Getting to the bus stop: part 1
This post and the one that follows it give a little more background of my paternal grandparents, and how each of them got to that bus stop when they shouldn’t have been there.
I’m going to come back to their immediate families and the 20th century, but before I do that, and after these two posts, we’ll jump back in time.
The Abramskys first arrived in America in 1903, when my great-grandfather Harry, his wife, and mother-in-law, arrived from Russia. Or at least they are the first that we know of.
He was followed three years later by his brother, Izzy, and around 1908 by his brother Charlie.
Nearly 20 years after Harry arrived in America, his brother Benny arrived, in 1921. This was the same year the Quota Act took effect, strictly limiting immigration by putting a number cap on how many immigrants could come from any country. In the process of passing the bill, the Senate decided to vote down a House amendment that would have made a distinction between an immigrant and a refugee. A distinction that could have altered history, and saved lives during the 1930s.
All four brothers initially settled in Brooklyn, New York, though it wasn’t the arrival point in America for any of them.
Most of them were young when leaving for America. Harry and Charlie were both just 20 when they arrived, and Izzy was only a teenager. While Benny was one of the youngest, of the four brothers, he also waited the longest to leave. He immigrated in his early 30s. It’s possible he’d found a way to make a living initially in Russia, and only left while he still had the chance, and his brothers were able to help him.
While Jewish life had long been restricted in Russia, and pogroms frequent at the close of the 19th century, Alexander III and Nicolas II expanded the laws dictating and limiting Jewish life, including where they could settle or own land. This included expelling Jews from cities and limiting their admission to university.
In the early years of the 20th century, pogroms and other anti-Jewish violence erupted, often coinciding with revolutions against Nicholas II. These also tended to line up with the years my great-grandfather and his brothers started coming to America.
With the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Provisional government removed all discrimination based on religious, ethnic, or social grounds. But as the Bolsheviks took over, they also pushed to abolish all religion, denying the right for religious organizations to own property or provide education. Religion became something to hide, and Jewish groups moved underground. It is around this time, that Benny, the last to immigrate, arrived in America.
My grandpa, Louis Abramsky (in the tie), and teammates in high school, the 1930s
Three of the four brothers went into the same business, though not on purpose, and not together. But they all owned baby carriage stores in New York. Each one took on the world in a very different way. All four of them had daughters, and all four named their daughter Theresa.
If you think that sounds confusing, I’d agree. Each Theresa got her name from their fathers’ mother. And each one went by something different, so maybe it wasn’t confusing.
I’m going to come back to them, but for now know that the second generation, including each daughter, went on do things that wouldn’t have been possible had they stayed in Russia.
This includes simply sending your children to college, or seeing their children move hundreds of miles away.
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