No. 48

Memoir: Anna B. Heldman

Sidlow and Hoffman

Family Papers [MSS 1247]

Yehoash Folk Schule

Calendar: JGS Pittsburgh Presents: Vivian Kahn



Community News: The Letters, Jakob's Torah, 1950 Census, Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project

Memoirs:

Anna B. Heldman

Anna B. Heldman (seated) with nurses from the Personal Service Department of the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House, undated.

—from Irene Kaufmann Settlement House Photographs [MSP 78]

Anna B. Heldman was head nurse of the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House. She began in 1902 and remained on staff for 38 years, becoming an institution in the Hill District. She was known by many as "The Angel of the Hill."

Heldman knew from an early age that she wanted to pursue nursing. She was particularly attracted to visiting nursing, which involved a lot of legwork and house calls. Visiting nursing was apparently a somewhat unfashionable at the time, but one can easily imagine what might have made it attractive to someone like Heldman: being invited into the innermost lives of other people.

At some point deep into her career, Heldman felt compelled to document some of these lives. The result was “The Neighbors’ Tales,” a collection of fictionalized versions of actual incidents she had witnessed over the years.

"Old Maid," by Anna B. Heldman, published in the Jewish Criterion (Aug. 23, 1957).

We’ve been defining memoirs as “first-person accounts of real events written down some significant period of time after those events occurred.” By that definition, “The Neighbors’ Tales” is an imperfect fit. The stories are first-hand accounts, in some sense. They reflect Heldman's experiences. But they can also be considered second-hand and maybe even third-hand accounts.

Each story is a monologue, told by a client of the settlement house. The plot of each story and also its spirit belongs to these narrators. Heldman takes the form of a “Mrs. Smith,” who listens quietly and occasionally offers a word of reassurance. Mrs. Smith is the "author" of these stories, the person who wrote them down. But Heldman felt incapable of writing the book herself. She hired a colleague named Hilda Satt Polacheck to turn her memories into prose. Satt Polacheck had immigrated to Chicago and was a client of the Hull House. She later wrote “I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl,” which is the only known account of Hull House written by a woman from the neighborhood.

Our copy of these stories came from Satt Polacheck’s daughter Dena J. Epstein, who responded to the initial call for materials when the Rauh Jewish Archives was just coming into existence in the late 1980s. At that time, Epstein was in the process of reviewing her mother’s papers for eventual publication and preservation and discovered these accounts from Pittsburgh. 

"No Luck."

Each story begins as a family drama, often between young married couples. Husbands desert their wives. Wives cheat their husbands. Parents are disappointed in their children. Children are furious with their parents. The resulting shouting matches can be heard blocks away.

But as these stories unfold, larger societal themes emerge in the background. The narrators are recent immigrants, and their troubles usually come from the challenges of starting over: how to find good work, how to maintain traditions, how to adapt to the social norms of a new home, how to feel respected and dignified, how to find happiness that lasts.

In the story “No Luck," Heldman and Satt Polacheck have Mrs. Smith make a survey of the neighborhood, “For weeks the story of Ella’s husband going to jail was the topic of conversation in the neighborhood. The women would stop me on the street to talk about it. The huckster’s wife said, ‘I expect my husband will some day make a fool of himself in front of the children.’ The broom peddler’s wife said, ‘Well, at least she knows where her husband is now, when he is in jail. What do I know; my husband has left me maybe six times already. I don’t know where he goes. Maybe here, maybe there, he never tells me.’ The widow from the grocery store said this when I stopped to make a purchase: 'There was my husband, the best man in the world; and he had to die and all the other men live, and see what trouble they make.'"

New Collection:

Sidlow and Hoffman Family

Papers and Photographs [MSS 1247]

Advertisement for “Santa’s Jogging Suit,” undated.

—from Sidlow and Hoffman Family Papers and Photographs [MSS 1247]

The Sidlow Family came to Pittsburgh from Cleveland in the early 20th century. Nathan Sidlow owned the Model Box Company in the Strip District and became a leader in the Jewish community through various affiliations. In the late 1960s, he led the fundraising campaign to add an educational wing onto Congregation Beth Shalom, a project that came to fruition after his death. His son-in-law Allen Hoffman later acquired the Christmas business of HALCO Inc., becoming a leading producer of Santa costumes. The Sidlow and Hoffman Family Papers and Photographs [MSS 1247] collection documents both branches of the family, as well as their business and communal activities.

Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:

Yehoash Folk Schule

Photograph showing students and faculty of the Yehoash Folk Schule, March 1929.

—from Yehoash Folk School papers [2000.0051]

The Yehoash Folk Schule was an after-school Yiddish secular school in Pittsburgh. It offered courses in Jewish history and culture, with classroom instruction in Yiddish. The Yehoash Folk Schule began meeting at the Irene Kaufmann Settlement House in the mid-1920s. By the early 1930s, it was also operating a second branch at 1909 Murray Ave. (The Squirrel Hill branch also met for a time at 5805 Forbes Ave.) Both branches offered classes in “Yiddish, Hebrew, Jewish history, and literature, social problems of Jewish life and a general knowledge of Jewish life—past and present.” The Squirrel Hill branch also had a mittle shule (high school) with advanced courses for older children.

Our entry includes a photograph of the student body and a program from its Purim concert, as well as a selection of articles describing its activities.

December 11:

JGS-Pittsburgh Presents: Vivian Kahn

This talk by internationally renowned genealogist Vivian Kahn will reference records from the vast area that was formerly part of Hungary, which includes present-day Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, northern Serbia, northwestern Romania, and Sub-Carpathian Ukraine. Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to hear from someone who has been instrumental in obtaining many of these records! With almost 2 million records already on-line and more added regularly, the JewishGen Hungary Database is one of the best resources for researching Hungarian Jewish families.

There are, however, a wide variety of websites that are less familiar to many researchers and can help you grow your family trees. This presentation will highlight what’s available from JewishGen and identify other less familiar on-line resources that can help you to expand your Hungarian research horizons.

Although many of them are in Hungarian, armed with a list of basic genealogical terms and an understanding of the site design and contents you can search these resources even if you don’t understand Hungarian. Vivian Kahn will review some of these websites, describe what they offer and provide tips on how to use them even if you don’t know a word of Hungarian.

The program is Sunday, Dec. 11 from 1-2:30 p.m. ET It's free for JGS-Pittsburgh members and $5 for the general public. Please register online. 

All attendees are encouraged to log on 30 minutes early for a virtual open house. It’s an opportunity to share genealogy stories and make new friends.

This is a virtual program. It will be recorded, and the recording will be made available for JGS-Pittsburgh members who are current on their dues.

This program is possible through the support of the William M. Lowenstein Genealogical Research Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation.

Vivian Kahn is JewishGen’s Hungarian SIG Director. She has presented workshops on Jewish genealogy and, especially, Hungarian Jewish family research at IAJGS annual conferences, for Jewish genealogy societies, and in Sighet, Romania, during a May 2015 gathering of Sighet descendants. Since beginning research on her own family from greater Hungary more than 25 years ago, she has identified and used a wide range of archival, print, and on-line resources to research families from Hungary, Moravia, Slovakia, Romania, and Galicia and has made research trips to Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania. Vivian has also written several articles on Hungarian Jewish family research that appeared in the print and on-line versions of Avotaynu and in other Jewish genealogy publications. Vivian was recognized as JewishGen’s Volunteer of the Year in 2021. Vivian is an urban planning and development consultant and teaches planning classes for University of California extension programs. She lives in Sonoma County, California.

[Right] Gertrude Perles of Vienna. [Left] Hasele and Abe Levy of Pittsburgh.

—from A. Sanford Levy and Gertrude Deutsch Perles Papers [MFF 4883]

"The Letters: A Plea for Help"

In late October 1938, Abe and Hasele Levy of Pittsburgh received a letter from Gertrude Perles, a stranger in Vienna who was trying to escape the Nazis and come to the United States. “My husband and I are both Jews,” she wrote. “I am sure you know what is going on here and I need not give you a more precise explanation. It is growing worse every day. Our only hope is to emigrate to the U.S.A. Please, if you are able to send affidavits for me and my husband, for Heaven’s sake, do it, before it will be too late for us.”

Over the next few months, the Levys worked to help this Viennese couple through the challenges and pressures of the immigration process. Their correspondence is preserved in the A. Sanford Levy and Gertrude Deutsch Perles Papers [MFF 4883] held by the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. The collection vividly shows the logistical and emotional challenges facing Jewish refugees as they navigated the immigration process.

Iris Samson of WQED recently produced a short documentary about the collection of letters titled The Letters: A Plea for Help. The moving 15-minute documentary places the eight-month correspondence into the larger context of the Anschluss, the Holocaust, and the start of World War II.

By now, you're probably expertly zipping around the new Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project platform. But if you still need a little help navigating its features and tools, you can view a virtual training workshop at the link below. Or, you can contact the archive or call 412-454-6406 with your questions.