How’d the Jews get to the South?

In the 1880s, Czarist Russia allowed its citizens to rob and terrorize Jews. That terror is called a pogrom. American Jews knew about it and worked to get them out of Russia to America where they’d be safe.

One Jewish businessman in New York, Jacob Schiff spent nearly $17 million (today’s equivalent) to bring 10,000 Jews to Galveston between 1907 and 1914.

It was called the Galveston Movement. A noble, uniquely American spectacle.

A Rabbi would meet them on the boat upon arrival to Galveston and help them get through customs. They were then sent to towns all over Texas, sparsely populated at the time. Within a few years they had stores in towns and cities all over the South: Sakowitz. Godchaux. Cohn, Pfeifer. Kempner’s. Kornfeld’s. Abramson. And hundreds more. Americans welcomed them without question.

Don’t you love America!

Here’s the story of the Galveston Movement in an article from The Jerusalem Post.

“Abramson” is the name of my friend Raymond Abramson. Raymond’s grandfather built this house in 1921-22 in Holly Grove, Arkansas where Raymond still lives. It is on the National Register of Historic Places that says about the house “…it is a particularly fine local example of Craftsman style architecture.”