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Two Letters on the Death of the Immolated Worker Girls

JL;DR SUMMARY Morris Rosenfeld's poignant poem, published in the Forverts in 1911, reflects the deep anguish and fear experienced by Jewish immigrant families following a tragic factory fire in Newark, paralleling the infamous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in the same era. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Yiddish LiteratureForvertsJewish ImmigrationImmigrant ExperienceEarly 20th CenturyFactory FireNewarkMorris RosenfeldTriangle Shirtwaist FactoryLabor Conditions

Places mentioned

Newark, New Jersey, United States
"A hundred girls he writes turned to ash In a fire at a sweatshop Newark, the city is called, isnt that New York?"

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This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 78527
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-03-26 05:31:38 UTC
Curated 2026-03-26 08:31:47 UTC