brown and refers to the color of her hair.
45 Soyer, Daniel. “The Early Years of the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn.” In Jews of Brooklyn, edited by Ilana Abramovitch and Seán Galvin. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2002.
46 "Brownsville," The Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative, Brooklyn Historical Society, <https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/napoli13/brooklyn-jews/#Browns>
47 Williams, Keith “Brownsville and the curse of geography” The Weekly Nabe <http://theweeklynabe.com/2012/06/15/brownsville-brooklyn-and-the-curse-of-geography/>
48 Züssel is Yiddish for little, sweet one.
49 Züssel’s Knopfholz relatives in Galicia left before the Nazi Holocaust. They settled in Brazil in the 1930s, where many family members still live.
50 Soyer, Daniel “The Early Years of the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn.” in Jews of Brooklyn, edited by Ilana Abramovitch and Seán Galvin. Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2002 cited in Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative “Brownsville” <https://brooklynjewish.org/neighborhoods/brownsville-brooklyn/ >
51 Hebrew Educational Society (HES) https://www.thehes.org/
52 Landsman is Yiddish for a man from the same town, region, or country as the speaker. The plural is landslayt. A female may be called a landsfroy (plural landsfroyen). A landsmanshaft is an organization of landslayt. The plural of landsmanshaft is landsmanshaftn. from Soyer, Daniel Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880–1939: Jewish landsmanshaftn in American culture (1997 Harvard College; Cambridge, MA) /(2001 Wayne State University Press; Detroit) <https://digital.library.wayne.edu/item/wayne:WayneStateUniversityPress4438/analysis>
53 Landsmanshaftn “Immigrants from the same towns came together for fun and charity” from Sachar, Howard M. A History of the Jews in America (1992 Knopf) ISBN 978-0394573533 <https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/landsmanshaftn/>
54 Soyer, Daniel Jewish Immigrant Associations
55 KUV=Kranken Untershtitsung Verein, literally “Illness Undertaking Association” or Sick Benefit Society
56 The Jewish Communal Register of New York City, 1917-1918 (1918, Jewish Community of New York City)
57 Soyer, Daniel. Jewish Immigrant Associations and American Identity in New York, 1880-1939 - Jewish Landsmanshaftn in American Culture. (1997, Wayne State University Press: Detroit) cited in wikipedia.org entry for “Landsmanshaftn”
58 wikipedia.org entry for “Landsmanshaftn”
59 Weinstein, Jonah Mapping Yiddish New York: A Columbia University Project “The Workmen’s Circle” (2016; Columbia University Jewish Studies: NY) <http://jewishstudiescolumbia.com/myny/places/the-workmens-circle/>
60 A different origin is described on the American Jewish Historical Society website at <https://ajhs.org/hias-timeline> “On December 3, 1902, a mutual aid society (landsmanshaften), known as the “Voliner Zhitomirer Aid Society," was organized in the store of Max Meyerson. The name was soon changed to Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, known as HIAS, and absorbed two similar organizations….”
61 YIVO Institute for Jewish Research “HIAS ARCHIVE: HIAS Ellis Island Bureau” <http://www.yivoarchives.org/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=33821>
62 HIAS “History” https://www.hias.org/who/history
63 HIAS “History” https://www.hias.org/who/history
64 Martz, Carlton “Educating European Immigrant Children Before World War I” Educational Horizons, Spring 1993, Vol. 71, No. 3, AMERICA (Spring 1993), pp. 139-141 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/42925006>
65 Martz, Carlton “Educating European Immigrant Children Before World War I” p 140
66 Land oyf shabes, bafrayen oyf zuntik, shule oyf mantag, shtimen oyf dinstag.
לאַנד אויף שבת, באַפרייַען אויף זונטיק, שולע אויף מאנטאג, שטימען אויף דינסטאג
67 Martz, Carlton “Educating European Immigrant Children Before World War I” p 141
68 Eisik “Isaac” died in Załośce, Galicia on June 27, 1887.
69 Dubno "Ду́бно", Russia (now Ukraine). Dubno is the city the Cossacks attacked in the climax of the 1962 movie Taras Bulba.
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