≡ Menu

The Strauber-Strober-Struber Reunion of 1941

More than 70 years ago, many members of the Strauber-Strober-Struber family gathered in a banquet hall in Brooklyn, NY. It appears there may have been about 80 guests. We don’t know who organized it. We don’t know who sent regrets. In fact, we don’t know much about it, expect that there’s a photo.

 

For a long time, this image was up on our GoogleGroup site, but then Google went all “textual” on us and all the graphics files had to come down. In the years the photo was up, we managed to identify (at least tentatively) almost everyone there. There are a few we still can’t quite place—feel free to click on either picture to enlarge it and try your own hand at putting a name to a familial face.

The photo is almost as interesting for family members it doesn’t show as for those it does. The descendants of Mendel “Max” Struber seem to be well represented in the gathering, as are the descendants of Chaim Groinem Strober. And there are descendants of Israel “Sruel” Strauber there. All of them were children of Yoinaton Folic Strober, and grandchildren of Abraham Aaron Strober. (And yes, there is a scorecard to help you follow along.)

Yet, the descendants of two other children—Surah Henya (Strober) Schkolnik (my great-grandmother) and Schmeel Hirsch Strober (who was the only child of Yoinaton Folic not to have come to the United States). Why weren’t there more? Was it a financial issue? A rift of some sort between the families? Hard times for other reasons?

A handful of those there could trace their lineage to Isaac Strauber, who (we believe) was a brother of Yoinaton Folic. Yet, others we now believe to have descended from other children, or possibly nephews, of Abraham Aaron are absent. Some were still in Europe, steeling themselves against the horrors of a war that was already well underway in their native towns and shtetlach. Some, perhaps, lived too far from the Brooklyn banquet hall. Maybe others had no desire. Yet, a half-century earlier, they’d all lived in shtetlach that were a stone’s throw (at most) from one another.

The mysteries are many. But what we do know is that scores of Strauber-Strober-Struber relatives did show up that spring night. And for at least the click of a shutter, they seemed to revel in each other’s company.