Charl's 90th birthday party: I sat next to Charlotte's cousin Amy, who lived in Heritage Village and whom I had met several times when Charlotte still had her apartment. Amy was a Dossick cousin. "I hear you are writing a family history" she said to me. At the time, I was hard at work, selecting George's WWI letters for what eventually became a book (self published) and now a web site, "Letters from a Jewish Doughboy". "When you do the Katz family, you must make it a love story!" she said. A love story, and also, a tragedy.
|
|
1890's
Aaron & Amalia Katz
|
This is the story she told me:
"Once upon a time, at the end of the last century, in the part of the world that was Russia last week, Poland this week, Russia again the next, there lived a widow with two beautiful daughters and a very young son.
Moritz Tolk went to New York, and worked his way up into Tammany Hall, where he had influence and money. He wrote to Gussie: "I have the money for your ticket to New York"
|
| The next generation: Gussie, Rebecca, Meyer | |
|
Gussie Katz - Mortiz Tolk Phil - Betty - Flo - Leo - Archie
|
Maurice and Gussie were married, and through the years had 5 children. They became rich, and were able to give their children good educations and as adults all followed professional careers as lawyers and teachers. But Gussie was a very possesive mother. She worried that "gold diggers" would go after her rich, professional children, and told them that if they ever married, she would cut the married child out of her will. None of them married, and so the Tolk family died out with that generation. |
|
Rebecca Katz - Louis Dossick Harry - Theresa - Esther - Bernie Jesse - Martha - Amy
|
As for the Dossicks, Maurice found a job in Tammany Hall for Louis, but Louis was not ambitious and did not do well. They were poor all their lives. Poor, but happy, for theirs was a family built on love. Of their 7 children, two died in childhood. The others all married, had children, and most went into deaf education.
|
|
Meyer Katz - Mary Nojfech
Rose
|
And the very young son? When he was 16, and beginning to feel his oats, his mother decided it was time for him to marry. She wrote back to her cousins in Kremenitz, asking if any had a daughter who would be willing to make the trip to America, and marry her son. Her cousin Sima Nojfech answered, saying her daughter Mary, who was also 16, would be willing to do this.
The story is told that as the boat pulled into the dock, Mary scanned the faces of the crowd waiting on shore, and spotted this very handsome young man. "I hope he is the one" she said to herself. And he was. She lived with the family for a year before she and Meyer were married. She always had the option to go back, but she didn't take it. It was an arranged marriage, which ended in love. Meyer was a businessman. When one business went down, he bought another. Sometimes Mary helped in the business, most of the time whe was a mother, a hostess, a home manager. Their home was the first stop in the new world for many cousins from Kremenitz. There were 5 children: Rose, Charlotte, Mollie, Archie and Claire. Like the Dossicks, it was a family built on love.
|
| the tragedy |
In the 1930's, Mary, with her daughter Rose, travelled to Kremenitz, to convince her mother to return to America with her. They knew a war was coming in Europe and felt it would go bad for the Jews. "I cannot possibly go without my children and my grand children" said Sima. Mary's sister Rosa, and brother Mischa, were established in Kremenitz and did not want to leave. And so they stayed. And when the war came, and the Nazis were marching toward their town, all committed suicide rather than be enslaved. And so brave, courageous Mary, who made the trip as a girl, was the only member of her family to survive the war.
|
Imagine a 16 year old girl, with no English, making the trip to America, to meet someone she barely remembered and to spend the rest of her life in a strange land, with its strange customs. She was very courageous!