Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1990
Abstract
In the spring of 1908, Morris Zemsky, a Russian- Jewish immigrant homesteading in Ashley, North Dakota, sent a letter to the Industrial Removal Office (IRO) of the Baron de Hirsch Fund in New York. Joseph Kaminer, Secretary of the Ashley Farmer's Bureau, wrote the note for Zemsky, who spoke only Yiddish. The letter requested advice on the condition of Zemsky's parents "who are now in New York and are actually starving to death. As they are several in the family and no one of them can find work."1 Zemsky requested the IRO to send his parents to his North Dakota homestead not only to help them escape the dangers of the city but also because he needed their assistance to make his farm successful. Zemsky was one of a group of more than 1200 Russian-Jewish immigrants who had been located on North Dakota homesteads with the assistance of German-American Jews in the first decade of the twentieth century. This brief glance at his experience is indicative of the purpose and process of homestead settlement by Jewish immigrants on the Great Plains between 1900 and 1920.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly [OPQ 10 (Fall 1990): 228-2441 .Copyright 1990 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska—Lincoln.