Sessions with Accessions: The Konstam/Brotter Family Papers

by LILI BROWN

YIVO’s rich collections are constantly expanding and becoming richer through accessions, or archival donations. These new accessions become their own collection or supplement a current collection we already have on site. Anyone can donate materials to be stored in YIVO’s collections, and anything can be an accession – accessions are not just limited to the records of notable people. Rather, our accessions are an avenue through which the daily life of Eastern European Jewish communities across the world can be illuminated and pieced together.

Looking at a few materials from one of our recently accessioned collections, the Konstam/Brotter Family Papers, reveals how these donations serve as a crucial piece of the puzzle of understanding how the experiences of everyday people build Jewish history, past and present.

The Konstam/Brotter Family Papers were donated to YIVO in March of 2018. The collection narrates how two Jewish immigrant Polish families merged in the Bronx through the 1933 marriage of their children: Henrietta Brotter and Leon Konstam. The scope of the collection extends beyond this central union, and in looking specifically at the life of Leonia, Leon’s similarly named sister, we find a woman’s transnational educational path in the twentieth century.

Leonia began her education before her family immigrated to America, completing her high school studies at the gymnasium in Kharkiv now in modern-day Ukraine [refers to image 2]. This transcript reflects how the Konstam family underwent internal migration within Eastern Europe before they migrated to New York City in 1922-- throughout a fourteen-year period, the Konstam family moved from Plock, to Lodz, and ultimately to St. Petersburg as a result of Leon and Leonia’s father, Aharon Konstam’s career as the head of various schools. Leonia herself attended the gymnasium in Kharkiv as a boarding student – another instance of Leonia moving for the sake of education.

Leonia and her family left Eastern Europe – and thus the educational system there – three years after Leonia completed her high school studies. And then, twenty years after she graduated from the Kharkiv gymnasium, Leonia graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from New York City’s Hunter College, an all-women’s undergraduate school at the time.

Her degree from Hunter, however, would not have been possible without her education in Eastern Europe. A letter from the Hunter College Registrar at the beginning of the 1938 Winter semester assures Leonia that she will receive credits toward her Hunter degree from courses she took at the Kharkiv gymnasium, or referred to as “work completed in Russia.” Letter from the Hunter College Registrar.

These documents together specifically trace the migration of not just people from Eastern Europe, but also the necessary transmission of their life experiences in their previous home to experiences in their new one. Where education was concerned, there was not a rigid boundary for Leonia Konstam between what she had learned and where. She used both to earn her college degree, and out of her four siblings, she and her brother Leon are the only two to have received a college education – in the United States or anywhere else.

The Konstam/Brotter Family Papers have been designated as RG (Record Group) 2145 in the YIVO Archives and will soon be added to YIVO’s online catalogs.

Lili Brown is the Assistant Accessions Archivist at YIVO.