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100 years after deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, its Jewish and Italian workers get a memorial
(New York Jewish Week) – As Allison and Rebecca Kestenbaum stood in front of a building in Greenwich Village on Wednesday, they were thinking about another set of sisters: their relatives Celia and Bess Eisenberg, who, as teenagers, worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.
Bess called in sick on the day that a horrific fire tore through the garment factory. Celia died, along with 145 others.
The tragedy transformed U.S. labor law and the building that housed the factory, now a New York University science building, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2003. But until this week, there had never been a permanent memorial paying tribute to the fire’s victims.
One was unveiled Wednesday at the site of the factory on the corner of Washington Place and Green Street near Washington Square Park. The memorial was conceived by the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, a nonprofit group of descendants and labor advocates dedicated to preserving the memory of the mostly Jewish and Italian immigrant women who died that day and the fire’s impact on the organized labor movement.
“It’s remarkable to see people showing up who maybe didn’t have a connection but who feel moved by it,” said Allison Kestenbaum, who brought her two children to the unveiling from their home in San Diego. “This triggers emotions for a lot of people and opens our eyes to something that so many didn’t know anything about.”
According to the story that’s been passed down through in the Kestenbaum family, Celia, just 17, went to work alone on March 25, 1911, a warm Saturday.
Near the end of the workday, a cigarette butt ignited fabric scraps inside the factory, on the ninth floor of the Asch Building. As the flames began to spread, the women who worked there found that they had been locked in from the outside by management, who wanted to prevent the workers, who made roughly $7 a week, from stealing inventory as well as keep out union organizers. The fire was one of the deadliest industrial disasters in New York City history.
The memorial, in the making for more than a decade, includes a massive stainless steel ribbon that floats horizontally along the edge of the building — the names and ages of the victims are cut out of the ribbon. A stone panel underneath the ribbon reflects the names back to the viewers and also bears quotes from witness and survivor testimonies. On Wednesday, the reflective stone panel was also adorned with 146 white roses in honor of the victims.
Gov. Kathy Hochul spoke at the unveiling ceremony of a memorial for the 146 victims of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, Oct. 12, 2023. (Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)
“It’s getting some really beautiful reactions,” Uri Wegman, who, along with Richard Joon Yoo, was one of the two architects of the memorial, told the New York Jewish Week. “You never know how people are going to respond and I feel like we are accomplishing exactly what we designed the memorial to do, to transport and reorient people” to the events of the tragedy, the Israeli-born architect said.
Over the next few months, a vertical steel column will be installed to showcase the height from which workers jumped in a futile attempt to escape the flames.
The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition organizes an annual event on the anniversary of the fire, in partnership with Workers United, the New York City Central Labor Council, the FDNY and New York University.
“I’ve waited a really long time to say three words to you — three powerful words, and three extraordinarily sweet words: We did it,” said Mary Anne Trasciatti, the president of the coalition, at Wednesday’s unveiling ceremony. “By honoring the Triangle workers with this memorial, we are making a statement about the dignity and humanity of every worker, past and present. We are showing our support for baristas, auto workers, nurses, teachers, farm workers, warehouse workers, coal miners.”
Unions from around the city and beyond — including the International Ladies Garment Workers, the Steamfitters Union, the Laborer’s International Union, Actor’s Equity, United Automobile Workers and the SAG-AFTRA Union — sent representatives to the unveiling ceremony.
At the ceremony, labor organizers reminded the crowd about how the fire jumpstarted labor reforms and workers’ rights efforts, including activism and legislation that led to safety protocols, workers’ compensation, a 40-hour work week, minimum wage and pensions. They also used the opportunity to speak about workers’ rights today, pledging continuing support for the Hollywood actors’ and United Auto Workers strikes.
Hundreds of people, including descendants of victims, union members, local officials and labor activists came to the unveiling of the memorial, Oct. 11, 2023. (Julia Gergely)
The Triangle fire — with its large number of Jewish, Eastern European immigrant victims — also “galvanized the Jewish community, which had an already active labor base,” Ann Toback, the chief executive officer of the Worker’s Circle, told the New York Jewish Week.
Founded in 1900 as a fraternal organization to help Eastern European immigrants adjust to American society and workplaces, the Workers Circle was a central base for Jewish labor activists. In 1909, it helped organize an 11 week long general strike consisting of 20,000 young Jewish women in the shirtwaist industry. One of the only holdouts of the strike was the Triangle company.
After the tragedy in 1911, Jewish union organizers Clara Lemlich and Rose Schneiderman marched from the site of the tragedy to Cooper Square to demand new changes and more organizing.
“It did spark a new outcry of activism and The Workers Circle at that time was very much a center of labor activism,” Toback said. Jewish labor activists and Workers Circle members were also at the forefront of expanding the membership and organizing power of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, which became one of the country’s largest labor unions after the fire. The Workers Circle was a sponsor of the victims’ memorial at the site of the factory.
In remarks, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul shared that her grandfather, uncles and father worked in coke ovens at the Bethlehem Steel plant, itself the site of multiple fatal industrial accidents.
“I am so proud to be part of this effort to honor the names of those who were lost in that horrific inferno,” Hochul said. She called New York “the birthplace of the workers’ rights movement” because of “what happened right on this block.” New York State allocated $1.5 million in state funds to build the memorial.
A steel ribbon with cutouts of the names of the victims wraps around the former site of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory on the northwest corner of Washington Place and Greene Street. (Julia Gergely)
Hochul, who has been trying to maintain support for immigrants as the city struggles with the recent influx of nearly 125,000 migrants, connected the fire to the present day.
“Our workers deserve to be protected and we will fight to make sure they have those rights,” Hochul said. “This state is so great because of the immigrants, the migrants who came here. Let them work. We need them.”
Julie Su, the Acting U.S. Secretary of Labor, also addressed the crowd. “We can imagine the black plume of smoke up in the air, the flames that spread from floor to floor, the panic of the workers who ran and found closed exits and broken fire escapes,” she said. “Their cries for help and then the thud of bodies as they began to jump one after another.”
Allison Kestenbaum said she has always felt a strong connection to her relative and other victims of the fire. “I went to NYU. If I had been there two generations earlier, an immigrant, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to go to college — I would have been a seamstress in a sweatshop,” she said.
“It also relates to what’s going on in our present and our future,” she added. “The story and everything that came after is known throughout our country and in so many parts of the world for the tragedy and for all the changes that it inspired and continues to inspire. It’s very meaningful.”
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Yale University Student Body Approves Divestment Referendum Targeting Israel
Graduates protest the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist terror group Hamas, during the commencement at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, US, May 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Michelle McLoughlin
Yale University students have voted in favor of a referendum calling for the school’s divestment from Israel — a core tenet of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — the Yale Daily News reported on Sunday.
“The referendum, proposed and written by the pro-Palestine Sumud Coalition, asked three questions. The first two ask whether Yale should disclose and divest from its holdings in military weapons manufacturers, ‘including those arming Israel,’ and the third asks whether Yale should ‘act on its commitment to education by investing in Palestinian scholars and students,’” the paper reported, noting that while each item received overwhelming “yes votes,” they equaled just over one-third of the student body.
The low-threshold is, however, sufficient for the referendum questions being codified and passed as a resolution by the Yale College Council (YCC), which facilitated the referendum and spoke positively of it before students cast their votes. It also rings loudly to the school’s Jewish community, senior Netanel Crispe told The Algemeiner during an interview, explaining that some 2,500 students voted for a policy aimed at compromising Israel’s national security to precipitate its destruction.
Crispe, as well as his fellow student Sahar Tartak, led a campaign against the referendum.
“We put up a good fight, and I am immensely proud and grateful for all the students who organized to support the ‘vote no’ campaign,” Crispe said. “While this ultimately represents the opinion of less than half the student body, it highlights the level of animosity, discrimination, and, to a large degree, Jew-hatred that is present on this campus. What they said is that they support destruction of Jews, the abandonment of Western values, and are willing to do anything at their disposal to accomplish those goals.”
He continued, “The largest consequence of this resolution and its passing on the student level is its effect on the Jewish students. Some 2,000 of our peers were willing to publicly make it clear that they don’t support us and that they’re willing to go in favor of a bill that specifically targets the Jewish state and the land of Israel while labeling it as an apartheid state and perpetrator of genocide. I’ve seen no such bill or resolution put forth or passed to condemn Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7 or to support Jewish life or condemn antisemitism.”
On Monday, Yale University told The Algemeiner it will continue to foster intellectual diversity and a robust Jewish student life without discussing the merits, or lack thereof, of the referendum.
“The university remains committed to fostering an academic environment where all can feel a sense of belonging,” a spokesperson said. “There are strong collaborations and close working relationships among the Joseph Slikfa Center for Jewish Life at Yale, Chabad at Yale, the University’s Chaplain’s Office, the faculty-led Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life, and other offices across Yale, including the Yale College Dean’s Office and the Office of the President. For example, the Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life is helping to guide the university’s continued efforts to support and enhance student life for Yale’s Jewish students.”
Regarding the referendum, the university said, “The referendum votes are expected to be formally transmitted to President [Maurie McInnis] this week. The YCC followed the referendum process according to its by-laws, and throughout the voting process, many undergraduate students and other members of the Yale community — including graduate and professional school students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents — shared their views openly with one another and with Yale University leaders.”
Speaking to the Yale Daily News, Han Pimental-Hayes, a leader of the anti-Zionist Sumud Coalition group which authored the resolution, praised the outcome of the referendum as expressing the will of students.
“University leaders have long tried to paint pro-Palestine and pro-divestment students as a fringe majority,” she said. “The results of this referendum demonstrate that, in reality, the movement for a free Palestine and a more ethical endowment is overwhelmingly popular.”
Yale University’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility (ACIR) has before ruled against divesting from armaments manufacturers, saying in April that “it does not believe that such activity meets the criteria for divestment” because “this manufacturing supports socially necessary uses, such as law enforcement and national security.” The decision set off a raging protest which resulted in the assault of a Jewish student and the arrest of some 47 students who had trespassed Beinecke Plaza, where they vowed to abstain from food unless the university acceded to their demands.
The campus has seen a heightening of anti-Zionist and antisemitic behavior since Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7. Less than a month after the onslaught, the Yale Daily News came under fire for removing what it called “unsubstantiated claims” of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas raping and beheading Israelis on Oct. 7 from an article written by Sahar Tartak. Published on Oct. 12, the column — which lambasted Yalies4Palestine (Y4P), for defending and seemingly applauding Hamas’s atrocities — was at some point afterward censored to no longer include a portion describing reports and eyewitness accounts of Hamas raping and beheading Israeli civilians. The paper later apologized.
Additionally, on the day of the massacre, Zareena Grewal — an associate professor of American Studies, Ethnicity, Race & Migration, and Religious Studies at Yale who describes herself as a “radical Muslim” — defended Hamas, saying it had “every right to resist through armed struggle” while denouncing Israel as as a “murderous, genocidal settler state.”
Most recently, a pro-Hamas activist spat in the direction of Jewish students, a group which included Tartak, for campaigning against the referendum.
On Monday, during an interview with The Algemeiner, Tartak called on the campus’ Jewish community to confront hostility with courage and strength in numbers.
“Our response to this should be an even stronger and prouder Judaism,” she said. “We need Shabbat dinners to be twice as large, twice as many students visiting Israel for Birthright, lighting Shabbat candles, and coming to Jewish learning classes and Torah study. That’s the way we empower Jewish students: make them connected in proportion to the extent that they are being targeted on campus.”
Follow Dion J.l Pierre @DionJPierre.
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‘UNRWA Gives Rise to Palestinian Terrorism’: Experts React to NYT Expose Revealing UN Staff Active Hamas Members
UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini in Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 17, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
Dozens of senior staff at UNRWA, including school principals, are active members of Hamas and other terrorist groups, according to a New York Times investigation published on Sunday, in revelations that sparked renewed calls to shutter and defund the controversial United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.
The allegations exposed in the Times, based on firsthand testimonies as well as internal documents seized by the Israeli military from Hamas offices in the Gaza Strip, assert that at least 24 senior administrators and teachers employed by UNRWA at 24 different schools are registered members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Many were also involved in armed activities, with some possessing weapons like rifles and grenades or engaging in combat training conducted by these groups.
However, UNRWA expert Einat Wilf — who previously served in Israel’s parliament, known as the Knesset — argued that the Times‘ exposé detracted from the real issue: that UNRWA perpetuates the conflict by entrenching the refugee narrative and fostering a new generation committed to terrorism.
“UNRWA is not infiltrated by Hamas; UNRWA is the soil that constantly gives rise to more violent Palestinian organizations,” Wilf told The Algemeiner.
Residents of Gaza told the Times that Hamas’s presence in UNRWA schools was “an open secret,” with one example of an UNRWA teacher “regularly seen after hours in Hamas fatigues carrying a Kalashnikov.”
The report noted Hamas tunnels running beneath UNRWA schools and referenced internal Hamas communications identifying specific schools as locations for concealing weapons, with some texts describing schools and other civilian areas as ideal shields, or, in their terms, “the best obstacles to protect the resistance.”
In one notable incident, UNRWA uncovered a tunnel running beneath one of its schools in central Gaza. The agency reported at the time that it had protested to Hamas about the tunnel’s presence and moved to seal the entrances. However, the seized documents revealed that the school’s principal, Khaled al-Masri — who UNRWA did not fire — is a Hamas member who had been issued weapons by the terrorist group, including an assault rifle and a handgun. Photographs on social media showed him standing before a Hamas banner.
“The UN has been unable and or unwilling to eliminate Hamas militants and their supporters, as well as those from other terrorist groups, from their ranks,” James Lindsay, who served as UNRWA’s general counsel until 2007, told the Times.
“UNRWA hiring practices and the makeup of the labor pool from which UNRWA draws its employees suggests to me that the numbers the Israelis are talking about are probably pretty close to the truth.”
UNRWA commissioner general Philippe Lazzarini claimed that the organization “lacked the resources” to independently investigate the allegations, according to the report.
He also said that it was “extraordinarily interesting” that Israel shared the documents with the Times rather than UNRWA, but failed to mention that the agency had rejected evidence of terrorist activities on the part of his staff on several occasions in the past.
After being confronted with footage showing UNRWA employees loading the corpse of a murdered Israeli into a vehicle during Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7, the organization responded by stating that some of its staff “may” have been involved with Hamas.
“The UN seems intent on portraying this problem as a few bad apples, rather than acknowledging that the tree is rotten,” Amir Weissbrod, the Israeli foreign ministry’s deputy director for international organizations, told the Times.
The findings add to long-standing accusations that UNRWA’s operations in Gaza facilitate radicalization rather than fostering peace. Last month, Israel passed legislation banning the agency from operating within Israeli territory and prohibiting any Israeli authority from engaging with it.
Wilf commended the Israeli government for finally taking decisive action against the agency, saying that last month’s bill and the decision to expose the agency to the press marked an end to “decades of serving as UNRWA’s Iron Dome and protector.”
However, she went on to argue that the real issue with UNRWA is not limited to its staff’s ties to Hamas but its broader role in perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and that while Palestinians often separate UNRWA employment from direct terror activity, “the wife will work as a teacher and get paid directly by UNRWA, and the husband will be a Hamas operative.”
The critical question, Wilf said, is not how many terrorists are paid by UNRWA but rather how many have been educated by the agency or falsely registered as refugees.
“How many of the terrorists, the butchers, not just of Hamas, but Palestinian terrorists over the years, how many of them have been educated by UNRWA? How many of them were living in neighborhoods that were misnamed refugee camps, even though they’re not camps and no one there is a refugee?” she said, adding that the answer is “practically everyone.”
UNRWA “secures the next generation of people who believe that it is their noble duty by any means necessary to ensure that Jews do not and will not have a sovereign state,” she concluded.
Marcus Sheff, CEO of the NGO IMPACT-se, which monitors UNRWA’s educational curricula, responded to the Times‘ report by saying it confirmed what the world has known for years. “Quite simply, Palestinian children are subjected to indoctrination on a grand scale — and UNRWA is one of the driving forces behind it,” he told The Algemeiner.
According to Sheff, the curriculum in UNRWA schools glorifies violence and promotes deeply antisemitic narratives. “UNRWA educates the majority of schoolchildren in the Gaza Strip,” he said. “They teach students that Jews are liars and fraudsters, that Jews spread corruption which will lead to their annihilation. They are told to ‘cut the necks of the enemy,’ that a massacre of Jews on a bus is to be celebrated as a BBQ party. Terrorists like Dalal Mughrabi, who murdered 38 people, including 13 children, are held up as role models. Many of the people running the schools, teaching, and creating educational content are members of terror organizations. UNRWA is not fit for purpose and should not be allowed to educate children.”
In 2018, the Trump administration cut all funding to UNRWA, calling the agency “irredeemably flawed,” a decision reversed by the Biden administration soon after taking office. Apart from the US, UNRWA receives funding from Canada and several EU states.
Fleur Hassan Nahoum, special envoy for Israel’s foreign ministry, called on those countries to cease all funding to the agency, which she described as an obstacle to peace.
“UNRWA was infiltrated by jihadi terrorists a long time ago,” she told The Algemeiner. “The world is now unearthing what we already knew. It is a poisonous organization taking us further away from peace. The question is now why are countries still funding them.”
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Trump Says Israel Must Have ‘Victory’ in Gaza as Middle East Rises to Top of Transition Agenda
US President-elect Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with House Republicans at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Washington, DC, US on Nov. 13, 2024. Photo: ALLISON ROBBERT/Pool via REUTERS
US President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday said that Israel must achieve “victory” against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza before the war can end, elaborating on his views toward the conflict as the Middle East rises to the top of his agenda just six weeks out from his inauguration next month.
In Trump’s first sit-down interview since his electoral victory last month, NBC host Kristen Welker asked if the president-elect is going to “pressure” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza.
“Yeah, sure,” Trump said, shrugging.
“I want him to end it, but you have to have a victory,” he continued, before adding that people have “forgotten” about Hamas’s invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7, which started the war.
“People forget about Oct. 7 … I noticed that a lot of people are saying, ‘Oh, it never really happened.’ That’s like the Holocaust,” Trump said. “You know, you have Holocaust deniers. Now you have Oct. 7 deniers, and it just happened. No, Oct. 7 happened. And I’ve seen the pictures. It is — what happened is horrible.”
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and kidnapped over 250 hostages back to Gaza while perpetrating mass sexual violence during their onslaught last Oct. 7. Israel responded to the massacre with an ongoing military campaign in neighboring Hamas-ruled Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling the terrorist group’s military and governing capabilities.
Since the onslaught, many anti-Israel activists, organizations, and lawmakers have attempted to downplay the atrocities, even alleging that widely corroborated claims of systematic sexual violence targeting Israeli women were fabricated. In some cases, others have falsely claimed that Israel, not Hamas, killed all the civilians on Oct. 7 in a “false flag” operation to justify a subsequent offensive in Gaza.
Trump’s comments came on the same day that he released a statement on the social media platform Truth Social reacting to the toppling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime by rebel forces over the weekend.
“Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer,” Trump posted. “There was no reason for Russia to be there [in Syria] in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever. Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success.”
On Saturday, Trump argued that the US should “not get involved” in Syria.
“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Despite having expressed a desire during his presidential campaign to remain out of foreign military entanglements and focus on US domestic issues, Trump has found himself increasingly focused on the Middle East amid major regional developments.
Last week, Trump vowed there will be “hell to pay” in the region if Hamas does not release all of the remaining hostages in Gaza before his inauguration on Jan. 20.
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