From Poland to The New World - Williamsburg

Rachel Klein, my paternal grandmother, came to America in 1901 when she was 16 years old to stay with her sister Jenny. Her intention was to remain in America. In order to support herself, she bought a Singer sewing machine with hope of becoming a seamstress. After returning to Poland to tend to her dying mother, she met and married Joseph Welfeld, a young man from Tarnow. Although I never met my paternal grandfather, I carry his name for life and visit his grave in the cemetery my parents are buried in. Kind of spooky to see "Joseph Welfeld" on a gravestone, but his Hebrew name is a bit different.

In 1927, Joseph reluctantly left Poland and journeyed to New York, where he stayed with his friend Jacob Brandt and his family. Jacob, who was Joseph's friend back in Poland, owned and operated a kosher (Sabbath observing) barbershop on Pitt Street in New York. In addition to cutting hair, he manufactured and sold sulfur powder used to shave orthodox men who would not use a razor blade. Jacob helped Joseph set up a kosher barbershop in Williamsburg, where he remained until his death in 1947 one year before I was born. Joseph would learn how to make his own sulfur powder and the barbershop continued in operation for a number of years after I was born.

On March 21, 1929, the Welfeld family received their visas in Warsaw. On May 17, 1929, Rachel, her seven children and her Singer sewing machine set sail on the Estonia of the Baltic America Line and arrived in New York at 8-10 Bridge Street on May 27, 1929. Since Joseph was a citizen (he had received a document called "First Papers" which allowed him to send for his family in two years). She was known to me as Bobbie (Yiddish for Grandma) Welfeld.

My Mother’s family history is a bit murkier and more complex. My maternal grandmother’s first name was Chvulah (possibly a contraction of the Hebrew names Chava and Leah). It is her last name that took me quite some time to figure out since she was married three times. Her first husband was my mother’s father – Yitzchak (Itcha) Schachner. He was born in 1881 in Gorlice Poland and married my Grandmother Chvulah Pencak who was born in 1882 in the same town. Itcha died in 1917 presumably in World War I when my mother was eight years old.

She married a second time to Joseph (Yossel) Gelb and had a stepson named Chaim. Chaim was a well-known charitable figure in Williamsburg and could always be found at weddings and other occasions where he would collect charitable contributions for poor families in the community. He would often see me returning from the library on Friday afternoon and would remind me not to open my books on the Sabbath because I would be breaking the words “Brooklyn Public Library” which were stamped on the side of the closed pages.

My grandmother married a third time – to an individual whose last name was Messer. I don’t know how and when he died and have no information about him. I knew my grandmother by that name and referred to her as Bobbie Messer. She dressed very modestly, wore a wig and spent much of her waking hours either in or outside my parents’ store and home. Bobbie Messer was very quiet and generally sat in or in front of my parents’ hardware store for much of her waking hours. I do not recall much in the way of conversation with her but felt the love every time she looked at me. Bobbie Messer lived around the corner on the second floor in an apartment building on Ross Street. It was on the floor of that apartment building where she was found by my mother and me when she passed away in 1958, when I was 10 years old.

One of the most important lessons I learned from my parents was their strong love and respect for their mothers. Both were guests for every single Friday night dinner in our small apartment. The incredible obligation they took on did not register with me until years later when my simple obligation was the "burden" of inviting my mother and mother-in-law to my home for weekends - albeit not together. The respect for their parents filtered down to me, and as a result my grandmothers got all of the love and respect, I could give. It became my responsibility to walk them home and up to their second-floor apartments every Friday night after dinner. It was also my job to pick them up from the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and walk them home. The vivid memories of the elderly women wearing sparkling white aprons on top of their dresses pop up each year during these holidays. My only hope is that my grandchildren understand what they have in grandparents and find ways to respect them as well.

Bobbie Welfeld initially lived across the street at 58 Lee Avenue in a three family walk up above a store and dentist. Not long after Bobbie Messer died, Bobbie Welfeld moved into the second-floor apartment above ours at 49 Lee Avenue. She lived there with my cousin, Rozzie (Rosalind Folman) for a number of years until she entered a nursing home before passing away. Bobbie Welfeld taught me how to play (and cheat) at solitaire. Each Friday afternoon she would give me a weekly update of the events of the various soap operas she watched. Unfortunately, it was an update in Yiddish, and I didn’t understand all of it. Each Friday, she baked a small challah for me which was the best gift I could receive. I looked forward to it every week and often think about it on Friday nights to this day.

While Bobbie Welfeld was alive, we had family members visit frequently. My aunts, uncles and cousins came to visit her and at the same time, visited my parents. Unlike my parents who stayed near their moms, my relatives moved to exotic places like Flatbush, Bayside and Stamford and I enjoyed the opportunities to visit them. It didn’t hurt that three of my uncles were involved in candy stores, and visits were quite rewarding. My mother had two sisters, one who lived in Buffalo, who we rarely saw (I believe we visited Buffalo once) and another who lived in an apartment building a few blocks away. Her son, my cousin, became one of my closest friends and we shared a bungalow with them at the Pioneer.

Much of my parents’ early life is a mystery to me although I do know that they married in 1933 and first lived at 35 Lee Avenue where I was born. They moved to 49 Lee Avenue, where I grew up after my father purchased the building which included a store and three apartments. I do know that my father Morris, who was known by all by his Yiddish name as Moishe, had both an entrepreneurial and a gambling spirit (more about this later). My understanding is that early in his career he was involved in the formulation and sale of various furniture polishes – perhaps the chemical bent came from his father’s foray into sulfur powder.

My first memory of his business activities was the hardware store at 49 Lee Avenue and the sheet metal work he did in a shop that he built in our back yard (more about the store later as we get into more detail). He also had great mechanical skills, many of which I learned from him as I grew older, and probably one of the reasons I went on to get a Mechanical Engineering degree at Cooper Union. I know he was extremely proud of my acceptance at Cooper Union, not only because it was a top-notch engineering school, and it was free (all students at the time received a tuition free scholarship thanks to Peter Cooper) but it also had an Anti-Semitic history and in the past Jews were not welcome. He was an athlete – a long distance runner in Poland, and many of his athletic traits were inherited by both my brother Irving and me.

For me, the store was very much an integral part of my life since we lived directly above it in the first of three apartments that rose vertically above it. As a kid, I shared a very small bedroom with my brother until he moved out to Harvard Law School and then to married life. I really mean small. In fact, years later my nephew Jeremy (my brother’s son) who was two years old at the time, wanted to know why “Uncle Yussie sleeps in the closet.” What made it even more unique was that in order to get to the bathroom from my room, you had to pass through my parents’ bedroom. So much for privacy!

The room had another unique aspect – a small crack in the window that allowed cold air to come through in the winter. In fact, the breeze was often so strong that a tissue placed at the window flew across the room. This was my first exposure to engineering aerodynamics and I spent many nights experimenting.

The room also became the center of my indoor entertainment. Without Internet electronic games and/or my own TV in the late 50s, creativity became the key to entertainment. I spent many nights in my room with a flashlight and many Saturday afternoons with a water gun. The goals were simple and rewarding. At night, people walking in the street a few feet below me often looked down to see a circle of light following them. When they stopped, the light stopped and when they looked up the light was gone. The trick was to keep from laughing loud enough to be heard. On Saturdays, the well-dressed Chasidim walking with their families on a nice cloudless sunny day were often surprised by a rain shower emanating from my water gun. Again, the goal was to keep from laughing out loud as they took off to get away from the storm. Nasty, but really lots of fun!

The apartment above me which later became the home of my Bobbie Welfeld, and my cousin Rozzie (Rosalind) initially had a few other tenants, only one whom I remember. A family who emigrated from Hungary moved in for a while and they had a son my age. While he did not speak English and we were not able to communicate much, he did teach me how to play chess, and chess became our language of communication for the short period of time he lived there.

The third floor was occupied by “Harry the Mailman” who was single and lived there as long as I can remember. I remember being in his musty apartment a few times and even remember watching one of the games of the 1954 World Series there when I was six years old. My only memory of Harry was that he was a bit eccentric and gave me a three-foot long machete as a gift. I can’t imagine where he would be locked up if he tried to give me a machete today. I also don’t know whatever happened to that machete, or for that matter to Harry.

A few years after my father died in 1971, we sold the house in Williamsburg for a grand total of $40,000. A few years ago, my wife and I visited Williamsburg, and we stopped in front of 49 Lee Avenue and as we looked at the optical store that replaced the hardware store, the current resident came out of the front door (which was now on the left side instead of the right) and wanted to know what I was looking at. My wife Blossom explained that I had been born and grew up there. Looking at the two of us in shorts on a hot summer day, she who was dressed in a long dark dress and wig said - “that must have been a long, long time ago.” Given that the property values in Williamsburg have gone through the roof, it was also 960,000 dollars ago.