No. 42

Memoir: David Glick

Beaver Valley Hebrew Religious School Photographs

[2021.0173]

Labor Lyceum [pictured]

The Man of A Thousand Sales

Calendar: Sukkot, JGS Pittsburgh Presents: Emily Garber



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

Memoir:

"Looking Back"

David Glick portrait, undated.

—from Jewish Chronicle Records [MSS 906]

The dozens of memoirs we’ve shared this year have something in common: they all describe the life of the author. Each generally begins with ancestry, continues through childhood, and conveys something of the adulthood of the person telling the story.

This memoir is different. It covers one episode in the life of its author.

David Glick was a prominent lawyer and communal leader in Pittsburgh in the early decades of the 20th century. He was a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and Harvard Law School, a veteran of World War I, and a past-president of the Allegheny County Bar Association.

In April 1936, the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee sent Glick to Germany to act as a liaison between the Jewish population and the Nazi government. His mission was simply to help Jews get out of the country. This was after the Nuremberg Laws but before the Anschluss, before Kristallnacht, before the invasion of Poland. Daily life was becoming increasingly agonizing for the Jews of Germany, but escape from the country was still possible. Glick spent two years traveling Germany meeting with Jewish communities and Nazi officials and then throughout South America, where many German refugees resettled. 

For years, Glick declined to discuss his mission publically. But in 1963, a year before his death, he published a long article in the Harvard Law Review describing his work in Germany in the late 1930s. The Jewish Chronicle republished the article across four issues in June and July of that year. 

The series is fascinating and frustrating. 

Early in his account, Glick explains how he leveraged a series of diplomatic relationships to arrange a brief meeting with Heinrich Himmler and how--sitting there in Himmler's office--he secured official sanction to “help the Jews of Germany to assist them in leaving Germany for other parts of the world with as much of their property as possible under the laws of Germany.”

It seems like the start of “something conspiratorial, a sort of cloak-and-dagger tale, some clever and cunning pulling of wires,” as Glick puts it. Then the tone shifts. Instead of giving a detailed account of the next two years, Glick becomes impressionistic, favoring a first-person description of the mood and spirit of Germany as it descends into horror. “I hesitate to begin a recitation of my experiences and the work accomplished, for old soldiers never die; their memories fade and their imaginations grow. During the two years, I could see the effect of the power and cruelty of the tyrannical, half-mad dictator.”

Eager to ensure that the work itself and the details of the mission entered the record, David Glick’s great-nephew Allen Hepner in 1999 commissioned a historical study of the mission. The results of that study form the basis of the David Glick Project Records [MSS 895] at the Rauh Jewish Archives and the related David Glick Collection at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

New Collection:

Beaver Valley Hebrew Religious School Photographs

[2021.0173]

Beaver Valley Hebrew Religious School Confirmation Class Photograph, 1935.

—from Beaver Valley Hebrew Religious School Photographs [2021.01738]

The National Council of Jewish Women-Beaver Valley Section founded the Beaver Valley Hebrew Religious School around 1917. The school included children from Beaver Falls, New Brighton and other small towns in the Ohio River Valley throughout Beaver County. The school was part of the regional Southwestern District of Pennsylvania Jewish Religious School program and worked with Rodef Shalom Congregation on its annual confirmation programs around the time of the Shavuout holiday in early summer. 

The Beaver Valley Hebrew Religious School Photographs [2021.0173] contains photographs of the school's confirmation classes of 1930, 1934 and 1935. Each has a caption naming students and teachers appearing in the image. Included are several members of the Sondheimer and Soodik families, ancestors of Norm Sondheimer, who gave the collection to the archive. 

Jewish Encyclopedia of Western Pennsylvania:

Labor Lyceum

Cornerstone from the former Labor Lyceum [2018.50]

The Labor Lyceum was a community center in the Hill District for Jewish political parties, Jewish labor unions, and secular Jewish cultural activities. Local branches of the Workmen’s Circle and other groups founded Labor Lyceum Inc. in 1907 for the purposes of building a center for Jewish labor and socialist activity. The coalition broke ground on a building on Miller Street in 1916 and held a housewarming on February 4, 1917. The three-story building had offices, a lecture hall, a public library, and community spaces. It was a meeting place for at least 13 Jewish labor, fraternal, political, cultural, and philanthropic organizations. Our entry for the Labor Lyceum includes a comprehensive bibliography, as well as a photograph of its cornerstone.

"The Man of a Thousand Sales"

It took me a while to understand what Harry Saville did for a living. Even now, I’m not convinced I understand. I’m definitely curious, though, and based on what little I know about his career, I think he would take my curiosity as proof of a job well done.

My curiosity started with an advertisement in the Jewish Criterion. It featured a little illustration of a man appearing to throw a punch at the reader. A photograph of Saville’s face was stuck atop the illustrated body. That dynamic illustration appeared over and over in newspaper advertisements from the early 1920s for Saville Sales Co.

October 17-18:

Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah

Flyer for Simchat Torah celebration hosted by Congregation Dor Hadash and its Dor L’Dor religious school, undated.

—from Congregation Dor Hadash Records [MSS 410]

The final days of the holiday of Sukkot, known as Shmini Atzeret and the related holiday of Simchat Torah, fall this year on Monday, Oct. 17 and Tuesday, Oct. 18. The Rauh Jewish Archives phone number and email account will be closed both days. We wish a joyous holiday to all who celebrate.

November 13:

JGS-Pittsburgh Presents: Emily Garber

Get on board for a guided tour through your family’s complex history! In this all-day hybrid seminar led by Emily Garber, you’ll learn where to start and how to explore your relatives’ lives. Discover clues about your family in the records they left behind. Train in the best research practices. Track your findings as you go. This course will set you up for future success in your Jewish family history journey. Seminar also includes an introductory session showing you how to find your Western Pennsylvania ancestors in the archives.

The program is Sunday, November 13 from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET. For a complete schedule of the seminar, visit the Heinz History Center website.

It is a hybrid event, with options for in-person and online participation. It's free for JGS-Pittsburgh members, $10 for non-members joining online and $15 for non-members joining in person. Attendees can reserve a boxed lunch from Creative Kosher for $20 or bring their own. Please register online. 

This is a hybrid program. Portions will be recorded, and the recordings 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.

An archaeologist by training (B.A., Vassar College; M.A., University of New Mexico), Emily Garber is a professional genealogy researcher, writer and speaker who specializes in Jewish genealogical research. She has researched both Eastern European and German Jewish communities and immigrants to the United States and Great Britain. She has toured family shtetlach (communities) and explored archives in Ukraine.

After retiring from her 30-plus year career in natural resources management, Emily earned a certificate from Boston University’s Genealogical Research program. She has spoken at nine International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies conferences, as well as National Genealogical Society’s conferences, the New York State Family History Conference and the Utah Genealogical Society’s Summit of Excellence. She has presented talks and seminars throughout the United States, and in Israel and Poland. She coordinated two different weeklong seminars on Jewish genealogy at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh and the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. She has authored four articles published in Avotaynu: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy and, for a client, completed two privately published volumes chronicling the 300-year history of a German Jewish family. She writes a family history blog, The Extra Yad.

Emily serves on the board of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. She also chairs the Phoenix Jewish Genealogy Group and is on the board of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. She served for about 10 years as one of the moderators of the JewishGen Discussion Group.

[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.