Pillow sham with embroidered animals made by a Jewish immigrant

Yetta (Yitke) Kwasznik was born approximately June 26, 1885, in Ratno, Russia (Ratne, Ukraine) to a Jewish family. She had a younger brother Motel, born in 1888. On June 15, 1906, she married Shlomo (Samuel) Eckstein, who was born in Ratno around January 15, 1878. A son, Edmund (Edward), was born in the fall of 1907. The next year, Samuel immigrated to the United States, sailing from Hamburg, Germany, and arriving in New York on May 25, 1908. He settled in Denver, Colorado. Yetta and Edmund joined him there in 1912. Yetta began to use the name Edna. Samuel was a laborer and eventually a driver with the Teamsters union. The couple had four more children: Rebecca, (April 16, 1913- September 12, 1971), Annie born 1915, Isadore, born 1918, and Abraham, born 1922. Edna received several letters from her brother Motel pleading for financial support, but after 1931, she received no more letters and had no further contact with her family in Eastern Europe. Rebecca (Betty) married Leo Veta and they adopted an infant girl and, in 1950, an infant boy, whom they named Samuel. Samuel’s biological mother, Ruth Haneman, had fled Nazi Germany with her family for Shanghai, China. Both her parents died in Shanghai in 1943, leaving sixteen year old Ruth responsible for her younger siblings. Samuel, age 68, died on March 9, 1946. Edna, age 92, died on January 12, 1977.

The pillow sham was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2012 by Samuel Veta, the grandson of Edna Eckstein.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Samuel Veta