Biographies of Oakwood Cemetery Residents
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KRUGER, FANIA FELDMAN (1893-1977) Buried Beth Israel II
Fania Feldman Kruger, poet, was born on March 8, 1893, in Sevastopol, the Crimea. Her father was a rabbi; because of the family's faith, Fania was denied entrance to the Gymnasia three times before she was admitted. As a child she witnessed a murder committed by Cossack troops and saw her father after they had beaten him. She and her sister became partisans in the political underground during the revolution of 1905, and out of fear for their safety the Feldmans immigrated to the United States in 1908. The family settled in Fort Worth, where Fania learned to speak English. On March 24, 1912, she married Sam Kruger. In 1913 Kruger opened a jewelry and antique store, and Fania became active in a Jewish women's group and the local literary society. After Sam died in 1952, Fania moved to Austin. Her experiences in Russia inspired her poetry and were the basis for a lifelong commitment to human rights. Her poetry, which described Czarist cruelty and Jewish life and customs, expressed a concern for humane action among all people. She published three collections of poetry, Cossack Laughter, The Tenth Jew and Selected Poems. One poem, "Peasant's Pilgrimage to Kiev," was translated into Russian and published in Moscow. Fania Kruger won several awards for her work. In 1959 she returned to the Soviet Union for the first time in fifty years and visited Moscow and Yalta, but was not permitted to go to her birthplace, Sevastopol. Asked repeatedly if Russian life were superior to life in the United States, she replied that it was not. Fania Kruger died in Austin on July 16, 1977.
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online
KRUGER, SAM (1882-1952) Buried in Beth Israel II
Sam Kruger, jeweler, was born on May 1, 1882, in Schershov, Ukraine. As a teenager, Sam Kruger went to Odessa, Ukraine, on the Black Sea, and worked as a watchmaker. When Sam was eighteen, he and his brother moved from Odessa to a nearby town and started a small jewelry business. They immigrated to the United States in 1904, arriving in New York, then around 1907 moved to Fort Worth, Texas. There Kruger met and married Fania Feldman. Kruger and his brother Julius named their original Fort Worth jewelry store Kruger Brothers Jewelry. His sister, Leeba, married into the Zale family and her sons joined the Kruger jewelry business. In 1926, when Morris Zale was in his twenties, he thought of starting a credit jewelry store, and Kruger gave his nephew the resources to open what became the first Zale Jewelry Store. Kruger's mother, whom he could not bring out of Ukraine, died of starvation. Kruger died in Wichita Falls on November 21, 1952. Source
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online
