My maternal grandmother, Anna (Cohen) Mensowitz, was born in 1892, in Minsk.  In or about 1906, after a series of pograms, her father, fearing for the safety of my grandmother and her younger sister, Ida (Cohen) Benesowitz, wrote to a relative who had emigrated to the United States, asking for money to buy tickets on a ship which would take his daughters to the US.  Upon receipt, he booked his daughters on a ship which was to set sail from Hamburg.  Tickets in hand, Anna, age 14, and Ida, age 12, left for Hamburg, a distance of almost 900 miles.  Two Jewish girls, one barely into her teens, the other not yet a teenager, travelled by themselves, on foot.  They reached Hamburg, boarded the ship, crossed the Atlantic, made it through Ellis Island, ferried to the slip at Battery Park, took their very first steps into Manhattan, where they met their benefactor, there father’s relative.  They settled in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, married, had children (five daughters for my grandmother, a son and two daughters for Ida), and raised their families in Brownsville, under very trying economic circumstances.  At a time when parents are reluctant to have their school age children travel more than few blocks from their homes, this story, which was told to me by my grandmother in a combination of Yiddish and halting English, more than 75 years ago, amazes me, to this day.  

– Jay A Kranis

Relationship:  Grandchild of im/migrant Grandchild of im/migrant