ZIERING

Dr. Robert A, Liftig

After the War, Jack enrolled in the Denver College of Dentistry (now the University of Colorado) and after graduation, b. 1947, Frankfort, Germany (U.S. Army Dependent)

moved to Brooklyn where he stayed with his Ziering cousins – I think Mortimer’s family. Mortimer also became a dentist. My m. Inez Fugate. 1971

grandfather called him “The Chinaman,” because he looked it.

The story was told that Jack got lost during a snowstorm when he was a little boy on the Lower East Side, and his mother, Anya Liftig

Helen, went out to look for him. She found him, but she got pneumonia and died. Later I was told she had TB, but TB was con-b. 1977

sidered a “shanda” by the Zierings (they liked to keep secrets-especially when it hurt their pride), because the disease was a sign m. Noel Hartman

of having lived in poverty-which was a disgrace.

Dorothy Allyson Liftig

Helen’s death left Wolf a widower with four young children. He married Sarah, who worked in his sweat shop as a secretary, b. 1981. Norwalk, CT

and who said she felt sorry for him. With Sarah, Wolf had three children. Sarah, I was always told, treated all the children equally, m. David Martin

and was in returned loved by all of them.

Sarah had been previously married and they had a son and they had lived near Dorohoi. One afternoon, a gypsy came to Sarah’s The Zierings were the dominant family in my childhood. My mother Fran had 14 first cousins. Her grandfather Wolf Reuven door and told her fortune: she said she would lose two men very close to her within a year. Within a year, her husband and son were (William) had nine children from two wives. He was born in near Dolina and moved to Ednitzy, Bessarabia (now Moldava), then dead, and Sarah went to live with relatives in New York, determined to be a single woman the rest of her life. She thought Wolf was under Russian occupation. His first wife was Helen (Silverman), my great grandmother. His second wife was Sarah (Meyrovici), a very nice man, but never thought she would marry him. Wolf obiously courted her, and the rest is family history.

from Dorohoi, Bessarabia. Wolf is buried in Washington Cemetery, Brooklyn, in a plot with others from Ednitzy, Jednicy, or Sarah survived her husband by 30 years, and lived until her death in an apartment on West 72nd St., NY, NY. My grand-whatever the fuck it was calling itself at the time.

mother Dorothy’s sister Lillian lived with her when she was a buyer for a New York department store . My mother lived with her He considered himself an Austrian, though,when Bessarabia changed hands, he dodged the Russian army, first starving him-too, when my mother was a student at Columbia (Mom used to walk her step grandmother through Central Park in the section self to buy time, then hitting the road. He walked. He went by way of the “underground railroad”by way of Germany, France, and now called “Strawberry Fields.” My mother says she remains amazed that, although Sara was only 62, she looked like “an old England. He sent for one brother, then another, and finally for his sister and mother. The three brothers were draft dodgers, which woman”).

was a tradition dropped quickly on this side of the Atlantic until my generation. Even so, when the three brothers got together later My Aunt Helen was with Sarah the night she died on February 28 in I don’t know what year – maybe 1944 Sara believed

on in life in their tenements on the Lower East Side, they would march around their apartments in military fashion to entertain that if you cleaned house or apartment thoroughly on March 1, you would get to live at least another year. That night, as she was their kids.

preparing for the next day’s cleaning, she came into the living room looking radiant. Helen said it was as if she had an “aura”

Wolf had two brothers: Philip, and Dave. I met Dave when I was 12. There is a picture extant of a reluctant me with this very around her. Sarah died that night– at what I estimate must have been around age 70.

severe looking relic.

Jack was the historian of the Ziering family, and he said there were three things that he had always heard about the Zierings: Wolf (pronounced “Volf”) had a sister, Edis, whose husband had a club foot. When they arrived at Castle Garden (the 1812

1) Zierings are royalty (once I thought to it mean they were historically important, now I interpret it to mean they were fort on the Battery in New York which was in use before Ellis Island opened as an immigration entrepot in 1890. Ironically, Levites – assistants in the original temples)

Kesselman was also the name of Edis’ second husband. OK. Maybe it’s not so ironic), they held him there as a medical undesir-2) All Zierings are related (a common saying among Zierings)

able. The husband almost convinced the authorities that he was only temporarily lame, and that his leg would heal if he could just 3) There are two Ziering families: one is Jewish, the other Christian; the Christians “are a bunch of drunks.” (See below) set his foot on official American soil (Castle Island, though connected to Manhattan by a foot bridge, was technically “offshore.”

Jack also told the story of a Ziering cousin, Louis Stromwasser, (also known as “Honey” Lucas) who had once attended a It was called “Kessel Garden” by Jews with Yiddish accents) Edis went on to stay with relatives on the Lower East Side, but her Communist rally and who disgraced the rest of the Ziering family, who were die-hard Republicans (they became Republicans husband’s club foot remained a club, and six months later, they deported the guy – and Edis went back with him to Europe, and because it was “the most American party.”) Honey was a bookie in Chicago who was said to have dreams of becoming a bank to their eventual deaths in Auschwitz.

robber, and he may have been originally from Gary, Indiana. Once he came to Connecticut to visit Uncle Jack at his Main St., New Dave, Wolf, and Phillip established a fur business (aka sweatshop) on Bleeker St. in Greenwich Village. Their company went Britain dental office. The New Britain National Bank was just across the street, and Honey kept looking out of Jack’s window and bankrupt during each of the two depressions during the 1890s, but apparently immediately started up again each time. Dave ran asking what time the bank closed and where the Brinks truck picked up the money. Jack immediately cancelled his patients for the sweat shop, Phillip managed it, and Wolf was the buyer; this required him to travel the Pacific Coast. There are postcards sent the rest of the day and drove Honey down to the train station and made sure he saw him off to Indiana, or Chicago, or wherever by Wolf from Los Angeles in 1910.

he was from out West. Honey was believed to finished up as a lifer in the prison at Joliet, Illinois – apparently having decided to My grandmother, Dorothy Ada Ziering, was born on Rivington St. on the Lower East Side in 1895. As The Ziering Brothers get away with the crime of his life – but didn’t.

prospered, Wolf moved his family to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and then to Convent Ave. in the Bronx, before the family relocated Other stories have it that Honey was simply a small time bookie and nothing more than that, and the rest is the standard to Denver in 1910 – under the cover story that he would be closer to the fur supply.

Ziering exaggeration.

He was actually dying of TB.

Family always came first with the Zierings, and they kept their memories as clear as they could about all their relatives. Aunt Wolf’s first wife – my great grandmother - Helen died of TB, and Wolf had also contracted it. After his second marriage (to Lillian (Ziering) Raymond always said the same thing other Zierings have said: “All Zierings are related. We are a big family.

Sarah Myerovici), his doctors told him to move to Colorado so he could breathe again. He died in Denver in 1917 and his body Whereever you go, you should look for them.”

was brought back to New York on a train accompanied by some of his children – including my grandmother.

Here are two quotes from the letters of my Aunt Helen which show how serious the Zierings have always been about their Others stayed on in Colorado. Rose taught cowboys in a one room schoolhouse in Fort Collins (she was believed to be the genealogy:

first woman to go up Pike’s Peak on a motorcycle); Jack joined the National Guard which was federalized during the Denver Mine

“Grandma (Aunt Lil, Uncle Joney, and Uncle Nat’s mother) introduced her sister in law, Paulie’s sister Sadie Kleinberg,

riots. He said he felt sorry for the strikers and used to give them rides back home on the back of his horse. Jack also helped chase

to her cousin’s wife’s brother, Mr. Hyman! I think she would be a cousin of Aunt Lil’s, but not ours.”

Pancho Villa back to Mexico when he was made part of the U.S. Cavalry. He then went on to serve in WWI in Fort Oglethorpe, Here’s another description of the same branch of the Kleinbergs who married into the Ziering family:

Ga. – where my grandfather was stationed. We have the postcards he sent home from the service.

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