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Hendler, Elliot, Reyna Lee Stovall

Bronx Jewish History Project

Elliot Hendler is a lifelong Bronx resident, born during the Great Depression in 1935. He moved to various addresses throughout his childhood, having lived on 172nd Street and Washington Avenue, 169th Street and Washington Avenue, and 170th and Townsend Avenue. Describing his childhood neighborhood as “bad” and marked by crime, he details his experiences with violence and vandalism. When he married his wife, Libby, in 1958, they moved to an apartment on 205th Street, and in 1969 moved to Co-op City, where they have lived ever since. Together, they have two children and two grandchildren.

Hendler details his impressive educational …

Katz, Helen, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Sophia Maier

Helen Katz was born to Holocaust survivor parents in the Bronx. The family originally lived in the South Bronx until Katz was one year old, when they moved to the Olinville section of the Bronx. They lived there until Katz was in her 20s, when they moved to Pelham Parkway. Each time, they moved because the neighborhood was deteriorating.

Katz describes the Olinville neighborhood as predominantly Italian, although her own family was Orthodox. Despite the differences, she remembers playing with the Italian Catholic school girls. They attended a Lubavitcher shul, and Katz attend a yeshiva for her …

Cohen, Ruthie, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Ruthie Cohen is a second generation American, with her paternal grandparents immigrating from Poland. When she was born, her family lived at 2805 Sedgwick Avenue, but moved nearby to another two-family home at 2805 Webb Avenue. She remembers how her immediate neighborhood and school was predominantly Jewish, but Italians and Irish also lived nearby and attended parochial schools. Cohen felt very little antisemitism from them. She was the youngest of four children in a relatively observant family.

Cohen’s father was a teacher who was very involved in the larger community, and education and tolerance were important values in her family. …

Yelloz, Eva, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Eva Yelloz was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany and came to the Bronx in 1949 with her parents. They lived in the Melrose neighborhood in the Bronx, on Avenue St. John. Her mother was 19 when World War Two began, working as an apprentice in a non-Jewish home, and she heard her family was in the Warsaw ghetto. Her father had been killed and the family was sent to Treblinka, but she jumped off the train, escaping and being nursed back to life by a non-Jewish family before becoming a partisan for the remainder of the war. …