ABOUT ME: Judy Herrmann
SSBB ASQ-CQE, CQA
I am retired, but once upon a time, I was an engineer at a manufacturing plant.
My hobbies are genealogy, reading, and cats.
I first became interested in genealogy in high school. This was about the time “Roots” was on TV starring LeVar Burton. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075572/. This project is my genealogy do-over project.
No matter where we each stand, together we can look upon the same sun, the same moon, and the same sky, so we are forever one family.
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My family relocated to the U.S. during a period of extensive immigration from southern and eastern Europe. From 1880 until 1921 (when the United States began to tighten immigration laws), more than 20 million immigrants arrived in the United States. About two million of these immigrants including my family were Jews. I began doing genealogy because it interests me how my ancestors lived.
My family came from the “Pale of Settlement”, an area controlled by the Russian Empire where the Jews were allowed to live. My ancestors left due to the “May Laws” that restricted where Jews could live and work, and pogroms (anti-Jewish riots). My family passed down stories such as family members changing their names to avoid the Russian conscription, and children taken away and converted to Catholicism.
The first generation of immigrants (my great-grandparents) worked in the immigrant-heavy garment district in New York City and as shopkeepers. The second generation enrolled in college and became professionals, with the help of the GI Bill.
Europe:
My paternal grandfather came from Lithuania near Vilna in 1910. The family moved to Brooklyn when my grandfather was about 10. There are rumors that this side of the family worked as union busters in the New York City garment district.
My paternal grandmother’s family immigrated about 1900 from Jassy, Romania, famous for its Yiddish theaters (the language Jews spoke in E. Europe). They relocated to Key West, Florida, which had a significant Jewish population during the time. My grandmother was born in Key West, where the family had a grocery store. After a hurricane and in search of a larger Jewish community, they relocated to Jacksonville.
My maternal grandfather’s family came from the Kaunas area in Lithuania in 1890. They relocated to northern New Jersey and founded a local synagogue. The family had a local shop that sold awnings. My great-grandfather took pride in owning his business.
My maternal grandmother’s family came from what is now northeast Poland in 1910, in a region known for its tailors. My maternal grandfather worked in the garment district in New York.
Arizona:
My family began moving to Arizona in the 1930s and 1940s. My great-uncle on my mother’s side relocated here in the 1930s to be a Rabbi at Temple Beth Israel. He led the congregation from 1938 to 1953. When he arrived in Arizona, he brought a family Torah that had come with my family from Europe. My paternal grandfather relocated to Arizona in the 1940s due to tuberculosis. His wife had already passed away. My father joined his father a few months later. My grandfather was a veteran and later died of tuberculosis in the veteran’s hospital near Prescott.