The Hirsch Family Saga a Mlynov Family Story
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THE HIRSCH FAMILY SAGA A MLYNOV FAMILY STORY Version 22 *** From the desk of Howard I. Schwartz, PhD Cell: 408.838.5410 / Email: [email protected] February 2021 (written during the COVID-19 pandemic) (Copyright 2021) *** From the Desk of Howard I. Schwartz, PhD–2 The Hirsch Family from Mlynov–3 Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 5 The Story of the Hirsch Family from Mlynov .................................................................................. 7 The Early Migration of the Hirsch Family........................................................................................ 8 1905 Arrival of Hersch (Harry) Hirsch ......................................................................................... 9 The 1906 Arrival of Gdalie Girsch (Jack Hirch) .......................................................................... 11 Abraham Hirsch’s 1907 Arrival .................................................................................................. 12 The 1907 Arrival of Uncles Jacob Newman and Chaim Yerukhem Katz .................................. 15 Uncle Jacob Newman ............................................................................................................ 15 Uncle Chaim Katz from Chelm, the Father of Aleph Katz ..................................................... 18 Eureka: Finding the Manifest of Chaim Yerukhem Katz ....................................................... 22 1909 Arrival of Isaac Hirsch ....................................................................................................... 24 1909 Parents, Ephraim and Gitel, and Two Siblings Arrive ....................................................... 26 Moving Uptown to East Harlem ................................................................................................... 29 Back in Mlynov: Ruchel Leah Gurtin ......................................................................................... 32 Arrival of a Wife and Aunts ....................................................................................................... 34 1911 Arrival of Aunt Chaya (Hirsch) Newman and Children ................................................ 34 1912 Isaac’s Wife and Children Arrive .................................................................................. 37 1913 Aunts Zelda Berger and Henie Katz Arrive With Cousins ............................................ 41 The Move to Jersey City and the Wet Wash Laundry ................................................................... 43 The Development of “Wet Wash” Laundry .............................................................................. 47 Life in Jersey City, 1911–1920 ................................................................................................... 53 Clues from 1917-1918 Draft Registrations ................................................................................ 56 Cousin Aleph Katz Comes To Standard Wet Wash ............................................................... 59 Some Family Memories of Aleph Katz .................................................................................. 62 Hyman Leo Newman Comes to Standard Wet Wash ........................................................... 63 1922 Sister Ruchel Leah Gurtin And Family Arrive ................................................................... 65 1926 Arrival Daniel Mordko Hirsch and Family......................................................................... 75 From the Desk of Howard I. Schwartz, PhD–4 1920–1930 Making It In Jersey City .......................................................................................... 79 The Return to Mlynov in 1935 .................................................................................................. 90 Mlynov Halperin Relatives and Their Fates ............................................................................... 95 Lipa Halperin’s Story.................................................................................................................. 98 The Survival of Saul Halpern ................................................................................................... 109 The Hirsh Family Circa 1947 .................................................................................................... 112 Acknowledgments ................................................................................................................... 113 The Hirsch Family from Mlynov–5 Introduction I became interested in the Hirsch family story along two separate paths that converged together and made learning their story a pressing matter. Over the last few years, I had found a few records of Hirsch men who had listed “Mlinov” as their birthplace and I had set them aside as a research project to which I wanted to return someday. Along the way, as I let people know of my interest in the Mlynov shtetl, and what became of the people there, a cousin of mine named Saul Fishman, gave me a digitized version of a homemade film, made in the 1935, that was supposedly taken in the shtetl of Mlynov. Saul is my second cousin. Our grandmothers were sisters. Saul’s family had gotten the copy of the movie from his cousin, Irene Siegel, also descended from two Mlynov families and who had herself become a family historian. Irene had saved many stories and photos, some of which had come into my hands as people learned of my interest.1 Saul summarized what he knew of the film in an email to me. I think the story of the Mlynov video is as follows: Irene Siegel, a cousin on the Fishman side of the family, was attending an elder hostel. She met some woman there who mentioned that her family had come from a small shtetl called Mlynov. So they got to talking. When Irene learned that someone in that family had been back to Mlynov in 1935 with a movie camera, she asked for a copy. I don't know if the Hirsch family is related at all (although Mlynov was small enough that maybe if we looked far enough and wide enough). The home movie that was passed to Irene and on to Saul’s family and then onto me, was incredibly precious. How lucky we were to have film from that small shtetl before the town and its residents were liquidated. I had earlier seen some photos of Mlynov from the 1930s. In fact, my great-grandmother had gone back to Mlynov in the mid-1930s, and I had seen a few photos of her with family from that trip. But this homemade movie, though poor in quality, showed living and moving people in Mlynov, and what houses looked like, and how people walked and dressed, at least how they dressed on the festive occasion of having a visitor from the United States. You can tell it was a big event for the small town of about a thousand Jews who had become part of Poland after WWI and were suffering from worldwide depression and the growing antisemitism of the Polish government. Ever since that movie came into my hands, I had wanted to track down descendants of the Hirsch family and learn more about them and the history of this home movie. I suspected that the records of the Hirsch men from Mlynov I had found earlier were related to the Hirschs who 1 The movie came to me from Saul Fishman, son of Ted Fishman, son of Clara (Shulman) and Benjamin Fishman. Saul had gotten it from Irene Siegel’s family. Irene is the daughter of Eta (Goldseker) and David Fishman from Mlynov. From the Desk of Howard I. Schwartz, PhD–6 had taken this film, an assumption that would eventually be confirmed. At the time, I had no idea that I would eventually learn not only the story of the trip that produced that home movie but would eventually share a copy of that movie back to some of the Hirsch family descendants who had never seen it before. I was returning the gift. At some point after the home movie was made, someone had added a soundtrack of a woman speaking in a Yiddish accent and naming people in the film. She identified herself at the start as “Luba Kravitz” and calls out the names of people she recognized in the film. “There’s Abie Hirsch,” I thought she said several times. And there’s “Ruth and Ellen Hirsch.” I suspected that the “Abie Hirsch” she identified was in fact the Abraham Hirsch from Mlynov whose record I had earlier found. But I could find nothing about him and had looked in vain for some of his descendants. I would eventually learn that what she was really saying was “there’s A. D. Hirsch” and I would come to know a lot more about the interesting story of A. D. and his family. In the meantime, some doubt was thrown on the authenticity of the movie which gave me pause and made me wonder whether it was in fact an artefact from Mlynov after all. Here’s what happened. About a year ago, I had begun a project with another Mlynov family descendant named, Rich Polt (a descendant of the Goldseker family), to capture high quality video interviews of some Mlynov immigrants who were still living. Rich and I had met for the first time when I sponsored a Mlynov descendants reunion in Baltimore in August 2019. Rich is a legacy film producer and loved capturing stories via video interviews. For my part, I was becoming an expert of sorts on what became of Mlynov families. “Wouldn’t it be amazing,” Rich said to me, “if we could find someone from Mlynov who is still alive?” And so, I set out to find out if any Mlynov-born individuals were still living. In the past year, I tracked down four individuals still living who were