There was an enclave of new Boschan and Politzer immigrants in New York City in the early 1900’s where relatives congregated as they emigrated from their birthplaces for a variety of reasons. My father; to escape the inevitable draft in the army, my mother; to escape an arranged marriage. The emigres supported one another during the process of adjusting to their new way of life in the United States. Eventually, they moved on to other parts of the country when opportunities arose.
My mother, Ida Boshan, did not know my father, Charles Politzer, before arriving in New York. However, each had gravitated to that area where their relatives had already settled and they found that they had relatives in common. I have learned that Boschans and Politzers had married before them.
A cousin of mine, Lilian Politzer Rubin, told me that our fathers (who were brothers) came from Siefer, Hungary. My father had done his apprenticeship as a butcher in Vienna, Austria, and, rather than face mandatory conscription into the Austro-Hungarian army, he immigrated to New York around 1906.
My mother also arrived in New York in 1906. She left home rather than become party to an arranged marriage to a local farmer, perpetrated by her parents. She grew up in Trnava, Austro-Hungary, which is now Slovakia, the eldest of ten children; two brothers and sevenother sisters
Ida Boshan is the lady in the middle, Charles Politzer is the gentleman in the middle
The Boschan family before Ida, on the far right, left for America.
It was the custom then that the oldest girl in the family must marry before the younger daughters could marry, and her younger sisters were already engaged and applying pressure. Their father had been in Kaiser Franz Joseph’s army in Herzegovina and, later, became an overseer of the Kaiser’s fields, so the family resided on a large plot of land and were farmers.
Though I have been resentful of my father’s attitude that girls were less valued than boys, it also provided me with the impetus to prove him wrong, and to strive to do my best whenever possible.
Between the two of them, I feel that I have inherited healthy and quality genes, a respect and admiration for family, and regard for citizenship. Hopefully, I have passed some of these qualities on to my own children.
Ida Boschan and Charles Politzer were married in New York city on 3 March, 1907, in a Jewish ceremony and here are their Katubas in English and Hebrew.
My parents met at that Boschan / Politzer enclave in New York City. I do not know the story of how they decided to marry.
But, they were married in New York City on March 3,1907. After they were married, they produced a daughter every year for four years. My four older sisters were born in New York City.
Josephine was born in 1907, Frieda in 1908, Bertha in 1909, and Gertrude in 1910.They lived in a walk-up New York City flat. My dad, having completed an apprenticeship as a butcher in Vienna, worked in a meat packing plant, going to work early in the morning and putting in a long day. This was also not an easy life for Mother managing four babies, with the laundry four flights down.
The Girl’s first language was German (Hungarian being the private language between the parents). English was “picked up” from the environment by the parents until the children started school. Then, I am told, the children began to insist that English be spoken. By the time I came along, 9 years after Gertrude, I heard German spoken when adult relatives got together, but English was the prevalent language.
Having grown up on a large farm my mother was not happy with “city life”.…..The family moved from New York City first to Flint, Michigan, and later, to Detroit, where I was born when Gertrude, their youngest was nine years old. (I learned much later that a birth control devise, a gold ball, had to be removed because it was creating a health problem for my mother.) Maxine was born three years after me. Viola was born fifteen months after that.
Mother’s role was MOTHER. She always did what needed to be done. For the most part she was living the life she expected to live.My mother was very much a loving, generous, caring person who was limited by her lack of education, but, strong in meeting human challenges.
My mother’s schooling stopped at the third grade. She was deft with her hands, experienced in sewing, crocheting, and knitting, and loved gardening. She was a husky, healthy woman who responded happily to Hungarian and Austrian music. We had a victrola and player piano in our house, and she often couldn’t stop her feet from keeping time when the “Old Country” music was played. She was also skilled in the art of making strudel. She could stretch that fragile dough across our entire three leaf dining room table and create the flakiest strudel I have ever eaten.
Our “country place” was a magnet for the other relatives, of which there were many in the Detroit area, to arrive either late on Saturday night or early Sunday morning, to spend the weekend. In the summer, the porch was used by relatives who would arrive with additional mattresses and sleeping gear on Saturday night, after they closed their shops, in order to spend Sunday in the country.
The Aunts would busy themselves cooking and baking for the Sunday Dinner, while the husbands played cards. We children played ball, climbed trees, went for walks in the woods, picked berries, and, occasionally, raided the trunk in the basement to create costumes, and put on skits to entertain the grownups.
Mother looked forward to these social times because she had no social life other than these. She never learned to drive. We had very few neighbors out in the country. My mother always felt inadequate, but she always kept herself busy with household and family chores, did a little reading, and a lot of canning of the produce from her big garden.
It was while I was in high school that Mother seemed to go into a deep depression: I would come home from school and she appeared to have done nothing all day. The breakfast dishes would still be on the table. I tried my best to clean the house and put things in order. Some days I would find her weeping, but she would make no explanation. Dad seemed as mystified as anyone. Mother finally came out of it. (Menopause?)
In the 1950’s she bore the throes of two bouts of colon cancer, but, coupled with diabetes, it was too much and she died at the age of 75, in 1959.
When I was 5 1/2 years old, probably in 1924, the family moved to the country so that my mother, who grew up on a farm in Hungary, could have a garden, that subsidized the budget for food. My father bought a ten acre plot which had a large house with an apple orchard in the front yard and was located on Southfield Road and 8 1/2 Mil Road just over the Oakland County, MI, line.
Our Southfield house was a two story brick structure with a large screened in porch in the front and on the left side. The porch was wide enough for double beds which the family took advantage of in the summer time. In the winter, the porch space was used as a “freezer”; barrels of smoked goose and corned beef would be stored there. Vegetables from the garden were stored in the cellar. A ton of sand would be poured through a basement window (just like the coal was poured through the window of the coal bin). And before the ground froze, the root vegetables and celery were picked and “planted” in the sand. That way we had semi-fresh vegetables for the Sunday chicken soup. The carrots sprouted leaves, as did the turnips, parsnips, and celery.
My cousins, Fred, Leonard, and Lillian Greenhut, and Harry Blau, would spend many summers with us full time. Not having any brothers, this was a very natural way for me, and my two younger sisters, to have contact with boys. (The four older girls were away, either at jobs or were married already).
There is a darker yelllow where Frieda is sitting.
I can remember that everyday when we sisters came home from school there was a fresh round loaf of rye bread with jam for us to snack on. I think my mother would get the rye bread fresh from the bakery every day. One thing I remember very clearly, when I was 12, that on Saturdays we sisters spent the day cleaning at home while my mother and Aunt Gretchen went to matinees at the Bonstelle Playhouse or any other matinees playing in town. They had a wonderful time together. My mother loved to go and she dressed up like a Lady and really was a Lady going out.
Between Josephine and I, we got all the work done with the other girls helping. My sister Bertha never wanted to do house work. I can remember Josephine, who was the oldest, would get real mad at her. Gretchen was usually deep in dance lessons, when all this was going on.
I don’t remember much about when we were young. In general, we went to school, and did things together.
One thing I do remember, was when I learned to write long hand, a second time, very prettily. There were glass doors at our school and one day I put my hand on the glass and it went straight through! I had to have my wrist fixed up and when it all recovered, there was this lump on the inside of my wrist. So, for the rest of my life, people would ask me why I had that lump there. I had to learn to write all over again from the beginning. (You will note in a few places in this story, Frieda’s hand writing that was very very fine.)
The two families would get together for picnics on a regular basis. Either in our back yard or theirs. Gretchen didn’t take part in the eating on these occasions in order to keep her ballet figure. She watched her weight very closely even at an early age, because of her dancing.
It was Gretchen who chose me to go out to dinner with them early on. We were close friends, Gretchen and I. She shared her feelings and dreams with me and I with her. But it was different than now-a-days. We didn’t have a lot of time to converse and share our secrets when we were growing up. Gretchen was more the out going one and I tagged along. Since she was a year younger than I, we didn’t go to the same classes in school and I don’t remember going back and forth to school with her. She had lots of home work to do after school; piano lessons from her mother and ballet practice. I eventually had three younger sisters to take care of after school and other duties. I went to watch her in ballet class some times, but I just wanted to watch. So we were both very busy with our own things growing up.
Gretchen was very preoccupied with her dancing. She took ballet lessons. And she was very good at it. She went to Olga Fricker’s Ballet School and eventually, by the time we were teenagers, became one of the principle dancers and a soloist in the Concert Group of Miss Fricker’s Dancing school which was connected to the Bonstelle Playhouse in Detroit. When I was twenty I got a job making costumes for Miss Fricker’s ballet company. That’s when I took lessons there, too, so that I could understand more about how to make the costumes.
Gretchen
Gretchen’s mother used to make costumes for her. The one that I remember particularly, that I had a picture of, was a butterfly costume with wings – a white satin butterfly. During World War I, Aunt Gretchen sold liberty Bonds and to do this she would set up entertainment programs for people to watch. She would plan the whole thing and she would have Gretchen perform solo dances in her butterfly costume.
Eventually both families moved away from Gratiot Avenue. The Haveman’s moved to the north side of town and we moved to Southfield Road in a house on 10 acres of land where wild strawberries grew in the woods. I can remember on Sundays when maybe 25 of our relatives would come out to our house to pick wild strawberries in the woods and stay for dinner. I can still see them now, maybe 20 aunts and cousins would sit in a row in the kitchen against the wall watching me washing the dishes singing “I’m forever blowing bubbles. Pretty bubbles in the air……” I was always washing the dishes. My sister Josephine was always on a date. My immediate younger sister Bertha was always studying and I was always washing the dishes or taking care of my three younger sisters.
I went to Northern High school. At the time, we lived 5 1/2 miles from the nearest public bus stop. So my father bought a car and gave each of us, who were old enough, a chance to learn to drive it. Then he decided that I would be the regular driver. So it was my job, every morning, to drive us to the bus stop and park the car there and catch the bus to school.
Frieda’s Highschool graduation pictureyears later…………………
My older sister Frieda (later Fritzie) did not live at our house when I was growing up. She had been almost adopted by family friends, the Havemans, as a companion for their only daughter. The father, Hans Haveman, had a brewery. They lived on the same street in Detroit as Mother and Dad, when we were growing up. Aunt Gretchen (Mrs. Haveman), was Mother’s best friend. When we moved to the country, they moved into a lovely home in northern Detroit and also had a home in Hamilton, Ontario, in Canada, where they kept horses. Frieda lived with the Havemans during high school. She would visit us when the Havemans visited. Mr. Haveman occasionally hunted pheasant on our property, and, occasionally, I was allowed to spend the night at “Aunt Gretchen’s” house when they returned home from a visit.
My mother was of course the one who taught me how to sew, so she was very important in my beginnings. When my sisters and I needed a new dress, I helped her make them or I made them myself by the time I was 12 years old.
Mother made our winter coats and during World War I, she made my sister Josephine and I military style coats out of Astrakhan (a fake fur material). And we had military caps to go with the coats; the kind that fold flat and can be slipped into a coat pocket. During this time my Uncle Alex who was going to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor took Jo and I to our first Football game all dressed up in our Astrakhan military coats and caps. I think it was Michigan playing St. Louis.
Mrs. Gretchen Haveman
Mrs. Haveman was another one of the earliest influences on my life.Years later when I began to sew and make clothes for Josephine and I, and the other sisters, Mrs. Haveman, Aunt Gretchen said to me, “You’re very good at that. You really ought to make that your profession, designing and making clothes.” And she said, “When you get old enough to do this, I will help you.” And that was very important to me. Because I felt that my own mother couldn’t help me make it my profession. It was Aunt Gretchen who suggested that my professional fashion designer name be “Madame Fritzie”.
One year Aunt Gretchen gave us 3 or 4 coats that she didn’t need any more; one for each of us. I don’t remember what Josephine or Bert’s looked like, but mine was very elegant – brown with an edge of fur going down the front and all around the bottom edge, around the back.
But Aunt Gretchen gave me the feeling that she could give me the tools to start me in business and that was something my mother couldn’t do. By that time I was one of seven daughters and my mother didn’t have time to learn very much about the business world. For one thing she never bought clothes in a store. Mrs. Haveman did and she knew what was needed in the way of clothes that were to be sold in stores. She had a sense of how fashions changed.
So early on, I developed a great affection for Aunt Gretchen and to some extent became her confidant, someone that she could talk to. Her parents, Gretchen’s grandparents, lived with them. Aunt Gretchen was often depressed about the association with her parents. All she got was complaints about how she didn’t do this and she didn’t do that and that wasn’t right and this wasn’t right. And she would tell me about all this. I don’t know why. I must have been older than 12, or she wouldn’t have talked to me about it. Whenever there was an argument, she’d tell me about it. I was sorry for her, and happy to listen. But there was nothing I could really do to help her.
Anyhow, by the time I was 15 or 16, I realized that Aunt Gretchen wasn’t very happy with her husband, either. I didn’t have anything specific to base this on, just a feeling. And besides I could see how much she enjoyed the attentions of my Uncle Louie. Uncle Louie was very handsome and a real womanizer. They had a very good time together. He was younger. Mr. Haveman was a big heavy set man and older than she was; a real German Prussian type. Anyway, she had a marvelous time with Uncle Louie. So what could I know, at 15.
…..after leaving Flint for Detroit, MI, Dad bought a Meat Packing Plant, hoping a son would arrive to take over the business, but when that didn’t happen, he opted for a retail butcher shop as a means of livelihood, which was located near where we lived.
I (Polly) worked at our father’s butcher shop from the age of 8 years old, probably in 1927 or 28, both inside and outside running errands, and continued through high school.I worked there all day Saturday and was in charge of the financial issues during my high school years.
College?
In the summer of 1937, I was accepted at Antioch College and gleefully showed the notification to Mother and Dad. It required a financial statement and a signature confirming that financial obligations would be covered, which amounted to about $400 per year, at that time. Dad’s unbelievable reply was, “What do you want to go to College for? You’ll just get married.” I tried to explain how important it was to me to further my education. I had graduated Magna Cum Laude from high school, a member of the Honor Society. I was determined to do something more with my life than marry a Jewish boy and become a “hausfrau”. Here was an opportunity to broaden my horizons and meet a variety of people and have a number of job experiences (through the special Antioch college work-study program), which would allow me to earn some of the needed money. Anyway, I felt that I had already earned part of the cost by working at the butcher shop all those years and I had spoken to Dad before about my expectations of going to college. But Dad concluded the discussion by saying he couldn’t afford it!
I just blew apart! I attacked him with my fists and pummeled as hard as I could, screaming that “It isn’t fair! You know that I have been working for this for a long time.” Mother stepped in and pulled me off, to stop the hitting. I was beside myself! I threw myself on the ground and just sobbed. I was devastated.
When we all cooled off and could talk; probably the next day or so, Dad came up with a compromise. I was to go to work for a year; put away some savings, and apply again the next year. Meantime, Dad would also put money away for my college expenses. I agreed. I got a job as a stock clerk at Himmelhoch’s Department Store and enrolled in a required English class at Wayne State University night school. My pay on the job was $14 a week which did not allow for much savings. Actually, it paid off in the long run, because when I applied again at Antioch for the following year, they offered me a scholarship and gave me advanced academic and work-study credit for my year of work.
My older sister Bertha had a similar experience. She graduated from high school and wanted to go to college, but Dad said he couldn’t afford it. According to Bertha, Dad had contributed money to his brother Morris, so that Morris’s sons (Edward and Rudolf Politzer) could go to the University of Michigan.
It was clear, Dad thought that higher education was wasted on girls.
The signature confuses me. I always thought that my mother made the linoleum cut. For sure she held on to this all these years…….
Around the time I started high school, my older sister Frieda, who was already called Fritzie most of the time, began working for Olga Fricker at her School of Ballet, as the costume designer. Fritizie lived in her studio on the top floor of the school which was a three story building on Cass Avenue near Wayne University. Fritzie and I had become better acquainted with each other and were then very good friends: I found in her someone I could talk to and she was very supportive. I let her know how lonely I was living in the “boonies”, at home.. She made arrangements with Olga Fricker to let me join an after school ballet class and pay for it by being responsible for keeping Olga’s office clean.
I enjoyed the ballet classes; I worked hard and made enough progress to be in a recital. Most thrilling of all, I was included in the group that auditioned to be extras on stage with the Corp de Ballet Russe for a performance of “Petrushka” starring Balanchine. And I was one of those chosen!
Then, at Christmas time, after I had advanced to dancing “on toe” I was included in a group that was booked at a downtown theater to perform an “interval” where a Shirley Temple movie “The Littlest Colonel” was being featured. This was two weeks of “showbiz”; three performances a day! full of grease paint! costumes! music! and waiting……… I think I saw the Shirley Temple movie twenty times.
I also began to take voice lessons, learning excerpts from Shakespeare, etc. I was a stagestruck kid. My bedroom was plastered with pictures of Lunt and Fontaine.
When recital time came around and Fritzie became very busy in the costume department, I became her go-fer and all around assistant: standing in for the “dummy” (Mannequin, dress form) while patterns were fitted; going to the fabric store to match materials and thread and trimmings; putting together a hurried snack at any time of the day or night when the pressure was on. Many times I just spent the night at the studio and would catch the bus to school in the morning. And Fritzie rewarded me by taking me to plays, such as “the Women” by Clare Boothe Luce, which raised questions about sex and society for me. And Fritzie was there to answer my questions. I had never been able to talk about my personal questions with my mother. She was very shy, unable to cope with subjects like sex or personal hygiene. And personal discussions never seemed to be appropriate during the time I spent with Bertha, one of my other older sisters. Sometimes Bertha would take me with her to her Art Class at Wayne and I “felt big” when she did. Somehow, my relationship with Fritzie was more like being an equal rather than being the “little sister”.
At the beginning of my sophomore year, Fritzie presented me with a special gift: two lovely raspberry red outfits. One was a long sleeved wool crepe, a rather, dressy dress. The other, a sporty pin whale corduroy shirt dress. I was delighted. My wardrobe had always consisted of hand-me-downs or things I had made myself and I was not a faultless seamstress.
Between my junior and senior years of high school, 1936, I applied for a drama Scholarship that was being offered at Northwestern University, and I got it. When I was awarded the scholarship to be a “Cherub” (the name given to the students in this program), Fritzie immediately came forward by putting together my wardrobe. She made a spectacular organdy formal (one of the requisites in the brochure) to be worn at the competition that was to be held at the end of the session. The dress was perfect for the occasion; very feminine; a hyacinth blue organdy penner entirely edged with matching ruffles over a blue taffeta slip.
……….By this time, summer 1937, Fritzie had her own business designing women’s clothes in Gross Pointe, an upscale suburb of Detroit. ……….
It was Fritzie who persuaded me to apply to Antioch College. I had thought I would like to go to a women’s college because that is where my high school friends had applied. Fritzie’s comment was, “Growing up with six sisters, why the hell would you want to go to a girl’s school?”. But she also had an alternative for me to consider. The daughter of her friends, Ralph and Clara Holmes (Ralph was the drama critic on the staff of the Detroit Times) was attending Antioch College in Ohio, and was very enthusiastic about it. It had a unique work-study program and was a small school. Fritzie arranged for me to spend a weekend at the school and financed the trip. I was hooked after that experience and determined to fulfill my part in the bargain I made with Dad and see to it that he kept his part. In the summer of 1939, word came that I had been accepted with advance credit for my courses at Wayne State University and also work credit, with a small stipend toward my tuition.
Fritzie made me a very collegiate blue plaid pleated skirt that I wore for years.
Many times, my aunt Polly would tell us about the prom dresses that my mother made for her. Polly would write to Fritzie and mention the date of the dance, and on the very day of the dance a package would show up with a dress that fit Polly perfectly.
