VIA ZOOM
The next hidden corner of our Random Walk Through Jewish History and Culture brings us to the Early 20th Century during the Great Migration of Jewish Immigrants from the Pale of Settlement mostly to the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
One largely unremembered part of that process was the desertion of their families by thousands of Jewish men. The problem was large enough that the Jewish community created a separate agency to find these men and both cause them to meet their responsibilities as well as help the abandoned families find the means to survive. This institution was called The National Desertion Bureau.
The presentation not only tells the story of the Jewish institutional response, but also gives an unusually touching insight into how difficult life was for the immigrant families, in the real life illustrations of the Bureau’s work. The panel discussion was a session introducing the exhibit on the Bureau at Yivo in New York.
The NDB is the subject of “Runaway Husbands, Desperate Families: The Story of the National Desertion Bureau” an exhibition at the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research.
“It reveals an aspect of Jewish immigration that is not usually discussed,” said Eddy Portnoy, Director of Exhibitions at YIVO, which houses the over 18,000 case files of the NDB and who collaborated on the exhibition with The Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, a mental health and social services agency.
Howard Schickler, who will be facilitating the presentation may gather additional information. If you would like to receive these, please click here. As always, the presentation stands on its own, so these additional readings, if any, are purely optional.