This is a photo of Regina (Rivka, nee Kanner) Gottlieb and her daughter Madeline in a park on the Lower East Side in 1947. The joy on both of their faces is palpable, despite the difficult years that preceded this photo. Regina and her husband Alexander were both from Poland, Alexander from Borislaw and Regina from Lodz Ghetto. They had both survived concentration camps (Dachau and Auschwitz, respectively) and met in a displaced persons camp in Naples, Italy where their eldest child Madeline was born in 1946. Regina's family helped them get to America and they first lived on the Lower East Side, then moved to Brooklyn in 1948 where they settled in Borough Park.
This photo is part of our Brooklyn Jewish History Project, which is a community scanning and oral history project to document the history, lives and experiences of Jewish people in Brooklyn. Madeline Gottlieb and her brothers contributed this and other photos, and Madeline also recorded an oral history interview describing her and her family's history. Madeline grew up speaking Yiddish in Brooklyn and learned English from attending public school. She did not experience non-kosher food until she went to Brooklyn College. After college, her family moved to Sheepshead Bay and she and her husband settled on Ocean Parkway.
Interested in seeing more photos from CBH’s collections? Visit our online image gallery, which includes a selection of our images, or the digital collections portal at Brooklyn Public Library. We look forward to inviting you to CBH in the future to research in our entire collection of images, archives, maps, and special collections. In the meantime, please visit our resources page. Our reference staff are still available to help with your research! You can reach us at cbhreference@bklynlibrary.org.
This blog post reflects the opinions of the author and does not necessarily represent the views of Brooklyn Public Library.
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