Archives West Finding Aid

Tape recorded interview conducted on 3/31/81. Accession includes additional information from 7/14/81 (typewritten) and two hand-drawn genealogical charts.

William Cobb gives a vivid report of Shtstl life in Pilvishok in the Giburnya of Suvalki in Luthuania where he lived until he was 14. He also studied in the Yeshiva (school of higher Jewish learning) in the Shtetl of Slobodka and gives a description of school. He is a nephew of Mike and Kassel Gottstein who established the M. and K. Gottstein liquor business in Seattle, and he gives information about these two brothers of his mother. He tells of Jacob Berkman's return visit with his family in 1906. Mr. Berkman, a resident of Pilvishok had stolen across the border and come to America in the 1880s and was already established in business before the Seattle fire. He could not risk returning to Pilvishok so they stayed in Eitkunen just across the German border (Helen Berkman Blumenthal tells of this visit in her taped interview). His father, Ruben Kabaznick, came from Eisheshoch.

Genealogy of the Gottshein family.