Ancestor: Fenya Gwirtzman Dresner
Descendant: Wayne H.
Fenya Gwirtzman lived with her four brothers and three sisters in Elisabethgrad, Ukraine (now Kirovohrad), part of the Russian Pale. Her father, Lieba, was a rabbi at the Choral Synagogue in Elisabethgrad, a building still in existence.
She had developed a relationship with an officer in the tsar’s army. Her father disapproved of her seeing a man in the military. He decided that he would send Fenya to the U.S. to stay with her sister Esther and brother-in-law Charles Rosenbaum. Charles was a pharmacist and owner of the Fordham Road Pharmacy in Brooklyn, NY. Fenya had no choice but to obey her father. She arrived in New York in July of 1906.
She was introduced to a young, Jewish lawyer from Chicago who grew up in New York City, Morris Drezner. He had emigrated with his family from Vilna, Russia when he was only two years old. After a long correspondence and many visits, they were finally married in August of 1913. They returned to Chicago and Morris’ fledgling law career.
In 1917, they were presented with a daughter, Vera. She grew up to marry an Army Sargent, Paul Holowitz in Savannah, GA in 1944. They returned to Vera’s home, Chicago. The Holowitz family soon changed their name to Holly. They lived with Fenya, who was widowed in 1939, in the Rogers Park neighborhood, a stone’s throw from the Farwell Avenue Beach on Lake Michigan.
Paul worked as an office manager for Alden’s, a large mail-order company in Chicago. Vera stayed home with her mother. The couple had a son, me, after several years of marriage.
Since there were now four people in an apartment, the family needed more room. They purchased a home in the Chicago suburb of Morton Grove. Unfortunately, not too long after the move, Fenya suffered a stroke and died at the age of 64.
It is amazing that two people, separated by a very long distance in Russia would somehow meet in New York, marry, and move to Chicago. All because my great grandfather so disliked my grandmother’s military boyfriend.