{"id":1953,"date":"2016-02-18T23:02:49","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T07:02:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/aharon.varady.net\/omphalos\/?p=1953"},"modified":"2023-03-05T21:30:38","modified_gmt":"2023-03-06T05:30:38","slug":"reszi-sunshine-1885-1970","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aharon.varady.net\/omphalos\/2016\/02\/reszi-sunshine-1885-1970","title":{"rendered":"Reszi Sunshine (1885-1970)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"1913,<\/a>

1913, Regina and Coleman<\/p><\/div>\n

I look for them in the past and I find their remains, enough to resemble a person, even someone whose passions I can identify more than vaguely with my imagination. Again, I have this feeling that the historical researcher is more than part necromancer. Not only do we create with meaning, but we also revive with our devotion to enliven. The magical praxis demands a gathering of every bit of surviving evidence. I’ve pieced what I’ve can together, and I return to this page to add more detail as I can find and collect in free-without-fee genealogical databases courtesy of JewishGen.org<\/a> and the Church of Latter Day Saint’s FamilySearch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Little is certain — a family legend has it that at some point, the name Varady was adopted by ancestors named Weisenberger or Weinbecker. (Some resolution to this mystery has been detailed here<\/a>.) This however, is the story of my great-grandmother Helen<\/strong>‘s younger sister who was born Regina Szabolcsi<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

She was born 27 Nov 1885 to my great-great grandparents Chaim Volf Zwangschein<\/strong> and Ghinendel “Nina” Ehrlich<\/strong> (spelled Mina in my great-grandmother’s death record) in Nagyv\u00e1rad<\/strong><\/a> (now Oradea, Romania<\/strong>). In 1883, Chaim Volf (from Gy\u00fcre<\/a>, Hungary) Magyarized his name to Farkas Szabolcsi<\/strong>. He’s sometimes listed as a grocer, a peddler, or a merchant.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nina was born in Tolcsva<\/strong><\/a>, near the border of Galicia<\/strong>. I think she may have had a sister, by nature of an interesting coincidence I discovered:<\/p>\n

A woman, Irma Ehrlich<\/strong>, was married to Rabbi Armin Rosenberg<\/strong>, the first Chief Rabbi of the Nagy Fuvaros Street Synagogue<\/strong> according to a history of Budapest synagogues. After several children died young, in 1897, Armin and Irma took a ship and settled in Brooklyn. A few years later in 1903, my great-grandmother Helen, joined them there.\u00a0Later on, Armin, now a cantor at Beth Israel in Philadelphia<\/strong> married her over to my great-grandfather Joseph Varady<\/strong>, a Hebrew carpenter and socialist, also from N\u00e1gyvarad.<\/p>\n

Helen’s 1903 emigration record tells me she was a dressmaker whose last residence was Paris. I imagine her learning to sew magnificently fancy dresses for ritzy Austro-Hungarian balls. Regina, we learn, was also a dressmaker. Perhaps their mother Nina was as well. Her husband, my great-grandfather Joseph had a step-father from the age of 3 who was also a dressmaker, Samuel Kohn<\/strong>. Perhaps he introduced them back in Hungary?<\/p>\n

A digression: We find Helen returning to the United States from Vienna via Trieste in 1908 where her occupation is now listed as housekeeper. Later on, we find her returning to the US again, this time at the very outset of WWI via Liverpool in 1914. Had my great-grandmother returned to Europe to work or live with family while my great-grandfather Joseph Varady continued working in the US in order to send back money to her in Europe? Plausible. No one knows. In the Bureau of Investigations report on Joseph from 1918, we find him in possession of I.W.W. pamphlets and part ownership in a cooperative farm in Ruskin, Florida. He’s accused of being a spy while working at the U.S. Navy shipyard in Charleston but is cleared. The story is ridiculous. A month later, he’s arrested for smuggling liquor through the mail from a friend in New York City in an empty boiler. He builds his own house in Yardley, Pennsylvania and he or his boys participate in a Jewish farm school.<\/p>\n

I can’t know for certain when Regina arrived. More research is needed. Is she the Regina Sunshine shown in the 1910 Census to be living in a Chicago boarding house with a number of other single women? Where did she come by the name Sunshine. There is a man — Sam Sunshine. On his 1942 Naturalization record, it appears his previous name was Samuel Szabolcsi<\/strong>, from Nagyv\u00e1rad, Hungary. His immigration record notes that Yosef Varadi is his cousin (!), but probably we think just means that he’s his brother-in-law. Sam Sunshine<\/strong> is Reggie and Helen’s younger brother, born in 1892. Sunshine is an anglicization of Zwangschein<\/strong>. But there’s also another sister, born in 1888 — Roza Szabolcsi<\/strong>, of which our family has no memory; is she the Reszi Sunshine that the family knows and if so, then who is her older sister? Her birth year matches more closely what is provided in her eulogy (see below). Is that her residing in a Manhattan boarding house with other single women in the Census of 1920? <\/span><\/p>\n\n\t\t