T

he Kazers in Florida

 

March 22-24, 2003






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Jews are well-known for moving to where economic opportunities are better. Sometimes the move is a pull and sometimes it comes from a push. When Gerry's grandmother and grandfather Kazer moved from Narodichi to Chicago in 1913 that was a push; the Tsar's Russian empire was not a good place for Jews to be. But in the 1930s and 1940s Jews were pulled rather than pushed to Florida which started to attract Jews in large numbers.

Gerry's Aunt Mae (his mother's sister) and her husband Louis Rosenstein caught the Florida bug and moved to Miami Beach in the early 1940s. They got into the hotel business and soon asked Mae's younger brother Ben and his bride, Esther, to join them. Ben was a newly minted lawyer and prospects at that time in Chicago didn't seem too great so he agreed to go to Miami Beach. Very reluctantly Esther agreed.

And thus it was that the first wave of the Kazer clan got settled in Florida. A few years later they brought Grandma Ette to Florida. And then there were children and grandchildren and pretty soon it seemed there was as much of the Kazer clan in Florida as there was in Chicago. Two of them were Aunt Frances Stotland and her husband Edward. They retired here after a life in Chicago. But true to the beginning of this little story, it didn't last. Now, more than sixty years later, with many deaths and decisions to pursue life's pleasures elsewhere, the Kazer relatives in Florida have dwindled to three: Gerry's Aunt Esther, her daughter Cookie, and son-in-law Eric.

But wait, as the commercials and we have become fond of saying. There is more. Enter Fred Grossberg . He arrives in the state as a new member of the US Army in 1941 who was assigned to the Army Air Corps for training as a pilot in Miami. He became one of literally millions who thus got an introduction to Florida courtesy of Uncle Sam. War over, he returned to Miami Beach, and met Mae and Louis' daughter, Esther Rosenstein, who before long became Esther Grossberg. And thus, if you count all the Kazer relatives by marriage, Fred was the first Kazer relative to live in Florida.



It is said that a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world affects the weather on the otherside. This is true in only the most formal sense. Certainly the movement of every molecule affects every other since, according to both Newton's gravitational theory and the more modern (and seemingly more correct) Quantum Field Theory, every apparent particle is an effect of one giant field. But in practical terms it is certainly not true. If it were in any meaningful sense we could not make long term weather predictions and even the crossing of a street would be too dangerous as a hurricane could suddenly come up.

But there are connections among human affairs. If we hadn't gone to Israel and known Fred Grossberg we would not have been able to re-establish contact with the Komisars. If we had not seen the Komisars we would not have known about Iosif Stotland and that his branch of the extended Stotland-Kazer family had moved to the New York area. And if we had not known that, we might not have spent so much time in the USA and gone to Florida. And if we hadn't gone to Florida we might not have another wonderful gift related to Family History from Esther Kazer and Cookie Lamet.

They had Ben Kazer's boarding card for the ship he took from Europe. Through that we were able to trace the probable route of the family's immigration from Narodichi to Chicago . Thus in a year and a half Gerry went from not even being sure where in Ukraine his mother was born to having visited her birthplace and having an excellent idea how she got to Chicago. Thank you Esther!

 


August 28, 2003