The Great Immigration was the most massive outpouring of
humanity in recorded history. Millions of Jewish men, women and children sought refuge
from the hunger, poverty, tyranny and political turmoil of their native lands. They
carried with them only the clothes on their backs, Shabbos candlesticks, and if lucky, a
beloved Samovar from the Old Country. The few rare objects that survive today are a
testament to the survival of the Jewish people despite millennia of persecutions, pogroms
and exiles.
Who were these people who so bravely voyaged into the unknown? What were the
individual circumstances that propelled them to the "Goldene Medina"?
Every family has a unique story to tell of their own
personal history. Here are the stories of four families who became one family due to this
monumental event - The Great Immigration.
The Podbereski Family, Ilya, Lithuania, (Smargon, Vilna
Gebarnia) c. 1901
Pictured L to R: Ethel Farberman Gordon (relative of actress
Lisa Kudrow), Esther Genya (Stepmother), Philip Podbereski, Zev –Wolf (Velvel)
Podbereski, Libby-Duska Podbereski, Rivka-Baila Podbereski
Not Pictured: Max Podbereski Gordon (changed to Gordon upon arrival in America)
who studied at the Yeshiva in Volozhin and emigrated to America to escape the Russian
army. Jewish boys and men drafted into the Russian army were expected to complete 25 years
of service.
Basha-Ita Danishefsky Podbereski (Mother) died c. 1898).
The Podbereski Family lived in Ilya, Lithuania, in the Pale of Jewish
Settlement.
Ilya was a small village just outside of the
great center of Jewish culture and scholarship, Vilna.
The family lived in a small house on the
"Volozhine Gass", the road to Volozhin – a city that was home to the
legendary Volozhin Yeshiva, which attracted scholars from all of the great cities of
Europe.
Zev-Wolf came from the town of Vishniveh. He and
his wife, Basha-Ita Danishevsky had four children: Max, Philip, Libby-Duska and
Rivka-Baila. Zev-Wolf was a teacher, and all of the children were raised Orthodox and
steeped in Torah learning and Yiddishkeit -- in the true "Litvak" tradition.
Basha-Ita died when Rivka was only a year and a half old. Zev-Wolf married Esther
Genya, who was a wonderful stepmother to the children.
By 1916, all of the family but Zev-Wolf, Esther Genya and
youngest daughter Rivka-Baila had emigrated to America. The three older children worked in
upstate New York to save enough money to bring the rest of the family to the New World.
During this time, Zev-Wolf wrote many letters to his children in America, all written in
his beautiful Yiddish script.
Yiddish letters written by Zev-Wolf, c. 1910
While waiting for passage, Zev, Esther and Rivka were
caught in World War I and the Russian Revolution. Four years passed with no contact from
their family in America.
With much of the population in the war torn cities starving, Esther Genya traveled
alone to her family farm to bring back milk and provisions. Caught in the ravages of war,
she disappeared and was never heard from again. Rivka-Baila and her father became refugees
and were moved from place to place as the wars progressed.
Zev-Wolf Podbereski and daughter Rivka-Baila
Ilya, Lithuania, Vilna Gebarnia c. 1915
While at an armory where they sought shelter, Zev-Wolf became seriously ill and
his condition continued to worsen. Rivka-Baila knew he needed a doctor and went to a
neighboring village to get help. When she returned a few days later, her father was gone.
She searched a makeshift morgue where she found his body amid
hundreds of others who had died from disease and starvation during the long Russian
winter. She buried her beloved father in the snow. Terrified and now alone, Rivka-Baila
had only one thought – to get to America.
Hearing about a Jewish Delegation in the free port of Danzig, she began her
journey across Poland on foot. Rifka-Baila had no passport. As a war refugee, she was
stateless. She learned of a family in Wizen who had room on their family passport for one
more person. Rivka joined this family and together with a brother and sister who were also
travelling alone (Laike and Joseph Sherman), she crossed Poland, working occasionally on
farms and sleeping outdoors or in barns.
Arriving in Danzig, they waited along with hundreds of other refugees for their
names to be called from lists of relatives providing passage to America.
Rivka-Baila in Danzig
In 1920, Rikva-Baila Podbereski’s name was called and she boarded the Susquehanna
-- the ship that would take her to the New World. Along with thousands of Jewish
refugees, Rivka-Baila made the long ocean voyage in the cramped, claustrophobic conditions
of Steerage Class.
The Voyage to the New World – Aboard
Ship c. 1890
Rivka-Baila arrived in America on Yom Kipper, 1920. Reluctant to travel on Yom
Kippur, she nonetheless boarded a train to join her brothers and sister in Rochester, New
York. Although fluent in Russian, Polish and Yiddish and excelling in mathematics, the
only work Rivka could find was in a coat factory, sewing buttons. One day at work, a
co-worker, admonishing her for being old fashioned and Orthodox, spilled milk on her lunch
making it un-kosher, and therefore not edible. A young man named Joseph Martin Schuster
kindly offered her an orange. They were married in 1922.
Wedding of Rivka-Baila Podbereski & Joseph Martin Schuster,
June 4, 1922.
The Schuster Family, Bozalia Russia c. 1909
Pictured L to R: Ancy, Pesse-Channa (Fanny), Sara (Tzipra), Yossel
(Joseph), and Yitzhak (Jack)
Not pictured: Father: Mendel, already in America
Joseph Martin Schuster was born in Bozalia, Russia in 1899. Bozalia was a tiny
shtetl with a population of less than 400. The town consisted of a Church, a Synagogue and
a general store. The only transportation was horse and wagon. The closest town was Keppel,
which was 60 miles away. Many people walked to Keppel for goods. There was a tailor in
town who had the only phonograph. On summer evenings he would play music and people would
dance outdoors.
Russian Shtetl, Woodcut by Solomon Yudovin
The house the Schuster family lived in belonged to Grandmother, Leah Schuster. It
was made of mud and straw, with a straw roof and a dirt floor. In the wintertime, the
family would sit atop the "pripichik" (stove) to keep warm and rip goose
feathers to make featherbeds and pillows. The lighting was candlelight or kerosene. There
was no indoor plumbing. Drinking water was carried home in wooden buckets from the town
well. Joseph, an enterprising young boy, made wooden ice skates for his brother Jack and
they both played with their dog Moose. A Russian woman, Yuchema, helped Zipra bake breads,
which she sold to the Jewish families in town.
At the turn of the century, restrictions against Jews were intensified. Children
could not attend public schools and means of making a living were curtailed. In addition,
Bozalia was becoming increasingly unsafe for Jews due to attacks by Cossacks and organized
pogroms. Mendel Schuster, the father, was the first to emigrate to America.
Mendel and Zipra Schuster, c. 1895, Bozalia,
Russia
Mendel was a skilled furrier by trade who made furs
for the Russian nobility. He traveled to their lavish estates, but was forced to sleep in
their barns, even in the dead of winter. His health began to decline while he was still in
his twenties. Conscripted into the Tzar’s army, he soon realized this was a death
sentence for him. In order to escape the unbearable conditions and the rampant
anti-Semitism, Mendel deserted and fled to the Goldene Medina – and a chance at a
better life. Leaving his wife and four children in Bozalia, he found work in New York and
began to save money to bring his family to the New World.
Joseph, the oldest son, was a very bright child who dreamed of
becoming a doctor. He was an avid learner who spoke Yiddish, Russian and German. In
preparation for their trip to America, Joseph’s mother Tzipra (Sara) chose him to
learn English and hired a tutor for this purpose.
Joseph Martin Schuster, age 14
Three years after arriving on Ellis Island, Mendel sent for his
eldest daughter, Fanny. Fanny and Mendel worked to earn enough money for passage for the
rest of the family. Two years after Fanny’s arrival, Mendel sent for the rest of the
family, leaving Grandmother Leah in Russia with Yuchema.
The Schusters arrived in the port of New York on September 15,
1913, on the Dutch ship, Kroonland.
 
Schuster Family Passport Page 1 & 2
From Bosalia Russia to the New World
Zipra (Sara), Fanya, Joseph, Isaac (Jack), Pesse-Channa (Ancy)
 
In 1914, only six months after his family arrived in America,
Mendel Schuster died. He was 38 years old. Zipra, a young widow with four children, sold
the few possessions the family had brought with them from Russia: a samovar, candlesticks,
and a mortar and pestle. Joseph was taken out of school and went to work to support the
family. He was 14 years old. His dream of becoming a doctor ended. Working long hours at a
variety of jobs, Joseph continued his education on his own, studying medicine and history
throughout his life.
In 1921 while working in a clothing factory, Joseph shared his lunch with
Rivka-Baila Podbereski. They were engaged in 1921 and married in 1922.
Engagement of Rivka-Baila Podbereski &
Joseph Martin Schuster, 1921.
In 1924, their first child was born: Basha-Ita (Beatrice Edith), named after
Rivka’s mother. They had 3 other children, Burton Gordon, William (named after her
father, Zev-Wolf) who died in infancy, and Alan Herbert.
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Beatrice Edith |
Burton Gordon |
Alan Herbert |
Beatrice Edith Schuster ( Basha-Ita )
The Rolnik Family, in Ivenitz, White Russia
(near Minsk) c.1912 Avram, Doris, Leib-Dovid, Yerachmil, Sara, Stepmother Gisha, Tzril
(Not pictured: Mother: Chaya Horowitz Rolnik)
Vereshka (Doris) Rolnik was born in Ivenitz near Minsk, Russia
in 1895. Ivenitz was a typical Eastern European town: wooden houses, main roads paved with
stones, back streets and alleys of sand. Five thousand Jews lived in relative peace with
their Catholic and Christian neighbors. There was a Jewish school with classes taught in
Yiddish, a Polish school and a Tarbut School where classes were taught in Hebrew. Many
fruit plantations surrounded the area and near the Volma River there were two Jewish owned
windmills. A Jewish owned lumber mill supplied refined pieces of wood to Poland. A small
professional pottery industry employed hundreds of workers both Jews and Gentiles.
Ivenitz map
At the beginning of the 20th Century, a wave of anti-Semitism
began to spread. Many people from Ivenitz and surrounding areas sought passage to
Palestine only to have their plans blocked by Turkish rule. Consequently, people wanting
to leave Europe started to prepare for immigration to America.
Doris (Vereshka) Rolnik coming to America,
c. 1910.
Vereshka was the oldest daughter and was educated by a tutor. Her mother died in
1909 and she helped raise her younger siblings, Yerachmiel, Avram, Tsril and Sara until
her father remarried. Her father, Leib-Dovid, had traveled to America at the turn of the
century with her older brother Alec. Living in New York for seven years Leib-Dovid then
returned to White Russia. In 1915, Vereshka and her father boarded the ship Mauritania
bound for New York. Leib-Dovid left the ship a few days into the journey and returned to
the family in Iventiz. Vereshka went on to join her older brother Alec in America.
Rolnik Family, Ivenitz c.1920 – Gisha,
Tsril, Leib-Dovid, Sara
Doris (Vereshka) c. 1914
In the New World, Vereshka called herself Doris (after her Hebrew name, Dvora).
She went to live with her Uncle and Aunt in upstate New York. In 1913, she met young
Samuel (Usher-Zelig) Goldberg at the Strand Theatre in Rochester, NY.
Sam & Doris c. 1913
They became engaged.
Doris Rolnik & Sam Goldberg’s
engagement photo, 1914.
Samuel (Usher Zelig) was one of 7 children born to
Hyam Goldberg of Zlottopollee, Ukraine and Libby Zinkoff Goldberg of Odessa, Russia. Hyam
was the only son of Yisroel and Havka Goldberg of Zlottopollee, Ukraine. He had
three sisters, Rifka Dina, Pearl, and Malka (Molly). Hyam's first marriage was to Rivka.
They had a son named Moshe. Hyam and Rivka divorced and Hyam moved to Odessa
where he met and married Libby Zinkoff. Moshe lived with them and they had six other
children: Julius, Gittel (Kate), Rose, Usher Zelig (Sam) Eva and Bessie.
Bar Mitzvah of Usher-Zelig (Samuel) Goldberg,
Odessa, Russia 1906
The family escaped the brutal pogroms in Odessa by emigrating
to America. The older children traveled first, the parents and three younger
children arrived on Ellis Island on New Year's Day, 1907. The family settled on
Rivington Street, on New York's Lower East Side. Hyam died in 1920 and Libby in
1923.
The Lower East Side, c. 1900
Sam and his older brother Julius worked selling glass lamp
parts from a horse drawn cart in New York City, before moving with the whole family to
Rochester, New York where sister Gittel had secured a job in a clothing factory.
Sam and his family were known for great humor, masterful storytelling, joke
telling, their contagious optimism and extraordinary ability to enjoy life. He played
mandolin, loved anything Italian, was a member of a Jewish theatre company, The Lyra, and
ate ice cream everyday of his life at 3:00 PM sharp.
Sam, c. 1915
Sam met Doris Rolnik in 1913.
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Doris Rolnik, c.1913, NY |
Sam Goldberg, c.1915, NY |
They were engaged in 1914 and married the same
year.
Doris and Sam's Wedding, July 5, 1915.
They had three children: Mack, Helen, and Herman.
Mack, Helen, Doris, Herman, Sam c.1926
Mack, Sam, Helen, Doris c. 1922
New Americans: Helen, Doris, and Mack. July
4, 1921.
Sam & Doris, 1930s
Herman - named after Sam's father Hyam, c.1929
Sam and Doris' youngest son, Herm, fell in love with Beatrice Schuster.
Beatrice & Herm
High School Sweethearts
He called her "P.F." (Pretty Face) and wrote love
letters to her while he was in flight school.
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Beatrice, "P.F."
1944 |
Herman, Pilot Flight School -
Army Air Corps 1943 |
Herman, LT. US Army Air Corps c.
1943-44
On July 4th 1944, In Rochester, New York, Beatrice Edith
Schuster, daughter of Rivka-Baila Podbereski from Ilya, Lithuania and Joseph Martin
Schuster from Bozalia, Russia married Herman Dorsam Goldberg, son of Doris (Vereshka)
Rolnik of Ivenitz, White Russia and Samuel (Usher-Zelig) Goldberg of Odessa, Russia.
Wedding of Beatrice and Herman, July 4, 1944 – First
Generation Americans
They welcomed their first child in 1947.
Beatrice, Herm & Donna Elizabeth
second generation American
1947, Syracuse NY
Note: Of the family members and individuals who did not journey
to the New World during the Great Immigration, all but a few perished in the Holocaust,
murdered by the Nazi’s.
There is no record of any surviving members of the Schuster Family of Bozalia or
the Danishefsky or Podbereski families of Lithuania.
In Odessa, any remaining Goldberg family members were lost in mass killings. On
October 22, 1941,19,000 Jews were taken to the harbor, doused with gasoline and burned
alive. Another 16,000 were taken the following day to the outskirts of the city and
massacred. Another 5000 Jews were subsequently deported to camps set up in Bogdanovka,
Domanevka, Krivoye Ozero, and other villages where about 70,000 Jews, all from southern
Transnistria, were concentrated. During December 1941 and January 1942, almost all of them
were killed by special troops of Sonderkommando aided by Rumanian Police, Ukrainian
Militia, and especially SS Units made up of German colonists of the region. After the last
convoy left on December 7, 1942, Odessa was declared "Judenrein."
Almost all of the Rolnik family perished in the Holocaust.
Yerachmiel Rolnik, his wife Yentl and all of their children,
except their son Motek,were murdered by the Nazi’s when their town, Ivenitz was
liquidated. Thousands were forced into to a mass grave and shot on September 19, 1941.
Motek Rolnik, son of Doris’s brother Yerachmiel, was a survivor of this slaughter.
Motek, the sole survivor of his immediate family, crawled out from under the bodies of his
parents and five siblings, and escaped to the forest where he joined the Partisans –
Jewish and Russian armed fighters. He was 14 years old. He eventually made his way to
Israel.
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Yentyl and Yerachmeil Rolnik |
Motek Rolnik - Teenage
Partisan, 1946 |
Doris’
sister Tsril was sent to Auschwitz with her two young sons (one too young to have a name).
The three were murdered in the gas chambers upon arrival.
Tsril and husband Shmul
Iskovitz
Doris’ sister Sara had a different story. Married to Hersh Rolnik (no
relation), she was the mother of 5 boys: Haim, Zev, Meier, Shlomo, and Leib Dovid. In
October 1939, Hersh was arrested by the N.K.V.D. (a precursor of the KGB) under the false
charge of being a Polish agent and an anti-Communist and sentenced to prison in Siberia.
Six months later, on the eve of Passover 1940, the N.K.V.D. deported the rest of the
family. Sara and her five children (ages 3-11) traveled into Russia by freight wagon (five
families crowded into each wagon). The journey lasted an entire month with little food and
no sanitary facilities.
The Rolniks were left off in the city of Kokchetav, Siberia. Small trucks were
brought to the wagons and they were driven 100 miles away to the village of Voscrenovcka.
Certain that the family had no means of escape, the N.K.V.D. soldiers left them there.
The village itself was built from clay and wood. The ten families (only two of
them Jewish) that had been exiled together sat in the snow and rested. The town counsel
brought them hot tea and soon the women went off to find shelter. The villagers themselves
were also exiles from Central Russia during World War I, and so had great compassion for
these new arrivals. Sara and her sons were taken by sled to a villager’s home and
given a room.
Sara worked in a brick factory and sold the clothes she had brought from home in
order to feed the children. Chaim, Zev and Mier started to attend Russian school, while
Shlomo and Leib David attended kindergarten where they were furnished with free meals.
Soon Sara moved the family to the market village of Volodarovka, where she was able to
sell clothing at the weekly market and was able to purchase a small clay home, most
of it underground. On a trip to a neighboring village to purchase goods, Sara was arrested
by the N.K.V.D. for illegal trading. During her months in prison separated from her
children, the ever-resourceful Sara began sending messages to her sons by singing in
Yiddish (a language the Russian guards did not understand). Two months after her
imprisonment, in the summer of 1944, she demanded to be set free, and miraculously was
– under the caveat that she would leave the vicinity.
On August 9, 1944, the Russian Army liberated Ivenitz. Sara received a letter
informing her that all the members of her family had been slaughtered. Her husband, Hersh
Rolnik (long thought dead), managed to make contact with Sara and the children. His
letters informed them that he was sentenced to 8 years and still had three more years left
as a prisoner. Also, he had never been sent to Siberia, but was in a prison near Ivenitz.
In prison, Hersh worked hard labor, coal mining and woodcutting in temperatures
that were 40 below zero. Only
very few prisoners survived the full 8 years under such harsh conditions. Most prisoners
died in the first year and were replaced by transports of new prisoners. Hersh asked Sara
for help – food and clothing. His health was poor and he weighed only 42kg, half his
normal weight.
Sara and the children organized packages of provisions, which kept Hersh alive
during the winter of 1944. After the war, Ivenitz became part of Russia, and the Rolniks
went to Poland. Hersh wrote urging the family to try to make their way to Israel, and if
possible, he would join them.
Zev and Chaim stayed in Poland, while Sara, Meier, Arye (Leib-David) and Shlomo
crossed the border into Czechoslovakia. They were immediately taken to a refugee (DP) camp
and placed with others who had crossed the border illegally. A few months later, they
again crossed the border by foot and entered Austria where they again stayed in a DP camp.
From there, they went to Germany where they stayed for 2 years and were joined by Chaim
and Zev. The Rolniks were among the 60 million displaced persons in Europe at the end of
World War II.
Rolnik Survivors 1946
– Arye, Shlomo, Meier, Zev, Chaim
Rolniks 1946 – Arye, Shlomo, Meier,
Zev, Sara, Motek
While in Germany they joined the Betyr Movement and lived along with a few
thousand other Jewish refugees on a large German army base, Hindenburg Kasarma, near Oelm.
Schools were established and they received some money from The Joint Distribution
Committee, an American Jewish charity. Other youth groups, Hagana and Etzel, gave military
training to the refugees so that when they arrived in Israel, they would be ready to join
the Israeli Army.
Zev, Arye, Sara and Chaim Rolnik, 1946
In 1948, Zev and Meier lied about their ages and joined 40 other boys and girls
bound for Israel via France. They arrived in Haifa on May 22, 1948 and were immediately
taken to the front lines to fight the Arabs in Tel-Mond. Zev stayed with the Giv’ati
battalion fighting the Egyptians and Meier (because he was underage) was sent to live with
distant relatives who had been pioneers in Palestine in the 1930s.
In December 1947, Hersh was released from Russian prison and went to Poland. He
joined the "Hashomer HaTazair" movement and continued on to Marseilles where he
underwent military training in preparation to join the Israeli army. He wrote to Sara who
was in Italy with the young children in a failed attempt to get to Israel. Hersh asked
Sara to make her way to Marseilles. Finally, Sara and Hersh were reunited in France and in
September 1948, they reached Israel!
Sara and Hersh rebuilt their lives and had another son, Reuven.
(Note: Leib-David (Arye) fell in the Sinai War of 1956.)
Doris Rolnik Goldberg, who had immigrated to America so many years ago, did not
know the fate of her family from Ivenitz. She placed an ad in a Jewish newspaper
requesting information. Motek Rolnik (teenage Partisan and sole survivor of the Ivenitz
massacre) contacted her. In 1953, Doris and Sam traveled to Israel and Doris was reunited
with her sister Sarah and nephew Motek Rolnick, a teenage Partisan. It was the first time
the two sisters had seen each other in 40 years.
Sisters Sara and Doris. In Israel -
1953 - reunited after 40 years.
Rolniks in Israel 1953
Standing: Chaim,Sara, Shlomo, Meier, Zev
Sitting: Reuven (born in Israel) Hersh, Arye
note to Herman in America on back of photo
From this small fragment of survivors, the Rolnik family has
grown to over 100 members, and is thriving in Israel.
By connecting to the Immigrant experience, we honor our parents and grandparents
and are compelled to share with each new generation the astounding stories of our own
family's personal history and journey to the New World.
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