Alan Gottlieb has shared an amazing photo from the 50th Anniversary Banquet of the First Kanczuger Society (a NY-based landsmanshaft) in 1950. He also has shared a program from the 60th Anniversary Banquet, which besides the menu, also includes a list of the officers in 1959. Alan found these in his mother’s possessions, who passed away a few years ago. The photo was folded and creased, but Alan had it restored and I am very grateful he has shared it with us.
The photo is a panoramic photo from the 50th Anniversary banquet in 1950. I can’t be sure by my grandparents and gg-uncle may be in the rear right corner of the photo. While for the most part the faces are sharp, in that corner it is too blurry to be sure. If you see your relatives in the photo, please post a comment.
Next, there is the program from the 60th Anniversary Banquet (which was only about nine and a half years later). The banquet committee included David Marsel, Charless Gross, Joseph A. Lustig, Ann Lustig, Max Silverman, Benjamin Kessler, Daniel Lusthaus, Jakob Silverman, and honored Nathan Brill on the occasion of his 80th birthday. Nathan Brill was the brother of Dr. Abraham Brill, one of the earliest American proponents of psychoanalysis, and one of the first people to translate Freud to English.
The menu is quite interesting. Take a look. It also specifies it was catered by Joseph Katz, and that it happened at a place called The Senate on East 188th Street in the Bronx. I found a photo from 1949 that was taken by the city for tax purposes, and shows it as Senate Caterers. Today that space is a beauty school.
The last page of the program lists the officers as of 1959. Those include Honorary Presidents Max Silverman and Irving J. Katz, Junior Ex President Benjamin Kessler, President Charles Gross, VP Joseph A. Lustig, Recording Secretary Ann Lustig, Finance Secretary Nathan Brill, Treasurer Marcus Mintzer, and Sergeant at Arms Moses Ezekiel.
Trustees included Leon Freund, Sam Silberman and Dave Marsel.
The Board of Directors included Chairman David Marsel, Secretary Nathan Brill, Sam Silberman, Harry Silberman, Max Greenbaum, Harry Landau, Louis Furst, and Abraham Silverstein.
I will mention two more people from the above program briefly. Joseph A. Lustig has shown up in my research. His WWI draft card shows him as having been born in 1891 in Kanczuga, and being a sign painter. His WWII draft card shows his permanent contact as Anna Lustig, that he lives in the Bronx, and that his employer is Longchamps Restaurants. Longchamps was a chain of fancy restaurants in NYC at the time that was founded by Henry Lustig, whose wife was Edith Rothstein, the sister of the infamous Arnold Rothstein. Henry’s mother’s name was Anna Drillman Lustig. It’s unlikely that Henry’s mother Anna Lustig is the Ann Lustig in the program, as she would have been quite old if she was even still living. So is Joseph’s WWII contact Anna Lustig – Henry’s mother, did he marry someone named Anna Lustig who was later known as Ann, or is the Ann in the program a completely different person? One of the more confusing paths in my family research. According to family lore, the Lustig and Traurig families were the same family, but the two brothers were assigned different surnames by an antisemitic bureaucrat who thought it was funny (Lustig means happy and Traurig means sad).
It’s also worth pointing out the names in the program above overlap quite a bit with the names on the cemetery section gate in the Mt. Lebanon cemetery that was erected four years earlier in 1955. See the picture below, or jump to the Mt. Lebanon cemetery photos to see all the photos of the section, which were published on this site four years ago.
One thing to note is the society was founded as the First Kancziger Aid Society, but by this point was known as the First Kanczuger Society.
