Chaika (Chaya Zlottie) Waxman, the daughter of Yankel (Jacob) Waxman and Beyla (Bella) Cohen and stepdaughter of Yussel (Joseph) Einbinder, was born in Kalarash in February, 1892. She never knew her exact date of birth, but always said that it was "around Chami'shussar" [Tu'Bishvat, the New Year of the Trees], so everyone celebrated her birthday on that holiday. Although her family spoke Yiddish at home, she attended a Russian-language school in Kalarash. She was a survivor of the 1905 Kalarash pogrom and often told her children and grandchildren how she, her mother, and her brother Iser (Izzie) had lain on the floor of a train to flee from "the pogromchiks".
Chaika did not like living in Kalarash and was thrilled when her father Jacob sent her a ticket to New York. Accompanied by her stepfather Joe Einbinder, Chaika came to America in 1908. She lived with her family on Rivington Street, on Manhattan's Lower East Side, and worked as an assistant to a woman who made sheitels [wigs]. Then she took a job as an examiner in a ladies' shirtwaist factory on Stanton Street. She dated the manager of the factory, an American-born Jewish man whose parents broke up the relationship because they didn't want their son to marry a "greener" [new immigrant]. After the death of her father in 1910, Ida (as she was known in America) used her stepfather's surname and was naturalized on his papers.
One evening, Ida and some girlfriends went to a dance given by a Bessarabian landsmanshaftn. They got bored, so they went across the street to another hall, where a dance was being given by a Galitzianer organization, the Skala Benevolent Society. There she met Skala-native Jacob Wiesenthal, whom she married on March 25, 1917. They had two children: Ethel (born 1918) and Martin (1922-1943). The Wiesenthals lived on Dumont Avenue in East New York, bought a house on Lee Avenue in Williamsburgh, then moved to 49th Street in Boro Park.
Ida was an enthusiastic worker for charitable organizations and served as President of the Ladies Auxiliaries of the Kalarasher Bessarabier Progressive Association, the Skala Benevolent Society (her husband's landsmanshaftn), and the Lemburg Home for the Aged in Brooklyn. She was famed for the fluency of her ad-libbed speeches and fund-raising appeals, which she always ended by saying, "See you next year!" Ida died in Miami Beach on April 30, 1980 and is buried next to her husband in the Skala landsmanshaftn plot in Mt. Hebron Cemetery, not far from the Kalarash plot.
Credits: Photograph, text, and page design copyrighted © 2007 by Helene Kenvin. Page created by Helene Kenvin. All rights reserved.