“Galveston, oh Galveston, I still hear your sea winds blowin’,” and I still hear Glen Campbell crooning that tune in my ear. In the early 20th century, as Jews (including all four of my grandparents) began immigrating to America to escape persecution in Eastern Europe, most landed in Ellis Island and settled in New York. Many are unaware that a number of ships carrying Jewish immigrants diverted to the South, disembarking in Galveston, Texas.
The “Galveston Movement” was an effort to disperse Jewish immigrants to the South to alleviate overcrowding (and growing antisemitism) in New York. Also known as the “Galveston Plan,” it was funded out of the personal pocket of Jewish financier Jacob Schiff, who contributed almost $17 million in today’s dollars. Between 1907 and 1914, about 10,000 Jewish immigrants landed in Galveston. The program ceased at the outbreak of World War I, bringing an end to one of the biggest periods of immigration in US history.
One such Jewish immigrant who landed in Galveston in 1914 (just in the nick of time before doors shut) was the patriarch of our family and the first to come to America, Uncle Yosef “Joe” Weinstock. It’s no small miracle that Uncle Joe became an American. Federal law excluded from entry “persons suffering from loathsome or dangerous contagious diseases,” as determined in the eye of Dr. Max Bahrenburg with the US Public Health Service. Bahrenburg deported seven times the number compared to Boston, six times that of Philadelphia, and four times that of New York. In his arbitrary discretion, “‘race’ showed a ‘preponderance … of serious defects which interfere with one’s ability to earn a living.’ More than one-third of the Jews he excluded because of ‘grave defect’ demonstrated nothing more than poor physique.”
Fortunately, Joe (a teenage boy traveling alone) passed inspection. He was met at the pier by Rabbi Henry Cohen of B’nai Israel, who put him up overnight in a hostel. The next day, Joe received a ticket to Troy, Alabama where he soon developed typhus and almost died. A religious Jewish woman named Mrs. Kermish took him into her home, rubbed him down with alcohol to take down the fever, and nursed him back to health. It was a close call that Joe made it past the evil eye of Dr. Bahrenburg.
May marks Jewish American Heritage Month. In honor of that commemoration, I devote this post to the story of Joe Weinstock. I featured Uncle Joe in this blog on May 23, 2023, “Grateful for My Strong Family “Stock” – The Story of My Uncle Joe Weinstock.” Click HERE to review that post, which I’ll expand on now.
Joe was the third of six children of Eliezer and Leah Weinstock. Joe left behind his parents and five siblings in Polona, Ukraine in order to avoid being drafted into the Russian army by the Czar. He was warned that remaining religiously observant in America (particularly in the South) would be impossible. But Uncle Joe defied the odds and remained “Shomer Shabbos” (strictly Sabbath observant) and kosher his entire life, even in faraway Troy, Alabama. He soon relocated to nearby Montgomery in order to belong to a synagogue. Joe bought a horse and wagon, going house to house selling fruit.
Ten years later (after World War I), Joe had saved enough to buy a visa for his parents and two of his younger siblings, Morris and Pauline (my grandmother). By this time, Jews couldn’t get passports to leave the Soviet Union, so the Weinstocks were smuggled across the border into Poland, where they paid bribes to get Polish passports. Miraculously, they made it to America just before immigration ceased in 1924. Alas, the oldest two Weinstock children, Elke and Enoch, were married and couldn’t be covered on the same visa. They remained behind and were later murdered by Hitler. Sister Rachel and her husband were on a separate visa, but settled in Cuba, as the US quota for Jews immigrating from Poland was full.
Joe ran an ad in the Yiddish newspaper seeking a religious wife, and he and younger brother Morris married sisters Rose and Ruth Pass from Columbus, Ohio. Joe never had children, but he treated my mother Elsie and her siblings as his own. In spite of all his struggles, he was always cheerful and singing. One of Joe’s favorite sayings was, “I never had a bad day in America.” The Montgomery Advertiser did a story on him, saying “Weinstock came over from the Old Country with a smile on his face, and the smile never faded.”
Beginning in the 1950s until his death in the 1980s, Joe and Rose spent the High Holidays every year in Jerusalem. It was said that his body was in Alabama, but his soul was in Israel.
If not for Uncle Joe’s courageous voyage to Galveston, our entire family would have perished in the Holocaust. In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, I am grateful for the heritage I inherited from Joe Weinstock. His selfless devotion to our family and the Jewish people never wavered—from Ukraine, to Galveston, to Alabama, to Israel. To this day, Uncle Joe continues to give me strength.
Marvin E. Blum
Source of information in paragraph 3: “Study on Antisemitism in Texas,” Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission, Nov. 1, 2022.
Marvin Blum’s Uncle Joe Weinstock (center) prior to immigrating to Galveston from Ukraine. Joe is flanked by four of his five siblings (L to R) Rachel, Enoch, Pauline (Marvin’s grandmother), and Morris. Joe was able to rescue his parents and three of his siblings from death in the Holocaust, but was unable to save brother Enoch and sister Elke.
