Documents & Photographs
These artifacts are all documents and photographs. They tell stories of our past. Each and every one is special. They represent an amazing record of where we all came from. These are the stories of our journey to America.
Article about oldest man ever in Israel
Israel
My Mother
My grandmother's uncle holds the record for oldest man ever in Israel. He has trouble seeing, but as one who has repeated the prayers for more than a century, he knows them by heart. He was born in 1895 in Iran. He became an adviser to the Shah, who admired his mastery of languages, including Persian, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic and French. He was known for his smiles and for laughing and joking with his large family, who visited him daily. For nearly 110 years he smoked, but he says the damage was minimized because he never swallowed the smoke.
He was the oldest man in Israel. And even though he passed away, he still holds the record for Israel. He was loving, caring, sweet, kind, and most of all, helpful. I think that makes sense because that's what Israel is all about.
WW I Letter
France
Jerry G.
This letter is significant to my family because it was written by my Great Uncle Sam and he died in WW I.
We never knew him so these letters helped us get to know him. He wrote the letter to his mother and brother (My Great-Great-Grandma Sara and my Great-Grandpa Dave).
This artifact is important to Jewish heritage because even though Sam was in WW I, he still celebrated Yom Kippur at a YMCA in France. On the day of Yom Kippur the Jews in the army didn't do any drills.
Immigration Document
U.S., Hungary
Mom
This document is my great-grandfather, William Markovics' (Markowitz), immigration papers, along with a photo of him, his younger sister, Amalia, and younger brother, Alexander, before they immigrated to the U.S. If my great-grandfather didn't immigrate, three generations of my family would not have existed, including me.
My great-grandfather's father, Leo, brought him to this country to live with him and his second wife. If William hadn't come here, he would have perished (probably) in the Shoah (Holocaust), along with his mother Hani.
Photograph of My Great-Grandmother & Great-Grandfather
Jerusalem
Mother
This photo was given to my mother by her mother. It shows my great-grandmother, originally from a Hasidic family in Satmar, Hungary, marrying my great-grandfather, also from Hungary. The location of the wedding is in Jerusalem, Israel. From this union my maternal grandmother was born in Jerusalem in 1933. Both great-grandparents survived the perils of the Holocaust by immigrating to Israel prior to the Second World War.
Jewish weddings are one of the life cycle events of Jewish people. My great-grandmother came from a Hasidic family in Hungary, but she didn't want to be married in a shidduch so she took a ship to Jaffa in Israel. There she met my great-grandfather who was a chemical engineer. (He had to retrain to become a civil engineer as there was no chemical industry in Palestine at that time.)
Sadie & Fannie
Poland
Cheryl & Robert K.
The photo is of my maternal Great-grandmother and Great-great-grandmother. (My mother's mother and my mother's grandmother.) The photo is the last known photo of the two of them together before my Grandmother Sadie came to the US. The china place setting (the other artifact) was a wedding gift to Sadie from her mother. It is the only remaining place setting from the china given.
The photograph was taken before great-grandmother came to America to get married and start a family here from Poland. Like many other Jews she left Poland because of anti-Semitism in the hopes of finding a better life.