Lillian Waldman Anson
Lillian Waldman Anson was born in New York City in 1887, the daughter of Orthodox Jewish immigrants. Her mother came from the Austrian region, spoke Austrian German mixed with Hebrew words, and had lived in Vienna, while her father's family had roots in Hungary. Her father had managed a baron's estate in Europe but faced religious criticism in his strict Hasidic community, which contributed to the family's decision to seek a freer life in America. Lillian recounted a dramatic story of her mother bringing the children through Ellis Island, persuading an inspector to leave a sleeping child's face covered so his measles would not be discovered, thereby allowing the family to enter the country.
The family settled on New York's Lower East Side, living in tenement apartments with railroad-style rooms and shared outdoor toilets. Lillian was one of five children, with two brothers and two sisters. Her father first traveled to Cleveland, where an older brother had settled, but returned to New York after that brother died of pneumonia. Disliking the poisonous conditions of the garment sweatshops, he bought a small tobacco shop, first in a gentile neighborhood and later in a mixed Hungarian and Slovak neighborhood, eventually building a respected cigar store that served prominent German-Jewish customers. The family remained Orthodox, adapting their observance to American life, staying close to a synagogue and keeping the holidays.
Lillian attended a local school where she was often the only Jewish child and remembered being timid and quiet. After grammar school she entered teacher training at a normal college, earning her license and beginning to teach before she was eighteen. For about two years she worked as a traveling substitute, sometimes walking long distances and going days without pay, before receiving a regular elementary class under a stern principal. She recalled anti-Jewish prejudice, including being called slurs and having snowballs thrown, as well as one dedicated teacher from out west whom she admired. She spoke proudly of her brother, Morris David Waldman, MD, who organized Jewish charitable relief work during the era of the First World War.
Full Transcript
This is Ginger Jacobs. It is July 29, 1982, and we will be talking with Mrs. Anson. Okay, Mrs. Anson, can you tell me about where you were born and when you were born? I was born in New York City. One would be two years or two years less than we are now in. That would make it 1885? 1887 I think. This is 82. So it would be 1887. That would make me two years less than 100. No, it would make you... How old are you now? I was married... They make you 85, 95 I believe. Yes. Oh no, I'm nearer to 105 years. Oh. Oh, alright.
I think I'm two years and four months removed. Oh, okay. So I'll have to leave that mathematics to you. so you're 97 and a half about almost 98 yes yes that's wonderful can you tell me where were your parents from my mother was born in Slovakia Is she born in Austria or Swarlacc I not too sure of that Um See, my mind is gone. It's not again. Well, um, what was her native language? What did she speak? For Austria, it was German. It was the Austrian German with a great many of our Hebrew words that were put into common usage. Um... That's where I learned to speak German without having to study German, you know, not that I know it well.
tell me my pronunciation is excellent I wouldn't vouch for the grammar well when did she come here how does she meet your father do you know where was your father from her father was from Hungary and your father my father yes was Marano oh oh where was he from of course and he was a maker of talis talitzen silk talis that they that was so important in their prayers you know what that is yes where was your father from was he from spain then I don't know that I know father's background that fair far back. I'll have to try and think in my mind and dig deeper into it.
All this may be in that book by my brother or my father. I think it's terribly essential for you to read that book. Yes, I will be glad to. but I think we go on and on and then we go back to the we no further ahead because you haven read the book you know what I mean what is your brother's name my brother yes he was Morris David Waldman MD we called him. Okay. Where did your mother and father leave Europe from? Where did they live before they came to the United States? Mother in Austria. In Vienna. and your father hungry and when did they come to the United States unless we have to work out I get your pride in the book You want to put your paper and pencil for notes?
Yes. Put that down and then you'll have to look that up. You'll have to do that at home because I think there won't be the time to wait. Because that could take quite a while. Did they come about 18, how many years do you know about how many years they came before you were born? How many years they came, how many years have they been in the United States when you were born? Let's see, how can I do that? A very interesting, dramatic point I want to bring out while we're here about her getting into the United States. This whole thing could have amounted to nothing zero but she used her head and she had her head and though she wasn an educated woman in our modern sense she was a knowing woman and she was quick and bright I'll tell you the incident.
Yes. well the Orthodox Jewish women at that time were wearing those horrible black horse hair I call them horse hair, shibbles. Yes. Let me put my teeth back out of the mouth. she was um um she just wore a little tiny piece of false hair there hair was very fine like mine very fine and thin and uh but she was broad enough to make that uh that satisfied her you know she was following the orthodox law when the ship landed the ship they came on and they came in steerage she came in not the very lowest but the next which was practically the same they were in the same um adjoining quarters you know yes in the bottom of the ship thank god it must have taken at least 14 days to cross the ocean she um when they woke up that morning ready to land with all the feverish preparations gather all the little ones and the little ones were nervous and some of them got lost they had to find them you know that sort of terrible excitement she had her family together, they lined up, and some were not admitted, and those who admitted were allowed to cross that wrong wooden Bridge between Ellis Island.
This was out in the ocean on the island, an island called Ellis Ocean. Yes. It didn't come right up to the mainland of the United States. She landed there. And it was easy to trip on that too. It was just boards, you know, boardwalk. Ordinary boardwalk, crude boardwalk. um sorry my head is going around again she um anyway it came to her turn she was holding her child with his face covered and the agent was about to lift the cover she said please you understand if I take it to me Lassen's again bitter please leave him covered he said why she said he had a very bad night with all the excitement and he didn't sleep and now he was very much upset crying and now he is sleeping peacefully so the agent thank heaven it was not a complete roughneck let the cover drop back on his face his face had broken out into the measles red with all the measles yeah splotches and he let her pass and she says danke schön her agent whatever they call them and of course she can have a few words of German evidently yes allayed him yes softened him enough to let her go on yes And that's how we landed.
Otherwise, this child would have been buried in the bay near New York. My mother would not even have had a cemetery to go to for solace And I suppose the rest of us would have been sent back here they had given up their home and they would have come to a homeless land they don't know what would have happened then in that predicament so that expression bitter hair agent last in him thus wasn't he bitter last to see sloth and maybe in that book i don't know if my brother went into detail on that point i think if you could get into that yes undisturbed and apply yourself to at least those first chapters i think that would
be a greatest help to you um do you know why your parents came here from austria do you know why they came to the united states why did they leave europe yes yes yes glad you asked that question otherwise this would not have happened my father had charge of the baron's estate in those days the barons who owned the land in sections of the land the king didn't bother about anything he left it to the barons each had his area to attend to during the winter the Shabbos was over earlier dark it didn't matter when it came to springtime the days were longer so that
I don think I getting this very clear now my head is going around if you would read when we start next time start with this point and see whether I created up my own mind somehow and in other words he was still doing the weekly work in daylight instead of in the dark It's tearing my stomach as well as everything else. Well, let's get to the end of that point so I can go on. the fact that in that little very hasidish almost they won a seeding but almost you know the next step that was quite an offense religiously then what happened he was criticized and disgraced the community as these people considered it And that was so disagreeable to my mother and to him, I don't know, he decided, or both or what, he decided the best was to get to America.
They could be just as religious there from what he knew about it and and not be so closely watched and criticized so you could take it on from there when you read the book that may give you a little bit more make a make them put that down in your notebook so you'll know exactly what we're referring to in your notes so you will be looking carefully at this point god i wish i could read that book again well maybe someone can read it to you maybe gene or arthur will come into a lot of reading and unless i could perhaps hire some about it i don't What part of New York did they settle in?
What part of New York were you going to? Oh, it was down on the east side. It was not yet this Hester Street pushcart kind of ghetto, you know what I mean? What was it like? Oh, there were these houses that were turned into tenements. Yes. The houses then were mostly built, part of the building for the middle class, were two families on the floor. Railroad ran from back to front. You walked into a kitchen pot where you ate and you cooked and you so forth. Then came two bedrooms. She went through railroad, you know, bedrooms were private. Those who went to bed last had those that were nearest the kitchen.
And the living room, I remember in our case, we had a little girl, there was that folding bed. And the two, my two brothers slept in there and you closed up that bed and it looked like a commode. And you put something on top, a plant or a vase or something and it dressed up your living room. How many brothers and sisters did you have? I had two brothers, two sisters. There were five. Did you have any relatives living with you at any time? Relatives with us? No. Yes. We had no room for relatives. We had them around. Yes. We'd have them there for Shabbos dinner or something like that, Friday night.
You know, my brother had a nephew here. My father, excuse me, when he came to New York, I manned it. He didn't stop in New York. He made a train immediately for Cleveland where his older brother had established himself and had sent for my father. Oh. Did he come back to New York then? and his brother developed pneumonia and you didn't live with pneumonia then it was the worst disease possible very few people pulled out of pneumonia poor people I mean with a result that he died when he died my father had no reason to stay in Cleveland though they Cleveland was popular with Jewish people from Hungary and that section the Russian Jews stayed in New York I guess I'll have to leave it at that.
What was it like growing up in New York? Well, then did you come back to New York, or did your father and mother go to Cleveland together and then come back to New York? Oh, my mother wasn't over here yet when he came. He came without her. they didn't come together he came without her to establish a place and then to send for her when she came he had come back to New York because well there were some distant relatives and lancemont in Cleveland I guess he felt they were not the ones that he would ask for help so he came back My father came back to New York.
Then that turned out into a real ghetto when the Russian-Polish Jews came over. Then they left that ghetto. and my father in the meantime did not like working in these sweatshops of those there was no ventilation they had the gas big irons very heavy that you put on little gas stoves and there was a constant poisoning of the gas filling you and people just got this tuberculosis and died and he was an outdoors man from the by his name even around the money woodsman forester so he What did he do? So he decided to find some other way of living. And he bought a little tobacco shop.
this was on sale in a very good neighborhood at that time in new york a strictly gentile neighborhood with a uh a methodist church up the street and uh up the avenue a block or two away these were short blocks i talking about the new york city i don know if you know it at all the avenue blocks are short and these street blocks were long yes about three times a short block and when new york was the first established it was decided that was a design for residential privacy for the middle class. So he was able I suppose on small monthly payments the seller was willing to sell it on the installment plan and he was a man that was retired and expected to be around enough years to eventually have all his money out of it when I went to a school belonging to that district I think I was the only Jewish child in the school And with my ability to talk a little German and all that, I was able to get along.
I was talking English at that time, so I had a playmaker too to play with, out of the poor class, I suppose, poorer class. I think if you would read that carefully, you would sort of ponder over it and make notes. I think you'll get to see the picture. Well, let's go on with your story, though. With the what? Let's go on with what you were saying about playing with the children in class and being in school. I always hung back, you know. I was unnoticed practically like some kind of an unimportant which I was and i rarely answered or was scared to answer and hardly ever called on to answer i became a kind of a silent uh member of the class very timid very timid about it all did you have any feelings about being jewish in a non-jewish class was that could that have been part of it i don't remember my reactions in that respect i just thought it was a funny mixed up well for me i think i have a feeling gradually we get settled somehow you know what about uh religious education did you have
any what about religious education was there any type of uh no there was no religious school for me to go to around there dad began to teach me a little on a saturday he would give me a little time in the afternoon and you know beginning with the alphabet were your parents traditional when they came to the united states to make the orthodox did that change over the years were they always strictly orthodox they remained orthodox but better adapted to the united states that's why i keep begging you to did they stay did you stay out of school on jewish holidays well the jewish schools
in that neighborhood would stay closed they were open to those who wanted to come into the non-jewish but the Jewish were excused if you brought a note saying why you couldn't come then that was the acceptance did you also stay home from school on Passover and on Shavuot and on Zutnik? Strict holidays, yes. In fact, all of the first part, like Passover, I wouldn't go to school the first day, you know. And they had two seders, which was a strictly orthodox. Yes. And this, of course, was never as important as a first. did you ever have did your parents ever have a sukkah were they able to build a sukkah for sickos well they lived in an apartment building they tried it but it was very difficult wasn't your own ground your own backyard yes so the shoals all the like shoals all had sukkahs so you use that one I suppose you brought yourself a little supper fruit and apples were in season and uh and new york state is a great snake for apples and they were very probably always very cheap should have been reasonable california was not yet producing the fruit nor was florida so luckily that's why i give anything for fresh apple and i can't get my teeth into uh let's uh talk about synagogue did you live close to a synagogue walking you know walking distance did your parents walk on saturdays did they go to synagogue on saturdays because they had to walk they were orthodox but many orthodox people don't go to the synagogue every saturday that's why i'm asking you because we're a few blocks away that's why they they lived near the synagogue ah okay okay they never lived where they couldn't reach it by foot okay some people may have had to walk a mile.
Yes. Because they had to establish for some reasons further out. Yes. Yes. Once you rode on the Sabbath, you were not orthodox strictly. You were did they call it reform Or what did they call it then It could well I don it could have been reform yes it could have been conservative but i don think it would have to probably i don think it went you were orthodox but you had to bring in a little of the of the news so you were sort of um um what was the transportation in those days well then you remember what was the transportation were there street cars in new york at that time again please were there street cars in new york at that time what kind of transportation generally yes
how did people go if they couldn't walk horse cars horse cars no tracks i think they were just on on the cobblestones how many grades of school in the summer they were open yes so that you had a step along the whole length yes and they were open yes it's fun riding in them then because you have the breeze and you're cool and then the winter they were closed up I don't think they were ever heated but they were closed up and the windows were shut tight so all you did was maybe open your collar a little you know and and so you didn't um
what was the life like i could see i could see people i suppose jews and non-jews who would not even have overcoats they would just do the best they could you know with the little suit coats they were wearing maybe a vest under it or something and the underwear was woolen they had woolen underwear if they could possibly afford a little extra instead of a cotton long pants shirts and then later they had it in one piece called a union suit it was just less bulky that came later cost a little more What was the life like in New York growing up in New York
at that time Oh after we were better established and Dad bought the full cigar store then he went into back into a mixed neighborhood with a Hungarian Goyim Slovakian Goyim who smoked the wrong Meerschaun pipes and then he packed tobacco in bags and sold a bag for nickel and a dime but the U.S. got most of the revenue liquor and tobacco with a too heavily taxed thing other other things were not taxed and eventually it developed with all his hard work and devotion it worked into a a nice cigar store that day big puck bellied stove in the middle and in the back of the stove a little was his little factory he had one woman the stripper who stripped the tobacco off the stem and cut away what the men were going to use to make the finest tarana tobacco into the cigars only had some of the very prominent Jewish rich German come over early and the German millionaires like Schiff's and the Oppenheim's and all those people who who are his customers and a hard worker and a happy nature not a complainer easily satisfied and the sweetest disposition in the world taught everybody not only his children his wife his family and so forth but everybody and of course mother was a worrying time about how old were you and about what year was it when he bought the new store About what year About what time frame What year When I what?
When your father bought the new, moved his store from the east side. When you, when he dealt with all these people, about what year? when he came from the Glacier neighborhood where he bought the store yes to the mix to the mixed neighborhood yes about how old are they? you have to figure that through well now he was for my understanding is first he was on the east side and then he bought another store is that correct? He came to the east side from this elegant neighborhood. I don't quite get that point clear. I have to think about it. About were cars on the road yet when he had this other store?
were cars on the road when he had it when he first bought the store when the mixed neighborhood yes yes of course was it before the first world war oh my god the first world war I was a young woman teaching school well mixed up in your dates well that's why you've got to read that book were you were you a child when he bought the second store were you still were you in school uh in grammar school when you bought when you bought this phone no no it must have been younger than that when i was in grammar school he was already well established ah okay So what was well in our family was well done.
What was life like? Well for me, then, for me, well it was very pleasant. I scored, made some friends and probably almost the same circumstances and we had our little fun and charlotte's and so forth. What did you do for work here after school? After school, we just played. Girls would usually play metal with the boys and everyone on the side walk in front of the house. We had to go to the big backyard. and we had our little games in the big backyard. At first the toilets were out there, not the modern plumbing. And the toilets were right back of the house, back of your apartment.
And of course you did the best to keep it as clean as possible. You had strong sodas and soaps and all that sort of thing. And at one time I know you had to share it with a neighbor and sometimes the neighbors would fight, you know, said you need to keep it clean you did it clean up and clean it yesterday when you see so we always had newspaper i think hanging on the string so you could pull a sheet down and make a hole in the middle of the sheet and not have to touch the wood you know so you skim and never had abrasions we never had any um skin out breaks nobody in the family somehow we managed it seems like i do today i haven't an abrasion on my skin even at my age i don't have a pimple nothing it's as clean as a baby's of course it's old thin skin and it's amazing how clean i've been told over and over again the day before the whole upset two of the aides came in and said they wanted to test the anal region they went in very carefully I was scared stiff but they didn't hurt me.
They went in very carefully and slowly took their time And I don know what did they use I don know what did they use to do it with a suppository or what and it didn hurt there were very nice women aides and they said everything is just clean and healthy and they were amazed they gave me a marvelous report i felt like the cleanest woman old old uh hundred year old in uh in america and then it all got upset when they uh uh when they began to go into more rigid uh applications it's not your mind canada well let's talk uh let's talk about
your schooling where did you go after grammar school what type of high school after you finished grammar school we did not go to high school at grammar school when you graduated at 12 or 13 you went right into your um training to be a teacher what type of training what did that include there were two types one was the more practical one the one my sister went to eventually and the other was a regular one and after you were through with that you you had your license how long did that last that was about three years at that time i think i did it in
three years when i began to teach i was not quite 18. and what did you teach just the elementary children in the elementary grades primary they call them the primary grades was that type of what was that type of schooling called when you went for teachers training primary school when when you went for teacher training was it perhaps called a normal school Or what type of school was it called Normal. They called the college a normal college. That was the name of the college. Normal college. And so normal college was changed to uh uh uh what was it? Was it, you mean now, City of New, um, no, no, no, that time.
Any college or university, I don't know, a university was larger than a college. No university, there was no situation. Teachers college? Teachers college. Maybe went to teachers college, it was a practical one, and, that mine or three other if you will read that very carefully and ponder over it i think you'll get a better understanding than i can possibly give you well let's go ahead with uh when you taught how now did you teach in the neighborhood you where did you teach did you teach in the labor you lived in did they send you to teach in another area oh they could send you far away where you had to take by that time they had an elevated road yes in new york city you know with a car
up high on the elevators yes some people never saw the on the outside looked out of their windows only so the elevators going by yes i mean the which elevated trains going by um where did you teach when you finished your normal school your training your teachers training where did you teach my first assignment in the first place you weren't assigned right away there wasn't always an opening oh you were registered as a substitute teacher some days you didn't teach and some days you'd and no telephone of course so you had to go around to the various schools you come in the good morning are
you leaving a substitute today no yes you know some weeks i didn't earn anything luckily my father was able to take care of me and And some days I would get a job, you know. I remember having to go walk miles further uptown from where I lived in order to... And after afternoon, I think, after the noon hour, I don't think they ever hired anybody if a teacher was absent. They would just put an older pupil in charge, leave the doors open and the adjoining teachers would kind of peep in, you know? Yes. for the extra two hours lunch was from 12 to 1 and in two hours at three o'clock the school was dismissed and what did you do if you didn't did you teach some days every week or were there long periods of time that you didn't teach well i would say that I don't remember but I would seems to me that it was rare that in one whole week you didn't you didn't find one day you know but it must have happened and with that we always ate well not fancy but you know my mother knew how to give you a a good meal without uh unnecessary expenses you know did the children help and contribute to the household running or did the children help in contributing to the running of the household when you got paid when they were when they were later on when they were They became more like my brothers.
They would, they would consider my brother, the older one, who studied law. He became my father's little, in a little way, his bookkeeper, you know. He was care of the books. There was a lot of bookkeeping, a lot. Because the government was such a back of people like they did the liquor people. you didn't get away with a penny unless you got a hold of someone you could bribe maybe but they never tried to do that they were they were strictly with the law because they they knew that in the courts the jews uh you couldn't do any bribing the jews you know they wanted to stay within the law was there any semitism that's the whole thing i'm talking about yes well uh what would what happened what type of things happened anything could happen in the winter with the snow They throw snowballs and ice balls and didn't clean their sidewalks and all those kind of things.
Did they call names also? Oh my heavens, Sheeny. Sheeny was the name they called her. A child made report to his parents, and says, oh, there's a new store open. Sheenies on it. But they're hard class sheenies. Then came the Irish. And then there was a difference in the change of attitude. Some of the Irish were easygoing, and they got along, and some of them were not. Some of them are so tough and some of them are always full of liquor, you know. And the saloons sprang up. And very rarely was a Jew owned a saloon occasionally. If things get better, he was able to afford it.
He'd buy a saloon. Well he was not a drinker or his family He could sell it all right I wish I could make the picture clearer but it impossible to do so You're doing very well. Now, how long, let's talk about how long you had to wait until you got a class where you were hired as a teacher. Were you... Oh, I think it took about two years that I was traveling on the sidewalks as a substitute. I think it took around two years and I had a regular class. How did you get that? Then I got the West Principal in the United States. She was a devil of meanness and life was a kind of a terror all the time.
And she's an American woman. She wasn't Irish. She wasn't Catholic. She was a devil. she liked she's interested in the music she had that little something in her while having the children see the assembly opened in the morning the doors were on a track so you opened the doors and made one great hall there would be about three i think three classes six classes on the other side of the main aisle. So she had probably, she may have had around 250 children and she did very well at the ensemble singing the assembly singing but she's only a small part of the life at that time as far as the this jewish history goes now i don't know whether my brother had the same experience when he wrote he counted the same experiences when he wrote the wrote the book did you find anti in the school when you taught Anti from whom From the pupils, from the teachers, from the principals.
I'm talking to you about the teacher, the principal. Not from the teachers, no, very rarely. The teachers each had her problem, you know. We knew we each had our problem. Well, was the principal only against Jews or was she a devil generally? No, I don't think she was so much against Jews. She was just a devil generally. The door would open a little bit and you knew that she was peeping in, you know, and it would close. or she'd open the door, crack, and probably stand there holding the knob and putting her ear to the slit so that she would hear what the teacher was saying.
Once we would have the children, 10 o'clock, they called a little recess, if it keeps up, they would stand up in the aisle next to their desk and we'd give them little exercises you know to get them circulating and because they weren't allowed to walk around freely and there was one teacher who came from out west somewhere she was a marvel of dedication to teaching she loved it and she gave the children a lot of freedom she was a marvel but they didn't quite appreciate how they were trying to to uh press her down into the pattern of restrictions and she had she stood a lot of sorrows from them you don't find teachers like that she had come from a one one one class school somewhere as you know in a small town out west western new york could be uh just a few miles then you know you said yesterday that you had taught a group of jewish children well this is much later though when the war came First World War The First World War Did you do any of that Was it what?
Did you do any of that? Was there a mass Jewish immigration before the First World War while you were teaching? Yes, that's when there was so much. in the first war by that time people were getting kind of established they had the charities that's where my brother started and i don't know what else to say there well did anything particular happen no he went on that way until he conceived it was his conception his idea he's new in the world he didn't get it from any other country he didn't and another thing the unscrupulous people would make application for the handout. I would get paid three handouts.
I was scrupulous, truthful people. They'd be deprived. And by organizing it, by keeping the records, he got a very fine woman she wasn't Jewish but she made a wonderful secretary for him and she had no family just her husband and she stayed with my brother for many many many years and made a secretary even after they were organized was this for a welfare program generally what did they organize what type of program what did they distribute i don't understand just what You said that he organized a program. How did he organize this? I don't know what I referred to then. Whatever. Whatever. The board of education.
Okay. Which consisted of six men, non-Jewish. Okay. Catholic I think all of them and tell you what let's take up from there tomorrow after you leave the book maybe I'll get it clearer in my mind okay