CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
1923–1925
When the rowboat carrying Itzie, Molly, and Bessie disappeared from the shoreline, they didn’t realize that all of New York City, and perhaps the entire country, also knew of their family’s arrival. Splashed across the front page of the New York Times on September 2, 1923, was the headline, “Aliens on Four Ships Too Soon to Enter.” It was followed by the harrowing news blurb, “Most of the 1,896 Who Arrived Before Instead of After Midnight Must Go Back.”
The United States implemented not only an annual quota for immigrants entering the country, but also a monthly one, making the first day of each month the most desirable time to arrive at Ellis Island. Once monthly quotas for each country were filled, steamships were forced to return any excess immigrants back to their original ports, at the expense of the company.
When the ship’s crew advised all passengers to go to sleep early on the evening of August 31, 1923, so that their eyes would look rested for the medical examinations scheduled for the following morning at Ellis Island, Rebecca and Isaac could not have predicted the chaos that would follow. A strong flood tide caused the stern of a steam liner to drift over the imaginary line, leaving Gravesend Bay too early; three other ships, including the SS Braga, raced in afterward.
An official observer looking through a pair of binoculars claimed that a steamship, the Esperanza, was the cause of three other ships entering before midnight. By recognizing the arrival time of their ship before midnight, the Braga’s passengers would be counted in the already exhausted August quota.
According to the New York Times, “The four steamships which the official observer says crossed the imaginary line between Fort Wadsworth and Fort Hamilton before midnight on Friday were the Esperanza of the Ward Line, 11:55 P.M.; the Braga of the Fabre Line, 11:56; the Greek steamship Byron, 11:57; and the Estonia of the Baltic-American Line at 11:59.45, fifteen seconds before midnight.” At that moment, Isaac and Rebecca’s entire future, as well as that of their children and (future) grandchildren, hung in the balance by a mere four minutes!
The captains of the four ships fiercely disputed these times, insisting, during a meeting on September 1 with Commissioner of Immigration Henry C. Curran,I that they followed the ships’ chronometers, which must be exact to the second or else their navigation would be off. Both the Western Union observer and the postal observer agreed with the captains of the ships, and recorded the Braga’s entrance as seven minutes later at 12:03 A.M.
Captain Jurgensen of the Estonia, the fourth ship accused of entering into the harbor too early, insisted that he called out each half minute from 11:55 P.M. to midnight to the pilot. Jurgensen stood by the wheelhouse door, carefully observing the chronometers that were in their boxes, which could not be wrong.
Yunkel and Esther Cutler and their four children also found themselves in the same precarious predicament—they were sailing aboard the SS Byron. On their ship were a large number of Greek girls whom the media referred to as picture brides, whose marriages had been prearranged. They were traveling to meet their prospective bridegrooms in America for the first time and openly wept when they were told that they would have to return to Greece without ever getting a glimpse of their future husbands.
The new immigrants were fortunate to have an important advocate on their side. Commissioner Curran, although agreeing with the early arrival time of the official Ellis Island observer, sympathized with the plight of the immigrants. He agreed, in conjunction with the decision handed down by the Department of Labor, to allow the passengers to enter America, and apportion the blame instead on the steamship companies. A tremendous fine was imposed on the four steamship companies, amounting to two hundred US dollars per immigrant. In addition, the liners were ordered to return the passengers’ fees which amounted to approximately one hundred US dollars per passenger. The ships would not be allowed to leave Ellis Island before posting a bond for the fines.
The liners paid the first part of their fines before returning to Europe. However, it is not known whether they ever informed the passengers on the SS Braga that a problem ever occurred. Channa never knew if the steamship company ever returned the fare money to her father as they had been ordered. As far as she knew, Isaac left Ellis Island with the same meager thirty-five dollars in his pocket that he had traveled with across the ocean.II
Ironically, as the new immigrants desperately sought entrance into the Goldene Medina, after fleeing atrocities in Ukraine that most people could never imagine, a large number of sophisticated and prominent Americans were readying themselves to leave New York City to set sail for Europe. On September 8, 1923, one week after their controversial arrival, eight liners left New York with important passengers aboard, including Colonel George Harvey, the US ambassador to Great Britain, and Will H. Hays, a prominent politician. The liners were traveling across the ocean for the end of the summer tourist season; several Americans were headed for England and Scotland for pheasant shooting season, which was set to begin in early October.
As these ships carrying their respected first-class passengers sailed back to Europe, Isaac, Rebecca, and their children, as hopeful new immigrants, were soon subjected to the much-anticipated medical examinations and other tests at Ellis Island. They felt sympathy for the poor sick souls, whose clothing was marked in chalk with coded letters, labeling them as undesirables. Even they knew that those immigrants would be subjected to further examinations, quarantines, hospitalizations, and sometimes deportations. Channa even noticed one slick character turn his marked shirt inside out before proceeding among the others to live a new life in America.
The family knew they were fortunate to pass all their medical examinations. Channa’s parents were particularly relieved that she had made it through the dreaded buttonhook exam of the eyelids. In the end, this awful day ended on a more pleasant note as they were at last fed sandwiches in a large mess hall in Ellis Island. The girls and their parents were famished; this was the first decent meal served to them since departing the Port of Constanta. The long tables, each covered with white rectangular cloths and set with food, were the most vivid memory that Channa’s little sister Sunny had of the entire journey.
Subway
It was the first time Channa had ever seen a subway, and it cost only a nickel to ride from one end of New York City to the other. You’d put a nickel in a slot, and then you’d go through the turnstile. Channa stared intensely as the guide inserted nickel after nickel to let the immigrants through. Her papa wanted to be the first in their group to get on the subway, and he thought he’d be a sport and pay for it himself. When he pulled a penny from his pocket and put it in the slot, it got stuck.
Chelsea
Since their passports stated “Destination: Chelsea, Massachusetts,” that is where the Caproves were sent. Grandpa Carl’s (Zeyde Kalman’s) nephew Harry Wise, a well-respected Jewish philanthropist, had settled there back in 1892, and he and his family became prominent members of the Jewish community.III
The invitation wasn’t exactly Harry’s idea, but Bessie Cutler was running out of viable options. She had worked for two years to save up enough money to bring her family over, but she hadn’t lived in America long enough to sign for them herself. So a year before the remainder of her family left Europe, she made the trip to Chelsea, Massachusetts, to ask a favor of her father’s relatives. When Harry Wise saw the lovely namesake of his mother—the original Bessie Cutler—he could not turn her away. Her sisters often wondered if Bessie had confided in Harry the details of her awful ordeal in Konela, perhaps to make him aware of the gravity of the situation in Europe. Harry rose to the occasion, and instructed his oldest son, Robert, a successful cotton waste dealer on Arlington Street, who was also the bearer of an American birth certificate, to sign visas for the entire extended family. For that, the Cutlers and Caproves have always been grateful to the Cutler and Wise families of Chelsea.
And so it was that upon their arrival during the first week of September in 1923, the family stayed at the modern Orthodox home of Harry Wise and his wife, the former Ida Fastofsky, who had suffered a partial hearing loss after the great fire of 1908. When nearly half of Chelsea was engulfed in flames, Ida ran outside into the cold air and caught a fever, which left her hard of hearing.
Harry and Ida were well-known in Chelsea circles for their charitable contributions to Jewish causes. Harry was an active Combined Jewish Appeal worker and devoted his time and money to the Hebrew Home for the Aged, the Chelsea Hebrew School, the Chelsea Hebrew Free Loan Association, and the YMHA. He was also an active member of the Cemetery Association in Chelsea and later served as president of both the Elm Street and Walnut Street Synagogues. Harry, who was once the president of the Zhashkover Society in Boston, also took part in assisting many new immigrants.
Zeyde Kalman’s (Carl Cutler’s) New England relatives came out in droves to visit his children at the Wise household. Hertz, Zeyde Kalman’s brother, the peddler from Zhashkov who often sold his goods at the market in Stavishche, brought his large brood over to see their “pilgrim” relatives from Kiev Guberniya. Hertz immigrated back in 1911 with the help of his son Jacob, who sent him a steamship ticket. After settling near relatives in Chelsea, he Americanized his name to Harry Cutler and became a burlap bag merchant. Hertz was with his brother back on that fateful day in 1875 when Zeyde Kalman had first laid eyes on his future wife, Fay, as she wandered into the town yarid.
The newest arrivals were embarrassed and self-conscious about their appearances in front of their American relatives. Not only were they physically weakened from their arduous voyage, but their clothes left no doubt in anyone’s mind that they were European Jews from the shtetl. One of Rebecca’s American cousins, Fannie, pitied the little girls and took Channa and Sunny into downtown Chelsea to buy them each two new dresses. Even though the girls were relieved to say goodbye to their old dresses that had disintegrated into rags, the new ones that she bought didn’t exactly fit. Fannie, who was single and never had any children of her own, was inexperienced in buying clothing for young girls, and the garments that she chose were two or three sizes too big. That didn’t diminish their excitement over the new clothing.
Channa and Sunny couldn’t stop thanking Fannie, as they tripped over their new dresses. But Channa took a few minutes to take a closer look at herself in the long mirror in the dress shop. Her hair was butchered with a brutal haircut that left patches of skin showing; her new dress was so long that it would surely take a year or even two to grow into. She heard others in the shop call her and Sunny “greenhorns.” Embarrassed, she decided then and there that she would never again be mistaken for a “greenie.”
As for sustenance, the new immigrant relatives were fed tomato herring every day in Chelsea; it was served for each meal… breakfast, lunch, and dinner, until they couldn’t look at the stuff anymore. A tall can of tomato herring must have been cheap; perhaps it cost a nickel or a dime back in 1923. The family couldn’t understand it; did Americans really believe that Europeans loved tomato herring that much? They only visited for a week but ate enough tomato herring to last a lifetime. Never again in their entire lives would Channa or Sunny be able to look at or eat tomato herring!
Finally, the Caproves left Chelsea for Brooklyn, New York, to join Bessie, Molly, and Itzie. Channa was so embarrassed over her shortly cropped hair that she always wore a kerchief or a hat to cover it. Strangers on the street would point at her and whisper. At that time, a disease was spreading where people would lose clumps of hair due to sores on their head, and Channa was sure that’s what people thought she was suffering from.
Bessie wore fashionable hats that she designed to match her beautiful dresses. She was a young woman now in her twenties who delighted in dressing up and going to social clubs; it was at one of those functions that she befriended a young couple who were divorcing soon after their marriage. They lived in a three-room apartment that they had just completely furnished, and they were now dividing up the entire household. Bessie came along and paid them three hundred dollars in cash for the whole works.
The apartment was located in the back of a butcher shop in Brooklyn, complete with beautiful furniture, dishes, pots, pans, carpets, and even window treatments.IV Rebecca, Isaac, and their family felt as if they were now living like royalty. Bessie, who had been living elsewhere, moved in with them that first day.
Channa loved playing ball with the kids on the stoop. In the evenings her mama and her two aunts enjoyed meeting out on that same stoop to sing Russian folk songs and harmonize as Molly played the balalaika. Many nights, Bessie sat and talked with her sisters; the young beauty had a hard time finding a place for herself in this new world. She was still young and pretty, but she had been married before and had lost a child, and was still in pain from her tragic loss.
Many young fellows belonging to that generation refused to marry someone who had been previously married. Every time a boy would get serious with her, she would confide in him that she had been caught in the pogroms, and her husband was murdered and her baby had died. Shortly after hearing this revelation, the young men would invariably cool off and disappear from the picture. Bessie felt they didn’t want a “Second-Hand Rose.”
Channa often overheard Bessie asking her mother’s advice out on that stoop. “What shall I do?” she’d ask, her head buried in her hands. “Every time I find a man I like, who is also interested in me and wants to marry me, he hears my story and says, ‘I don’t want anybody who’s been married before.’ ”
But Bessie’s fortunes did change. In 1925, she met a young furrier named Ben Baker. He was handsome and fell head over heels in love with her. Nervous to share her background with Ben, she debated whether to tell him the truth after he proposed to her. “Should I tell him or not?” she asked Rebecca. Finally, she told her sister with a sigh, “If he really loves me, he will accept me as I am.” She did tell him. Ben was grateful that Bessie was honest and trusted him enough to share the painful details of her past. He made her promise not to think of or talk about the unhappiness that she had suffered; he wanted her to only focus on happy thoughts.
Bessie Cutler and Ben Baker were married in August 1925 and moved into their own apartment. They eventually became the parents of three children.
Isaac got a job as a baker’s assistant, working the evening shift helping bake doughnuts. He was paid thirty-five dollars a week, which, to him, was a fortune. Soon, he learned how to bake them himself, and in the mornings he and another man would go out delivering the doughnuts to their customers. Isaac never had a night off, but his family enjoyed enough doughnuts to feed an army—powdered, jelly, and chocolate. At first they could not get enough of them, but after a while, they were as unappealing as the tomato herring, and the family begged him not to bring home any more doughnuts!
Channa and Sunny loved going to school—they attended PS165 in Brooklyn. At first, the teachers didn’t know where to place eleven-year-old Channa. She began the year in the first grade, but after just six months, she was quickly moved up to the sixth grade. The teachers kept an Italian boy after class with her, and they’d drill both children on how to pronounce the letters w and v so that they’d sound more American. Channa was fortunate to have had such dedicated teachers.
Her favorite part of school was recess. The kids were taken to an empty lot to play dodgeball and pegs. When she returned to the apartment one afternoon after a dodgeball game, Channa found her father sitting at the table, looking very solemn. It had been a year and a half, and his boss could no longer keep him on as an apprentice; he would have to join the union as a baker. A union man would have to be paid twice the salary as an assistant, and his boss didn’t want to pay the higher salary. He’d found a new immigrant to take over her father’s job; Isaac was crushed.
Shortly after losing his job, a letter arrived from Kiev from Rebecca’s brother Shalum Cutler; the timing couldn’t have been worse. He wrote to Isaac that he had an opportunity to come to America with his wife and all their children, and he wanted to ask his brother-in-law’s opinion if he should come to the United States or stay in Kiev. Shalum knew that he would not get an unbiased answer from his own siblings; over the years he had grown to deeply respect Isaac and knew that he would be truthful with him.
It is ironic that Isaac’s first experience with Shalum began with that fateful letter back in 1909 that Shalum had written to Rebecca, warning her against marrying him. Fifteen years earlier, he had meddled in the love affair of his sister and her fiancé; now Shalum was putting the future of his own family in the hands of Isaac. Isaac, who was going through a terrible time in his life after losing his job, wrote back to Shalum, saying that if things weren’t so bad in Kiev, he’d be better off staying there.
Shalum Cutler never did come to America, and nobody in his family ever saw him again. When Rebecca’s siblings discovered that Isaac had advised Shalum to stay in Kiev, there was a terrible rift in the family. Eventually Rebecca’s family forgave her husband, as they came to understand how rough his life had become since losing his job. A certain ache remained in all their hearts, though, as they truly longed to be reunited with their family from Europe.
Isaac continued to worry about how he would support his family and reached out to his cousin Sonny Vinokur, who had immigrated to Toronto, Canada. Sonny’s father was the brother of Isaac’s mother, Sarah Leah Vinokurov Caprove. He received a six-page reply in Yiddish from his cousin, as well as good wishes from a group of old friends from Stavishche who sent him encouragement and apparently an invitation to move to Canada. Only the last page of this poignant letter has survived, which had the Toronto addresses of his cousin, who by then called himself Mr. S. (Sayner) Winniks, and his friend from Stavishche, Mr. Mirotchnik.
On the other side of the addresses was the last page of the letter, written by his cousin and his friends from the Old Country. The translation read:
… my speech is easier (in Yiddish). Be well, all of you. May my letter find you all in the best of health.… This is your friend Yankel Mirotchnik and my wife Frehme and our son Kharving (Irving). I greet you, Isaac, and your wife Revka and your dear children. My wife and I wish you the same as we do for ourselves and our husbands and wives and children, and your Sayner (Sonny) and his wife and children; also (sending regards are) Halle Riven and his wife and children. All send greetings. You will not be embarrassed when you come to Toronto. I am sending you my address so that you can write to me.
As it turned out, though, Isaac and his family were not destined to move to Toronto. Avrum Cutler’s father-in-law, Myer Ova Denka, once the famous boot maker for the tsar of Russia, had resumed his business of manufacturing shoes in Philadelphia. When he heard that Isaac, once a shoemaker in Stavishche, needed a job, he offered him employment. Rebecca packed up everything that they owned, and in just a few days, at the end of August 1925, they set out for Philadelphia. Money was so tight that Rebecca had to borrow funds from her landslayt to pay the movers. The family rented a tiny house located at 627 Mercy Street. This is where their new life began.
1. I. Henry Curran, who had only assumed his position at Ellis Island two months earlier, had been defeated in the New York City mayoral race in 1921 by incumbent John F. Hylan.
2. II. On the same day that the SS Braga sailed safely into the port of New York, disaster struck on the other side of the world. On September 1, 1923, just before lunch hour, devastation hit Japan in the form of a catastrophic earthquake that measured 8.0 on the Richter scale; 140,000 lives were lost, including 30,000 in downtown Tokyo, who were incinerated by a firestorm.
Following the disaster, violent pogroms broke out in Japan targeting Koreans who were living in Tokyo. The People’s Korea reported the vigilante murders of approximately six thousand ethnic Koreans (and a lesser number of Chinese) living in Japan. The pogrom started after military forces believed unfounded rumors that Koreans in Tokyo deliberately started fires and poisoned wells to start an uprising after the earthquake.
The Caprove and Cutler families were unaware of the disaster that hit the other side of the earth.
3. III. The Wise (formerly Weiss) and Cutler families of Chelsea were successful in the textile, cotton waste, burlap bags, rags, and junk businesses.
4. IV. A November 1923 document signed by Isaac had the family living at 4310 Thirteenth Avenue in Brooklyn.