Victoria (Zetlin) Russman Pordes Collection

Victoria (Zetlin) Russman Pordes was the third of five children of Selig Selikov Zetlin, orginally from Vitebsk, Byelorussia, and Esther Geselevna Zetlin. Selig worked for the Russian railway and the family was well off, with a house and coach, a coachman, and other servants. After Russia's defeat by Japan in 1905, there was an increase in pogroms, and Esther and four children (Hesse, Isabella, Victoria, and Lyova) emigrated to Vienna. Victoria was the middle of five siblings: Hesse, Isabella, Victoria, Lyova, and Anna.

Victoria Zetlin, born April 7, 1903, wanted to be a librarian but could not afford the training and so became a bookkeeper. In Vienna she worked mainly for Jacob Engel, who had a wholesale drygoods business. Victoria Zetlin's marriage to Emil Russmann (she generally dropped the second n) in November 1937 was for citizenship purposes only; they were divorced in May 1938. She was the first to immigrate, in the fall of 1938. At first she packed medicines in jars and bottles at Purepac but she soon began a series of jobs as bookkeeper in advertising agencies. In August 1949 she married Rudolf Pordes, a furrier. They lived first on West 108th Street, then on College Avenue in the Bronx, and finally on Long Island, where Rudolf Pordes died of heart failure in July 1980. Victoria Pordes soon moved to Isabella House in Washington Heights, where she died of a heart attack in June 1986.

Hesse Zetlin, the eldest of the five children of Esther and Selig Zetlin, was born in Kursk, Russia, on April 19, 1897. Hesse studied when he could but during World War I the children were excluded from school as enemy aliens. In the 1920s he moved to Prague, where he met and married Ina. They soon emigrated to Palestine, where Hesse worked as an engineer. He outlived Ina and his second wife, Ethel, and died in an old age home on December 11, 1979.

Isabella Zetlin Steiner came to the United States in 1939 with her husband and children, where she opened a dressmaking business.

Lyova (Leo, also called Lowa by family and friends) Zetlin was born in Kursk in late July (26th?) 1904 and emigrated to New York in 1939. He served briefly in the Army Corps of Engineers but was soon discharged, due both to poor eyesight and to his skill as an engineer, which enabled him to do war work. He worked for ship-building companies, mainly in New Orleans, and later specialized in air-conditioning. In addition to New Orleans, he lived, and in some cases worked, in Berlin, New Hampshire; Portland, Maine; Portland, Oregon; Tampa, Florida; San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In the early 1950s he bought a small house in Montrose, California, near Los Angeles. From here he took numerous trips, mainly to mountains and national parks, first by train or bus, later by car. He climbed mountains, photographed them and associated scenery, developed and printed the photos himself, and compiled albums with clever captions. Aside from a very occasional trip with nephew Paul Steiner (son of his older sister Isabella), these outings were evidently solo affairs. He also traveled in Mexico and in Greece, Italy, and possibly other Mediterranean countries. He lived alone for most of his life. He died in July 1969 at the age of 65, after a stroke and other ailments.

Anna Zetlin was born January 27, 1906 in Vienna. After completing high school she began a two-year course as a kindergarten teacher in Austria. Upon its completion she took classes in psychology, education, child psychology, and psychoanalysis, and also opened her own kindergarten. In 1933 Anna was involved in a severe skiing accident that necessitated the amputation of her leg and the use of an artificial leg for the rest of her life. On May 10, 1930 she married Josef Jarosik; they divorced in 1939 due to Anna's being Jewish and Josef being Aryan and the related societal and financial pressures of this. In the spring of 1939 she left Vienna for England to wait for her American quota number in order to join her siblings in the United States. In Lincoln, England she taught at a nursery school, volunteered as part of the fire watch, continued her education, and gave lectures in child psychology and the care of mentally disabled children. She came to the United States in 1946, and in 1949 received her Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Education and in 1953 her Master's in Psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University. From 1946 through 1953 she was employed as a preschool and kindergarten teacher at various schools in New York City and in July 1953 became education director at a childcare center in Brooklyn, New York. In February 1958 she became director of the Lillian Sklar Filler Day Care Center of Brooklyn, a position she held until 1972. In her later years she often traveled with her sister Victoria or on her own to visit friends. Anna Jarosik died in July 1996.

For brevity, Victoria (Zetlin) Russman Pordes is often referred to in this finding aid as Victoria Pordes, Anna (Zetlin) Jarosik as Anna Jarosik.