THE IMMIGRANTS FROM EASTERN EUROPE: 1880 to 1920

My mother came here in 1906. She was seven years old. She came over with her family from Russia…They had a close call [during a Czarist pogrom]. They lived in Odessa…and the priest hid them in a sub-cellar…The priest was scared that the baby would cry and give them away. They could hear the soldiers…They’d hear the soldiers marching on the floor [above]. -Gloria Strauss Bogen

The Greenfield Family in Russia (Collection of Louise Greenfield)

The largest number of Jewish immigrants to Waterbury arrived during the first two decades of the 20th century. More than 8,500 immigrants from Russia, Poland or Lithuania settled in Waterbury during this time, including some who arrived by way of New York, Canada, or other cities in Connecticut and New England. Many of these Eastern Europeans were Jews, refugees fleeing the wars of Eastern Europe or official czarist policies in Russia to eliminate the Jewish people through economic strictures and officially sanctioned mob violence.

My father-in-law was a tailor. He had a friend from Europe who lived in Waterbury and this friend wrote to him, "Harry, you have to come here. It’s wonderful. There’s fresh air and it’s beautiful and there are flowers and trees and you can get a job or you can open a business." -Mollie Birenbaum

Most of the Eastern European Jews began arriving in Waterbury after 1880. Within a decade, there were more than 60 Jewish families in the city. These new arrivals settled in the dense commercial area at Canal Street and Chatfield Avenue, as well as Bank Street and Riverside Avenue in Brooklyn. They found work as peddlers, tradesmen, farmers, and factory workers. Many built successful businesses that served their Jewish neighbors and the larger community.

The Adolph Sanditz Family (Collection of Fred and Janet Hennick)

Everything came to life on Saturday night. Everybody was out shopping. All the housewives were buying their meat and their chickens and it was very exciting to be out on Bishop Street on Saturday night. -Goldie Atkin

Hebrew Institute class, 1920s (Collection of Harold & Sonya Davids)

Secular Jewish organizations were established in the Kingsbury Street neighborhood by the Eastern European Jews, as well as religious organizations and synagogues. The Eastern European immigrants included socialists, Zionists and atheists. Their social organizations reflected this diversity and emphasized the Yiddish language that formed a common bond among the new immigrants. The Workmen’s Circle promoted Jewish causes, including the Labor Palestine Committee, and they organized social events that included Yiddish concerts. They operated a school on Spencer Avenue to teach Yiddish language and culture.

At the Workman’s Circle, it was strictly Yiddish. They had plays and shows and everything else down there. It was a friendly place to be. They had a big hall downstairs and then it had classrooms upstairs. -Milton Kadish

Beginning in the 1920s, many younger Jewish families moved to the larger homes with yards and parks where children could play in the Cooke Street and Overlook neighborhoods.

Neighborhood group, 1927 (Collection of Edward Wilensky)

Before the war Beth Israel got so crowded that they had separate services for the young people at the Waterbury Hebrew Institute. They’d pack the auditorium with young people, and when services got out, and they generally ended about the same time both at Beth Israel and the Hebrew Institute, you couldn’t get a car through on Kingsbury Street. It was just jammed. -Sherman London

THE NEW IMMIGRANTS

Students at the Yeshiva (Collection of Yeshiva Gedolah)

Waterbury’s Jewish community has continued to assist Jewish immigrants throughout the 20th century. Synagogues and the Jewish Federation welcomed Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors after World War II and helped find homes here for Russian Jews released from the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

They hired me probably six years ago, part time, to do the same things that were done [for] me when I came over, to help the family, because we didn’t have any family when we came over so our own family was Federation. We did exactly what they recommended us to do.... Okay, first of all, it meant that [when] people from the synagogues and the Jewish communities came to our house they brought [things we needed to settle in]. And the rabbi brought a bottle of wine, then people came with little snacks like cookies and brownies and they put a mezuzah on our door. And then they explained to us [what the mezuzah means]: that a Jewish family lives here and anybody who needs help, Jewish or non-Jewish is welcome to knock this door, and he will be helped or she will be helped, because this is a part of being Jewish. -Liliya Magidina

The newest immigrants to Waterbury’s Jewish community are the members of Torah Umesorah, who plan to bring 300 families to the Overlook neighborhood to worship in the former Beth El synagogue and to study in the yeshiva that will be housed in the campus on Hillside Avenue.

Fulton Park (Collection of Yeshiva Gedolah)

Torah Umesorah [is] the most wonderful thing that happened in Waterbury.... Many of the materials that I purchased for the Beth El religious school years ago came from Torah Umesorah. And we’re very happy that the synagogue will still be retained as a Jewish synagogue. -Irving Pinsky