by Austin Gaebe, Museum Experience Leader

Content warning: This blog contains descriptions of ethnic violence.

The yellow star indicates the location of Kobryn.
*Source: Google Maps*

In the swampy marshes and low rolling hills of eastern Europe, Ashkanazi Jews had a place where they could live in relative peace and isolation. They led orthodox lifestyles in their enclaves dotting the plains of Polesia and straddling the banks of the Mukhavetes River. For hundreds of years these diasporic congregations worshiped, celebrated, suffered, lived and died in this region, but as Russia’s fragile political climate reached a boiling point in the early 1900s, many families began to consider a new way of life in a new country.

A street in Kobryn from an early 1900s postcard
*Courtesy of the National Library of Poland*

In 1872, Alter (later David) Kobrinsky was born into one such family in Kobryn, Russia (now Belarus). The town, approximately as big as Lynchburg at the time, had a strong Jewish presence, at one time making up almost 80% of its residents. Throughout his early teenage years, dozens of pogroms swept across Russia. Pogroms, which were essentially anti-Jewish riots, often resulted in violence, and from 1881 to 1884 thousands of Jewish homes were burned and hundreds of Jews were beaten, raped, or even murdered. The tensions between Jews and Eastern Orthodox Russians were exacerbated when the foreign press and diplomats began to publicly criticize the nation’s internal political turmoil.

In an attempt to salvage his empire’s international reputation, Tsar Alexander III enacted the “May Laws” in 1882. This new series of regulations segregated Jews even further from the rest of the population by prohibiting them from participating in agricultural markets and from purchasing any additional land in rural areas. As these laws went into effect, many Jews felt that better opportunities awaited them beyond the borders of the Russian Empire.

The first member of David Kobrinsky’s family to make the over 4,700-mile journey to Lynchburg, Virginia, was his older sister Rachel, who also went by Sarah Rebecca. In 1894, Rachel and her son Louis joined her husband William Levine, who had immigrated a year earlier. They settled in Lynchburg by 1897 with William operating a shoe repair shop on Twelfth Street behind First Baptist Church, where the family also lived. William was one of the 23 original congregants of what would eventually become the Agudath Sholom Synagogue, Lynchburg’s first and only Jewish house of worship. As Rachel and Louis settled in the United States, the synagogue’s congregation raised enough funds to purchase a permanent house of worship on Church Street. In 1903, the couple’s daughter Eve was the first of the Kobrinsky lineage to be born in the United States as an American citizen. Unfortunately, Rachel died of complications from childbirth, making her the first known Kobre to die on American soil.

By the time of Rachel’s passing, her and David’s brother Isaac, his wife Frieda Alper, and their daughter Ida had immigrated to Lynchburg. Isaac was likely the first to anglicize the family name from “Kobrinsky” to “Kobre” upon passing through Ellis Island in 1900. He worked with William Levine, his brother-in-law in Lynchburg, as a shoemaker until 1903 when he paid for Frieda and Ida’s ticket to America on the S.S. Rhein, which at the time cost $64.15 (over $2,100 today). Over the next few years, all of Frieda’s siblings also crossed the Atlantic Ocean to live in Lynchburg, Virginia, establishing the Alpers as a prominent Jewish family in the city.

Meanwhile, in Kobryn, political tension continued to escalate in the first decade of the 20th century. Under Tsar Nicholas II, the Russian working class reached a breaking point with strikes and riots tearing through the empire. Oftentimes, Russian Jews found themselves in the crossfire between the radically emboldened proletariat and the fearful aristocracy. During the next few years, many would flee their hometowns for the United States, leaving David Kobre and his family in a tumultuous situation.

Part II coming soon…

Leaving the Old Country Behind: The Kobre Family’s Journey from Russia to Lynchburg (Part I)

Lynchburg Museum System