Rose Gollup Cohen was the author of a 1918 autobiography detailing her childhood in Russia, immigration to the United States, and life on New York City’s Lower East Side. Out of the Shadow offers one of the richest accounts of the experience of a Russian Jewish immigrant woman at the turn of the century. Rose Gollup Cohen, born on April 4, 1880, was the daughter of Abraham (Avrom), a tailor, and Annie Gollup. The oldest child in her family, she grew up in a small village in what is today Belarus. The onset in the 1880s of attacks on Jewish communities and the expulsion of Jews from numerous Russian towns and cities made life increasingly intolerable for the Jewish minority and contributed to the exodus of about two million Russian Jews between 1880 and 1914. The Gollup family was part of this massive immigrant flow. As was common in the period, Rose’s father migrated first in 1890, leaving his family behind. He worked and got a foothold for himself in New York City, and after a year and a half sent two prepaid steamship tickets to his family. In 1892, Rose and her unmarried aunt, Masha, joined him. A year later, her mother, two brothers, and two sisters followed. Cohen provides a detailed view of sweatshop garment work. She recounts union organizing among the men of her shop, her attendance at a mass union meeting, and joining a union, probably the United Hebrew Trades. After the arrival of her mother and siblings, her story continues with accounts of a brief stint as a domestic servant, her rejection of a prospective suitor, and increasing health problems. During one illness, she was visited by the noted settlement worker Lillian Wald. Through the settlement, she was referred to the uptown Presbyterian Hospital, and there she met wealthy non-Jews who sponsored summer outings for children of the Lower East Side. She worked successive summers at a Connecticut retreat established for immigrant children and, like others, found herself torn between the immigrant world of her family and broader American culture

click here