Anita Solomon Blimbaum (1958) is a resident of Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Born Anita Solomon to Samuel and Josephine Costello Solomon, her family lineage speaks to the high proportion of immigration from Eastern Europe to the Cleveland area. Her paternal grandparents, Morris and Helen (Lieb) Solomon, were Jewish immigrants from Belarus, Russia, while her maternal grandfather, Stanley Costello emigrated from Poland with his parents, Jos and Agnes (Tellese) Costello. Her grandmother, Julia Kaminski Costello was born in Cleveland, but had strong ties to Poland, with at least one sister, Stacha (Sadie) Kasperek, residing there and parents, Ignacy and Teofila Lawinski Kaminski emigrating from the area to Cleveland. Though Anita's maternal side of the family was spread across the globe, they managed to keep in touch with one another regularly through letters, many of which were written by Josephine Solomon and Julia Costello, Stacha (Sadie) Kasperek, as well as other relatives of the Costello and Kasperek families.
The Anita Blimbaum Family Papers, 1929-1990 and undated, consists of correspondence written to and from the Costello and Solomon families, particularly Josephine and her mother, Julia, as they corresponded with their relatives abroad. The collection includes letters between Henryk Kaminski and Joseph Lewanski and Ignacy Kaminski (father of Julia Costello); Josephine and Samuel Solomon and the Lesser family (relatives from England); Julia Costello and niece Hella Kasperek; Julia Costello and nephew Kazimierz Kasperek; and Julia Costello and sister Stacha (Sadie) Kasperek.
This collection is of value to researchers interested in the history of the Solomon and Costello families of Cleveland, Ohio, and the Kasperek family of Poland. Researchers interested in the lives of immigrant families to the United States, and particularly their correspondence with relatives in their home countries, will also find this collection to be valuable. Additionally, as many of the letters were written by civilians in Poland during World War II and immediately after, researchers studying the effects of the war on Polish civilians will also find this collection to be of interest. Other topics of interest covered by this collection include Polish casualties of war and the civilian reaction to the war in Warsaw, as well as Polish civilians' attempts to recover and relocate in the years following the war.
The collection is arranged alphabetically by document type and then alphabetically by last name of correspondent.
Processed by Whitney Stalnaker and Matthew Gauthier in 2015.
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[Container ____, Folder ____] MS 5381 Anita Blimbaum Family Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
Gift of Anita Blimbaum in 2014.
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.