The Family (43 page)

“Machines, needles, thread, pressing cloths
 . . .”:
Roskolenko,
The Time That Was Then
, p. 69. Other details on sweatshop and pay, from Roskolenko,
The Time That Was Then
, chap. 3.

I have over a thousand dollars
:
The exact sum and how much various relatives chipped in is much debated in the family.

“the sentimental heart and the battling mind
 . . .”:
Roskolenko,
The Time That Was Then
, p. 120.

“the capital of capitalism
 . . .”:
Michels,
A Fire in Their Hearts
, p. 10.

CHAPTER SEVEN: SOCIALIST IN A BLACK SATIN DRESS

I relied on Itel's Story for many details in this chapter.

“The Jewish needle
 . .
 .”:
Quoted in Roskolenko,
The Time That Was Then
, p. 63.

“I am a socialist because
 . . .”:
Quoted in
How We Lived: A Documentary History of Immigrant Jews in America
, by Irving Howe and Kenneth Libo (New York: Richard Marek, 1979), p. 190.

“A man either had God or socialism
:
 . . .”:
Roskolenko,
The Time That Was Then
, p. 111.

CHAPTER EIGHT: FIRST WORLD WAR

When the news reached Volozhin
:
Volozhin Yizkor book, p. 343.

When Russia mobilized
:
S. Ansky,
The Enemy at His Pleasure: A Journey Through the Jewish Pale of Settlement During World War I
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002), p. ix.

“swaying back and forth
 . . .”:
Quoted in
The Long Way Home
, by David Laskin (New York: Harper, 2010), p. 92.

Some 600,000 Jews were sent packing
:
Ansky,
The Enemy at His Pleasure
, p. ix.

Cossacks were desecrating
:
Ibid., p. 281.

Again and again, a story was repeated
:
Ibid., cited in Laskin,
The Long Way Home
, p. 92.

In a neighboring shtetl
:
Krasnoe Yizkor book.

A letter appealing for emergency aid
:
On Foreign Soil: An Autobiographical Novel
, by Falk Zolf at www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/rakov//rkv_pages/rakov_stories_onfor.html.

In March of 1916
:
Details from
The Eastern Front, 1914–1917
, by Norman Stone (New York: Scribner, 1975), pp. 228–229, 231.

Shalom Tvi managed to secure
:
No papers or photos exist to document Shimon Dov's move to Rakov, but there is one compelling piece of physical evidence. It is the Jewish custom to bury the dead within twenty-four hours of their passing, and even in fine weather it would have been difficult to transport a body from Volozhin to Rakov that quickly in the days of horse-drawn carts. In February 1917, with the roads drifted over in snow, Volozhin sealed off on the front line, and the Pale crippled by war, such a move would have been next to impossible. Since Shimon Dov was buried in Rakov, he must have been living there at the time of his death. Aside from this evidence, family customs and habits also support the idea that Shimon Dov moved to Rakov during the war. His son Avram Akiva lived with his children
in New York, so it seems logical that Shimon Dov, a widower in time of war, would have moved in with his last son remaining in Europe.

It was International Women's Day
:
Orlando Figes,
A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891–1924
(New York: Penguin, 1996), p. 308.

Police and Cossacks were called in
:
Sheila Fitzpatrick,
The Russian Revolution
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 44.

no one had thought to issue whips
:
Figes,
A People's Tragedy
, p. 308.

February 23 in the old-style Julian
:
Dates in the old-style Julian calendar are thirteen days earlier than dates in the new-style Gregorian calendar (see footnote above); hence in Russia, which was still using the Julian calendar, it was known as the February Revolution—even though in the West the date fell in March.

The Petrograd chief of police
:
Figes,
A People's Tragedy
, p. 310.

As of March 15, 1917
:
Geoffrey Jukes,
The First World War: The Eastern Front, 1914–1918
(Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002), p. 60.

“There is nothing more to discuss
 . . .”:
Quoted in Laskin,
The Long Way Home
, p. 119.

Russia must withdraw immediately
:
Fitzpatrick,
The Russian Revolution
, p. 51.

In the first week of July
:
Ibid., p. 57.

“the worst possible material
 . . .”:
Quoted in Laskin,
The Long Way Home
, p. 135.

“it will be a shameful peace”
:
Quoted in Figes,
A People's Tragedy
, p. 544.

Russia lost not only all of its western territories
:
Figes,
A People's Tragedy
, p. 548.

The regime change came as a huge relief
:
Some of the details here were supplied by my maternal grandmother, Gisri Sore Galpierjn. Gisri Sore was the daughter of a prominent family in the shtetl of Krasniki—fifty-five miles north-northeast of Minsk. During the Great War a gentlemanly German officer was billeted in their house. The officer told the family that he would help them in any way he could after the war and he made good on his promise. When Gisri Sore decided to immigrate to America in 1921 at the age of eighteen, she contacted the German officer and he helped her arrange passage. In America she Americanized her name to Gladys Helperin. Gladys married Sam Cohen shortly after the death of his first wife Celia, raised his four children, and bore him a daughter, my mother, Leona Pauline Cohen, in 1926.

When Passover came
:
The Jews in Poland and Russia, Volume III: 1914 to 2008
, by Antony Polonsky (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), p. 19.

“On the earth this is the last part
 . . .”:
Arnold Zweig, quoted in
War Land on the Eastern Front
, by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 191.

There were stories
:
Liulevicius,
War Land
, p. 120.

“Jews are living here in considerable numbers
 . . .”:
Ibid., p. 120.

“The shelling did not come in bursts
 . 
. .”:
Captain Ben H. Chastaine,
History of the 18th U.S. Infantry, First Division 1812–1919
(New York: Hymans Publishing), p. 47.

For a week they lived on
:
Jeremiah M. Evarts,
Cantigny: A Corner of the War
(Privately printed, 1938), p. 2.

The shriek was directly overhead
:
Details on shell explosion from Evarts,
Cantigny
, p. 73.

A soldier with Company K
:
Testimony of Corporal Fidelis H. Elder, on file in National Archives and Record Administration, College Park, Maryland.

But Hyman gave a different account
:
Hyman's account in
As I Recall
, pp. 32–41, has a number of errors: he puts the date of Quesenberry's wounding and death a month later than it actually occurred; the part about Quesenberry's refusing aid in the church basement seems unlikely since Corporal Fidelis H. Elder, in sworn testimony, describes him being removed in an ambulance in which he died on the way to the hospital. Hyman states at the start of the book that he was writing “from memory” and the events of the Great War had occurred a half century earlier.

The hard part would be fending off
:
History of the First Division During the World War, 1917–1919
, compiled by the Society of the First Division (Philadelphia: Winston, 1922), p. 83.

“No more glorious task
 . 
. .”:
Chastaine,
History of the 18th
, p. 59.

“Blinding flashes of lightning
 . . .”:
Ibid., p. 61.

the serene neoclassical façade
:
Evarts,
Cantigny
, p. 86.

“No man is fearless in battle
 . . .”:
Charles H. Abels,
The Last of the Fighting Four
(New York: Vantage Press, 1968), p. 77.

Casualties mounted
:
Chastaine,
History of the 18th
, p. 63.

“like insects fleeing to the rear”
:
quoted in Laskin,
The Long Way Home
, p. 220.

Captain Robert S. Gill
:
Hyman mistakenly identified him as Captain Gilbert in
As I Recall
.

horrific flanking fire
:
Chastaine,
History of the 18th
, p. 64.

“so exhausted
 . . . that it was often necessary”:
Douglas V. Johnson II and Rolfe L. Hillman, Jr.,
Soissons 1918
(College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1999), p. 126.

only seventy-nine returned
:
Chastaine,
History of the 18th
, p. 66.

The First Division Infantry as a whole
:
American Armies and Battlefields in Europe
(Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1992), p. 87.

For the first time since September 1914
:
Johnson and Hillman,
Soissons
, p. 125.

The blisters raised by the mustard gas
:
In
As I Recall
, p. 39, Hyman mentions the permanent scar on the lower part of his chin; his daughter Barbara Weisenfeld remembers scars on his neck behind his left ear.

CHAPTER NINE: PIONEERS

For background on Maidenform's founding and early years, I relied on Itel's Story, the Maidenform Collection:
They Made America
, by Harold Evans (New York: Little, Brown,
2004), pp. 308–315;
Past and Promise
:
Lives of New Jersey Women
, edited by Joan N. Burstyn, Women's Project of New Jersey (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1990);
Uplift: The Bra in America
, by Jane Farrell-Beck and Colleen Gau (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); “At the Curve Exchange,” by Vicki Howard in
Beauty and Business: Commerce, Gender and Culture in Modern America
, edited by Philip Scranton (New York: Routledge, 2001); and “Her Half-Billion Dollar Shape,” by Pete Martin,
Saturday Evening Post
, October 15, 1949.

For background on Zionism, HeHalutz, and the early collective Jewish colonies in Palestine, I relied on the following:
My Country: The Story of Modern Israel
, by Abba Eban (New York: Random House, 1975);
A History of Palestine: From the Ottoman Conquest to the Founding of the State of Israel
, by Gudrun Kramer (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002);
The Return to the Soil: A History of Jewish Settlement in Israel
, by Alex Bein (Jerusalem: Youth and Hechalutz, Department of the Zionist Organisation, 1952);
Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914
, by Gershon Shafir (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989);
Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist, Berl Katznelson, 1887–1944
, by Anita Shapira (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984);
Arrow in the Blue,
by Arthur Koestler (New York: Macmillan, 1952–1954);
Palestinian Identity
, by Rashid Khalidi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993);
Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv, and the Struggle for Palestine 1880–1948
, by Mark Levine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005);
A History of Zionism
, by Walter Laqueur (New York: Schocken Books, 2003);
Imagining Zion: Dreams, Designs, and Realities in a Century of Jewish Settlement
, by S. Ilan Troen (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003);
A Tale of Love and Darkness
, by Amos Oz (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2004);
The Blue Mountain
, by Meir Shalev (New York: Asher Books, 1991);
Pioneers and Homemakers: Jewish Women in Pre-State Israel
, edited by Deborah S. Bernstein (Albany: State University of New York, 1992);
Pioneers in Israel,
by Shmuel Dayan (Cleveland, OH: World Publishing, 1961);
The Promised Land
:
Memoirs of Shmuel Dayan
, by Yael Dayan (London: Routledge, 1961);
The Plough Woman: Records of the Pioneer Women of Palestine
, by Rachel Katznelson-Shazar (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002);
Pioneer Youth in Palestine
, by Shlomo Bardin (New York: Bloch Publishing, 1932);
The Israelis: Founders and Sons
, by Amos Elon (New York: Penguin, 1983);
Moshava, Kibbutz and Moshav
, by Dov Weintraub (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1969); and
The Moshav in Israel
, by Maxwell I. Klayman (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970).