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Immigrants Speak
P A G E 2
“The Cohens left Kalwaria in the spring of 1892 in a horse-drawn covered wagon... and reached the German border in a day or so... Their baggage was in a tarpaulin roll: linens, featherbeds, copper pots, a mortar and pestle, Sabbath candlesticks, and Bobe [grandma] Libby’s favorite wooden rolling pin. They carried a wicker hamper of food, mostly dried pumpernickel.”
Rose Berman Goldstein, manuscript, 1973. Goldstein’s mother’s family left Lithuania and settled on Minneapolis’s North Side. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
“The pogrom started in the night, away from our section of town, down near the seashore. They were burning warehouses, and we could see the flames. We were scared all right! We didn’t have anything to defend ourselves with — just knives we collected, and rocks. And we moved all the women and children to the second floor of the building, and kept boiling water on the stoves to pour down in case we were attacked.”
Ethel Schlasinger Overby, manuscript, 1977. Shortly after the pogrom in Odessa, Noah Schlasinger and his wife, Sarah, immigrated to a farm near Ashley, North Dakota. Their daughter recorded her parents’ memories. Courtesy of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest.
top photo: Leaving Danzig (Gdańsk) Poland, about 1900. Courtesy of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.
inset photo: Pewter Mizrach, made in Germany about 1800. Courtesy of William Schwarz, St. Paul, MN.
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