Jennie Zelda Litvack - L. Holstein & Company

1925 - 1926
1475 Bleury

Born in Warsaw’s Jewish district in 1910, Zelda Switzman arrived in Montreal in 1925 and eventually became “Jennie Litvack”. With the help of another emigrating family, Litvack left her village, Jablonna-Legionowa, for Montreal; she travelled through Warsaw, Danzig, Liverpool, and Halifax before finally joining her father who had arrived in Montreal a year prior. Initially settling in the Papineau neighbourhood, Litvack left school after a short time to help support her father. Beginning as a machine operator at Monarch Hat Company, she was highly sought after for her speed and craftsmanship, and by age 20 was already a factory forelady. For a number of years, Litvack went back and forth between Montreal and New York, earning top dollar for her skills and sending back as much as $100 each month to her large family in Montreal, most of whom had arrived in 1928. Litvack returned to Montreal for good in 1932 when she married her first husband, a furrier by the name of Rashcovsky, with whom she had three children. Litvack continued to work in the needle trades, and was a member of the Communist Party after World War II. The steamship ticket and money exchange office L. Holstein & Company (located on Notre Dame and later on Bleury) arranged Jennie Litvack’s immigration to Montreal.

These excerpts of her oral history appear in Seemah C. Berson’s I Have a Story to Tell You (WLU Press, 2010):

In those days there was the Holstein Company – the travel agency which is still [in 1974] in existence. They would make out all the affidavits and all the papers and everything, and you could pay them back a dollar a week. (184)

My father’s ship brother (what they call a person who was with him on the boat) brought me up to that factory to learn the trade. His name was Handler and I knew how to sew, because they teach you in Polish schools how to do fancy work, sewing, embroidery, that sort of thing; and my mother used to teach me too. So, at this place they teach you how to put a lining in a hat. In those days you wore hats with lining inside. And I was very good at that and the name of the place was Monarch Hat Company.It was a Jewish outfit, the boss’s name was Max Solin. So there was Max and Jack. Jack was in charge of the people and Max was the one who was doing the cutting. So Max was the quieter person and Jack was the very aggressive one who would try to get the most out of the youngsters. Now the forelady at the table was a girl who was two or three years older than I. Her name was Lucy Goffman, and she was very nice to me. She taught me different tricks to begin with. I took very fast to the work, so that when we had to work on a Saturday morning, which meant coming in from eight to one, she would choose me because I was very fastIn those days we worked forty-eight hours a week ... I used to take to work a lunch, which consisted of bread and butter and five cents. That is all we could afford. Sometimes I had a piece of Kraft cheese. (186-187)

At the time I was getting eight dollars. The forelady was getting married and she went on vacation. So I guess I must have been so capable that the boss made me in charge of the few girls on the table—and I was only getting eight dollars. So I wanted a raise of three dollars to give me eleven dollars, which would mean an awful lot of money for me at that time. He didn’t want to give it to me, so I left. And he was furious. I left and I went into work at that time to New York Hats, which was controlled by the Leopold Family. The Leopold Family had a hat factory. The Canadian Hat, and this was called The New York Hat. I didn’t only get eleven dollars, I got thirteen. Had I asked for more, I would have got more. That’s how good I was! I was very advanced. I had terrific speed and was very qualified. At this time I was seventeen years old. It had taken three years, you know, to get up to thirteen dollars. (187)

Compiled by Sarah Woolf and Seemah C. Berson.

Links

Liens

"Montreal and the Jewish Community in the 1920s" - Our Tribute Everlasting by Alexander Wright (1984) - Jewish General Hospital Archives
I Have a Story to Tell You - Seemah Berson
Immigrants and the Needle Trade - Seemah C. Berson - Jewish Independent
Jewish Studies - Jewish Life in Canada - Véhicule Press
MP-1978.207.1.40 | Dominion Bank, corner Bleury and St. Catherine Streets, Montreal, QC, about 1915 - McCord Museum
Shedding Light on the Rag Trade - CBC Digital Archives

Sources

Berson, Seemah C. (ed.) I Have a Story to Tell You. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2010.

*Images courtesy of Faigie Coodin, Seemah C. Berson and Wilfred Laurier University Press,Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives, Jewish Public Library Archives and McCord Museum.

Media

Media