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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Welcome to the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research, Virtually. My name is Alex Weiser. I'm the director of Public programs of yivo, and we're really pleased to have you here for the second lecture in our Yiddish Civilization Lecture series. This is a series that brings together the students of our Yiddish language summer program with our general audience. And we're so pleased to have Annie Pond here giving the lecture today. Today's talk is called under the Tenement Immigrant and Migrant Families in New York. Before we get started, just say a brief word about Yivo. Yivo is a very special place for the contemplation and celebration of Jewish history and Jewish culture. We have an archive and a Library with over 23 million documents and over 400,000 books which researchers from around the world use. And in addition to making this material available, we celebrate and explore this culture in classes and exhibitions and in public programs like this one. So I hope that you'll stay in touch with Yivo and come to future events if you enjoy this. And thank you again for joining us. So today we'll be hearing from Annie Pollland. Annie Poland is a public historian, author, and the president of the Lower east side Tenement Museum. Annie, thank you so much for joining us.
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Thank you so much. Thank you, Alex. And it's wonderful to be here. I love yivo. And the title under the Tenement Rooftops actually comes from a Yiddish newspaper article in which Abraham Kahan, who was the editor of the Jewish daily Forward or the Forward, spoke about how the stories that happened under the tenement rooftops are stranger than fiction. And those were the stories that he wanted to collect. He was basically inspiring the people who lived on the Lower Efeid and in other tenement districts to send in their stories to the newspaper. And many of you have probably heard of the Bintelbreeve, where he would later create a column in which people wrote in questions and the editors would answer. But even before he did that, he was soliciting the stories of ordinary people. And I think at the Tenement Museum, which is on New York's Lower east side. And I'm here today from one of our tenements at 103 Orchard Street. We also aim to tell the stories of ordinary people and to look at the lens, to look at history through their eyes. I should also say that right behind me, you can see Delancey Street. In all also, there's like a little cast pillar which actually came from the Forward building. So I brought the Forward and the Lower east side to you. And what we wanted to do today was to talk a little bit about some of the stories that we tell at the Tenement Museum, but specifically reference YIVO's archives. So my colleague Chelsea Bracci is with me today, and we are going to look at our buildings, and we're going to look at sources and look at how stories are put together through them. I'm also curious if any of you have ever been to the Tenement Museum, but if you just, if you have a chance in the chat to kind of just enter whether you've been there or not, that's helpful and useful for me to know. Okay, so what you can see, for those of you who have been there, this will be a little bit of an introduction. And I see some of you have some of you been several times. On the left is 97 orchard. That was the first tenement that the museum started with in 1988. The building was built in 1863. And between 1863 and 1934, when it closed to residents, there were about 7,000 people who lived in, who lived in that building over time, not all at the same time, but over that span of years. In 1935, it closed to residents, but stores remained in the building. And so we also tell the history of the stores that were at the building as well. But one of the things that was always really important for the Tenement Museum is to be able to tell stories of more recent ways of immigrants and migrants. And so in about 2007, the Tenement Museum purchased another tenement on the corner of Orchard and Delancey Street. That's the building you see on your right. It's the building I'm in right now. And researched the stories of people who lived there and ended up telling the stories of a refugee family who had the parents had survived the Holocaust and moved to Little east side in 1947. And we're going to hear about that story today. Usually we also tell the story of a Puerto Rican family, the Faasbellas family, and the Wong family, a Chinese family. So that's the more recent exhibit. And we're going to look at stories from both 97 Orchard and 103 Orchard that focus on Yiddish sources to be and many of which came from the Yivo archives. So we'll tell a little bit about how we tell our stories based on the archives. And you can see in the next image, and I see that Malka has asked, what exactly is a tenement? A tenement technically comes from the Latin word tenere, which Means to hold. So it's like a holder. And it was first used in New York law in the 1860s. And specifically what a tenement means, according to New York law, any building that has more than that has three or more families sharing the building, but each with their own apartment, specifically each with their own kitchen. So technically, you can live on Park Avenue in New York and you're in a tenement apartment. But the tenements became associated with these crowded neighborhoods like the Lower east side, and specifically connected to kind of working class conditions. And so we don't use the word. We use the word tenement really to refer to these buildings that were built in the 19th century and early 20th century. Okay, so you can see here what we did is we imposed the picture of or juxtaposed the pictures of our tenements now in the archives. So I think that's like such an important way of thinking about the work we do. The first slide we saw was us on a map. We're very place based. Right? You're in a place. We're telling you about the history of that place. We're telling you the history of a family that lived in that apartment that we're in. That's really important. But behind the scenes, what's just as important in the construction of the story is not just the space, but the archives that give us insight on the choices and the situations that our families were in. So again today we'll be kind of moving backwards and forwards from the space and into the archives, specifically archival material that we got from NAIVA archives. All right, so we're going to go into the tenement and just be in the hallway for a moment. And this is kind of. I think this is the place that people are really excited to be in. I should also note that we. The tenement museum was closed during the pandemic. We were hit hard by the pandemic. But because of the support of people from across the country, we are opened up stronger this spring. And so we opened up for building tours in March, I mean, I'm sorry, in May. And we're open now four days a week. And July we'll go to five days a week. But also at the same time, we created virtual programs. So you can be going on our virtual programs online as well as visiting us. And I hope you do that. But it's been so exciting now that we're open again to be in the hallway of 97 Orchard Street. It's kind of like that ooh, ah, moment of kind of like Stepping back into time, stepping out of the 21st century and into the 19th century. And I think what's really useful about this hallway is that you can see the layers of history. History is layers. But to be able to see a building represent that does so much. So you can see even layers of sheet metal that are on the ceiling. Originally there was plaster, and then sheet metal is put up to protect it. And then you can see over time if you look closely that the sheet metal patterns change because landlords had to replace things and didn't always have what they needed. So you see the use. You can imagine someone hauling up a piano. Because immigrants brought pianos into these tenement apartments. The piano hitting the kind of the staircase at the bottom and needing more patchwork. I mean, there was so much life that flowed in these hallways. And in 1900, at its height, there were about 110 people living in 97 Orchard at the time. So just imagine all the people going up and down the staircases, people leaving to go to school, to go to work, but also people arriving to go to work because a lot of tenement apartments doubled as garment shops too. So if we go though to the 1870s, if we were to be standing in this hall in the 1870s, first of all, it would be a lot darker than it is now. It would be darker because there would have been no lighting. There also would have been. It would have probably been very wet. And the reason why it would be wet is that people were coming up and down the stairs with buckets of water. The only water source was in the rear yard. So if you needed water to clean, to cook, you're bringing it up in a bucket and that water is going to splash around. So we want to kind of imagine a woman named Natalie Gumpert, who was born in 1858 in Ortlesberg in Prussia. And she came over as a young woman in 1858 to this neighborhood. This neighborhood was not called the Lower east side then. It was called Klein Deutschland or Little Germany. And this is where the many German immigrants were settling. Around 1860, 1/4 of new York's population was German speaking immigrants. And by 1880 it would be one third of New York's population was German speaking immigrants. So this was kind of actually the first ethnic enclave that spoke a language other than English. And so. And if you looked at just the Lower east side or just Kleindeutschland, that was the fifth largest German speaking city in the world. And if you looked at all of New York, it would be the third largest German speaking city in the world. So Natalie Gumperts, as a German speaker, is going to feel comfortable in this neighborhood because she, she has cousins who live in the neighborhood. She's going to know people maybe from her hometown. And she moves into this building in 1870 with her husband Julius, also an immigrant, also from Prussia. Most likely they met on the Lower east side or rather Klein Deutschland. And again, so Klein Deutschland was not a Jewish neighborhood per se. It was a German neighborhood of which the largest majority of the or the majority of the people living there were Lutheran, Protestant, there was also German Catholics, and there were also German Jews. And I think often today, at least in the Jewish world, when people think of German Jews, they think of them as wealthy because when the East European Jews arrived, the German Jews had been here longer. But when the German Jews arrived, they were living in tenements. And so Natalie lives in this tenement. We can take a look at her kitchen. And she's in this kitchen and she's preparing food for her family. As a housewife, she would be very active. She'd be going to the cellar to get coal, she'd be going to the rear yard to get water. She'd be taking care of her family. I do speak fast, so just keep reminding me in the chat to go slower. There's just so much to talk about. So Natalie would be in her kitchen and she's taking care of four children by 1874. She has Rosa, Nanny and Olga. She also has a son named Isaac, a baby, Julius, her husband. Julius, her husband is a shoemaker. And so one of the things that's also happening in this tenement and in the neighborhood in 1874 is that new York is suffering from the after effects of the panic of 1873. So this was a large economic or a significant economic downturn. And many New Yorkers, especially working class New Yorkers, were forced out of their jobs and lost their jobs. It was a very difficult time. Julius, though, had a job. And so he left one morning in October to go to Levy's Shoemaker on Day street in Lower Manhattan. That was very normal. So Natalie would have spent her day taking care of the family, cooking, going to the neighborhood grocery, talking to her neighbors, all of that stuff. But what was not normal is that Julius did not come home that evening. And so Natalie, we know, and I'll tell you how we know later, went downstairs to the saloon, the German Lager beer saloon in the basement where musicians would hang out, neighborhood neighbors would hang out, people would be down there all the Time it was always open. And she went, you know, have you seen Julius? She asked John Schneider, the man who ran the saloon. She might have asked, or we know she asked the landlord. She asked a landlord from the building, Lucas Glockner. And they hadn't seen Julius. And by the next morning, Julius wasn't back either. So Natalie now has to figure out how she's going to support. Support her family. If you'd like, write into the chat where you think she might turn for help at a moment like this. Right. We have no idea whether Natalie loved Julius or not. No idea. The sources don't give us that information. But we do know from understanding the tenement conditions is that she would have needed. She would have needed help to pay for her groceries and. And all of that. And so what happened was she might have. Your. Some of your. Your questions are, Are coming on as well, that she might have gone to a landsman shaft. She might have had people from her hometown. We don't know if she was a member of the lawnsmanshop, but we know her cousins lived in the neighborhood. So she could have gone to her cousins for help. Most likely she went to her neighbors for help. And what we do know is that by 1880, so seven years, six years later, she's listed in the census as a dressmaker. And actually, even before the census, she's listed in a city directory as a dressmaker. And you can see the apartment we've recreated for her has a sewing machine on the desk. And so Natalie, after her husband disappeared, provided for herself and her family by becoming a dressmaker. And you can see even the screen that's in the corner, women would be coming in, they would be ordering new clothes, they would be fixing clothes. And Natalie ran this business, and this was something she could do from home and support her children. Now, I think the question comes up, how do we know all of this? And the reason we know this is because in 1883, she receives word that her husband's father in Prussia has passed away, leaving Julius an estate of $600, which would be the equivalent of about five years of rent for her. The problem is she can't claim the money because he's not officially dead. So she goes to court. And she goes to court, and she brings along John Schneider, the saloon owner, who offered the testimony saying that Julius disappeared that night. He said, I knew her husband, Julius Gumpert, who resided with her. I well remember the sudden, mysterious and unexplained disappearance of Julius Gumperts and the diligent and unsuccessful search for him, and I've never seen him again. Right. Lucas Glockner offers similar testimony. Rosa Gumperts, the daughter, who's now 16, offers testimony. And Rosa Gumperts, I think, is really, really interesting because also she says, as far back as I can testify of my own personal knowledge, my father, Julius Gumperts, did not reside with us. And I remember well that I was informed by all of the neighbors that in the year 1874, my father left his home and mysterious, disappeared and was considered dead. My mother is our only support and resides with us. She did not remarry. Okay. So this tells us so much about how this young woman is growing up, learning. And you see from this, too, the way in which having neighbors that know about what's going on can be very helpful, because probably those neighbors helped Natalie when Julius disappeared. But there also are ways in which. There are also ways in which neighbors can be neighbors. Knowing everything that's happening to you can be problematic. And so I'm happy to say that Natalie was able to claim her inheritance on Julius's and she would move to the Upper east side. But before we move on, I want to share with you more recent discoveries from the archives, specifically from Eva, that helps us kind of understand Natalie's life a little bit better and allows us to understand how she might have coped with that disappearance at the moment. So I think all of your suggestions were very good. These were people she could have gone to for help. And it is very likely that she went to an organization that would become part of the United Hebrew Charities. So she goes to the United Hebrew Charities, and you can see the ledger. And so in 1870, Julius and Natalie go to what was then the Hebrew Benevolent Fuel association, one of the first charities in New York. And in 1870, they're offered some kind of assistance. It says assist only occasionally. And then this ledger is really illuminating because it shows the plights of many of not just Natalie, but many of her neighbors, people who lived in the tenement districts who needed assistance. Some of them talk about a husband being in Sing Sing, so being in prison, and so they needed assistance. Others talked about children who were sick or a son who fell off a ladder and can no longer help with the family economy. So these are all different reasons for which people needed assistance. And what would happen is that people hired by the Hebrew Benevolent Fuel association would go visit, and then they would mark notes, and they would say whether someone was considered worthy or unworthy. And there was actually, and some are considered a professional Beggar, for they don't want to give to them. So this is also evidence of the Jewish community creating methods by which they could ascertain whether people were really deserving or not of charity. This was considered a kind of professionalization. It's also speaking to a moment in which the population is outgrowing the synagogues. In other words, there are more Jewish people arriving in New York who are not joining synagogues but yet might need help, and so that you need to have an extra synagogue, something outside of the synagogue to help care for the Jewish community. And so basically, this ledger gives us insight as to how the Jewish community was beginning to kind of professionalize its charity. And so Natalie and Julius were recipients of some kind of charity in 1870. We think it's likely that when Julius disappeared in 1874, Natalie went back to this organization that would become part of the United Hebrew Charities. And one of the reasons we suspect this is so is that in the annual reports of the United Hebrew Charities, they, of course, do not list the people that they helped. Right. Because that would be shaming those people. But they do list the people who donated to help them. And they gave general reports. And one of the things they said in the report of 1875, reporting on this year of 1874, is that there were a lot of husbands disappearing. So husband desertion was prominent, was widespread, and that also they were giving out sewing machines to tailors and tailoresses. So it seems very likely that Natalie received a sewing machine from this Jewish communal agency, and that's what enabled her to go into business and support her family when her husband had disappeared. And I think this story is important for a number of reasons, but I think it also shatters a lot of conceptions of what we think of German Jews. And it shows that the German Jews, the charity was first used on arriving German Jews, not East European Jews. And that it also gives us insight on the way in which Jewish families lived in tenements, both with other Jews and with a majority, though, of neighbors who were not Jewish. And that there were communal ties between the Jewish, Lutheran and Catholic Germans within a tenement, because Natalie's first net of support came from John Schneider and from Lucas Glockner. So these are kind of important things that we don't necessarily think about, but the tenement and the combination of the tenement and these sources helps us piece that together a little better. The heyday of Jewish immigration to the Lower east side, and when it starts to be called the Lower east side, is around the turn of the 20th century. And we can see the Robustevsky apartment as embodying that era. This is a family that came from Lithuania at the turn of the 20th century. And we show their apartment around 1911. And we use Yiddish sources to help our visitors understand where the Rogarsevskys were and what they were facing. And so one of the ways that we kind of do that is in the. In the kitchen, we have a reproduction of a Yiddish newspaper, right? So we're communicating the way that most immigrant Jews learned about America through the Yiddish newspaper. And there were five daily Yiddish newspapers. And Yivo has the microfilms of many of the Yiddish newspapers that were flourishing on the Lower east side. So this particular one, the one that we chose to reproduce from the microfilm, was from March 26, 1911. So the day after the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. And you can see that the morgue is filled with our carbonas, our sacrifices, our victims. And so we're able to kind of root this family in a particular moment through the newspaper. And I would say, in general, the best source about turn of the 20th century Jewish life in New York and beyond would be the Yiddish newspaper. So we use those a lot in constructing our exhibits. And so another Yiddish source that we use in this exhibit is one is a Sabbath prayer that came from a published book of poems from the Hebrew Publishing Company that was responsible for actually bringing into print new books in Yiddish and also reprints of books in Yiddish that had been printed in Europe first. And the Hebrew Publishing Company was actually located next door to where I'm sitting today. So this is a new prayer for candlelighting in America. And it's important because it illustrates a dilemma that many people in the tenement household faced, which was, you're in America for freedom of religion, but in order to support yourself. Many of the jobs, especially after the turn of the 20th century, due to changes in the garment industry, required Saturday work. So we know in this family that the father did not work for a period of time, in part because he refused to work on the Sabbath, but his teenage children did go to work, most likely on Saturday. And so families had to kind of resolve how to kind of create a Sabbath. And that is shown really vividly through this text in Yiddish. And we also have the English translation. But the Sabbath prayer asks God to guard and shelter me, my husband, and my children, from Sabbath and holiday desecration. Send us to our livelihood in pleasure and not in sorrow. And we shall, by no means, due to livelihood, not be able to make the Sabbath or the holidays weekly. And we shall be able to rest on the holy days and serve you with all of our hearts. So this was published in a book called Shastakhina, and it came out in the first decade of the 20th century. And so this helps illuminate the kind of struggle that many people in the tenement households had. And I can't stress enough how important the Yiddish source is here, because if you were just reading English sources, they which primarily at the time were English newspapers, they wouldn't necessarily be getting into the kind of internal mindset of what dealing with the Sabbath and the changes might be like. So we use this source. And I think what's really interesting on our tours is we have people both of Jewish background, but also people of other immigrant backgrounds who similarly point out places in which their culture needs to change or adapt or is facing questions due to being in the United States and how work in particular sometimes poses challenges to traditional religious observance. I should say, too, that at the time, at the turn of the 20th century, the work week in New York and in America was Monday through Saturday often. And so people were often kind of faced with what to do with Saturday. And before 1900, the garment industry was often based in these tenement apartments. And so if you were running your own garment shop in your own apartment, you could say, you know what? I'm going to work on Sunday and not work on Saturday. You had more control over your schedule. But after the turn of the 20th century, and this is actually well documented at Evo, too, in the RG102, which is the autobiography sections, there are people who write of this one. One in particular, a man named Aaron Domnit says there was a minor revolution, the movement of the garment shops out of the tenements and into the larger shops around the Union Square area, or where the area that NYU is now, or in soho that caused this revolution with regard to kind of what to do with regard to Saturday. So each tenement family resolved this in their own way. This just offers a window into exploring some of the tensions that people based. So there's much more to say about this family. But I want to be able to get to 103 orchards. We're going to jump in time and look a little bit at the neighborhood at the turn of the 20th century, easing into getting into 103. So this large image is actually not from Yivo. It's from the Museum of the City of New York. It shows Orchard street in 1898. And you can see it filled with life. And you can see Yiddish in terms of the signs that are hanging, the store signs. Most of them were in Yiddish and some were in English. You can also see American flags in the back, and you can just see the crowdedness. This was the most crowded neighborhood in the country. Some people argued the world. And by 1910, it would be the largest Jewish city in the world. And you had this amazing renaissance in a way of Yiddish culture. Because in New York, you had cheap paper, you have cheap labor, you have freedom of the press. And so all of these Yiddish speakers and all of these Yiddish writers and this kind of freedom and a need, people's need for information creates this amazing opportunity for the Yiddish newspapers to thrive as well. You can see through this image that commerce was a huge part of life on the Lower east side. The tenements, the first floors of all tenements were stores. So people were buying and selling in stores, but that couldn't contain all the commerce that needed to happen. And so it flowed into the streets. And you can see the push cart market here now into. This is where the Robustevskys would be coming. And again, we know the importance of the garment industry as well. And you can see the garment industry represented by the boy carrying the fabric through the streets of New York. He might be called the schlepper. So he might be bringing fabric to a tenement apartment for them to sew. Now, Jacob and Golda Epstein arrive in 1913. You can see them pictured here a little bit later in life. And they're part of this huge wave of immigration. But that huge wave of immigration that brings approximately 2 1/2 million Eastern European Jews to the United States, many of whom come through New York, many of whom come from the Lower east side that is cut off by laws in 1924, the Johnson region act cuts off immigration and makes it very difficult to get to this country. If you're from Southern Europe or you're from Eastern Europe, if you're from Northern Europe, fine, you're good, you can get in. But if you're not, it becomes very difficult. And this was done on purpose to stop the huge flow of immigrants from these areas. That, of course, has a huge effect on the Lower east side's population because the Jews who are already here move to Brooklyn, they move to the Bronx, they move on, but you have no new immigrants to replace them. And so the 1920s is actually the first decade in which the population of the Lower east side goes down after so many years of rising. And Jacob and Golda Epstein, who arrive in 1913. They stay on the Lower east side. They don't move away because Jacob runs a dress shop on Orchard street at 154 Orchard street, about a block from where I am. And you can see the picture. It even says Epstein's, although it's faded a little bit. This is from a photo from approximately 1940. So he stays and the story picks up because after World War II, he has a nephew, Carmen Epstein, who has survived the Shoah. And Jacob and Golda helped Kalman and Rifka Epstein come to the Lower east side. And so we're going to tell their story because ultimately they move in. Jacob, not Jacob, but Kalman and Rivka move into this building in 1955. And we're going to switch gears a little bit. We'll get back to documents, but we're going to now switch gears and talk about this apartment through the lens of oral history, through the stories of Bella Epstein, who you can see pictured on the corner of Orchard and Delancey street in 1955, right about the year that they moved in. And the Lower east side that Bella grows up in is a Lower east side that's very different from the Lower east side of Natalie Gumpert, when it was a German neighborhood, or the Lower east side of the Rogashevsky family, when it was predominantly Jewish. When Bella is growing up on the Lower east side, although it's a neighborhood with lots of Jewish stores and Jewish infrastructure, the Lower east side becomes actually one of the most diverse neighborhoods in New York. And so you have a Puerto Rican population because you have a huge migration of Puerto Ricans. About a half million Puerto Ricans come from the island to New York between 1940 and 1960. This is the corner also of Orchard and Delancey. So you can see the diversity of the neighborhood. You also have the Great Migration, which is bringing African Americans from the south into New York. And then while the majority of black Americans who move to New York go to Harlem, a significant number come to the Lower east side as well. And then, then, of course, on the Lower east side, you still have the Italian and the Jewish populations here. So Bella Epstein grows up in a very diverse Lower east side. And you'll start by the end of it to have a Chinese immigration pickup, too, after 1960. So we'll enter 103 Orchard Street. The building that Bella would move into in 1955 with her family. Again, Jacob and Golda, the aunt and uncle, are just a block away. But now Kalman and Rivka are creating their own house. And in this staircase, you'd hear the diversity of languages of the building. You'd hear Yiddish, for sure. You'd hear Italian, you'd hear Spanish. And Bella remembers looking outside the window onto the street you saw and watching Puerto Rican weddings. She was fascinated by that. We brought Bella back to the building and that's how we know a lot of what we know. And I'll actually let you hear from her what it was like for her. So this is now from 2013, and she's seeing her apartment after 50 years, after she's moved out.
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This is my apartment. I can't believe it. This is where you looked to see if somebody, if a stranger. My parents always told me, always look here, never open up the door unless you're sure you know who it is. This could be the mezuzah that we had put up because we never lived without a mezuzah to protect us. Which was brave of my parents, considering that they always been persecuted because they were Jewish. And no matter what, I always put a mizuza up in my house, wherever I live, on every room.
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Wow. So typically when you're on this tour, we, you know, you. You're able to walk around the apartment. And we've also created a 360 degree way of doing that. So Chelsea can walk you through how. Oh, actually she can just show you a little bit how you can see the apartment, just so you get that sense of being there. And then we'll pick up with the documents. And again, this was recreated based on Bella's memories. So when she walked into the apartment, we hadn't yet redone it. And so we were able to turn to her for even like paint color or what it was like when she opened the closets and the saddle shoes that she would see, the products the family used, the shampoo that she used, all of that was, we were able to recreate. We have an amazing furnishings curator who loved working on that. And actually that yellow coat was a beautiful coat that she found. The dial phone was. Was really important too. And Bella tells really great stories about some phone conversations there. And then you can see the dining room that was set up. And so the picture you can see of Colman and Rifka on the wall. These are Bella's parents who by the time we created this, they passed away in 1986. So again, we're relying on Bella's memories, not on theirs. And so we needed. Obviously, we don't just rely on the family's memories. We Go do archival research to try to understand as much as we can about what was happening at the time. And this is where YIVO came in handy because YIVO has the collection of HIAs, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society up to the late 40s, and then the American Jewish Historical Society, Yivo's neighbor has HIAS's papers after that. But so HIAS was responsible in helping to bring Kalman and Rifka over after the war. And they came in 1947. Kalman had survived Auschwitz and Rifka had survived Theresienstadt. And you can see the forms that these were, their declaration of intention. And then hia's papers also helped us fill in a little bit more of how they got here when they. In. In 1945, there were about 250,000 displaced persons who were in displaced persons camps in, in Germany. And of course, many of the people who survived were fairly young. Common had lost his wife and his son, and Rivka had lost her husband and many nieces and nephews, brothers and sisters. And like many survivors, they wound up in displaced persons camps with no other relatives. And what was happening in displaced persons camps was people were pairing up relatively quickly. There's amazing testimony from Yad Vashan in which a woman speaks of how, of meeting her husband at a displaced persons camps, being married by the rabbi on a Sunday afternoon and then nine months later with eight other couples and, or seven other couples and nine months later eight babies being born. There was just a tremendous desire to create new families, form new families. So Kalman and Rivka meet in Wilsheim, which, by the way, records of that displaced person's camps are at YIVO and many others. And they marry, but they can't come to the United States because there are quota laws in the United States. The same quota laws that were put in place in 1924 make it very difficult to get here. Harry Truman, the President, passes an executive order in December of 1945 that allows for some to come over. And Kalman and Rifka are part of this wave of 23,000 immigrants who come as a result of that executive order. And then by 1948, the displaced persons and Refugee act will pass in Congress, enabling 400,000 refugees to come, over 16% of which were Jewish. But we're going to play an image, some film. We don't have the footage of Colman and Rivka arriving by boat, but this is the Marine Flasher, one of the first boats to arrive with survivors from the concentration camp. So we'll Just let this play for a moment and just imagine what it was like for Jacob and Golda, the uncle and aunt, to be here, knowing that Kalman and Rivka would be arriving, a nephew they haven't seen seen in decades, and Golda had never met. And also Rifka, this new wife. I've seen that footage over and over again, and I could watch it forever. I think that kind of. You can read as much. You can read as many documents as you want about that time period. But to then kind of shift and think about what it was like on American soil, what it was like for people to first arrive and what it was like for their relative, I think that just brings so much of the emotion to the foreign. But I also think it's really important to look at other sources to get a sense of even before the survivors arrived, what were the American Jewish communities doing? And specifically what were Jacob and Golda doing? And we didn't know the answer to that. But Yivo helped us find out more because someone earlier had brought up landsmanshafton and landsmanshaften are organizations based on hometown that were recreated in New York. And there were hundreds, thousands, thousands of them at the. In the heyday in the early 1900s. And this one, the Kiltser and Chantineur Relief Society, stayed around. And first of all, they would help immigrants who were arriving. And then During World War I, for example, they raised money to send back During World War I and all, whenever the towns in the hometown in Europe needed help, there would be fundraisers and there would be. They created balls and associations to raise money, to send money back. So we found this one in January 18th of 1941, and Jacob and for the benefit of the unfortunates in our hometown. And so this was a party that they had at Webster Hall. And one way they raised money was by creating these journals and people could place ads in them. And so they paid to have the ad in it. And that money then would go to help those in kilts. And so you can see Jacob and Golda placed an ad. They were manufacturer boy suits, coats, knee pants, pants and shirts. They're closed on Saturday, so they're Sabbath observance, 154 Orchard Street. That was the picture we had seen earlier. And there were other shopkeepers. And I'm just. I'm going to read to you a speech that was here by a woman named Bessie. I'm sorry, Gussie Goldstein, she was the vice chair of this organization. And there were many speeches in here, and they really show the anguish at the situation and like their. Their dedication to their family in Europe and their. Also their own sense of fortune at not being unfortunate. Right. They were the fortunate ones and they understood that. And this is. This is the speech that Guthy Goldstein gave that evening in Webster Hall. Jacob and Golda would have been in attendance. Again, it's 1941. They haven't had contact with their relatives. They know they need to help them, and they're raising money to do so. We gather here today with mingled feelings of sorrow and thankfulness. Our sorrow at the plight, as the plight of our relatives across the ocean is great, and we pray most sincerely for their deliverance. On the other hand, we are most wholeheartedly thankful that we can still join together here, openly and unafraid, to pledge ourselves to continue in every way our work of fostering goodwill and understanding and of promoting the welfare of humanity. So these are some of the sentiments that were expressed that evening. And then. Right. So, you know, you have this situation where you can't do anything, and then the war is over, and then refugees can't come over because of the quota laws and the kind of lobbying that needs to happen. And then finally, the executive order is passed and they're able to work with Hias and bring Kalman and Rivka over. And when they do, they give them a wedding party on so that even though they had been married at Wilsheim, they give them a new wedding. And. And again, Colman and Rifka are here, and they're being reunited with these relatives. They probably don't know anyone else in this. So these are maybe people from the Landsmanschacht, maybe elsewhere. But again, most of their friends, their relatives have been killed, and they now have to start this new life. Now, everything I've told you about. And then. And again on the Lower east side, in some ways, this is a great place to be because you have everything you need to lead a Jewish life. You have the infrastructure that had been created at the turn of the 20th century that's still there. Kosher butcher stores, Jewish schools, synagogues, all of that is here on the Lower east side. But no one in this room, Jacob and Golda, no one can give Kalman and Rifka advice on how to raise children. You know, they can give them advice on how to get a job, and they'll get jobs in the garment industry. They can sign them up for English classes. And again, we know from the highest records that they went to English classes and they made a good adjustment according to, ahayas, visit, but no one is able to tell them how to raise children after what they have been through. And so that's. Now we go back to Bella and Bella's memories. Bella's born in 1948, a year after they arrive. Her sister Blima is born in 1952. And they grow up in this apartment that we just showed you. Bella said that they didn't talk about what happened. So everything I just told you about them, what they went through, where they're from, that is not part of Bella's life. That's never been told to her explicitly. But what she does do is listen to conversations through the door of her bedroom. She can see on Saturday nights, the parents would have friends over. They'd speak in Yiddish, so she'd hear a little bit about what was going on. But this was never kind of sat down, because this was. They were never sat down and told what happened because, I mean, from one perspective, at what age are your kids ready to hear that? And this was quite common in many families with survivors where they didn't want their kids to know what happened. But we know that they wanted their kids to have nice American lives and nice Jewish lives as well. And so they raised them in this apartment. And we can see Bella's bedroom, which is just next door. And one of the things her mother said was that she wanted to always see, have happy colors. So she would paint the walls over and over again, and she painted the walls freilach colors, joyful colors, the pink and the blue. And that was actually borne out through the paint analysis we did in the apartment. But many of the things that you find in her bedroom would be typical of any baby boomer growing up right in a ranch house in a suburb. You might have a record player or you might have some of the books that are on her desk. The parents sent them to be Siakov, a Jewish girls school, Orthodox Jewish girls school on the Lower east side. But Bella was also very interested in becoming American. And music is a way that we can understand culture. Yivo also has an amazing music collection. We're gonna play for you just for a moment. Bella's how music helped shape Bella's life. And this is Bella. It'll be Bella's voice describing, my father
- [44:11]
C
bought a record player that he used to play yossel record Rosenblatt albums on. And he would say, oh, astimmer ashima. That means a voice. What a voice he has. What a voice he has. And then when my father wasn't using the record player, I had gotten my mother to buy me a record and
- [44:32]
A
it was Paul Anker.
- [44:34]
C
Oh, please stay by me Diana, I'm
- [44:38]
A
so young and your soul, that was the soul.
- [44:41]
C
I mean, that was it. That. That made me an American.
- [44:51]
A
So the record player was one common bot for about $50. She remembers how much it cost and it had a handle on it. So they would have it in the living room, but then she would bring it in her room to play her music. And I think it's important to note that these two things were not viewed as in conflict with one another, that these two music styles could coexist in the household. But for Bella, she brought America into the apartment, an otherwise Yiddish speaking apartment. Yiddish newspaper, the Morgan Journal Tageblatt was their newspaper. Yiddish radio, Yiddish conversation. But Paul Inga was what kind of then anchored her in this country. She's born in America, she's born on the Lower east side. But it's not until she has this music that she feels that that made her American. There's much more to say about Bella and her life on the Lower east side. And I invite you to come do the Epstein tour, both in, whether in person or online. But I'll just add, I'll end with one story so we can go into questions. So Bella would grow up, they would move to Brooklyn, which was again, considered what they really wanted to do. They didn't want to be on the Lower east side. They were as younger people, it was mostly older Jewish people that were living on the Lower east side. So they wanted to move to Brooklyn. They moved to Brooklyn. She graduates from high school, she becomes a nurse, she marries a man named Danny Seligson, who was third generation. And so Danny Seligson came over to her house and she said, why are your parents yelling at each other all the time? Why is everyone always yelling? And she said, we're not yelling, we're just speaking in Yiddish, like that's not it. But that they had a very different experience than Danny Seligson, who grew up without Yiddish by that point. And so they marry and they end up having three children. And when her first child is just a few years old or a baby, they're at a restaurant called Shanghai and Canarsie, which is a kosher Chinese restaurant. And a woman comes up to the table and she sees Rivka, and she says, Rivka. Or she doesn't say Rivka, but she says, I know you from somewhere. She says, oh, you were at Theresienstadt, I remember. And Rivka's like, oh, I'm sorry, I have no idea who you are. I don't know who you are. Again, this is in Yiddish. And she said, no, no, I know you. You took care of the children. And this is information Bella did not know at all. But Riska would still not acknowledge that she knew that woman. She said, look, I'm a survivor, yes, but I don't want to talk about it. And I don't, you know, I don't know you. I don't remember you. I'm sorry. So finally, the woman goes away, and they're, They're. They go back to normal, what it was. And it's really not until Rivka is dying in the mid-1980s of cancer that some of her guard goes down and she starts to tell more, talk more about what her life was. And she also wrote down these note cards for Bella to remember the names Mentor Nishburgassen. One dare not forget. One must not forget the names of some of the nieces and nephews that she had lost, and also instructions for how to keep Passover. And in addition to writing this information down, she told her more of the stories. So one last note I'll end on is that Bella came back once we had recreated the apartment with her grandchildren. And one thing we were able to do for her was to share a family tree that we did through the center for Jewish History, going back to the 1700s, kind of like reclaiming her father's family. We weren't able to find her mother's family. The names were hard to trace, but we were able to trace Kalman's family. And we presented this to Bella, and she now knows names of her family that she didn't know before. And she, you know, there was a lot that was going on, and she's showing this to her granddaughters. And one of her granddaughters, who was about 8 years old, said, when I grow up, I'm going to have twins, and their names are going to be Kalman and Rifka. And of course, as you know, in Jewish tradition, you keep names alive through naming children after people who had passed away. But I think one of the other things that's really important is keeping stories alive, like, not just the family trees, but what are the stories. And we have to think very carefully about what are the stories that are told to us and what are the stories that are not told to us. Because sometimes the stories that are not told to us are just as important and just as illuminating as the stories that are so that's the work we do with our own family history. But at the Tenement Museum, what's really important for us is to stitch back the family histories into the larger history and so that the textbooks and the history that we're learning in school is supplemented by these family stories, which often bring up new questions that wouldn't come up. So that's the work we do at the Tenement Museum. We tell many different stories. These were just snippets of stories, but I wanted to choose the snippets of stories in order to highlight some of the yivo resources we've used over the years. So I'll end now and I'm happy
- [49:48]
B
to take questions any thank you so much for this lovely presentation. I'm sure we're all going to flock to visit in person or in online tours to learn more because there's clearly so much incredible material. But for now, we'll have to settle for a few more questions for you. There are tons of great questions in the Q and A function. If you have a question, please put it there. I apologize. We're probably not going to have time to get to everything, but we'll see. We'll get to a few things. One topic that's come up a lot in the questions, Annie, is about just different questions about HIAs. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about HIAS and what they did.
- [50:27]
A
Thank you. And I guess there was might have been some controversy in the chat earlier on about the rate at which I speak. I apologize again for that. I do have a lot to say. So that's just how it is. But HIAS was founded in the early 1880s. The exact date of it is unknown for a bunch of reasons, because HIAs might have been the product of other organizations, organizations merging together. There was also the Hebrew Sheltering Agency. But the basic idea behind HIAs was Eastern European Jews helping other East European Jews settle and adapt to the new country. So there was a house that HIAS was located in and people could go there for help, but then they would also be dispersing aid over time. In the 1930s, HIAS is going to switch to kind of focus on getting Jews out of Europe, which was very, very difficult. Right? Because when highest is formed, there are absolutely no laws about for Jews about coming into the country. There are laws though, that make it impossible, difficult for Chinese immigrants to get into the country. But for Jews, for European, you could come in. But by 1924 that changes. And so of course, when Hitler comes to power and all sorts of other anti Semitic governments are in power, and in other parts of Europe, people want to get out, and it becomes very, very difficult. So HIAS concentrates on that, and then after the war does as well. And so after World War II, they'll be focused along with some other organizations like Nyana and others, and helping Jews get settled, helping them find people that might help sponsor them and so on and so forth. The laws at the time require some kind of sponsorship. So if you didn't have a relative, you needed this kind of organizational sponsor to help you come through and get settled. And so there are records at HIAs that you. The highest records are at YIVO and the American Jewish Historical Society. So if you're looking into your own family history, it's a wonderful resource. In short, though, HIAs in the 1950s would also help Jews in North Africa, in other parts of the world, and of course, the Soviet Union. So HIAS brings over many, many hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Soviet Union into the United States and also into Israel. But by the 1970s, Haya starts helping other refugees because they get government contracts to help refugees coming from Vietnam and Cambodia and those places. And so basically, I think it's in 2000 where they changed their mission. And they say at a certain point, Jews, Jewish refugees are where they need to be, and we're going to help other refugees, too. So now HIAS helps all refugees in this country.
- [53:15]
B
So fascinating. Thank you, Annie. A lot of people are very curious about the phenomenon of the deserted wife. And, you know, both in particular in this story, did they ever find out what happened? But also in general, maybe you can tell us just a little bit more about this phenomenon. What were some of the reasons that it happened and some of the kind of communal responses.
- [53:38]
A
That's a great, great question and a great topic. And you could write 8,000 books on that topic alone. And I'll also call out yivo, because there's the National Desertion Bureau files that are there. But in every immigrant community, especially working class communities, especially when economic downfalls hit and they hit all the time, you'd have a phenomenon of husband desertion or disappearance, which is basically husbands. Maybe they couldn't take care of their family, they didn't want to take care of their family. And given the anonymity of the ton, you could just hop on a train and go somewhere else. And so that happened. And the Jewish community was. Was very concerned about death and created agencies to help track down the husbands. And they also, the Yiddish newspapers were really important Specifically the forwards. The forward had a section of the newspaper that says it was a gallery of the missing husbands. And they would put the pictures of the missing husbands with descriptions of who they were. This was really important because let's say you were Charlie Wolf, and you're like, you know what? I'm ticking. I'm sick of my wife. I don't want these kids anymore. I'm going to San Francisco. Charlie Wolf goes to San Francisco and he meets another woman. He's like, oh, she's cute. I'm going to marry her. There's nothing that really, like, no one knows. But with the forward, everyone read the forward. And so people could be like, hey, that man's been married before. And so that was a really, really important way. So the forward cooperated with the National Desertion Bureau and with the. But the government to actually track down husbands. And if they weren't going to come, their primary goal was to reunite them. If they weren't going to be reunited, then they were going to get money from them to help support the deserted wives. But every once in a while, there was a missing life. There was a woman that ran off, but it was mostly the husbands who ran off. So it was a factor of families who had been separated for some amount of time. Sometimes because most families came over through chain migration. Husband comes first, and then he's gonna send for his family a few years later. Well, what can also happen is that the Americanization process takes hold, and then your family arrives and you're not, like, in sync anymore. And so this is beautifully depicted in Yaekel, a novella by Abraham Kahan that was put into film called Hester street in the 1970s with Carol Kane. So in terms of Julius Gumpert, I could be really mean and say, you have to come on our tour, and I'll tell you what happened to him. But Julius, as far as we know, Natalie, didn't know what happened to Julius. But we know that Julius made it to Cincinnati and lived in Cincinnati and was a salesman there. And he dies in 1924 at a Jewish old age home. And it looks like he didn't remarry.
- [56:22]
B
Wow. Well, I'm sure everyone's gonna have to go anyway, even though they still know that. On the topic of the Yiddish press, there have also been a variety of questions about, you know, where can we learn more about this? Whether if we speak Yiddish and we can read Yiddish, is there a place that we can access it, or if we don't, what's in translation? What are some Good sources for us to explore more.
- [56:42]
A
That's great. And again, I can't say enough about the importance of the Yiddish press. I mean, the Yiddish press was its own world. It was its own. I think Eddie Portnoy says it best. It's like its own country, the Yiddish press. So there's Eddie Portnoy's book called Bad Rabbi, which draws on some of the more lurid stories of ordinary Jews who were criminals or had funny, interesting stories that shows, I guess, like the underside of Jewish life. But that was very much part of the street culture, fortune tellers, all sorts of things like that. So that's a book called Bad Rabbi by Eddie Portnoy. And his introduction, I think, talks a lot about the Yiddish press. There's a book called Branma Never Lived in America, which was edited by Moses Rishon, and it has translations of some of the Yiddish. I think it's the Yiddish press. It's Abraham Khan's work, although that might have been Abraham Khan's work for the Commercial Advertiser. I'm just trying to think about as much as I can in translation. I mean, basically any good book about Jewish history in New York is based on the Yiddish press. Tony Michael's book A Fire in Their Hearts. There's a great book by Roberta Newman and Alice. I'm blanking on her last name, but it starts with an N called Dear Mendel, Dear Razel, which is actually not Yiddish Press, but it's translations of guidebooks that were written at the same at the time, letter writing guidebooks and stuff that also offers this kind of daily life window in terms of you do read Yiddish. Then there is a website that the National Library, the National Institute, was it the National National Library of Israel, has online. And just look up Jewish Historical Press. All the Yiddish newspapers are online there. Not every year necessarily, but even if you're in Chicago, the Chicago Yiddish newspapers are up or, you know, all over and there are. There are just hundreds of them. So if you do know Yiddish, that is absolutely the best source. And I wish it was around when I was doing my dissertation, because when I was doing my dissertation, it was only microfilm, which is its own joy, but a little bit less accessible.
- [58:50]
B
And I'll just add a very brief thing to that. This is about another question about non Yiddish language Jewish newspapers. There are of course, lots of Jewish newspapers in other languages in New York and around the world. And that website that Annie just referred to is a really wonderful resource for all of them. So Hebrew, Polish, Russian, you know, you Name it Ladino. There's tons of great stuff there. So we don't have that much time left. Unfortunately, we can't get to all the questions, but maybe we can end with a few questions just about the physical space. A lot of people are curious. How did you figure out how to recreate these apartments physically and how similar are they to how they looked? I mean, some people have noted that they look fantastic. Could it really have looked that good back in the day?
- [59:39]
A
Yeah. And also I have to say that the photographer who came and did some of those shots, it was like really well lit and beautiful. So when you actually visit, the spaces are a lot darker. But it's interesting because at different moments in the tenement's history, it's going to look better or worse. So Natalie Gumpert's apartment, that was early on in the tenement's life. So it was a tenement that was like, you know, a few years old. So it actually looked kind of nice. And don't Forget, in the 1870s, the Lower east side was not as crowded as it would become. There were maybe 70 something people living in that building. So as opposed to 110 just 30 years later. So depending on when you lived in the tenement, that would determine the wear and tear on the building and what it looked like. It would also determine what kind of amenities were there. So when it was first built, the water source is outside, the toilets are outside in privies. But after 1905, there are indoor toilets and there's more. There's gaslighting and other. So it depends on what era we're recreating. But we always use what's left in the building, you know, where, where walls, where partitions would have been. Moving things around, we analyze the. While the wallpaper, there's about 24 layers of wallpaper that are in the building and so and the paint layers. So we're able to date things according to paint layers and wallpaper. So there's all different kinds of artisans really, who work on the building and help us determine what things would look like at a given time. And of course, we also use photographs. Actually, crime scene photographs are great because they, you know, they, you know, a crime might happen in a parlor and yet you still get a great view of what the mantle looked like. And I think one of the things that people are surprised by, they think, oh, tenements, it should just be utter destitution. But I think the great thing about the museum is that we're able to show that these were people's homes, and they wanted to decorate them. They wanted wallpaper on the walls, and they could to buy a little tchotchka to put on the mantle. And if you read the Yiddish newspapers and saw the advertisements, you see that people were buying things and that America was a land of abundance. Even in the districts like those pushcart peddlers were selling all sorts of things that people had never seen. Some of them had never seen quite the variety before. Even to just use an example of prayer shawls, the Forward was aghast at the time of the. Of the Jewish New Year because all of a sudden everyone wanted to go to shul. They thought they had made everyone socialists by then, but it turned out that even socialists sometimes want to go to shul. So the way that the Forward deals with this, they talk about the fair, the yarid of prayer shawls and machzorim, like prayer books and all the different kind of varieties of things. And they said that these things are selling like hotcakes. So there's a way in which America allows for an abundance of all sorts of things. And so even people are living in tenements. They still have many more things often than they. They would have if they. They stayed put. So we try to tell as much of the. The variety of the stories as we can.
- [62:37]
B
Well, Annie, I'm going to join the chorus of people in the chat and the Q and A, just saying thank you so much for this fantastic presentation. It's been so lovely to have you here, and we'll all be joining you in person very soon.
- [62:49]
A
Great. And I would just do a pitch, Support Yivo, if you can. EVO is a wonderful organization, and as nonprofit leaders, we know how important the support is. So I am here today. I'll say support Yivo, and then when you come to the Tenement Museum, I'll say support the Tenement Museum. But anyways, really do come visit us. We do virtual programs every week, and we're open now. Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. No, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And then we're adding Thursday in July. So we are open for building tours and open for virtual tours. You can get memberships at the tenement that allow you to see all the virtual stuff for free. So anyways, I hope to see you. I'll put my email in the chat, so if, in case you want to be in contact with more, with more questions, feel free to do so. So I will put that in right now. But it was a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. And I also want to thank Chelsea, my colleague who helped, who put together the beautiful presentation.
- [63:44]
B
Thank you so much, Chelsea. And thank you again, Ann.
- [63:52]
A
Sam.