The Fusgeyers, Part III: What Came Afterwards

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Amy

In my last two posts, I wrote about the vast emigration of Jews from Romania between the late nineteenth century and World War I in the face of widespread anti-Semitism and poverty. According to one source, almost thirty percent of Romanian Jews migrated to the United States or Canada between 1871 and 1914; many others migrated to what was then Palestine.[1] Wikipedia estimates that about 70,000 Jews emigrated from Romania, almost a quarter of the total Romanian Jewish population in that period.

Many of those who left were part of the Fusgeyer movement, groups who walked from their home towns across Romania to escape, often depending on donations raised by entertaining the crowds in towns throughout their route to freedom. My grandfather was one of these walkers, and so perhaps were his siblings, cousins and other family members, though I’ve not heard any other descendant report that their grandparent walked across Romania. According to Culiner, there are no statistics on how many people were a part of this movement or how long it lasted. Groups ranged in size from forty people to 300 people, and in 1903 about 200 to 300 Jews were leaving Romania each week, many on foot. (Culiner, p. 20).

Although Jacob Finkelstein’s report of the experiences of his 1900 Fusgeyer group painted a generally rosy picture of their trek, being welcomed and well-fed in most places they visited, other groups faced greater struggles. One observer reported that he saw groups where people were famished, in some cases starving, and living in horrible conditions. He wrote:

One has to imagine 300 people, men, women and children wandering through the cemetery [where they were then living] like famished wolves, burnt by the sun during the day, tormented by mosquitoes in the night, all three hundred of them with bare feet, sick, some moaning, others crying: fever-racked women who are incapable of feeding their young, the children pale and suffering.[2]

Is it any wonder that my grandfather never talked about his life in Romania, other than to mention the music and beautiful horses he remembered? I’ve asked many of my newly-found Rosenzweig and Goldschlager cousins if they knew anything about their ancestors’ lives in the “old country,” and the response I’ve heard over and over is that their grandparent never wanted to talk about those days, but wanted to focus on the present and the future. Given the conditions they endured both living in Romania and leaving it, why would they want to remember any of it?

Despite this large-scale emigration of Jews before World War I, there were close to 800,000 Jews remaining in Romania at the end of that war. (This large increase resulted from the addition of Bukovina, Transylvania, and Bessarabia to the territory controlled by Romania in accordance with the terms of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference after World War I.)

the death train from Iaşi (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By the end of World War II, that community had been further decimated. Approximately 300,000 Jews were murdered in the Holocaust between 1941 and 1944 by the Romanian government, the largest number of people killed by any Nazi ally other than Germany itself. Nevertheless, unlike in many other countries in Europe, the majority of the Jews in Romania survived the war. Estimates vary, but approximately 300,000 Romanian Jews survived. Most, however, did not return to or remain very long in Romania. The Communist era resulted in further reduction of the Jewish population with many who had returned emigrating to Israel or the United States or elsewhere. Wikipedia includes this chart of the declining population of Jews in Romania:

Historical population
Year	Pop.	±%
1866	134,168	—
1887	300,000	+123.6%
1899	256,588	−14.5%
1930	728,115	+183.8%
1956	146,264	−79.9%
1966	42,888	−70.7%
1977	24,667	−42.5%
1992	8,955	−63.7%
2002	5,785	−35.4%
2011	3,271	−43.5%
Censuses in 1948, 1956, 1966, 1977, 1992, 2002 and 2011 covered Romania’s present-day territory Source: Demographic history of Romania

These facts are important in order to put into context my next post: what Romania is like today, as seen through Jill Culiner’s eyes in her book Finding Home and through Stuart Tower’s eyes as depicted in his photographs of Romania.

[1] Joseph Kissman, “The Immigration of Romanian Jews Up to 1914,” YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science (New York 1947-1948), p. 165, as cited in Jill Culiner, Finding Home: In the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers (Sumach Press 2004), p. 19.

[2] Isaac Astruc, “Israelites de Roumanie,” p. 43, as translated by and quoted by Culiner, p. 23.

The Fusgeyers, Part II: How They Did It

Posted on April 28, 2014 by Amy

A Group of Fusgeyers from Iasi, c. 1900 http://epyc.yivo.org/content/photos/14_q_RM-RUMANI-4_lg.jpg

Yesterday’s post described some of the reasons that Jews like my grandfather and his relatives decided to leave Romania in the early years of the 20^th century: rampant anti-Semitism, poverty, violence, false accusations, and laws depriving Jews of access to education and to most means of earning a living as well as denying them the legal rights of citizens. Thousands of Jews left Romania between 1900 and 1910, many of them on foot, including my grandfather. In both The Wayfarers by Stuart Tower and Finding Home by Jill Culiner, there are vivid descriptions of how these people managed to accomplish the task of walking about 1500 miles to cross the border from their homes in eastern Romania to Hungary or Galicia, where many then caught trains that would eventually bring them to the ports where they could sail to the United States.

Both Tower and Culiner relied heavily on the unpublished manuscript written by Jacob Finkelstein around 1942, describing his personal experience as a member of the first group of Fusgeyers. Finkelstein’s memoir appears to be the most important primary source regarding the Fusgeyers, and Culiner begins most of her chapters with an excerpt from that manuscript. The first group of Fusgeyers walked out of Romania in 1900, traveling by foot from Barlad to Predeal and crossing into Hungary. As detailed in both Tower’s and Culiner’s books and as described by Finkelstein, that first group was an outgrowth of a club of young people in Barlad who put on theatrical works to raise money for charitable causes. Members of the group decided that they could use their talents to raise money to pay for their travels out of Romania. They raised some initial money through donations and from fees collected from those who wished to join them, and eventually there were seventy-five men and three women who joined the group and left Barlad in April, 1900.

Barlad, Romania

Română: Timisul de Jos,Predeal,Brasov,Romania. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One person was selected to be the leader of the group, and others were appointed to various roles: treasurer, medical care, scouts, and security. They had flyers printed to distribute in the towns they planned to visit, and the people of Barlad provided not only financial support, but food and supplies to the group. The group then walked from town to town across Romania, often being treated very well; in some places people provided them with food, shelter, and generous donations. The group would stage musical performances to raise money. Many newspapers publicized the movement, bringing even more donations and larger audiences to greet and support the Fusgeyers. Moreover, this first group inspired new groups to form and to leave their homes as well. My grandfather, who loved music and was smart and funny, might very well have been one of the Fusgeyers who left Iasi in 1904.

Sometimes, however, the group met up with hostility. In Ramnicu Sarat, the police confiscated the passports of that first Barlad group, telling them to keep themselves from being noticed. The passports were, however, returned once they left the town. The group was threatened with arrest if they entered the town of Mizil, so they stayed out, sleeping in tents in the rain instead, and they were told to avoid the next town as well, resulting in another night of sleeping in the rain. There was even trouble within the group; money was wrongfully taken by one of the group representatives. Overall, however, at least according to Finkelstein, his group’s experience was a huge success—enabling not only that group to escape, but also inspiring thousands of other Romanians to do the same.

I cannot capture or describe all the details of the experiences of the Fusgeyers. All I have as primary material in Finkelstein’s memoir, but Stuart Tower’s book takes the skeleton of facts provided by Finkelstein and builds from those facts a novelized version of that experience that helps to bring to life the Fusgeyers’ trek through Romania. He developed characters and storylines that add an extra layer of humanity to this basic story.

The Wayfarers (Paperback) ~ Stuart Tower (Author) Cover Art

When I was doing some additional research about the Fusgeyers yesterday, I happened upon a website that described plans to turn Tower’s novel into a documentary about the Fusgeyers. I did not realize it at first, but the website was a page on Kickstarter, a crowd-sourced fundraising site that helps people raise funds for private projects—in the arts and otherwise. The Kickstarter page for The Wayfarers movie had not yet attracted any donors. I made a small donation and also left a comment for the contact person of the page, Ron Richard, explaining my interest and expressing my concern that there had not yet been any other donations for the project.

I have heard back now both from Ron Richard and from Stuart Tower, the author of The Wayfarers. Tower sent me some wonderful photographs of Romania from a Fusgeyer tour he ran in 2005, and I am hoping to get permission to post some of those photos here. If any of you would also like to help Ron Richard and Stuart Tower make this film about the Romanian Fusgeyers, please check out their Kickstarter site at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1552736981/the-wayfarers-the-story-of-the-fusgeyers?ref=live It may be the best opportunity many of us have to see Romania and to understand better the experiences of our ancestors.

Jill Culiner’s book takes a different approach to exploring the Fusgeyer experience. After reading Finkelstein’s memoir, she decided to re-enact the walk of the Fusgeyers, also walking from Berlad to Predeal, but not with a large group, just with one companion. Her experiences doing this provide a chilling post-script to the story of the Jews in Romania, one that I found moving and haunting even re-reading it. I will post more about her book and her experiences tomorrow.

The Fusgeyers: Why They Left Romania

Posted on April 27, 2014 by Amy

Isadore Goldschlager

“Grandpa walked out of Romania to escape from the Romanian army.” That was the one story I knew about my grandfather’s life before he came to the US as a teenager. I knew a few other snippets about him in general—that he loved music and animals, that he knew multiple languages, that he was a union activist and very left-wing in his political views, that he was a milkman, and that he was a terrible tease and had a great sense of humor. But the story about him walking out of Romania was the one that always intrigued me the most. I would ask my mother questions: Did he go alone? Where did he walk to? How did he get to the United States? But she knew nothing more than that barebones story—that as a teenager, he decided to run away from the army and walked across the country to escape.

When I first started researching my grandfather’s family, I wanted to know more about this story. Was it just a myth, or was there any factual basis to it? I did some initial research and learned that there was in fact an entire movement of Jews who left Romania by foot beginning in the early 1900s, around the same time my grandfather left (1904). These walkers were known as the Fusgeyers or “foot-goers.” Unfortunately, I could not find many sources of information about this movement. I found only two books devoted in depth to the topic. One is a novel called The Wayfarers by Stuart F. Tower; although written as a novel, it was inspired by the author’s actual search to learn about the Fusgeyers. It tells the story of an American man whose grandfather left Romania by foot. The grandson, now an adult, takes his own teenage son and his elderly father to Romania to learn more about his grandfather’s escape from Romania. The author describes long conversations that the lead character had with a rabbi living in Romania who was familiar with the Fusgeyer movement. Although this book gave me a taste of what the movement was like, I wanted to read something more fact-based and scholarly to understand and know more about the Fusgeyers.[1]

I found that in the second book about the Fusgeyers: Finding Home: In the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers by Jill Culiner. This book, a work of non-fiction, is fascinating and heart-breaking. After reading Jacob Finkelstein’s “Memoir of a Fusgeyer from Romania to America,” an unpublished Yiddish manuscript written around 1942 and held by the New York-based YIVO Institute, Culiner, not herself a descendant of Romanian Jewss, decided to retrace the routes taken by the Fusgeyers as they walked out of Romania. She actually walked these routes, visiting all the towns and cities along the way, asking current residents what they remembered of the Fusgeyers and of the Jewish communities that existed in those towns before the Holocaust. What she learned about the past and present in Romania is what makes the book both fascinating and heart-breaking, and in a subsequent post, I will write more about that. But first, I want to set the scene by describing what I learned from this book and elsewhere about why the Jews left Romania in the early 1900s.

As reported by Culiner and others[2], Jews had likely been living in the two principalities that became Romania, Walachia and Moldavia, since Roman times. The Jewish population increased significantly in the second half of the 14^th century when many Jews from Hungary and Poland immigrated there after being expelled from their home countries. (Wikipedia). Ironically, Romania eventually became one of the most anti-Semitic of the European countries. In 1640, the Church Codes of Walachia and Moldavia declared Jews heretics and banned all relationships between Christians and Jews. (Culiner, p. 15). During the 17^th and 18^th century, there were repeated “blood libel” accusations against Jews—being accused of killing Christian children for their blood— followed by violence and persecution. (Culiner, p. 15; Wikipedia).

The widespread anti-Semitism really came to a head in the mid-nineteenth century during the movement for Romanian independence and the unification of Walachia and Moldavia into the independent nation of Romania. As the report on Romanian anti-Semitism on file with Yad Vashem reports, after the Crimean War and the defeat of Russia, which had previously controlled Walachia and Moldavia, the European powers (primarily France and Britain) put a great deal of pressure on the leaders of the independence movement in the region to grant Jews full legal status in the new country. Although the leaders had originally argued for such rights during the uprisings against Russia, the external pressure created a great deal of resentment, and in the end the European powers backed off from insisting on full legal rights for the Jewish residents of the newly-united nation of Romania. (Yad Vashem report).

The Yad Vashem report continues: “A real explosion of openly expressed antisemitism occurred as the prospect of achieving national independence became more certain. During discussions of the new Constitution of 1866, Romanian leaders began to portray Jews as a principal obstacle to Romanian independence, prosperity, and culture.” As finally drafted, Article 7 of the new Constitution for Romania provided that “[t]he status of Romanian citizen is acquired, maintained, and forfeited in accordance with rules established through civil legislation. Only foreign individuals who are of the Christian rite may acquire Romanian citizenship.” Culiner described this development, saying that “anti-Semitism had now become part of the national identity.” (Culiner, p. 15)

Despite protests and outcry from western European countries, the new country persisted in its anti-Semitic views and practices. Between 1866 and 1900, a number of laws were enacted restricting the business and other activities of Jewish residents in Romania. Jews could not become officers in the military, customs officials, journalists, craftsmen or clerks. Jews could not vote or obtain licenses to sell alcohol. Jews could not own or cultivate land. Jews could not own or manage pharmacies. They could not work in psychiatric institutions or receive care as free patients in hospitals. Jews could not sell tobacco or soda water or certain baked goods. Fewer than ten percent of Jewish children were allowed to attend public schools, and Jews were prohibited from opening their own schools. Jews were not allowed to work as peddlers, which was sometimes interpreted to include owning shops. Jewish homes were randomly destroyed as “unsanitary.” (Culiner, pp. 16-17)

Culiner wrote: “Eventually, 20,000 Jews found themselves on the streets of Romania and dying of starvation. There were many suicides in Iasi, Bacu, and Roman….In 1899 and 1900, harvests were poor and a severe depression gripped the country. Anti-Semitic decrees were applied with new severity and anti-Jewish speeches were delivered in parliament. Riots took place in several towns, and…a pogrom broke out in Iasi.” (Culiner, pp. 17, 19) (See also Wikipedia and the Yad Vashem report on Anti-Semitism in Romania.)

That pogrom in Iasi was described in the American Jewish Yearbook of 1900: “For several hours there was fighting, merciless blows, pillaging and devastation, all under the paternal eyes of the police authorities and the army, which interfered only to hinder the Jews from defending themselves.”[3]

In 1900, my grandfather was twelve years old. He lived in Iasi. He experienced this horrible violence and hatred. By that time his uncle Gustave and his aunt Zusi had already left for America. Is it any surprise that this young teenager would have wanted to escape from his homeland and seek refuge someplace else?

Isadore age 27

As I will report in a later post, he and thousands of other Jews did leave, many on foot, walking out of Romania to find a better life. My grandfather followed his uncle and his aunt, who had left in the late 1880s, but he left alone, without his parents or siblings. His first cousin Srul Srulovici, who became Isador Adler, had left two years before him in 1902, also alone and without his parents and siblings. My grandfather left in 1904, and by 1910 the rest of his family—his siblings, mother and father and the rest of his Srulovici cousins—had also arrived. I don’t know the details of how any of them got out or whether they were also Fusgeyers, but they all followed their two oldest sons and brothers, both to be called Isadore in the United States.

So my grandfather left Romania on foot, but not only to escape the Romanian army. He escaped a life of poverty, of hatred, of discrimination. He was only sixteen, but he was brave enough, smart enough, and strong enough to get out of a place that held no future for him. He led his family to freedom. Whatever life brought them in America, and it wasn’t easy, it was better than what they had left behind.

[1] Apparently the novel is being turned into a documentary about the Fusgeyer movement. See https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1552736981/the-wayfarers-the-story-of-the-fusgeyers

[2] Wikipedia has a long and detailed article on the history of the Jews in Romania at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Romania. I also consulted other sources, such as a report on Romanian anti-Semitism filed on the Yad Vashem website at http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/about/events/pdf/report/english/1.1_roots_of_romanian_antisemitism.pdf

[3][3] “Romania since the Berlin Treaty,” The American Jewish Yearbook (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1900), p. 83, as quoted in Culiner, p, 19.

Gratitude

Posted on April 26, 2014 by Amy

I am sitting in North Truro on the Outer Cape, looking out at the bay and Provincetown. The Pilgrim Monument stands tall above

English: The Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, Massachusetts from the north. The Pilgrim Monument Museum can be seen in the foreground. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

everything else on the horizon, reminding us that this was the place where the Pilgrims first landed before making a permanent settlement in Plymouth, just across the bay. I have often walked near the steps where those first immigrants first walked on American soil. I have spent time trying to imagine what it must have looked like back then—before all the roads and houses and cars and tourists were here, when it was just open land, sea, forests, dunes, and the local tribe who lived here first. How magnificent it must have seemed, how frightening as well.

My own ancestors made their pilgrimages over two centuries later, and their first visions of America must have been far different from those of the Pilgrims—a crowded, dirty city, thousands of people, noisy streets, a jumble of different languages they could not understand. It must have been magnificent, but in a far different way, and certainly it was just as frightening.

I woke this morning, filled with gratitude. This has been a transitional week for me. I have not had much time to focus on research, and I am also in a holding pattern, waiting for documents and for some clues from relatives to help me make some breakthroughs. I’ve been busy with the end of the semester tasks, and I’ve been concerned about a dear friend. But this morning I am taking a moment to be grateful. My friend is feeling better. My students left me some wonderful gifts, including a large poster signed by them, wishing me well on my retirement. My exams are written, and the students are preparing to take them. And I am in the place I love best with the person I love best, staring at a scene that always brings me comfort and perspective. So I am grateful.

When I think about my life compared to the lives of my ancestors, of those who came to America back in the late 19^th, early 20^th century, how could I not be grateful? I get to travel to places out of choice, to see those places for pleasure, to experience the beauty in the world for the sake of that experience. They traveled because they had to—to escape from a difficult place and to attempt to create a better life somewhere else. I get to live where I want to live. In all my adult life, I have only lived in five different homes. One thing that has struck me as I’ve done my research is how often my ancestors moved. One cousin explained this by saying that every time a landlord raised the rent, the family would move, often not paying any rent due because they had no money. When I have moved, it has always been out of choice—to a bigger home, for a better job, for a better location—not because I had to move.

My ancestors probably never knew the concept of leisure time. Life was hard work all the time. Although my grandparents were able to take some time away in the country during the summers when my mother was a young child, those were short vacations, a brief respite away from the hot city. I have the luxury now of retiring and choosing every day how I will spend my time: Will it be yoga or the elliptical at the gym today? Will I take a class or tutor a child? Will I write my book or research my family? Should I do the NYTimes crossword puzzle or read a book? I still cannot fully grasp what that will be like on a daily basis, but I am so grateful that I will have that opportunity to figure out how to spend my time.

Often I take all my freedom for granted and forget how lucky I am. But today, sitting here, looking at the Pilgrim Monument, thinking of those Pilgrims and of my own ancestral pilgrims, I am filled with gratitude for all that those pilgrims and Pilgrims did, for all that I have, and for all the people I love.

A Personal Reflection: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Posted on April 23, 2014 by Amy

Yesterday was a turning point in my life. Since August, 1982, I have been a law professor. Over the course of thirty-two years, I have taught over 4000 students various law courses, including copyright law, trademark law, antitrust law and contracts. The students I’ve taught have been overall very hard-working, determined, and excited to be in law school. I’ve enjoyed every semester, though perhaps not every day that I’ve taught during those semesters. Sometimes I was tired, impatient, or disappointed; sometimes the students were bored or unprepared or frustrated. But those were the rare days. Almost all the time, I loved being in the classroom. I loved helping students to learn, laughing with them, pushing them to try harder, and delighting in their successes. It was never boring for me; it was almost always fun and rewarding.

Yesterday was my last day teaching law students. After thirty-two years, I’ve decided to retire from the law school faculty and pursue other interests, including but not limited to genealogy. I was not tired of the students or teaching, but it was time for a change. I hope to find new ways to use my skills and love of teaching as a volunteer, working with a different type of student, teaching something other than law. I want to learn new things myself. I want time to do the things that I’ve not been able to do while working full time. But I will miss teaching law students and preparing them for a profession that they are so excited and proud to enter.

Yesterday I said goodbye to my students. I got choked up. It caught me by surprise how emotional I was, how sad I felt. I thought I would want to celebrate. I’d been counting down the days all year. Until this last week. Then suddenly I no longer was counting the days. It suddenly felt scary and sad. Don’t get me wrong. I have no second thoughts; I know this is the right thing for me and the right time to do it. But after 32 years, if I didn’t feel a little sad, what would that say about those 32 years? As my brother-in-law once said in a different context, if it doesn’t hurt when it’s over, it could not have been worth very much.

Yesterday is over; today I am processing what it meant. But tomorrow I will start thinking about what is ahead. I still have exams to grade, recommendation letters to write, one more faculty meeting, and graduation to attend. But after that I get to start a brand new chapter of my life. The third chapter. Chapter One was preparing to be an adult: childhood, adolescence, and education. Chapter Two was being an adult: raising a family, owning a home, having a profession. Chapter Three? I don’t know what Chapter Three will bring. I hope it brings new challenges, new experiences, new discoveries. I hope it brings time to reflect, time to give back, time to be with those I love, time to learn and write and think and read—all the things I love best. I know that a big part of Chapter Three will be learning more about my ancestors, more about my family. I know that this blog will be a big part of it as well. All my life I have wanted to write. This is my chance. This is my time. Tomorrow is here; yesterday is over.

Assessment time

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Amy

It’s time for my periodic review of what I have learned and where I am going in my research. I keep a Word document with lists of things I need to do, but sometimes I need to step back and see the whole picture, then step forward and see the details.

English: Forest trees Part of the forest which is a bit more mature than some of the other parts along the path here. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On the Brotman side, I think I am in fairly good shape. I have found descendants of all but one of Joseph and Bessie Brotman’s children, although I am not in touch with all of the descendants. The only missing link is Sophie Brotman; I’ve had absolutely no luck finding any records for her. I don’t know when she arrived, whether she married and, if so, who she married, where she lived, where she died. And sadly, I don’t think I ever will. There is no one left alive to ask about Sophie; none of the descendants I’ve spoken with know anything about her. Perhaps one of Abraham’s descendants might know something, so I will contact Paula, the one Abraham descendant I’ve been in touch with, and see if she has ever heard of an aunt named Sophie.

Bessie

The big research area remaining for me on the Brotman side is finding out whether we are related to any other Brotmans, in particular the Brotmans who settled in Brotmanville. I am in touch with a few of Moses Brotman’s descendants, and one is a genealogist, so we plan to collaborate and see whether we can find the connection between our families. If we can, that may also lead me to other clues about where in Galicia Joseph and Bessie lived and to clues about other family members.

Moses Brotman—Joseph’s brother?

On the Goldschlager branch, I think I am also in fairly good shape. I have found the descendants of Moritz, my great-grandfather, and of Betty and David Goldschlager, my grandfather’s siblings, and I know about the lives of Betty and David and their children. I’d love to go back and research Moritz Goldschlager’s family, but since his parents died when he was a young child, there does not seem to be too much more I can learn. My Romanian researcher did not find anything more related to my Goldschlager relatives, so I may have reached the brick wall with respect to that line.

Moritz Goldschlager

On the other hand, the Rosenzweig branch, my great-grandmother Ghitla’s family, still has a number of unanswered questions. I have been able to learn a great deal about most of the children of David and Esther Rosenzweig, my great-great-grandparents, but Zusi Rosenzweig remains a mystery. Her descendants were not responsive to my inquiries, so I may have to find another way to get closure on Zusi and her son Nathan and her husband Harry Mintz. I’ve had better luck with Tillie Rosenzweig Strolowitz Adler and her children and grandchildren and have been in touch with two of her great-grandchildren. There are still some loose ends there, but for the most part I have been able to find a fair amount about the children of Tillie and Jankel and even about their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Ghitla Rosenzweig Goldschlager

As for the family of Gustave and Gussie Rosenzweig, I still have some open questions, mostly about the daughters Lillie, Lizzie and Ray. This week I spoke with one of Sarah’s granddaughters, and I am hoping that she will also be able to help me find out more about her grandmother’s sisters, but as of right now, I have not been able to find any of the descendants of Lillie, Lizzie or Ray.

So that’s where I am in this journey to find my mother’s family. I feel as though I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, though there is still plenty of tunnel to get through.

What do I do now besides continue to search for answers to the remaining questions? I have a number of thoughts.

For one, I want to continue to build the relationships I’ve made with all my new cousins on both sides of my mother’s family—the Brotmans and the Goldschlager/Rosenzweigs. Having found them, I don’t want to lose them again. Facebook and email make this so much easier, but it will still take effort. I also want to see if I can organize a meeting for the Rosenzweig/Goldschlager cousins like we had for the Brotmans earlier this month.

I also want to pull all my research together into a format that will make it more easily accessible. I’d like to tell the story of the Brotmans, Goldschlagers and Rosenzweigs as a chronological story so that someone can pick it up and get the whole story without having to jump from blog post to blog post, searching for the next discovery. That is a larger project, and I don’t even know how to start it, but that is what I see as my ultimate goal—to write the book that tells the stories so that our descendants will have it and know who their ancestors were.

And then there is the next huge research task: my father’s side. That will be a very different research experience. His family has been in this country for about fifty years longer than my mother’s family. They came from Germany and from England. They settled and lived in other places: Philadelphia, western Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New Mexico, among other places. There will be a lot more American and European records available, which will make the task both easier and harder. I’ve already traced one of my father’s lines back to the 1750s or so in Amsterdam, a full century earlier than I’ve been able to trace any of my mother’s relatives. I look forward to this research with some trepidation because of the size of the task ahead. But I am also excited by the idea that I have more discoveries, more stories, more understanding of my family and of myself ahead of me.

Gifts from Doing Genealogy: My Wonderful Cousins

Posted on April 20, 2014 by Amy

I have updated this post by adding a link at the end for additional pictures taken by Bruce, Jody and me. If anyone wants to add more, just send them to me.

Rachel “Ray” Rosenzweig: Can anyone remember anything else?

Posted on April 19, 2014 by Amy

I have had amazing luck in finding out something about the lives of all but one of Gustave and Gussie’s children. I have even been able to connect with descendants of many of them. There are still holes and unfinished stories for Lillie and Lizzie and Sarah, but I’ve at least been able to trace them through some part of their adult lives. The only child I have had no luck finding after she left the family home is Rachel or Ray, the youngest child.

I know Ray was born in 1904 and that through 1930 she was living with her mother in Brooklyn, but I have found nothing that reveals what happened to her after her mother died. I have not been able to find her on the 1940 census, on the NYC marriage index, or on the Social Security Death Index. I don’t know whether she had any descendants. I need some assistance.

A number of Gussie and Gustave’s descendants remember Ray, and I have been able to obtain these two photographs of Ray from the 1940s. I know she must have lived at least into the late 1960s since so many of her great-nieces and great-nephews have memories of her. One remembers that she moved to Florida at some point and thinks she married, but cannot remember her husband’s name. Another remembers that she lived in New Jersey and married someone with an Italian surname.

Now I am asking to look carefully at these two photos and see if they spark any specific memories—an occupation, a husband, a child, a residence, a date of death—anything that might help me find out more about the youngest child of Gustave and Gussie.

Ray

Hyman and Sophie Brotman’s Sons: A Family Album

Posted on April 18, 2014 by Amy

Sophie and Hyman Brotman

One of the benefits of getting to meet six of my Brotman second cousins was that I was able to obtain a lot more photographs of my Brotman relatives. All six of the living grandchildren of Sophie and Hyman Brotman, my grandmother’s older brother, were able to attend our “reunion”—the three children of Saul and Vicky Brotman and the three children of Manny and Freda Brotman. Sadly, the two daughters of Joseph Brotman, Hyman and Sophie’s oldest son, have passed away. But I now have a good collection of pictures of Hyman, Sophie, their three sons, and their grandchildren.

Hyman Brotman was born in Galicia and arrived with his mother, my great-grandmother Bessie, and his sister Tillie in 1891 when he was about eight years old. He lived on Ridge Street with his family until he married Sophie Weiss on March 12, 1904. Hyman and Sophie had three sons. Joseph Jacob was born on February 4, 1905, and was named for Hyman’s father, my great-grandfather Joseph Jacob Brotman. Their second son, Saul, was born on April 27, 1907, and their third son Emanuel or Manny was born on May 9, 1910.

Hyman worked at various occupations, including as a chauffeur and in the sweatshops of NYC, but in the early 1920s he and his family moved to Hoboken, NJ, where he opened a liquor store. My mother has childhood memories of visiting her uncle and aunt in Hoboken, though by that time the three boys were all grown, and sadly she has no memories of her cousins.

Hyman, Bruce and Sophie in the Hoboken liquor store

Bruce, Hyman and Sophie in the Hoboken liquor store

As their children reported, all three Brotman brothers were very close and very athletic. They were all excellent swimmers and loved competing against each other, always arguing over who was the fastest.

Saul Sophie Joe and Manny

Joe married Perle Gorlin on May 1, 1935, and they lived in Queens where Joe was employed as a salesman for Abbott Laboratories, according to the 1940 census. Joe was a pharmacist in New York, but later moved to Florida where he became involved in commercial real estate.

Joe and Perle Brotman 1940 census

Joe and Perle had two daughters, Barbara, born in 1939 and probably named for Bessie, who had died just five years earlier, and Merle or Miki, born in 1941. Here are some photos of Joe and Perle and other family members:

Perle, Joe and Sophie Brotman

Hyman (second from left) and Joe (far right) and two unknown men

Joe and Saul Brotman

From Front Center, Clockwise: Joel, Herman, Sophie, Joe, Perle, Manny, Freda, Denny, Saul , and Vicky Brotman

Saul Brotman was an excellent athlete, especially in swimming and handball. He graduated from Hoboken High School and started college at the New Jersey College of Pharmacy in 1926; he then transferred to and graduated from Panzer College, which has since merged with Montclair State University in New Jersey. He later got a master’s from Rutgers University.

1932 Panzer College yearbook

Saul at Panzer College

Saul

In a comment posted in response to an earlier blog post, Bruce wrote the following about how his parents Saul and Vicky met:

“In Manhattan Beach (Brooklyn) there was a beach club, Manhatten Private. It had pools, handball courts, tennis and other sports. My parents were playing handball, my parents were both fine athletes, but not with each other. The ball from my mom’s court was accidently hit toward my dad’s court some distance away. My mom called to my dad saying “ball please”. Dad picked it up and threw it to mom. He then turned to his cousin, with whom he was playing and said “I’m going to marry that girl”. That was about 1940 or 41 I guess. He asked her out several times but she refused. On December 7 1941 my cousin Mel was born. Somehow my father found out and went to the hospital. (Mel was mom’s older brother Al’s first child). Mom asked dad what he was doing there – he said that he thought she might need some help, noting that Pearl Harbor had just been attacked. She apparently knew at that moment that she loved him. The rest is history.”

Vicky Horowitz Brotman

Saul and Vicky were married in 1942.

Saul served in the US Army during World War II and won a handball championship while serving in the army. After the war, he became a teacher in New Jersey, where he coached many state championship teams. After 32 years as a teacher, he left teaching after being assaulted by the parent of one of his students. Saul then became the pension director for a union.

Saul in the army

Saul and Vicky 1940s

Saul and Vicky had three sons, Bruce, Ronald and Lester.

Les, Bruce and Ron

Bruce, Ron and Les Brotman

Saul, Bruce and Vicky at Bruce’s bar mtizvah

Saul remained a great athlete all his life. In fact, Bruce told me that when Saul was in his seventies, Bruce challenged him to a game of handball, thinking that he could easily beat his father. Instead, Saul soundly defeated his much younger son; he won four straight games, with Bruce unable to score a single point in any of the four games.

Saul and Bruce

Saul and Vicky

Manny, the youngest of Hyman and Sophie’s sons, was also an excellent athlete like his older brothers.

Manny (far left) at camp in 1925

Manny November 1928

Like his brother Saul, he began college at the New Jersey College of Pharmacy, but he transferred to the University of Iowa, from which he graduated.

Manny with his fraternity brothers at U Iowa

He also graduated from John Marshall Law School (New Jersey), which was later taken over by Seton Hall University. Manny became a member of the New Jersey bar in 1938.

Letter informing Manny that he has passed the New Jersey bar exam

Manny married Freda Feinman on December 22, 1940.

Freda and Manny’s wedding invitation 1940

Manny and Freda 1940s

Manny enlisted in the US Army in 1944 during World War II.

Manny Brotman

Manny practiced law for some time, but then joined J.I. Kislak Mortgage Corporation, a subsidiary of J.I. Kislak, Inc. J.I.Kislak, Inc. was a residential and commercial Realtor, originally based in Hoboken and then in Jersey City, and Kislak Mortgage was primarily a residential mortgage banking company, one of the largest in NJ at the time, based in Newark. He was president and then chairman of Kislak Mortgage for many years, was president of the Mortgage Bankers Association of NJ, and a long-time board member and two-term Treasurer of the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, where he received the Distinguished Service award. Kislak Realty, a commercial mortgage firm, where he became the president. He was often quoted as an expert on veteran’s housing and housing in general in various newspaper articles. Here is one example of an article that ran in several newspapers across the country: Lebanon_Daily_News_July_10__1971_Lebanon__PA_Manny_Brotman

Manny and Freda had three children: Joel, Denny and Bonnie. Here are some pictures of Manny and his family:

Manny, Joel and Freda

Denny, Bonnie and Freda

The Feinman and Brotman families June 16, 1932

The Feinman and Brotman families June 16, 1937

From left to right: Aron Feinman, Hyman Brotman, Mary Feinman, Sophie Brotman, Manny Brotman, Sam Feinman, Freda Feinman, Saul Brotman (according to the back of this photograph)

I did not know Hyman or Sophie or any of their sons, but I was very fortunate to meet six members of the next generation, my second cousins Bruce, Ron, Les, Joel, Denny, and Bonnie. They all made the effort to come to New York City, some from as far away as Florida and Ohio. I really enjoyed meeting and talking to each one of them and getting a chance to meet some of their children, four of whom also showed up during the course of the weekend.

What a wonderful tribute to their grandparents and parents that these cousins and their children cared enough about the extended family, including some second cousins they’d never met, to make such a united effort to come to New York so that we could all be together.

Six of Hyman and Sophie’s grandchildren and three of their great-grandchildren

April 17

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Amy

My cousin Jeff would have been 68 years old today, and it is over ten years ago that he died. I’ve written about him before—my oldest cousin, the one whom we all adored, the leader of our pack. I am older now than he ever got to be. He did not get to see his children graduate from high school or college, and he will not get to see them get married or have children. He was cheated, and so were all of us who loved him. So for Jeff, a photo collage of pictures, some that I’ve posted before, some that are new to the blog. These give me comfort, and I hope that they will for all of us who miss him.

Jeff was an active child from day one, always into mischief. I remember my aunt’s story about finding him on top of her high dresser when he was just a toddler. Somehow he had climbed from his crib all the way to the top and was sitting there when she found him.

Gussie and Jeff 1946

Jeff and Gussie c. 1946

Elaine and Jeff 1949

These next two pictures of Jeff make him look far more angelic than he ever was!

Jeff Lehrbaum 1952

Jeff 5 years old

Jeff and Beth c. 1954

One of my favorites—I am sitting with two of my favorite people, my Aunt Elaine and my cousin, her son Jeff.

My cousin Robin sent me these three. They were taken when Jeff came to visit them in West Hartford the summer after he graduated from high school. I was so sad that summer, knowing that Jeff would be moving far away (to upstate New York from where both our families lived in White Plains).

Sue and Jeff 1964

Jeff 1965

Jeff at Horizons 1965 or 1966

Jeff and Jim 1971 oldest cousin to youngest cousin

Jeff remained a big part of our lives even after he went to college and when he moved to Philadelphia after college, married and had children. I did not see him as often as when we were kids, but he was always there at family events, and he remained the leader of our pack and always will be.

The Family Album continued

Brotmanblog: A Family Journey

Adventures in Genealogy

The Fusgeyers, Part III: What Came Afterwards

The Fusgeyers, Part II: How They Did It

The Fusgeyers: Why They Left Romania

Gratitude

A Personal Reflection: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Assessment time

Gifts from Doing Genealogy: My Wonderful Cousins

Hyman and Sophie Brotman’s Sons: A Family Album

April 17

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