[Cz-L] new member looking for famous Jewish architect in Czernowitz, c 1906

Hello Cz-L Members,

I write to introduce myself and to tell you a little about my current
book project and to ask for help finding information about Jewish
relief committees in Czernowitz a hundred years ago.

I am a new member, having just signed up last night. For many years I
have been an independent scholar and writer. Three of my four
grandparents were immigrants to America a hundred years ago (my
maternal grandparents emigrated from Caserta, outside Naples, and my
father's mother came from Wales; his grandfather was a 48er from
Prussia). Since leaving my traditional career as an academic (at
Yale), I have used my training as a scholar to create works about the
struggle of immigrants and ethnic peoples to preserve and pass on
their cultural heritage as they adapt to a new culture (and endure the
loss that comes with emigration). My first book focused on ethnic
American growers as culture bearers. I attach information about the
book below to give you some idea of the kind of work I do--blending
oral history, historical research, and literary writing about memory,
migration, and adaptation.

While I was writing that book, one of my closest friends told me that
gardening had played a role in her grandfather's escape from Czarist
Russia. For my new book, I am writing his story. Abram Spiwak and
Sophia Schochetman, (my friend's grandparents) were two young lovers
separated by the 1905 pogrom following the failed revolution, I am
seeking information about a crucial moment in the story that took
place in Czernowitz in the spring of 1906.

Abram Spiwak of Orheyev, Bessarabia, was lucky enough to attend one of
the six agricultural schools the Baron de Hirsch founded for Jewish
boys. His skill as a gardener saved his life. Through the story of
his life, including finding his beloved Sophie in Odessa, where he was
sent for his first job in the flower industry after graduating from
the agricultural school, I hope to render the story of the mass
migration of Eastern European Jews to America, and also restore a
fuller portrait of the Baron de Hirsch, who played an important role
in helping Jewish immigrants in America.

I am a registered researched with Jewish Genealogy, and have done an
extensive amount of research on the family and the Baron, using
materials at the Center for Jewish History in New York and online
genealogical data bases.

WHAT I NEED HELP WITH:

In joining your list, I am hoping someone, somewhere, may recognize
some part of Abram's story and be able to shed light on details of:
the escape route across the Carpathian Mountains, the organization of
Jewish relief committees in Czernowitz, and the route refugees
traveling to Antwerp for passage to the New World usually took. If I
could actually discover the identity of the Jewish architect in the
story, I'd be jubilant.

ABRAM'S STORY IN CZERNOWITZ:

Here is Abram's Czernowitz story, a paraphrase of a brief
autobiography Abram wrote for his grandchildren:

When Abram came of draft age for the Russian army, his sisters scraped
together enough rubles to help him escape across the Carpathian
Mountains. He traveled alone, on foot, bribing the border guards to
bring him across the Autro-Hungarian border, where he was picked up by
the Austrian police, who notified a Jewish committee. The three-man
committee called on Abram and asked many questions. Then they took
him with them and gave him food and shelter for five days (which says
something about the condition he was in after escaping across the
mountains and the generosity and care of these committees). They then
sent him to Czernowitz with a letter of recommendation to the head of
a "committee that sheltered refugees." The head of that committee was
"a famous architect." When Abram told him he had been trained as a
florist and nursery man, the architect said it was necessary to prove
he really had the skills he claimed to have in order to be helped to
emigrate to North America. The architect took Abram to a villa he
owned with a neglected garden. If Abram could restore the garden,
thus proving he had the credentials he claimed to have, then the
committee would help him. Abram restored the garden, the architect
was very happy with his work, and the committee in Czernowitz gave him
a letter of recommendation to a refugee committee in Antwerp and a
steamship ticket.

MY QUESTIONS:

WHO WAS THE FAMOUS JEWISH ARCHITECT AND HOW MIGHT I FIND A RECORD OF
HIM?
WHERE MIGHT THE VILLA HAVE BEEN?
WERE THESE JEWISH RELIEF COMMITTEES PART OF THE BARON DE HIRSCH'S VAST
NETWORK OF RELIEF COMMITTEES?
WHERE WOULD THE RELIEF COMMITTEE HAVE TAKEN ABRAM FOR SHELTER IN
CZERNOWITZ?

Can anyone identify who this famous Jewish architect--wealthy enough
to own a villa outside the city with a formal garden--might have
been? How can I search for him? Are there archival records of the
Jewish relief committees from this period? Since he was the head of
the Czernowitz committee, his name might have been preserved on some
documents.

The Baron de Hirsch funded relief committees in towns and cities from
the Austro-Hungarian border all the way to the ports of debarkation.
Might this have been one of his committees? How can I find out?

Does anyone have any letters of recommendation like the ones Abram
refers to? Does anyone have, in their own family history, a story
anything like this?

How would Abram have traveled from Czernowitz to Antwerp? By rail?
What kind of papers would he have needed (other than the letter to the
Antwerp relief committee?) to travel safely across Europe? Wouldn't
he have had to go around Germany in this period?

Anything you can offer that might help me bring this pivotal episode
to life would be greatly appreciated.

DATES:

Abram crossed the border in May 1906; his journey began in Orheyev
(Orhei). He boarded a cattle boat in Antwerp for Quebec in early
June, and arrived in Canada in late June 1906. He worked there for a
Jewish florist in Mimico (are any members from Quebec and familiar
with the Jewish community of Mimico?) for a year, then snuck across
the border into the US and through the Hevarim and Landsmanshaften,
found Sophie on the Lower East Side of New York City.


Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I would be glad to
hear from anyone who can shed light on any aspect of this story.

Patricia



MY EARLIER BOOK:




Patricia Klindienst
43 Water Street
Guilford, CT 06437
home: 203.458.6473
cell: 203.415.6163
fax: 203.453.1029
pklindienst_at_mac.com
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Received on 2009-05-02 16:26:40