It All Started With a Deli. M. Hirsh Goldberg

attacks on Jews as the general populace looked for reasons for their woes, and lashed out at scapegoats in their midst. In Russia, for instance, in 1881, revolutionaries assassinated Czar Alexander II. The death of this czar, an advocate of many anti-Semitic policies, only led to more social unrest and to the next czar who was even more anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism was ever present, either in the form of discriminatory government policies or in peasant-inspired destructive, deadly pogroms that swept periodically through Jewish shtetls and villages in Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine. The years leading up to the eruption of World War I in 1914 and in the war’s aftermath proved to be a time of additional troubles for the Jews. Through all this, America beckoned as a welcoming haven of acceptance for Jews, spurring many to leave their homes in Europe and seek new lives in America.

      Troubled by the ever-constant threat of pogroms, the dire economic times, and the restrictions on employment and religious practices, Harry Attman’s parents urged him to go to America. It was the general practice among Jews for one family member to travel to the United States, find work and, it was hoped, save enough money to help bring other family members over. And so in November 1912, 20-year-old Harry Attman became the first in his family to emigrate to America.

      Harry (his Hebrew name was Tzvi) was born in Kusmien, Russia, a village near the Polish border, on October 26, 1893, to Shmarja and Sluva Gettman (in English their names became Shmariah and Sylvia). Shmarja was a grain dealer. The eldest of nine children, Harry had three brothers and five sisters (two of whom were born after he left home). In one of many sacrifices he would make for his family, Harry, by traveling alone to America, would not see his parents, brothers and sisters for eleven years.

      Small but athletic and solidly built, Harry was adventuresome and looked forward to his new life. He first traveled from his home to the port city of Rotterdam where he boarded the ship Uranium for voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. It was just several months after the Titanic had sunk in the Atlantic after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage. Joining the crowded third class passenger area far below deck, he carried with his meager possessions an unusual set of implements for him: a pair of scissors, a razor, and a comb with which he planned to cut hair. It was one of the first indications of his enterprising spirit that would eventually find full display in his own business. While America at that time was a welcoming country to immigrants, government authorities were also careful to screen passengers for diseases and other problems before allowing anyone to disembark. Those who looked sickly or exhibited any of a series of disabilities faced the prospect of being sent back to their country of origin. In a Special Notice to Passengers given out at entry points and kept thereafter by Harry among his papers, the following warning was issued:

      No person who is Insane, Imbecile, Deaf, Dumb, Blind, Crippled or otherwise infirm or suffering from Trachoma, Tuberculosis, Favus, or any other contagious disease will be permitted to land, nor any person without money or baggage, or in any way liable to become a public charge, nor any person who has been an inmate of a prison, poor-house or work-house or any charitable institution.

      Only those who passed scrutiny were allowed into the United States. Others were sent back, even if it meant breaking-up families. The lucky ones admitted into the country often found immigrant officials marking on their clothing an “OK” in chalk.

      Harry used his set of scissors/razor/comb to earn money by charging for his services as a barber for his fellow travelers, but he was also helping them avoid those dreaded problems with inspection. In those days, a transatlantic voyage could take two weeks or more. The rough Atlantic seas could make the trip difficult, especially for the third class passengers below deck where most of the immigrants booked the cheapest passage. In fact, one young passenger who came across at about the same time as Harry later remembered how many of the passengers became violently seasick. Harry’s barber services must have seemed appealing to those who wished to look healthy and their children well-cared-for when they disembarked and had to pass the scrutiny of U.S. officials.

      Young Harry was showing how he instinctively grasped what the author of one of the most successful business books of that and future eras advocated. Napoleon Hill, born into poverty in America in 1883 ten years before Harry was born and living through the same time period as Harry, advised individuals in Think and Grow Rich that the road to business success in the America of the time (and at any time thereafter) was to “find a need and fill it.” Harry had sensed a need on that voyage and filled it. He and later his sons exhibited this entrepreneurial spirit and implemented such a strategy as they each built highly successful enterprises. Interestingly, family members cannot recall any time that Harry, before or after that voyage to America, ever picked up scissors and gave anyone a haircut.

      When Harry arrived at Ellis Island on November 23, 1912, he experienced the first change in his life in the New World. Immigration agents gave him a new name. At birth, he was named Harry Gettman, but after passing through the immigration process he found that his last name was printed out on documents as Ettman, which was later transcribed as Attman. Such a name-change was not an uncommon experience for immigrants. Many of these officials could not understand the language or read the writing of immigrants. In the processing of hundreds if not thousands of people a day, many speaking Yiddish, Polish, German, or Russian, officials often recorded names in variant English. ‘Gettman’ may have sounded or looked like ‘Ettman’ and so Harry Gettman of Russia eventually became Harry Attman in America. [A similar name change occurred to another immigrant to Baltimore who eventually entered the food business. A kosher caterer named Baida, who operated in Baltimore in the latter half of the 1900s, was given that name after he followed his brother through the immigration line; when asked his last name, he replied in Yiddish, “Baida dazelba,” which means “the same as his.” He subsequently found on his papers that his last name in English was now Baida.]

      After being admitted into the United States, Harry traveled to Providence, Rhode Island, where a cousin on his mother’s side, Harry Mittelman, lived and operated a deli/confectionery store. This was Harry’s first introduction to employment in the food business. He worked in the store for several years, was paid $5 a week, and lived upstairs. By 1915, Harry was ready for a change. He went to Baltimore to meet some friends, liked the city, which was experiencing a rapidly growing Jewish community from the influx of immigrants coming through the city’s port, and decided to stay. It was in Baltimore that he met his future wife, Ida.

      Ida (Chaya Feiga) Shapiro was born on May 17, 1900, in the town of Podwoloscycka, Poland, near the Russian border. She was the oldest of six children born to Yechiel Eliyahu and Rachael Leah Shapiro. Like Harry, Ida was the first of her family to come to America, arriving at the age of 15. She went directly to Baltimore where she had an aunt living on Aisquith Street and stayed with her while working for the Sonnenborn Company as a seamstress. When she and Harry met at a social gathering for young Jewish adults who had recently arrived in the U.S., they felt an immediate and as it turned out a lasting attraction. They made a striking couple who shared many compatible traits and they soon planned to marry.

      As we will come to see, both Harry and Ida possessed the emotional warmth, the entrepreneurial spirit and a wide range of abilities that would prove key to their accomplishments and those of the progeny that would issue from their marriage. Harry came to be known by customers and community for being friendly, with a good sense of humor. He was a well-rounded person: hardworking, earnest and religious, as well as an adept dancer and swimmer. He could speak five languages fluently: Russian, Polish, Italian, Yiddish and English. Although all-business at work, he was a strong family person. His first grandchild, Ronald, fondly remembers how when he graduated college, his grandfather, who had never attended college, presented him with a generous gift and wept with emotion.

      Ida was also a people-person and outgoing and, like Harry, very charitable. Their son Edward often cites her sharp mind and her unerring business and personal advice that proved to set him, correctly, on a life-long career. Their second child, Seymour, found her to be a very loving mother. Leonard, another son, remembers her as being “a tall and stately woman of regal bearing in both her manner and dress.” She also became known as an excellent cook and baker. “Nothing is as good as her strudel,” remembers her grandson, Gary; and another grandchild, Shellye, proudly reprinted in her synagogue’s cookbook one of Ida’s ‘secret’ recipes, “Bubby Attman’s Chocolate Chip Honey Cake,”