Browse Items (329 total)

former Executive Director of Jewish Federation of Delaware (JFD), story of Delaware participation in 1967 & 1973
Israeli War

Tales of Topkis family. Interviewee was daughter of David L. and Hannah Ray Topkis

Rabbi Leonard B. Gewirtz (1918-2003) was ordained in 1945. He moved to Wilmington, where he served the Adas Kodesch Congregation for over 50 years. As a rabbi, he began the state’s first bat mitzvah program, sanctioned a women’s prayer group, and…

Died July 9, 1983, age 80
Born Poland, came to Wilmington in 1926, opened dry cleaning and tailor shop on W. Fourth St., retired 1975
Became active in Workmen’s Circle, Branch 69 of Wilmington. Recording secretary, executive director before…

Died May 5, 1996, age 82
Born NYC, moved to Hartly, Delaware, with family early 1920s
Involved in farming, established Sydel’s Egg Farm after purchasing his father’s farm

Dr. Louis Levinson was a veterinarian, politician, and WWI army veteran from Middletown, Delaware. He grew up on a farm in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, where he acquired his love of caring for animals, and went on to study veterinary medicine at the…

Dora Markowitz was a Polish immigrant who moved to the U.S. in her late teens. Though she originally worked as a milliner in New York City, she became a homemaker and a farmer after she and her husband purchased farmland in Kent County, Delaware.…

Died age 93, February 25, 2002
Public school teacher 20+ years, first woman president of the JCC, president since 1959 of the Harry Cohen Foundation
Graduated University of Pennsylvania, post graduate work at Hunter College (NYC)
Harry Cohen…

(Born in 1900, Wilmington, Delaware)
Known as the “Carnival King,” Harry Schagrin supplied rides and prizes for the annual carnivals of the volunteer fire companies on the Delmarva Peninsula. In his travels, Schagrin saw a new gas cooking stove that…