The landsmanshaftn: how the immigrants buried their own
An immigrant from Medzhybizh arriving in New York found strangers, tenements and long hours. What he could also find was a landsmanshaft: a society of people from home.
A society of landslayt
A landsmanshaft (plural landsmanshaftn) was a mutual aid society of Jewish immigrants from the same town or region. Members paid regular dues. In return the society paid a benefit if a member fell ill, lost work or died, helped newcomers find housing and jobs, and gave them a place to meet, argue, vote and pray with people who spoke their Yiddish. By 1938 a survey by the Works Progress Administration counted 2,468 landsmanshaftn in New York City alone.
A place to be buried together
Above all, a society bought land. A plot in one of the great Jewish cemeteries of Queens and Long Island meant that no one from home would be buried among strangers, and that the poorest member would have a proper Jewish burial. Many society plots are entered through a gate whose pillars carry the society's name and the names of its officers and members.
The Medzhybizh societies
Two Medzhybizh societies are recorded in this registry. The Meshbisher Untershtutzung Verein (Medzhybizh Support Society) was founded in 1894 and dissolved in 1951; it holds an old and a new section at Mount Zion Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens. When it dissolved, its remaining graves were divided among the surviving members. The Medgibosh Progressive Solidarity Society holds a section at Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, entered through a gate whose two granite pillars list its officers, its members, and those remembered "In memory of." Inside, the society raised a memorial to the people of Medzhybizh murdered in 1942.
See the names on the gate, or visit the society's memorial page.
When the societies faded
From the 1950s and 1960s the societies began to fade as the immigrant generation died and their American-born children did not take their places. Most are gone now; a few still meet. Their land remains, and so does the question of who cares for it. When a society no longer exists, the upkeep of its gate, its paths and its memorials often falls to the families, and stones settle, tilt and wear.