In a previous post, I explored the efforts of my great grandfather, Chone Weirzbowicz, to get a visa to immigrate to the United States. He tried for more than four years, from mid-1934 to late 1938. His task was not easy, because he was from Poland, and the law at that time—the Immigration Act of 1924—made it very difficult for Polish nationals to get into this country. The law imposed quotas based on national origin, designed to severely restrict immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans. The Polish quota was miniscule—about 6000 a year. There were, according to one estimate, 78 applicants for every quota slot available to persons from Southern and Eastern Europe. (By point of comparison, there were about three applicants for every available slot to Western and Northern Europeans.)

Still, Chone had an advantage over most Poles because his son, my grandfather, had previously immigrated to the United States and, in 1934, become a U.S. citizen. Under section (6)(a) of the 1924 law, up to half of the yearly quota could be made available to close relatives, namely unmarried children under 21 years, parents, and spouses. A U.S. citizen could file a petition to have his or her relative admitted under what was known as a “preference visa.” (Nowadays, this procedure is called a Petition for Alien Relative.)

Almost immediately after obtaining U.S. citizenship, my grandfather filed a preference visa petition on behalf of his father. His first task was to establish that Chone was indeed his father, since my grandfather had changed his last name to Waxman upon receiving U.S. citizenship.

Having overcome that obstacle, he received a letter in late 1934 (of which I have but a poor copy) from the State Department informing him that his petition had been granted.

A bigger obstacle would be proving that he could financially support Chone, or, as the law put it, that his father was not likely to become a “public charge.” (See Section (9)(a)(6) [“the petitioner is able to and will support the immigrant if necessary to prevent such immigrant from being a public charge”].)

The idea of excluding immigrants unable to support themselves was not new to the 1924 law. It dates from an 1882 law authorizing immigration officials to exclude those “unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” The 1891 Immigration Act allowed the deportation of anyone who became a public charge within one year after his or her arrival in the United States. (The same law barred immigration of “all idiots, insane persons, paupers or persons likely to become a public charge, . . .” ) The time limit for deportation was extended to five years by the 1917 Immigration Act.

As a practical matter, however, few people were excluded or deported on this basis. (Daniels, Coming to America, 274.) Most immigrants who arrived in the United States after 1882 came with little money and negligible job skills, yet they were not excluded. That’s because businesses benefited from the cheap labor the immigrants provided. In addition, the steamship companies checked immigrants before they boarded lest they bear the expense of returning rejected immigrants. A 1911 Supreme Court opinion limited immigration officers from excluding immigrants based on their assessment that they would have difficulty finding employment in their city of destination. In essence, the “public charge” requirement was either ignored or interpreted as excluding only those who, because of some infirmity, would be incapable of supporting themselves. (Daniels, p. 61).

But the 1924 law changed that liberal approach. The law vastly expanded the discretion of consular officials to deny visas to would-be immigrants, including based on the “public charge” requirement. (Daniels, p. 295.) Then came the Great Depression. With unemployment rising, unions and others raised the fear that immigrants allowed to enter under the quota law would take away jobs from those already living in the United States. In response, President Herbert Hoover issued an executive order in 1930 directing American consulates to interpret the public charge provision more strictly, requiring that immigrants have proof of employment before migrating to the United States. The State Department even instructed consular officials to take away previously granted visas “if the consular officer believes that the applicant may probably be a public charge at any time, even during a considerable period subsequent to his arrival.” (Daniels, p. 61.) “The new interpretation of the old clause was eventually stretched so that many consuls were able to require immigrants to have either substantial assets in their possession or a sponsor in the United States who would file an affidavit attesting a willingness to support the immigrant if necessary and an ability to do so.” (Ibid.) Although President Roosevelt revoked this order in 1936, many consular officials continue to interpret the LPC clause in this restrictive manner. (Ibid.)

How could my grandfather establish to the government’s satisfaction that his father would not become a “public charge”? My grandfather owned a small paper goods business on the Lower East Side. He didn’t have a lot of money. Whatever savings he had amassed wouldn’t have amounted to much. Yet the law required him to file a sworn affidavit promising to provide Chone with financial support if needed.

Moreover, how could my grandfather prove that his father would find employment? What kind of work could Chone get in the midst of the Great Depression? By 1934, Chone was already in his late 50s. Whatever schooling he’d received was minimal, and confined to Jewish religious schools in Poland. Nor were his professional skills suited to the American job market. He worked as an “oil maker,” running a family business in Zambrow turning flax seeds into oil for industrial uses. New York City did not have the need for an oil maker.

But my grandfather was a determined man, and he tasked himself with solving both issues.

First, he set about finding a job for his father. He needed someone who ran a business. Someone in the Lower East Side, in my grandfather’s social circle, willing and able to help out a fellow Jew. Fortunately, my grandfather knew such a person. That man—an iconic personality and a highly successful businessman on the Lower East Side—was Shmulke Bernstein.

Shmulke was born in 1896 in Andrzejewo, a small Polish town not far from Zambrow, where my grandfather lived before leaving Poland. Shmulke was only three years older than my grandfather, and their paths, or at least their family’s paths, surely crossed before Shmulke immigrated to the United States in 1910.

Shmulke settled down in the Lower East Side, as did many other Eastern European Jewish immigrants. There he opened up a kosher butcher store and smoke house at 107-111 Rivington Street. The stores were quite successful, and his name became synonymous with quality meats of unquestioned kosher standards. Two of his most popular products, recalls a recent Facebook post, were the five pounder salami and fry beef. A sign on his door read: “Kashruth is King and Quality Rules.”

The inside of his shop attested to Shmulke’s devotion to Jewish values. As his granddaughter recalls: “Murals depicting scenes from Genesis decorated the wall of his butcher shop: Abraham at the opening to his tent, about to welcome the three strangers who are really angels. We see them in the distance. Then, Rebecca waiting by the well, followed by Joseph cast into the pit. Not great art, but good enough illustrations. The painted tales give the store a hallowed aura: a place of koshering, as in following the holy commandments first laid out in Leviticus 11. A place where, just by standing in line waiting to choose your shoulder chops for dinner, you might be engaged in a sanctified activity.”

Shmulke was known not only for his meats, but also for his generosity to Jews in need. According to his granddaughter, “many Jewish immigrants came to him for advice or aid or a job; they came to him for donations and loans. I never saw this happening, but I was told.” Shmulke, his granddaughter’s aunt recalls, was known as “the Angel of Rivington Street.”

Would Shmulke agree to hire Chone? While Chone had never worked in a butcher shop, he did have something in his favor: he was a religious Jew. He knew Jewish law and the process of kashering meat (making meat kosher); washing and soaking it in cold water and then salting it to remove the blood. He could perform these tasks as well as work as a mashgiach, someone who certifies that meat sold is kosher. Shmulke agreed, presumably giving written assurance to my grandfather, that once Chone arrived in New York, he could work at Shmulke Bernstein’s.

Later in his life, Shmulke’s name would reach even greater fame when, in 1957, his son opened up a deli, “Bernstein on Essex” at 135 Essex Street. The deli became known simply as “Shmulke Bernstein’s.”

The deli became famous as the first kosher establishment to serve Chinese food. A generation of Jews grew up dining at the deli, which eventually closed in the early 1990s.

(This 1970 video recalls the atmosphere inside the deli. For other memories of the deli, see pieces in the Bowery Boogie, “Mapping Yiddish New York”, The New York Times, the Times of Israel and Tablet.)

But with the limited quotas for Polish nationals, it took more than four years for Chone’s visa application to be granted. Before Chone could get the visa, however, my grandfather had to show that he could support Chone just in case he couldn’t find employment. Chone didn’t have a lot of money to take with him. Though he made a decent living in Poland, he was his family’s primary breadwinner, and so needed to leave his family with money to live on in his absence. My grandfather would have to show that he had enough money to support Chone.

My grandfather first reached out to a well-to-do uncle, pleading with him to help rescue his father from the impending danger posed by growing Polish anti-Semitism and Nazi Germany. But the uncle refused. According to my aunt’s memoir, he responded, “What will he do in America? Chone has no profession.”

Out of legitimate options, my grandfather, who had a reputation as an upright and honest man, availed himself to a last resort: fraud. He wrote a check for funds he didn’t have from his business account to his private account. He then went to the bank and got a statement showing the funds in his personal account. Then he immediately stopped payment on the check. As my aunt recalls, “it wasn’t an honest thing to do but it was the only way, and it worked.”

With the assurances that Chone would not become a public charge, the American consulate in Warsaw issued the visa that would ultimately save his life.

Chone arrived in New York on December 23, 1938. He went to work for Shmulke Bernstein kashering meat. “It was,” my aunt writes, “hard work and wet work. He had to lift large sides of meat and kosher them. He would be standing with his hands in cold water all day.”

Through a combination of Shmulke Bernstein’s generosity and my grandfather’s ingenuity in satisfying U.S. immigration law, my great grandfather was allowed to immigrate to the United States. He had waiting more than four years, and was over 60 years old when he went to work for Shmulke Bernstein. It wasn’t easy work for someone of his age, but, as my aunt writes, “he was very thankful to have work and saved his pay for the day when he could send for his family.”

That day, unfortunately, never came.