Embroidered black velvet tefillin pouch owned by a Jewish immigrant

Shlomo (Samuel) Eckstein was born about January 15, 1878, in Ratno, Russia (Ratne, Ukraine) to a Jewish family. He married Yetta (Yitke) Kwasznik on June 15, 1906. Yetta was born approximately June 26, 1885, in Ratno to a Jewish family. She had a younger brother Motel, born in 1888. A son, Edmund (Edward), was born in the fall of 1907. The next year, Samuel immigrated to the United States, sailing from Hamburg, Germany, and arriving in New York on May 25, 1908. He settled in Denver, Colorado. Yetta and Edmund joined him there in 1921. Yetta began to use the name Edna. Samuel was a laborer and eventually a driver with the Teamsters union. The couple had four more children: Rebecca, (April 16, 1913- September 12, 1971), Annie born 1915, Isadore, born 1918, and Abraham, born 1922. Rebecca (Betty) married Leo Veta and they adopted an infant girl and, in 1950, an infant boy, whom they named Samuel. Samuel’s biological mother, Ruth Haneman, had fled Nazi Germany with her family for Shanghai, China. Both her parents died in Shanghai in 1943, leaving sixteen year old Ruth responsible for her younger siblings. Samuel, age 68, died on March 9, 1946. Edna, age 92, died on January 12, 1977.

The tefillin bag was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2012 by Samuel Veta, the grandson of Samuel Eckstein.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Samuel Veta