If you are a Rappaport or Grabois and this is your family, please let me know.
Samuel Rappaport
KNOW YOUR ANCESTORS!
On the occasion of organization of JACOB & IDA RAPPAPORT Family Circles in Philadelphia, Pa. and Detroit, Mich., in the Fall of 1951, and for the benefit of our American-born "clan" of both present and coming generations who should at all times know something at least about the origin, life, and character of their immigrant ancestors, the undersigned member, as one of the "Last Mohicans" still retaining quite some vivid memories of our birth place in the "Old Country", has decided to offer an outline of the historico-geographical and social background of the founders of our clan in the USA.
Geography and Populace:
As most of you probably know, both our immigrant parents came here from "Bessarabia". That, however, incorrectly designates the country of origin, inasmuch as Bessarabia is only a province, or what we, in this country, would call a "State" only without any of the self-governing attributes of a State in the USA. Historically, Bessarabia played an important role in the perennial conflicts of the great empires. In 1812, following the Napoleonic wars, Bessarabia was annexed into Imperial Russia and made a "gubernia", just as its other 86 or 87 gubernias, or administrative provinces. However, in 1918, during the Bolshevik Revolution and the ensuing civil war in Russia, the Kingdom of Rumania, one of our allies in World War I, recaptured it and held it until about 1940/41, when with Hitler's node of assent, it was once more annexed by the Red Government of the Soviet Union and today it goes in the Soviet Union by the name of the "Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic". The word "Moldavian" comes from the Principality of Moldavia, one of the three principalities constituting the Kingdom of Rumania, and Bessarabia once formed part of Moldavia.
And so, coming back to the name of the country from which our forefathers emigrated, we must say that they came from Russia, specifically from Bessarabia.
The province of Bessarabia, about 18,000 square miles in area with a population (at the turn of the century) of close to 2,000,000, had what is known as the best black-soil land and therefore excelled in grain farming and cattle raising; it was called the bread-basket of Russia. It had some of the biggest Russian estate owners, mostly absentee owners, whose chief worry was how to spend their vast income and large masses of tenant framers, or peasants, tilling the formers' huge acreages, -- all unbelievably poor, backward, and virtually one-hundred percent illiterate. What added still to their misery was the fact that they could not speak Russian, the language of the country. They were not one of the Slave peoples but rather belonged to the Romanic group of peoples and spoke a dialect of the Rumanian language which in Russia we called "Moldavian". The village authorities, which included the priest (of the Russian Orthodox Church), the Justice of the Peace and the "Gendarme", or police officer, were able to converse in the Moldavian language.
Other groups and nationalities, among them some 170,000 Jews living mostly in the towns and cities (Kishinev was the capital city) had schools at their disposal in which instruction, naturally, was given in the Russian language, though not a single university or college. At that time, there were no schools in the villages for the peasant class. Compulsory universal schooling in the whole of Russia was only introduced during the first world war, I believe in 1915. So only the better situated Moldavans could afford to send their children to parochial schools and later perhaps to public schools in near-by towns or volost -- villages -- to learn the language of the country that was foreign to them.
Our Jewish fellow-men, in their trade relations with the peasant farmers, had to use, as best they could, the Moldavaneshti language. Far in the interior, especially toward neighboring Rumania there were no railroads at all and only a few lines led to the rest of Russia and Western-European neighboring countries (Germany and Austro-Hungary). And since, as had been mentioned, the land was very rich in grain and other farm products, it had a big export trade to the rest of Russia in all sorts of coarse grains (fodder) and bread grains, and also in oil seeds (reps, linseed, sunflower seeds, etc.) in which the Jews, as the perennial middlemen and brokers, played a leading part. Some would buy the produce, even long before the harvesting time, directly from the peasants and have it hauled (mostly in ox-drawn carts) to the nearest railroad station, which was not too near by any other means. Others, that is, the brokers, would serve their Jewish grain buyers as commission merchants and RR forwarders by storing the delivered grain on ramps at the station until an opportunity is found to load it into railroad cars for shipment abroad or to the famous southern port city of Odessa on the Black Sea, meantime also pledging the goods for advance payments which the customers could use to go on buying more produce. One other big field represented the buying of live stock (horned cattle) in both Bessarabia and neighboring Rumania (in the city of Jassy) for shipment to Central and Western Russia. In both these fields, the grain and the cattle businesses, our family was very much engaged at one time or another, as I shall point out below.
The Rapoport and the Grabois Families
Our father, Jacob Rapoport (that was the original spelling in Russia) was born and raised in the town of Bieltsy, the county capital (popul. in 1900, 18,600). His father, Salomon Zalman, must have died when father was still a youngster (by our present standards); at any rate he died before the last child, a girl, was born. He had one brother and two sisters.
We, the older children, knew little if anything about the Rapoport grandfather. Our grandmother Zlata, by the time we came to know her in person, was already bed-ridden and stayed so to the very end. All we knew was that the grandfather had owned and operated an inn, representing a substantial house with spacious drive-in courtyard and stables for regular Fair attendants, their horses and buggies and also storage bins (or barns) for grain, etc. All that real property later reverted, at the express request of our father, to his younger brother, our uncle Meyer, who (so reasoned our father) did not marry into a rich family, as was the case with him. In addition to the two brothers, there were, as I said, two sisters who married outsiders and so lived in the towns of their husbands. One, the oldest named Esther, was married to one Kogan, a manager and chief accountant of a private banking house in a larger town named Moghilev-Podolsk, in Russia proper, just across the Dniester River separating Bessarabia from the rest of Russia and connected by several bridges with Bessarabia, including a railroad bridge. -- (It was the banking house in which I myself later worked for three years, under that uncle's guidance, i.e., between 1903 and 1906.) -- The youngest sister, the one named after her late father, Shlima, was married to a Jewish Aldermanic Chief (called "Starosta") by the strange name of Zipleshter (or Cipleshter) and lived in the railway town of Calarash, a few short stops from the capital city of Kishinev. The Kogans had only one son, named Salomon (we all had a Salomon in the family, named after grandfather Salomon Rapoport), who died in Rumania, in a city named Tchernovitz, Bucovina, before the Hitler slaughters, but of his two sons one perished at the hands of the Rumanian Nazis, the other I understand has survived the extermination actions and today is still living somewhere in Rumania. The Cipleshters have all disappeared during that war on the Jews (the head of the family died long before the last war). The family of uncle Meyer, the only brother, consisting of some six boys and girls, no longer exists as such. The only survivors are or were a daughter Mania, a doctor-dentist in a Rumanian city by the name of Craiova, on the Danube River separating Rumania from Yugoslavia, and the youngest son, Maurice, who lives somewhere in Rio de Janeiro, the capital of Brazil. One other daughter, Aniuta, a physician, died soon after her marriage to a doctor, contracting some contagious disease. The oldest son and the pride of the family, Salomon, or Sioma, as he used to be called affectionately, lived most of his married life in Moscow, where he moved high up to be a legal consultant to the Soviet Department of Posts, Telegraphs, and Radio Communications, serving as a government special delegate to many international Postal Conventions abroad. He must have been "liquidated" by the Reds, for he disappeared, leaving his widow and two daughters, both engineers in Moscow. He was a wonderful violin player, while his wife played well the piano.
I could now close the Bieltsy period of my tale, except as to mention at this juncture that the last three or four years of our family's life in the old country were spent in that same town, where our brother Bennie was born. During that time our father tried to eke out an existence by working as a grain broker, while our brother, Salomon, did the same thing only not for his own account but as the all-round trusted aid of our uncle Meyer who was doing quite a big brokerage business in the grain sales and exports. As I moved to Moghilev to work in the private Josef Rapaport bank, the family in Bieltsy underwent the first split up that ultimately led to its emigration to the United States, leaving myself behind on my new and much promising banking job. With the exception of a short visit in 1906, lasting about four months, I did not join the rest of the family here until some 22 years later, just in time to help celebrate our parents' golden anniversary in August 1928.
The Faleshti Period.
From what we, the older children, could later observe ourselves, the Rapoport boys, Meyer and our father, must have received good schooling by private tutors, as was customary in those years in the small Bessarabian towns, for they were both well versed in Hebrew, especially our father, as well as in the Russian language, essentially a foreign language for Bessarabians generally. Our father, as many here well know, proved a great scholar in the Holy Scripts and the Hebrew literature, a fact that, much later already in this country, enabled him to hold positions as synagogue president and secretary of two landsmanship lodges in Philadelphia, requiring correspondence as well as bookkeeping (he even managed, despite his age, to finish the Night School for Adult Immigrants in that city, about 1908). But that does not mean he was in his home town prepared for a particular trade or occupation. In those years and in that corner of the world, such a thought would not come up until it was considered time for the "boy" to get married and "settle down". And so, with the aid, of course, of the then inevitable marriage broker, the young Jacov Hakohen Rapoport was picked by a wealthy landowner and gentleman farmer Saul Grabois, the leading citizen of the little town of Faleshti, as the husband of his then 15 year old daughter Haya (Ida, in this country). Not that she had herself anything to do or say about that match! Her parents, as was then customary, wouldn’t have asked her opinion even if she had been of a much riper age. To our grandfather Saul that choice meant just that he found a well-bred, well-educated and god-fearing son-in-law from the "big city", even though half-orphaned and comparatively poor. Like many a match over there, our father was "imported" and after the marriage taken into the business. And a big business it was indeed!
As far as memories and retrospection go, grandfather Saul (here turned to Charles; that’s why we have here a few Charlies in the family) at that time operated two large estates far apart from each other, so he put his new son-in-law in charge of one of them known as Vasiliutzy, a place with no other houses for miles and miles around except a small, primitive road-house at some distance from our main building, but otherwise nothing but vast stretches of corn and wheat fields in all directions as far as the human eye could see... I believe some of our first children were born in that fertile Steppe. After several years on the land, the family moved to Faleshti, the home of grandfather Saul, although our father continued to spend the time on the land -- I remember another estate named Halpeshti near Pyrlitzy -- coming home to the family on weekends. In the last named estate I remember seeing several hundred cows and a few thousand sheep, as grandfather used to be a big producer of two kinds of cheese: one called "Brynza", a sharp cheese, such as is even now being sold by Greek stores in New York, and the other, a soft spread cheese known as "oorda", similar to our cream cheese; I am not certain whether these cheeses were for sale to the trade, thus constituting an important by-product of the farm economy, or was finding its sole outlet via our immense family and many friendly households, who used to store up extensively for the long and drab Russian winters that lasted about 8 months. In our immediate family I remember the cheese was pressed into barrels the size of USA beer barrels, with salt-saturated cloths laid at certain intervals for better preservation, and sealed hermetically until the time to begin consuming it in the winter.
The Grabois Family
I said a while ago, "our immense family" and that needs some further elucidation in order to give you an idea how big that family really was. For that reason, the "flow" of the story on our parents will have to be interrupted for a while, the more so as thereby we may get a proper background for the Faleshti period of our life, which was indeed inseparable from that of the Grabois family.
Besides our mother, Haya (or Ida), grandfather Saul Grabois and his first wife Golda (for he was married thrice, but had all children from his first wife) had two more daughters and four sons, all of them, with one exception, already married by the time I came around, that is in the late 1880’s. One daughter, Ethel, was married to one Paul (Faiwel) Sternberg, who lived in a village called Riteni, near Braneshti, and had six children of their own. The third daughter, and the youngest, Itta (the mother of Ethel Levenson of New York), was married to one Koppel Zuckerman, who lived in a "big" city, Soroki on the Dniester River, and had four children. Then there was the oldest son, Abraham Grabois, the only town dweller, in Faleshti, who had I believe eleven children; the next son, Samuel, a farmer all his life in that same village, Riteni, where the Sternbergs resided; he had also six children of his own. Then came the third son, Alter, married but a short time by then, who later was the father of four children (all now in this country, including Rose Kravitz, her sisters Francis and Dina and a brother Ben); he was then still dependent on the old man and occupied a part of his houses across the path from the Grabois "mansion". And finally, there was the bachelor baby, Sender (Alexander), a violin player, who had the bad luck to be taken into the Czarist army for some 3 years, though he had it there relatively better by being a musician in the military band (he played a French horn there) that had to play in public parks in the summer evenings.
When, in 1891, a decree law (or Imperial Ukaz) barred the Jews in Russia from owning land and even living in rural communities (villages), our farmers Grabois and Sternbergs joined the city dwellers in Faleshti, though not for very long as it later turned out (for the ban on living on the land was later withdrawn in favor of those Jews who had always lived in villages) and were quartered temporarily in grandfather’s extensive buildings and annexes, the family size swelled on to about five dozen souls, with most of them practically under one roof!
While being on the subject of the newest of the many anti-Jewish laws in Imperial Russia, I may also mention that 1891 restrictive ukaz in a sense spelled for our big and relatively wealthy family the beginning of the future disintegration and dispersal over half the world. Looking at it in retrospect today, we must agree that it turned out to be a blessing to all of us here, for otherwise we would not be where we are now, and in all probability would have shared, instead, the tragic fate of the six million Jewish victims of Nazi and Fascist bestialities of 1933-1945! Soon after that infamous "Ukaz" of 1891 in Russia a wave of Jewish emigration swept the land, and an organized exodus began to the then sparsely populated Argentina, when the government set aside enough farm land free of charge to the new settlers, while the famous Baron Hirsch Foundation of Paris moved the settlers at its expense and provided them on the land with the necessary farm equipment and even dwelling houses. And so, in 1896, the two elder brothers of our mother, Abraham and Samuel Grabois, with their numerous offspring joined the exodus and were brought to that prosperous country, Argentina. In 1903, the Rapoport family sought a haven in the United States, settling down in Philadelphia, where the two elder daughters, Sarah and Minnie, and our oldest brother Salomon, had come before them, some 11 months ahead of the rest of the family. The next to find a haven here was our uncle Alter Grabois, mother’s younger brother, who came here with his family in about 1913. And finally, mother’s youngest brother, Alexander Grabois, the former soldier-musician, ran away from Russia at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905) to avoid being sent to the battlefields in the Far East and after a while also settled in Argentina, in the capital city of Buenos Aires. So, by now, even after the original heads of the three Grabois families in Argentina have gone, there should be in that country a very numerous branch of our Grabois clan, probably even more numerous than the Rappaport clan here in this country.
The early life of the Rappaport family in the small town of Faleshti, the birth place of most of us, centered upon the imposing, stately, and dominating patriarchal figure of Saul Grabois, our grandfather. For a time we lived in one of the less elaborate structures of the Grabois "domain", a series of living houses connected by an immense courtyard crowded with annexes, barns, stables, and coach-sheds, also servant quarters, etc. and ending in a large garden plot running at a straight angle northward beyond the courts of several adjoining properties (the length of a city block at least).
Grandfather Saul, a man of immaculate appearance and cleanliness, with a bushy (a la John L. Lewis’) eyebrows and a nicely trim grayish, later now snow-white beard, a tall erect figure in high riding boots,-- although thrice married, lived most of his married life with his first wife, our favorite grandmother Goldie, the mother of all of his several children, whom I personally did not know. I often heard, though, that she was indeed a "golden" soul, as the name implies; no wonder, therefore, that in virtually every descendent family there was or still is a Goldie, all named after her. As long as she lived, there was prosperity all around us and we all, or most of us, dwelled together in the many adjoining quarters, like one big family. With the arrival of his second wife (Reisel, or Rose), things took a gradual decline, and as the first outward sign of worsening financial conditions, our own family moved to separate quarters, the big mansion was rented out by grandfather who himself moved with his second wife to the inner area that, in the better days used to be offered as temporary catering place for the week-long doings on weddings by some prominent citizens, placed at their disposal free of charge, just as sort of a favor. the wedding in those cases, used to be held in one of the spacious grain storage barns, especially adorned and decorated with rugs and mirrors for the occasion. While on this subject, I want to also mention that whenever a Jewish road troupe came to perform in this town, theater was always playing in that same grain barn in grandfather’s courtyard, probably likewise contributed free of charge.
I think I was very close to grandfather Saul when I was a small boy. Quite frequently I would be allowed to accompany him on his regular tours into far outlying villages (Bolotino, Braneshti, etc.) some 40-50 miles away from home. On those trips I was always thrilled by his manner of conversing with the peasants or some officials in the strange language, "Moldavanesht", or observing the peculiar mode of attire the peasant wore while working in the field, i.e. a sort of our union suit, only made of coarse home-spun linen, and a big self-made straw hat, with nothing else, no clothes, no shoes. Or their getting around a low table, sitting on the floor, for their meals, molding the bits of mamalyga in their hands before dipping it in a dish of pot cheese (the peasants never ate bread, or sugar, or meat, all of which were a luxury to them, except perhaps on high holidays). Another trip on which I would go along with grandfather was that undertaken by him once a year when he would drive out to meet the approaching caravan of fifty ox-carts, each carrying a big barrel of new wine which grandfather used to order from the famous Bessarabian wine district, the Codrys (or Codreni), where Rose Kravetz’s mother came from. The purpose of this meeting the shipment half-way from home was to see to it that the drivers do not get dead-drunk from the still-fermenting, sweet new wine which they were drawing by means of a straw inserted through the unplugged aperture on top, just like we sip our ice-cream sodas, only they had to lean back from their seats while at the same time controlling their animals.
This grand old man, outwardly severe but actually warm-hearted, left many indelible impressions in my young memories. Some of them are, I believe, worthy of being recalled here for the benefit of our young crowd. Although never really showing interest in goings on in the kitchen, grandfather Saul assumed and faithfully carried out two duties relating to the dishes or meals: burying the fish (carp) for Sabbath and the young lamb carcasses in the season, and (later in the years, when living with his second wife), making a mamalyga himself, in the midst of his morning prayer, interrupting just long enough to mix well the corn meal as soon as the water was boiling.
Each evening after dinner (called supper over there), grandfather Saul would come out on the front porch facing the whole width of the main building, but not to sit down and rest as so many aged people do, but to walk briskly and non-stop back and forth, from one end to the other, for a good hour or more, and then he would say good night to his neighbors at both sides and retire, usually at 8:45 or 9:00 o’clock. Looking back to those days I always marvel how that man without what we refer to as a formal education realized the importance of such sustained exercises to the proper digestion and restful sleep. By the way, grandfather never ate between meals and that, to him, meant just twice a day, for I never saw him have anything for breakfast, except tea which he had to have also at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. His tea drinking, too, was most peculiar. He would not have anybody serve him the tea; he, rather, would pour it himself from the boiling samovar placed in front of him, and not only had the glass to be full to the top, but also had to overflow to fill the saucer, and this procedure was always repeated twice; that was his measure, never more and never less. And for his tea he had to have the lump sugar cut, mostly by himself in advance, two tiny little cubes, which he kept on his tongue while sipping the hot liquid...
Since the time he built -- I believe that was in the early nineties -- his own synagogue as a contribution to the Jewish families of the upper half of the town -- the more "aristocratic" half, I would say -- he was elected its life-long president. As such, he would on "Simkhas Torah", or the Feast of the Torah, entertain at his home all afternoon and into the early part of the evening, a dozen or two representative members of his congregation. Together with our own big family, it was quite a job to entertain such a crowd in a private home, but it could not have been otherwise as a special honor to the president. Immense quantities of walnuts and sour red wine from grandfather’s own cellar were being consumed on that occasion. In the end the whole crowd walked to the synagogue all the way up the main street, with their president at the head of the procession, singing and swinging their big wooden pails still half-filled with wine. On entering the synagogue, all the torahs would be taken out of the shrine and with them on their arms the spirited members would form a wide circle and dance around and sing aloud -- more perhaps under the effects of the consumed wine than by virtue of the solemn occasion.
As some of you recall, grandfather Saul died in 1906, when our family was already in this country. And of all the Rappaport family, it was I who had the sad duty to be present in Faleshti just on the day he died, but also the rare privilege to spend with him several crowded hours in broad and wide-flung reminiscences on that very afternoon, only a few hours before his end came. I came there from Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia, to take leave before leaving for Philadelphia, to visit with the rest of the family. That brought grandfather Saul on the track of talking effusively about his children, including our mother, that Fate had dispersed to all corners of the earth, with the result that at the time of his approaching end (which he knew was at hand) only his son Alter, of all his seven children, was present at his bedside. He died that night (before midnight), shortly after his son had helped him back into bed and turned him over to face the wall. And with that rich, eventful life he was only about 64 years old when the end came.
Bieltsy once more.
The first half of our father’s adult life in comparative prosperity as "gentleman farmer" ended, like for the rest of the members of the Grabois family, when the new law of 1891 against the Jews barred them definitely from owning or even working the land. In our own case, the curtain fell with a bang: Our father’s last "experiment" in large-scale farming brought catastrophe upon the family. That year father put under cultivation for an oil seed (called "raps") too big a share of his farm land, in order to increase the financial yield, since that product was selling at about thrice the price of wheat. Usually the Fall sowing is calculated in such a way that the seeds stay under the surface by the time the first snow in the long Russian winter blankets the soil, keeping it warm and protecting the plants (or, rather, the roots) underneath from the severe winter frosts. But on that year, the first snow and cold weather came much later than expected; by the time the delicate oil-seed plant stuck out considerably above the surface, with the result that it was killed completely by the first frost. The entire investment in seeds, labor, and land lease cost was lost, and we went broke.
From that time on, life for father assumed the serious aspects of a long and bitter struggle for mere existence, unaided as he then was by any of his 8 children, non of whom had been in the least prepared for any useful avocation or trade. And, considering the state of development or "civilization" of that god-forsaken corner of a backward Russian countryside, what gainful work was there for the upper-class offspring to perform? Our town, Falesht (population then about 5,000), and all the other towns in the whole of Bessarabia for that matter, had absolutely nothing to offer in the way of industry, which was non-existent, or of trade and commerce, which was carried on in primitive manner and on a very small scale. And, of course, there were no schools (except, perhaps, a parochial school for gentile children only, of which we had never heard in Falesht) and there were no banking or similar institutions, not even a post office-- to show you what I mean about the attribute "backward". Mail to other points of the country used to be taken along by persons who would travel to places having post offices or railroad stations and preferably by the professional Jewish coachmen who maintained passenger routes between specific points. (For government officials and mail traffic the Russian Government maintained a net of postmen furnishing horses and wagons on a yearly payment basis).
For years our parents, and many others in the town, had struggled to give the young ones as well as the grown-ups a little chance to learn the Russian language and the basic rules of arithmetics. The only way to do that was for several leading families in town to get together and "import" from the larger cities a young man who was then studying privately (we called these boys "externs") and submitting annually to examinations, the so-called "equivalent tests" at some gymnasium (that is the name in all of Europe for his school). These Jewish young men, who at the proper time skipped regular school attendance either because of financial disabilities or of the percentage quota then existing for Jewish children in both secondary schools and universities, would lend themselves to act as tutors in small towns lacking schools of their own until such time as they had to return to the city to pass the progress, or equivalency test (usually in June or August).
We had in Falesht a great many of these young men in the unenviable role of "collective" tutor, who would go from one home to the other to teach the children (and grown-ups too) the ABC or elementary arithmetics, mostly individually, because of such great differences in age and previous "knowledge". However, the trouble with these casual teachers was that they rarely stayed on the job for more than a few months, I now realize-- because of the terrible dullness of life in a muddy and barren place such as our town was. Such an unhappy tutor would one day mysteriously disappear, and until a replacement could be found usually many months would pass, so that our new tutor would have to start all over again, because whatever knowledge the pupils had acquired before, was as good as forgotten in the interim.
The foregoing, as mentioned, refers to so-called general education and not by any means to specific Hebrew teaching. For this latter we had in town a number of private teachers known by the name of "melamed" who ran a sort of one-man schools filled with kids of various ages. These teachers were aided by that tragic figure called "belfer" (a corruption, I believe, of the German word Behelfer, meaning "helper"), whose foremost job it was to call for and take home the children in the evening, carrying the small fry on his back and holding others by the hand, with the bigger ones following, usually with lanterns in their hand, lighting up the path ahead, to avoid frequent pitfalls in the soft ground (there were no pavements, of course). But, what we learned from these Hebrew teachers was of little or no help in the way of preparation for a future useful place in life.
At first our father tried his luck as commission merchant at the station village of Pyrlitz, where previously he had operated the estate, Halpesht, only a few miles away-- namely as supplier to the local Faleshti storekeepers of food and household products, while we at home set up a similar small store in the front room of our three-room one-story house. When this activity proved insufficient to provide the family with a modest living, father went to Bieltsy where he still had his younger brother, well situated both as grain broker at the railroad station and as owner of the family inherited inn. After a short preliminary trial period, father decided to move the family to Bieltsy, his birthplace town. That was in about 1898. There we, for the first time in our family’s history, had to live in a rented house, and I remember that by the time the family had emigrated to the United States about five years hence, we had moved twice more, but all the three residences lie within a distance of about two city blocks, which means that we stayed all the time within the same corner of that city. Here, as mentioned earlier in these memoirs, father tried to develop his own modest-size clientele as their station broker and shipper, while our brother Salomon, the oldest of the children, had his baptism as clerk, dispatcher, supervisor and trusted employee of the uncle’s business at that same RR station in that same line of services. And, finally, as the only one whose age was considered "right" for the kind of school we had at that time in Bieltsy-- i.e., a municipal school with a three-year course corresponding approximately the four upper grades of public school in this country, plus some extra subjects, such as the German language and bookkeeping-- I was admitted to the first class of the Russian school-- which I finished with honors in less than 30 months. That school period of mine laid the foundation for my future aspirations that ended in two years of study of economics at the University of Kiev and two years of Law later at the University of Vienna, Austria. As it turned out later, because of disturbed political conditions in pre-Revolutionary Russia and the World War I in 1914, I was deprived of a university diploma in either country. Because of the first mentioned circumstances, I left Russia in May 1912 for Vienna where I registered anew for the study of Law and at the same time found a position with an Austrian concern doing business with Russia. But two years later, with the outbreak of the war (1914), Russian students, as enemies of Austria, were dismissed from their University and Polytechnic, and I was one among those barred for the duration of the war. And when the latter was over, four years later, I was on a government mission in the Ukraine, in the same city of Kiev where I once was a student. there the ensuing dissolution of the armies and the Bolshevist revolution in Russia kept me a virtual prisoner until at the end of 1919 I succeeded in getting out of that hell and reaching safely Vienna again with my wife and 5 year old boy.
The material conditions in Bieltsy did not much improve, it was quite a task for father to provide for such a big family and an ailing wife who needed regular medical treatments and seasonal cures at the famous Bays near Odessa, on the Black Sea, for her a form of arthritis of the joints. Also, the hopeless state of affairs for our two elder girls, Sarah and Mania, as regards matrimony, may have contributed toward the grave decision to let the older ones go to the United States ahead of the rest of the family, with father still fighting the thought of total emigration to the new "promised land", America. Meanwhile, I personally had moved to a bigger city Moghilev-Podolsk, to my first big "opportunity" as clerk in that private bank I have mentioned before, to work under the firm guidance of my uncle, Moses Kogan, the manager and chief bookkeeper of that bank. From time to time I would pay a visit to the family in Bieltsy. And, of course, when it finally started on its memorable voyage to the United States, in the Fall of 1903, I came home to see them all off and even traveled part of the way with them together, taking leave at a railroad junction where our trains parted: they continued across the border, while I returned to my job in Moghilev.
Three years later, in the Spring of 1906, after I had resigned from an enviable banking position to resume my interrupted studies, I was "talked into" making a trip to the States, if only on a short visit. And a short visit it was, for some four months later I went back to Russia, settled down in Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia, and worked very hard for about seven months to pass entrance examinations to the 7th class gymnasium (equivalent to senior year in American high schools). It took a long time -- 22 years to be exact -- for me to rejoin the family in Philadelphia. This time I had to resort to the expediency of a "visitor's visa", in order to get here at all, and this circumstance later gave me and the rest of the family plenty of headaches until, almost four years later, I at least succeeded in obtaining in Canada a permanent entry visa which enabled me, in August 1932, to bring my wife and two children over from Vienna, Austria.
In the U.S.A.
I cannot say much about the first years of life here in the Jacob Rappaport family in the United States, as I was not here myself. I do know, though, that as new immigrants they were doing well, indeed. It did not take them long to buy their first house, at Reed Street, So. Philadelphia. And, with so many "hands" to go to work, our "old man" (who, by the way, was then in his mid-forties only, but looked rather old and frail) for the first time in his life could lean somewhat backward, letting the others provide the family's necessaries. Nevertheless, father preferred to do his share my working in a shop, while at the same time managing to attend regularly night school for adults until he graduated some four years later. He took those studies so serious that he rarely, if ever, missed classes during all the years. The reward of such diligence soon came when he was able to fill the office of secretary in two Bessarabian fraternities (Lodges) requiring correspondence and knowledge of elementary bookkeeping. In his neighborhood, lastly on Cross Street, he was held in very great esteem, equally by old and young, male and female. I shall never forget the picture I was able to observe myself of thousands of men and women lamenting and shedding tears inside the synagogue he is said to have founded and carried on his shoulders financially all the years of its existence and also outside the holy place, at the time of father's funeral in February 1931. It was also to me the first occasion ever to see a coffin being carried inside God's house. So great and so deep was the general admiration of that man who lived and died like a saint! Six months later, in August 1931, mother followed him.
Another "first" in the United States in the life of our free immigrant family was that the smaller kids got their first chance they never had in the old country, of going to American schools, at least until their turn came, too, to go to work and build their own future.
Twenty Years Later.
You all know the rest of the story for you have played a part in it yourselves.
Here we are now a big harmonious and closely knitted family, proud of the name that binds us all. The Rappaport Family in Philadelphia. There are no millionaires among us, to be sure; we are all plain though honest folks, some white collar and some even manual workers, a few even college graduates and professionals. But there are no paupers, delinquents or criminals among us, either, and for that we thank our forefathers, next to God. All the original immigrant children got married; they now have their own families and some, as you know, have even a few grandchildren to point to proudly, and the original family has by now grown manifold in size although naturally it has lost already a number of the older members, i.e. our parents themselves, a brother with his wife, a sister and a sister-in-law, my own wife Genia.
A sizable portion of the Rappaport family is now firmly rooted in the soil of America's greatest industrial city, Detroit, where to the Rappaports have been added, through intermarriage, several other respectable families, and the natural process of a further branching-out is still continuing at the present time. And, most praiseworthy, despite the great distance separating these two branches of the Rappaport family, they have managed to keep in close contact and to maintain warm and harmonious relations with one another over a long period of time. Visits to and from both cities are made frequently and are always looked for eagerly and sincerely, particularly on special occasions such as anniversaries, weddings, and engagements. And now, as a crowning act, the Detroiters have founded, themselves, their own branch of the "Jacob and Ida Rappaport Family Circle" in order to strengthen and, if possible, to perpetuate the already strong ties of mutual affinity and friendly relations between the two groups, for the benefit of the present and the future generations.
This is the story I intended to tell you as best I could, and I hope you will benefit from it in trying to live up to the standards of honesty and decency bequeathed to us living members by our dear and beloved parents whose memory we want to honor through the function of the said family circle.
In closing I also wish to call attention to the attached sketch of our Family Tree, which should be studied especially by the younger clan and which is intended to be supplemented at given intervals so as to always keep it more or less up to date.
New York,
December 1951.
[Note: this scan of the newspaper article is as good a quality as the document I have. It is hard to read due to multiple generations of photocopying.]
Newspaper Clipping from the New York Tog & Journal of early April, 1953.
THE RAMIFIED RAPPAPORT FAMILY
A reader of the "Tog" who prefers to be referred to as "one of the Rappoport family," wants to know how this family name originated.
A branch of the family emigrated from Germany and settled in Italy in the town of Porto (There is no city in Italy by that name, but there is a big city of Porto in Portugal, while in Italy there is a town of Porte.-- Samuel Rappoport). Since that time they began to sign their name as "Rapa-port" or Rapp of Porto (Rappa me-poirto), which simply means the family Rapa of the city of Porto. thus the family name of Rapoport (or Rappaport and its different spellings) was formed.
From Italy this family spread to various other countries, and one of them, Rabbi Shloime Jehuda-Leib Rapaport (Rpoipoirt, in Hebrew) was a rabbi and a great Hebrew scholar and author of a great many books. he was born in 1790 in Lemberg (in Galicia, Austria, also known as Lwow, now Lvov, under Soviet occupation. S. J. Rapp.), and died in Prague (now Czechoslovak capital) in the year 1867.
Rabbi Shloime Jehuda-Leib Rapaport was also known as "Shi’r" (which is the initials of Shloime Juda-Leib Rapaport), /which can also be represented as "Sch-ie -r-- Sam. Rapp. /.
Sam. J. Rappoport
May 19, 1953.
[Following is the best translation of the family tree I could make. This was a reduced, taped-together, hand-written document that was hard to read due to multiple generations of photocopying (see reduced scan of tree at left). Questionable or unreadable spelling is marked by a <?>. Birth years, when given, are marked with brackets. Last names of children, usually not given, have been put in by me based on the father’s name. Indents represent generations. This was originally presented in a horizontal format, and has been made vertical here for ease of reading.]
The Rappaports (Jacob [c. 1861-1931] and Ida nee Grabois [c. 1863-1931] )
Shloime (Salomon) Rappaport [d. 1938] m. Lea Raisman [d. 1937]
Charles Rappaport [b. 1909] m. Bertha
Michael Rappaport [b. 1940] m. Lisa
Jeannie Mae Rappaport [b. 1914] m. Geo. Rodman
Steven Rodman [b. 1942] m. Sue
Lydia [b. 1945] m. Don B<?>
Samuel Rappaport m1. Jenny<?>
m2. Clara Sussman
Emanuel Rappaport [b. 1924] m. Joan King
David Rappaport [b. 1948]
Philip Rappaport [b. 1950]
Lydia Rappaport [b. 1933]
M<?> Rappaport m. W<?>
Dolores Rappaport m. Harry Cohen
Robert Cohen [b. 1943] m. ?
Jay Cohen [b. 1945]
Sarah Rappaport m. Chas. N<?>
Bennie Rappaport m. Mildred
Jackie Rappaport [b. 1937]
Ilene Rappaport [b. 1945]
Sarah Rappaport m1. ?
m2. Max Bass
Charles Bass m. Anne
Linda Bass
Judy Bass [b. 1944]
Jack Bass m. Leah
Mannia Rappaport [d. 1948] m. Morris Silver
Lottie Silver m. <?>
Eddie [b. 1946]
Harold Silver m. Bea
Sharon Silver [b. 1947]
Marlene Silver [b. 1954]
Sylvia Silver m. Irv
Marissa [b. 1951]
Sam Silver
Goldie Rappaport m. Louis Schwartz
Albert Schwartz m. ?
?
Bernie Schwartz m. Evelyn
Susan Schwartz [b. 1945] m. Larry
Terry Schwartz [b. 1950]
Jeff Schwartz
Bella Schwartz m. Barney
Riley
Douglas
Minnie Rappaport m. Sam Aaron
Joseph Aaron m. Doris
Eileen Aaron
? Aaron
Charlotte Aaron m. Yatz Erman
Jeff Erman
Jerry Erman
H<?> Erman