| Notes |
- The following notes have been contributed by Bernie Dorin:
Florence, and her twin sister Bessie, were the youngest of the Horwitz children and the last to immigrate to the United States. They arrived in about 1909, making them about 13 years old. The twin girls were accompanied on their journey by their older sister Ida (abt 23) and brother Morris (abt 25) (we think). (Dates and ages must be considered as approximate.)
Ida and Morris may have been mature, but the twin girls were certainly very young for such a trip. It is difficult to imagine the thoughts and emotions of these uneducated Jewish children as they left their rural home near the Baltic Sea for “the other side of the world”. Not to dwell on it, but the context of this all important trip must have been the frightening experience of a lifetime. Did they, as rural Jews in the Russia at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, experience the persecution associated with the pogroms? Probably!
While the motivation for emigrating from Latvia was undoubtedly for religious freedom, to escape persecution, and for economic opportunity, unhappiness with their stepmother was also a factor for this band of four. Separation from the security of home into an alien and probably hostile appearing world of unfamiliar people, languages, and customs could well have been the material for fantasies and nightmares for years to come. Will the streets really be lined with gold? Will a man in a uniform (a Cossack) separate me from my family and send me back, alone? Will we find our brothers in some strange place called Chicago?
Do we have the empathy, secure in our twenty first century lives, to put ourselves in the shoes of those children? The questions of a lifetime are the ones I didn’t ask. In retrospect, the story of the journey is just a small part of a full, rich story of a life that starts at a time and in a place I know almost nothing about. As I write this, I see my mother’s face and sense her always gentle and comforting presence. She was not a story teller; with five boys to look after she seemed to always be concerned with the “here and the now”. At least that’s how it seemed to a young boy who took it all for granted.
I don’t know the port of embarkation to the “new world”, so I don’t know how my mother got there from her village of Resekne, Latvia. Whether it was by train or horse drawn conveyance, it was probably a new, exciting, and frightening experience. The ocean leg of the journey was almost certainly in steerage class, by all accounts very unpleasant accommodations. I don’t know the time of year she and her siblings set out, but I hope the trip across the Atlantic was not in the winter. The North Atlantic can be a nasty place in the winter.
I have been told that her older brothers preceded this little, last band of the Henoch Hirsh Horwitz family, entering North America through Canada and settling in Chicago. I assume that Florence, Bessie, Ida, and Morris entered this country through Ellis Island. I made this assumption because I do remember being told that the girls worked in a glove factory on the lower East Side of New York. They worked very long hours for very little pay in what is now referred to as a “sweatshop”. The idea, of course, was to accumulate the money to complete the trip to Chicago and family. I have done some research of the information in the Ellis Island website, but I did not find any reference to my mother or her brothers or sisters.
We have no details about what her new life was like for Florence, newly arrived in Chicago. I assume that given her young age she must have lived with one of her brothers. I do know that she had a social life beyond her immediate family. I heard references to, and saw pictures of, women she called her “girl friends”. I also don’t know if she worked outside of the home.
In due course Florence met Isadore (Issie) Dorin, a recent arrival from Poland. I don’t know how they met or how long they “courted”, but these two “greenhorns” (my father’s term) married on November 25, 1917. Isadore was a baker, having apprenticed at the age of nine in Warsaw. His father had already left for America, so his grandfather arranged for the apprenticeship, with the explanation that “you will always have something to eat”. That prediction was accurate. Isadore always had work and was able to provide a good home and education for their five sons.
The family lived on the west side of Chicago until about 1935, when we moved the northwest side. That was to be the family home for more than the next quarter of a century. All five boys went to elementary and high school in Chicago. We survived the Great Depression in good shape, but with three sons in the military during the war, WWII was a time of constant worry and anxiety for Ma and Pa Dorin. All three returned safely.
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1896 - 1967
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