ABOUT

The Institute | The Institute Director | Inspiration for the Institute | Activities of Advisory Board Members

Inspiration for the Institute

The women in these photographs (also on the Home page) are the grandmothers and great grandmothers of Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, founder of the Remember the Women Institute. All of our grandmothers have life stories that, in one way or another, can contribute to our better understanding of history.

Ida (Chaya Sarah) Ellen Levine, maternal grandmother of Remember the Women Institute founder Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, is shown, with her mother Mindel Ellen. They arrived in the United States from Lomza, Poland at the beginning of the twentieth century. They first joined Chaim, Mindel’s husband and Ida’s father, on Division Street on the Lower East Side of New York City, then moving to Schenectady, New York. Ida married Meyer Levine, in 1914 and they lived in Schenectady for most of their lives. For many years Ida helped to support the family by working in their small grocery store. She was a working mother who lived above the store and took care of business and household at the same time. The mother of two children--Florence Levine Saidel and Leonard Levine-Ida died in 1984, at the age of 89. She was a link with “the old country,” Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, for her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren.

Esther Feigel Ovchinskas (Hoffman) Saidel, paternal grandmother of Dr. Rochelle G. Saidel, is shown (pictured right) in a hat that she created herself. She arrived in the United States in 1908, from Kopcheva, Suvulk Province, Lithuania. Esther came to the United States with the family of her aunt, Peshe Similinska (Seaman) Miller. She married Samuel Saidel, and they lived in Glens Falls and Bolton Landing, New York. She worked as a skilled seamstress, then in the family’s general store, and then as an active partner in the family’s summer resort business. She sewed, knitted, and crocheted creatively and exquisitely, and also took great pleasure in her flower gardens. The mother of three children-Joseph Saidel, Leatrice Saidel Russ, and Dr. Frank Saidel-Esther died in 1959 at the age of 67. She never spoke of losing her father, siblings, and their children during the Holocaust, and information on their murder in Lazdei and Kovno emerged many years after her death from her only niece who survived.

Esther’s mother, Yenta Similinska Ovchinskas (pictured left), was married to David Ofchinskas, and they had eight children (in order of their birth): Esther, Raisel, Hirsch, Berl, Chaim, Devora Rifka, Ruchel, and Leizer Falk. Esther left for the United States with her mother's sister's family in 1908. Raisel, Hirsh, and Berl were murdered at Katkishok, along with David, Yenta's husband.  Leizer Falk was murdered in Kovno in the Ninth Fort. Chaim disappeared in Mexico.  Ruchel died before Katkishok—but her stone does not seem to be in the Kopcheva Jewish cemetery now. Devora Rifka, my grandmother's sister, was buried in Kopcheva in 1924 and the stone still stands there.

—Rochelle G. Saidel, 2005

Top of page