Interview with Fannie Siegle Robbins,

3/29/1976, Pittsburgh PA.

Interviewer: Natalie Klein, for American Historical Society

I can remember my home, in the city, how we lived with the grandmother, my mother’s mother, with a cow. My mother was an only child. The village was Kalusz, the province was Galicia, the country was Austria. I was born there and lived there until I came to this country, six years later. But I can remember it very well.

It was rural, we would call it, a little rural village, and we had a nice plot of ground, not a farm, and my grandmother took care of it herself. My mother was not a farmer, but she did help. My mother mostly did beautiful sewing and designing and artwork.

My grandmother—and she had a man, the man came in every day and did chores for her.

Yes, my father, as was the custom at that time, the parents kept the children a certain length of time, and my father, being an only son, his father took care of his end of it—you know, they have to have that dowry, and he went to her mother, but he didn’t like the situation, because he felt it was a charity, and he didn’t like the charity, and he wanted work, and the kind of work that his father …, he couldn’t do, because his father was a cattle dealer. He used to go to another village, I remember those things, to the large villages, to buy and to bring it home, then he would sell it to these different butchers, and so on. He was what we would call here today "a swinger" he was not at all like his son, his son was a quiet, very refined man, and he didn’t want any favors, and he didn’t like his position in life, he wanted to go where he could make a living for his wife and his children, and he wanted to go America. He wanted her to go too, but the mother said you cannot go, you’re my only child, and you’ll go to that uncivilized country and you don’t know how to do any kind of work, you’ll starve and the children (he then had just 1 child), I can’t let you go. So, she didn’t go, and he said, Well, I’m going alone, and he went alone to this country, to a cousin—there was always somebody, you know, that went before them, how all these immigrants came. So he came to this cousin and this cousin was one of these stogey-makers—that’s what they all did, they were either peddlers or stogey makers. Well, the peddling business, as my father used to describe it, was not his type of work, and the stogey business, he learned how to make these stogies, he made a living, and he wanted to bring his wife over, but then I was born when he wasn’t there, so my mother had two children, and still my grandmother said no, there’s enough here to keep you and keep your children well and educate them, and you can’t go to that wild country, so we didn’t go. Then he decided he would go and bring her, and he came home to his home town, and he was home six months, and my mother was pregnant with the third child, he thought to himself, he better go back where you can make a dollar and eventually she’ll have to come—they were what you call a "love couple" very much in love, even to this day and in this age you don’t see that sort of thing where you see people in love like those two were! They were very much in love and he said, she’ll come, which she did, when she had the third child, she said, I’ll come, no matter what my mother says. Of course, my grandmother had enough to make do, she wasn’t wealthy, but she had enough—she had enough to send to us here, because I remember the presents that came were so beautiful, and she also left an estate, because Lou Alpern was the attorney and he took care of that European inheritance.

The Jews in Austria were not, did not have a bad life, because deep in my memory I remember Franz-Joseph coming to town.

Yes. He came to town and the rabbis carried the Torah to greet him with. That’s how much they loved him and that’s how good he was to the Jews. They greeted him, in a parade, carrying the Torah, on the street, the Torah, he was so good to the Jews, and they in turn respected him, and they did everything for him.

My grandfather, as I told you, he had seven brothers, and we all associated, living in this little town. My grandfather was a cattle dealer. This was my father’s father.

My mother—I’m ashamed to say it, but it is true--she was divorced from her husband—in those days. You see, she was a woman of the world. He wanted a military career—and that’s unusual among Jews. He was an officer in the Austrian Army and he fought in the war with Turkey at that time, I don’t know where that was, and for that reason , she said she did not want a soldier for a husband, and she divorced him.

She lived in the same place as I was born. She was a caterer. Not only was she a caterer, but in the next village was Baron Hirsch, a Jewish baron. In Austria, you know, the Jews were respected. The name of that town was Stanislaus, I remember that. If he had an affair, or he needed somebody to make something special, she would do it, and she did a lot of work for this Baron Hirsch. If you look up in the history someplace, you’ll find this Jewish Baron Hirsch. It could not have been very far away, but it was a larger village and more business, and of course this Baron was the head man.

Non-Jews: There were peasants. All we had to do with them was to buy from them, buy their produce and buy their poultry and such like and so forth. I don’t think I ever played with them, not with the peasants. I remember playing with other children…. I don’t remember what kinds of games.

My house had one large living room and a kitchen, with that big built in brick oven where we used to do the cooking and you walked up a step and there was a bedroom, and that was the house. Now when you talk about my grandfather’s house, that was different. My grandfather had a house with a porch, and I remember the parlor with parlor furniture and carpet—and we children were not allowed to go in there, we were not allowed to go in there at all—holy, holy! The other rooms were just ordinary, nothing special, but across from this porch where we used to sit, there was a little lake, of course there were fruit trees and shrubbery, it was very nice, I remember. But we sat on the porch one day, and my sister, I had an older sister that liked to swim, and she went into the lake across from us, it was like across the street, and she went into the lake and somehow or other she disappeared and I remember my mother, long skirts and all, went into that water because she was drowning, and we were not allowed to go into that lake any more, and my mother did not go to the [mother]-in-law any more, for that reason. I remember distinctly and I have wanted in my life to go again down that hill to see that house and the lake in front of it.

No, I never had… I have had only work in my life. After we came here to this country, I had nothing but work, and I’ve had it all my life. I shouldn’t complain…. I still do it, it’s my life. If I don’t do it, I’m very unhappy.

I remember distinctly. First we went to another larger city, I don’t remember what the name of it was, but I remember riding the train to Berlin. You have to take a pillow, and the grandmother sent everything. A buggy took us to this larger village where we got the train to Berlin because we got on the boat in Havre, in Holland, but the city I remember was Berlin—so beautiful, and every window had a flower box, and I remember saying to my mother, "Look, how beautiful! How every window has a flower box." From the train you could see that. But I don’t remember much about Havre, but getting on the boat.

You carried the luggage on your back, you carried everything, like you see the refugees, carrying everything on your back, my mother was very good, she managed with those three children. And I was very sick, you know we went in steerage, and I was very sick on the boat.

And I’ll tell you an incident. I remember getting better and eating an order of baked beans, which they served on the boat, and the food was all right, and I went to the bathroom and don’t you now that a sailor followed me, and tried to touch me.

Yes, a sailor.

I screamed! Those things are private, we don’t show those to everybody. I told my mother. She said, "I will go with you the next time you have to go." That’s what you put up with. But I was sick all the time. We vomited every meal. It was steerage, and it was two weeks. It was a bad experience.

And we landed in Baltimore instead of New York. You see, these people who sold you the steamship tickets, they took advantage of these immigrants. They sold them a ticket to go to NY, that ticket said "Baltimore," but my father wouldn’t know it, and so we landed in Baltimore and in Baltimore they had somebody put us on a train to Pittsburgh, so we got to Pittsburgh. Naturally my mother didn’t speak the English, but she had the envelope with the address and that’s what she wanted, and my father was looking for the notice from the man who sold the ticket but the notice never came, they took advantage of these immigrants terribly. So he had no idea we were coming, but he was looking for us to come because he was assured that we were on the boat, so somehow or other by way of the letter and that she could speak German, they got somebody that understood the German so we arrived at our cousins, Joseph Richman, the Richman family, and we came to their house, it was on Crawford Street, I remember it very distinctly.

When I came to Pittsburgh, there were no grass or trees, it was dry and ugly, but my father said that he had been looking around for us and that he thinks that he has a place for us.