Lifshe Elizabeth Frankel

In immigration and census records as

Lizzy Frankel

Elizabeth Frankel

Is she a member of the Hirshhorn family of Suprasl, near Bialystok?

Marek Hirshorn*
The 1860s and 1870s, when Russian peasantry was emancipated from its servitude of the land, were a turning point in local industrialization. The Csarist government gave its patronage to the economic system and to the winds of industrial reform blowing from Europe. Even at the start of the nineteenth century, following the third partition of Poland and the advent of the Prussian administration in Bialystok, Germans began to immigrate to Suprasl and with their arrival the area started to become industrialized.
In 1833 Wilhelm Zachart arrived in the town with equipment, machines, as well as professional weavers and textile workers. He was followed by Bucholtz, Reich, Alt, and Onert, and in the second half of the century there were seven spinneries in Suprasl. Towards the end of the 1800s Suprasl changed from being an agricultural village to an industrial town following the passing of Suprasl's municipal laws in 1861 which gave the town the status of an independent local council authority.
At the turn of the twentieth century, with the Jews of Bialystok becoming dominant in textile industries, Jewish involvement in the industrial development of Suprasl began. The Cytron family acquired Buch's weaving factory and turneit into the largest factory in the area, employing at its height between seven and thirteen hundred workers, and the Hirshorn brothers established a fafor fabrics and blankets with departments for spinning, weaving, finishing and dying. The Hirshorns specialized in the manufacture of thick artificial wool for blankets and coats. The factory was powered by its own generator, which also supplied electricity to the municipality, and employed 120 workers. Another factory was built by the Krinsky brotherwho specialized in finishing adying, and employed seventy five workers.
In Hirschberg's book on Jewish industry in the region of Bialystok, which was published in New York, the Hirshorns and Krynskis are mentioned together with the Cytron family among the founders of the local textile industry. Later, between 1912 and 1915, a timber industry was set up with saw mills (tartak) utilizing the vast local foand river transportation. The Gottleib, D, and Semiatitizky families ran a saw mill the north of Suprasl near the German Catholic cemetery, and the Hazan family operated an additional mill in the south, with a flour mill owned by the Fine family.
The massive pine trees which grew in the Suprasl forests supplied the sawmills with raw materials and were particularly suitable for the manufacture of ships' masts. The Suprasl river offered an efficient and cheap means of transport along which flowed rafts and tree trunks via the Visla tributary to the Baltic ports of Gadinia and Danzig. At this time Jews were employed various professions such as tailoring, baking, carpentry, shoe making, tanning, tinsmithing and blacksmithery. In commerce Jews were active in grocery stores, haberdasheries, butcher's shops, tobacconists, and milkbars.
Despite the Jewish preference for commerce and crafts, there were many who worked in factories as weavers, dyers, foremen, and "maisters".
World War II, which brought with it Russian occupation followed by Nazi destruction, curtailed the process of industrialization in Suprasl which had brought the town's population to four thousand, approximately fifteen percent of whom were Jews. Today it is possible to examine Suprasl and retrospectively evaluate the contribution of the Jews to the industrial and commercial development of the town. The Cytron factory lies mostly ruined with only a small section renovated and operating as a furniture factory. The factories of the Hirschorn and Krynski families no longer exist, and the former saw mill is now a cooperative. Most of the present residents of Suprasl commute to work in Bialystok, and others who "inherited" houses which formerly belonged to Jews renovated the houses and work in the town's tourist industry which has suffered from the economic problems which beset the entire country. The tall factory chimneys which tower up among the church spires serve as reminders of the contribution of the Jews to Suprasl's economy which was violently cut short.

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• The son of the late Shmuel Hirschorn, who today lives with his wife Bella and family in Melbourne, Australia. Marek Hirschorn is Federal Chairman of J.N.F. (Jewish National Fund) of Australia.
  

See Photograph of the Headstone of Aryeh Leib son of Shmuel Hirshhorn of Bialystok, died January 21, 1903.

• Name: Mrs. Lizzie Frankel
• Titles and Terms (original):
• Death Date: 11 Sep 1927
• Death Place: Chicago, Cook, Illinois
• Gender: Female
• Marital Status:
• Race or Color:
• Age: 68
• Estimated Birth Year: 1859
• Birth Date: 15 Jul 1859
• Birthplace: Bialstock, Russia
• Father: Joseph Hershon
• Father's Titles and Terms (original):
• Father's Birth Place: Bialstock, Russia
• Mother: Elizabeth Sternfield
• Mother's Titles and Terms (original):
• Mother's Birth Place: Bialstock, Russia
• Occupation: Housewife
• Residence: Peoria, Ill.
• Street Address:
• Spouse: Julius Frankel
• Spouse's Titles and Terms (original):
• Spouse's Birthplace:
• Burial Date: 12 Sep 1927
• Burial Place: Peoria, Peoria, Ill., USA
• Cemetery: Peoria Hebrew
• Informant:
• Additional Relatives:
• Digital Folder Number: 4204469
• Image Number: 2487
• Film Number: 1877973
• Volume/Page/Certificate Number: rn 24736

Source Citation

"Illinois, Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916-1947," index, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/N3CQ-9YZ : accessed 5 July 2012), Mrs. Lizzie Frankel, 1927.