Author Archives: JHSSC
Suraskys and Poliers: The Old World Meets the New
Above: Surasky Bros. Store, Laurens Street, Aiken, SC, circa 1914. Interior: left to right, Ernestine Murrah, clerk; Solomon Surasky; H. C. Surasky; John Henry Holmes, employee; Sam Surasky; Mandle Surasky. Courtesy of Stephen K. Surasky. I am 67 years old and was born and raised in Aiken, as were both my parents, Harry Surasky and Evelyn […]
Books
Books listed have either historical, documentary or fictional content. They all contain information about Jewish people in South Carolina or being Jewish in South Carolina.
From White Russia to Aiken County: The Kaplan Family’s Story
Above: Left to right: Raymond Kaplan, his mother, Ida Kamenoff Kaplan, and her good friend Sophie Rudnick return from the races, Aiken, circa 1937. Courtesy of Jeffrey Kaplan. My family’s story begins in the 1880s in that part of the Russian empire known as White Russia: Byelorussia as it was called. Today it is called […]
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Contact Us
JHSSC Office Sylvia Vlosky Yaschik Jewish Studies Center 96 Wentworth Street Charleston, SC 29424 Phone: 843 953 3918
Collections
Legendary Patriot From a Forgotten Shtetl The Izik Leibovich Melamed Story by Jacob Lesov Click on Cover to Read Story To print the story, save the opened PDF file to your computer and then open it and print. Yiddish Letters From Kielce and Lodz, Poland During the Nazi Era Envelope Nazi Markings: “Geoffnet” – […]
Aboard the Huddleston: WW II Diaries of Dr. A. Ellis Poliakoff, Cpt., US Army Medical Corps
The five sons of David and Rachel Poliakoff of Abbeville, South Carolina, served their country in the World War II era like countless other Americans. All were proud University of South Carolina graduates, and from 1924 through 1940 at least one of the brothers lived in Burney College, Room 48, on the Carolina campus. Their […]
“H” is for Hebrew: a Jewish Combat Soldier and Prisoner of War
I am grateful for the opportunity at the upcoming May event on World War II to speak for my father, the late Alan Jay Reyner. In some ways it is an awkward situation for me as I’m not sure I am worthy to speak about a matter so personal to him that only he and others […]
A View from the Foxhole: Sam Siegel’s Story
Above: Sam Siegel, (front row, seventh from left) with his platoon at Camp Blanding, FL, August 1944 Our father, Sam Siegel, was born to Russian immigrants on February 27, 1915, in Anderson, South Carolina, the fifth of eight children. At that time Anderson was a mill town with a small Jewish population and an active […]