A letter from the rabbinate of Warsaw to President Roosevelt may be the means of uniting a Jewish mother in Poland with her only son, whom she left with her mother-in-law twenty years ago. The young man is now a student in Cleveland, Ohio.
In 1913, Zeshe Rusne, a widowed seamstress, left her four-year-old son with her mother-in-law in the town of Lomza and went to Warsaw to earn her living. She did not correspond with her mother-in-law, with whom she had quarreled, so that in a short time she lost all contact with her son. When a fit of longing for the child finally seized her, she returned to Lomza, only to find that the mother-in-law had left for the United States and had taken the boy with her.
Zeshe Rusne’s desire to see her son grew, and she toiled hard and long to earn passage to the Argentine. The United States would not admit her, but she consoled herself with assurances that being in the Argentine brought her nearer the child.
Twenty years passed, yet the mother found no way to see her son. As a last resort she inserted an advertisement in a New York Jewish newspaper, asking for information about her child. A few months later, the advertisement having brought no answer and Zeshe’s second husband, whom she had married in the interim, having also died, the disappointed mother gave up hope of ever seeing her son and returned to Poland.
A few days ago she received a message from the Argentine to the effect that eight days after her departure for Poland, her son had arrived in the Argentine. He had seen the advertisement in the newspaper. Of course, when the young man did not find his mother, he returned very much disappointed to the United States.
Zeshe Rusne, her hope of seeing her son once more aroused, appealed to the rabbinate here to get her a tourist passport to Cleveland. The rabbinate forthwith sent a letter containing the story to President Roosevelt, in the hope that he will take action so that mother and son may meet again.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
