Bessie and Joseph Hurwitz
The Jewish Encyclopedia
of Western Pennsylvania
A project of the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center
Zelek and Rachel (Goldstein) Hurwitz lived in Vilnius, in present-day Lithuania. They had four children. Their son Charles Hurwitz immigrated to Butler, Pa. and started a scrap yard. Their youngest Joseph Hurwitz (1886-1965) immigrated to New York City in 1903. He spent years between New York and Western Pennsylvania in search of desirable employment before permanently settling in Butler in 1920. He initially worked for his brother and then started an independent scrap yard in 1938 with his son Hyman and son-in-law Carl.
Joseph Hurwitz married Bessie Miller (1887-1968), also of Lithuania, on June 30, 1906. They had three children, Isabel (1908-1990), Alexander (1910-1994), and Hyman (1915-1994).
Isabel Hurwitz graduated from Slippery Rock Normal School with plans to become a local teacher. She was denied a position in the Butler school district due to discriminatory quotas on Jewish and Catholic teachers in the district. She taught in Summit Township for two years before working in a dress store in Butler. Isabel Hurwitz married Carl Teaman (1907-1990) on November 9, 1940. They had two children, Carol and Judy.
Alexander Hurwitz graduated from Butler High School in 1926. He graduated from the University of Pittsburgh School of Dentistry in 1933 and opened a dental practice on Main Street in Butler, Pa. that same year. He enlisted in 1943 as a captain in the U.S. Air Force and was honorably discharged three and a half years later as a Major. He served his tour of duty as a dentist on a military base in Herrington, Kansas, and he resumed his private practice in Butler after the war. Alexander Hurwitz married Lilian Blistein (1913-1998), of Rhode Island, on June 20, 1937. They had one child, Aaron M. Hurwitz (b.1946).
Hyman Hurwitz graduated from Butler High School in 1933 and graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1938 with a degree in biology. He worked as a science teacher until he was drafted by the U.S. Army in August 1943. He was injured during the Battle of Anzio in Italy in 1944 and spent several months recovering at the Army Hospital in Naples, the Army Hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, and finally the Deshon Hospital in Butler, Pa. before being discharged in 1945. Hyman Hurwitz married Sylvia Zeisel on August 15, 1940. They had three children, David, Larry, and Roberta.
