Lazar Brodsky
Who has not heard the anti-Semitic saying in the Russia of the twenties, “tea belongs to Vysotsky, sugar to Brodsky, and Russia to Trotsky!” It is difficult to say anything about Russia, no one has ever been able to determine to whom exactly it belongs – whether it belongs to this or that hereditary dictator, or a whole group that seized power, but never to the people. In general, the question of who exactly rules Russia has always been in the air.
Even the now suddenly beloved Nicholas the Second Bloody wrote in his diary: “Apparently, Russia is ruled directly by the Lord God, because if it were not so, then it is incomprehensible – how it still exists. But about tea, and especially sugar, the Russian people were right – indeed the sugar kings of Brodsky were among the richest people (if not the richest) in Russia at that time. Before delving into the history of this family, let’s tell the readers what we know about our heroes.
So, before the reader’s eyes there are five Brodsky brothers – Abram, Zelman, Isaac, Israel and Joseph, who were born in the village of Zlatopol, Kiev province. It should be noted that their father, Meir, about whom we will talk later, having managed to get rich, left his sons a decent fortune. However, the endeavors of fathers, as we know from general history, were not always continued by their children. But this family has a different story. The capital that the father bequeathed to his children was considerable, but no more than that. Then everything depended on the brothers themselves – how successfully or talented they could dispose of the received wealth.
Well, let us begin this narrative with the first of the brothers, or rather with the most famous and successful – Israel. He was born in 1823 in the town of Zlatopolye, which we have already mentioned above. By the way, his first attempt to engage in commerce, or as they now say, business, suffered a crushing failure. And this failure was of such a scale that the newly minted businessman lost almost half of the capital left to him by his father. However, this in no way stopped Israel. Excitement and desire led him through this life. Israel was only 23 years old when he decided to go into the sugar business. But he didn’t have enough money. Then he persuaded the owner of the surrounding land Peter Lopukhin, nephew of Prince Potemkin, to buy a decayed sugar factory. How he, a Jew, even from a family that was not poor at that time, managed to persuade the largest landowner of the Potemkin family remains a mystery to this day.
However, as a result, the factory in the village of Lebedin, near Zlatopol, eight versts from the future Shpola station, was purchased. And in a very short time, at the suggestion of Israel, it was converted from a factory producing granulated sugar into a factory producing refined sugar, because the prices for refined sugar were much higher at that time. But Israel could not stop there. After some time he offered Count Bobrinsky, the owner of several sugar factories in the south of Russia to develop a joint sugar-beet production on shares. In this case, Count Bobrinsky, being a millionaire, risked very little, Israel again risked everything. But luck was in his hands. A few years later he bought out Lopukhin’s share and became the sole owner of the Lebedinsky factory. This factory produced up to 1 million poods of refined sugar annually with an initial production of 10 thousand poods.
Soon in 1860, Israel moves with his brothers to Odessa. In Odessa he lives with his wife Chaya, four sons and three daughters. In the new place Israel builds the Odessa sugar factory. But, of course, does not stop there. Gradually he acquires seven more factories, creates on their basis the famous Alexander partnership, which was, in fact, one of the first concerns, builds new factories and as a result becomes the owner of 13 major factories, which employ more than 10 thousand people.
In December 1865, he petitioned for his enrollment from Odessa merchants to Kiev merchants. Let us remind readers that until 1858, only Jews – merchants of the 1st guild, i.e. people whose fortune amounted to a hundred thousand rubles (i.e. multimillionaires at the current exchange rate) enjoyed the right of residence in Kiev. Gradually expanding, the factories of Israel Brodsky begin to produce about 25 percent of all Russian raffinade. The fixed capital of these enterprises exceeded nine million rubles by the end of the 1970s.
In 1876, Israel moved to Kiev. The then governor of Kiev, Count Witte, wrote: “While I was living in Kiev, among the Jews who lived there in large numbers, the main one was Brodsky (Israel). He was a very venerable old man, who resembled a biblical patriarch… It can be said that he was one of the most important capitalists of the South-Western region. I had to talk to him many times, to conduct purely business conversations, and he always gave me the impression of a man of remarkable intelligence, but almost uneducated”. And indeed, Israel did not fit into the framework of the then Russian education. But according to the statements of contemporaries “Israel Markovich Brodsky was certainly a financial and industrial genius”. His outstanding services in financial and industrial activities were appreciated by the Russian government. He was marked with “tsar’s favor, and he “was granted the title of commercial counselor.” Reporting on this, Finance Minister Bunge in his letter of 1885 wrote: “Gracious Sir Israel Markovich, the Emperor on my all-subject report on your useful activities in the field of domestic trade and industry All Graciously deigned on the 26th day of this February to grant you the title of Commercial Counselor. I congratulate you on this monarchial favor and ask you to accept the assurance of my utmost respect and devotion.
At the same time Israel, actually, as well as the entire Brodsky family, unlike some Russian-Jewish nouveau riche, not only never denied his blood connection with the Jewish people, but also donated huge sums to Jewish charity.
The newspaper “Kiev Word” wrote about Israel Brodsky: “He sprinkled his homeland – the place of Zlatopol with favors. There all public charitable institutions are satisfied and provided for eternity with appropriate capital and income from the estate in Bobrinskiy district with more than two thousand dessiatinas of land given to these institutions”.
In Zlatopolye alone, Israel Brodsky built a hospital and a home for the elderly.
In Kiev in 1885 he gave 150 thousand rubles and built a Jewish hospital with 100 beds. Treatment in the hospital was free of charge, as were the medicines used to treat the patients.
He allocated more than 40,000 rubles for the construction, equipment and maintenance of a Jewish trade school, where hundreds of children from poor families received a profession. Living in a Christian country and being a member of many Christian societies and organizations, he annually allocated hundreds of thousands of rubles for their activities.
In the last years of his life, Israel wanted to build another trade school with his funds and establish a Jewish cemetery. He died in September 1888. In the obituary published on October 1 in the newspaper “Kiev Word” on his death it was written: “He undoubtedly carried with him to the grave that desire that his children continue to dispose of the wealth he left behind, as he did, that they would follow in his footsteps on the path of thanksgiving, that they would do and implement in this regard what he wanted to do, but for reasons quite independent of him did not have time to implement. In a word, that they should prove to be worthy children of a worthy father.”
The children proved worthy of their father. But first it is worth saying at least a few words about Israel’s older brother Abram. Abram was born in 1816 and died in 1884. He too, like his younger brother became an extremely successful merchant. So, in 1855 Abram built in Zlatopol a stone building for a hospital for 40 beds and provided its maintenance. Abram Brodsky left Zlatopol in 1858 and moved first to St. Petersburg, becoming a Tsarskoselsk merchant of the 1st guild, and then – to Odessa. Settling in Odessa, he became a member of the City Duma and a member of the City Council, and then already vice-mayor of Odessa. He built the Odessa Orphanage and financed the establishment of two Jewish agricultural settlements.
By the way, another of the brothers, Joseph, also became rich, having moved to Kiev in 1871. Joseph became the owner of breweries and vodka factories. He tragically died in 1882. The horses harnessed to his baby carriage were frightened by something and they were being carried along the Khreshchatyk. The carriage overturned, and Joseph was thrown out of it at full gallop. His son Alexander was left to continue his work.
But of course, the son of Israel – Eliezer (Lazar), born in 1848, acquired a particularly unique fame that rattled throughout Russia at that time. It was he who became a famous tycoon and an absolute “sugar king”. What is only one excerpt from his form list: “A hereditary honorary citizen. Kiev 1st guild merchant. In 1897, the Emperor granted him the title of Commercial Counselor on the basis of the all-subject report of the Ministry of Finance on his useful activity in the field of domestic trade and industry. Member of the Committee and Commission for the construction of buildings of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute. Honorary custodian of the Kiev-Fundukleevsky women’s gymnasium and the pavilion of Countess Levasheva. Honorary member and chairman of the Society for Combating Contagious Diseases. He is an honorary member of the Trusteeship of Children’s Shelters, a member of the Kiev Charitable Society for the Relief of the Poor, an honorary member of the House for the Patronage and Craft Education of Poor Children, which is under the Highest Patronage of Her Imperial Majesty, a member of the Kiev Trusteeship for the Benefit of Warriors’ Families in Need, the Trusteeship for Insufficient Students of St. Vladimir’s University, the Board of the Society of Houses of Labor and other charitable institutions”. Lazar Brodsky increased his father’s fortune many times by concentrating on the industrial and entrepreneurial side of things, and his brother Arye-Leibush (Lev), concentrated in his hands financial and banking activities.
Lazar manages to create the All-Russian Society of Sugar Producers – actually the first syndicate of the new industry. In addition to the sugar business, Brodsky and mainly Lazar started business in the flour milling, brewing and distillery industries. He was a member of the board of the St. Petersburg International Commercial Bank, founder and chairman of the board of the Second Steamship Company on the Dnieper, director of the Kiev Water Supply Society, managing director of the Flour Steam Mill Society, member of the board of the Mutual Credit Society, owner of the Khamovnicheskiy brewery in Moscow, salt mines in the Odessa area, coal mines in the Ekaterinoslav Province, controlling interest in the Kiev tramway society; he was the largest shareholder of the society. By the end of his life he was spoken of as one of the most prominent entrepreneurs of the Russian Empire.
The buildings that the Brodskys built are still standing in Kiev. These are the building of the Polytechnic Institute and the Bacteriological Institute, as well as the building of the Jewish craft school, in which they invested 300,000 rubles. Lazar and Lev named this school after their brother Solomon, who suffered from a mental disorder and lived under their care. The Brodskys also built the Trinity People’s House and two synagogues – choral Lazarevskaya, and another on the foundations of which now (or rather under Soviet rule) in Kiev built a movie theater.
By the way, even multimillionaire Lazar Brodsky had a hard time getting a synagogue opened in Kiev. Kiev was not part of the “settlement line,” and permits for synagogues in the city were granted personally by the Minister of the Interior. And he, as the researcher writes, “did not allow Jews to build religious buildings either in the central part of Kiev, or even in remote parts of it. Therefore, the synagogue project was rejected by the provincial authorities. Then Lazar Brodsky and the Kiev rabbi Zukkerman sent a complaint to the Senate in St. Petersburg. The Senate, strangely enough, sided with the petitioners. “And in 1898, on the day of Lazar Brodsky’s 50th birthday, the grand opening of the Choral Synagogue took place. The ceremony was attended by the highest provincial officials, who put so much effort into making sure that it did not take place.” And this despite the fact that the Brodskys constantly helped to finance the Kiev city government. In general, the Brodskys’ philanthropy was widely known, in particular, they spent a lot of money on benefits for the victims of pogroms.
In his will Lazar Brodsky bequeathed 500 thousand rubles to Kiev for the construction of the covered Bessarabian market. At the same time, the money was transferred to the city on condition that the city government should annually allocate 22 thousand rubles from the market revenues for the maintenance of the Bacteriological Institute, the children’s department of the Jewish Hospital, the Brodsky School and other charitable institutions. For “special zeal for the benefit of public education” Lazar Brodsky was awarded the Order of Stanislaus II degree and St. Anne II degree. The French government honored him with the highest award of the country – the Legion of Honor. He also had the Serbian order. It is interesting that in Russia to accept and wear these orders it was necessary to receive the “highest permission”. Lazar received it. He died at the age of 55 in Basel. Here lived his daughter, who married a Swiss officer.
In the morning, the front pages of all Kiev newspapers were filled with mourning announcements of his death. On September 24, thousands of Kiev citizens met the train that arrived from Switzerland. “On the day of the funeral, with a huge crowd of people, the facade of the Choral Synagogue was draped with mourning ribbons, and above the entrance there was an inscription: “Virtue marches ahead of him.” As the Kiev newspapers wrote, “about 150 wreaths were sent, ten of which were made of silver”. The life of Lazar Brodsky ended in 1904. As historians write, “ironically, the cause of death of the “sugar king” was sugar sickness. When he was buried in the funeral procession was attended by the governor, commander of the military district, the mayor. The famous lawyer Leo Kupernik in his eulogy called the deceased “the best of Jews”.
By the way, after Lazar’s funeral his brother Lev received an interesting letter, which, as S. Ilyevich writes “gives ground for thinking about another side of Lazar Brodsky’s charitable activities. In addition to this letter, now stored in the Central Historical Archive of Ukraine, there is an attached document from the gendarme department of Kiev signed by Lieutenant Colonel Spiridovich, which informs that “it became known from agent sources that Lev Brodsky received a letter from the Kiev Committee of the Party of Social-Democrats, “a copy of which is presented herewith by agent means from the Committee”. In the letter, sent by an anonymous person, signed “respectful commoner”, there was a request to Lev Brodsky to provide material assistance to 100 political prisoners in Lukyanovsky prison. The letter, in particular, said: “The essence of this letter is clear – we need money. At least in the form of a one-time donation. It is necessary to add that the late Lazar Israelievich did not bypass the needs of this society, and with his death they were deprived of huge support. Donations were very solid and several times a year.
We do not know how Lev reacted to this letter, but we know something else – the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia wrote: “In particular, the Brodskys financed counter-revolutionary ‘governments’ during the Civil War”. As the researchers point out “we are talking about the financial support of the Central Rada and the Directory”, the responsibility for which was assigned to Lev Brodsky, who after Lazar’s death was at the head of the clan. Here is the data from his form, as their Jewish Encyclopedia points out: “A well-known sugar refiner, comes from an old Jewish family (in Russia since the beginning of the XVIII century), was born in the locality of Zlatopol in Kiev province in 1852. He was a fellow chairman of the Kiev Stock Exchange Committee, chairman of the Refiners’ Agreement Committee, fellow chairman of the All-Russian Society of Sugar Producers, head of the board of a number of sugar companies, member of the boards of the Kiev Private Commercial, Russian for Foreign Trade, Volga-Kama and St. Petersburg International Commercial Banks. A major public figure and philanthropist. The total amount of his donations for public charitable purposes exceeds 2 million rubles. On these funds were built: the 1st Kiev commercial school, outpatient clinic, gynecological department at the Kiev Jewish hospital, 2-class Jewish school and many others. He was awarded many Russian and foreign orders and medals, including the French Order of the Legion of Honor and the Persian Order of the Lion and the Sun. In 1898 he was granted the title of Commercial Counselor. His fate after 1917 is unknown except perhaps that he ended his life in France in 1923.”
Researchers also point out that “according to family tradition, he was listed as the head of many firms, businesses and charitable societies. But about this tycoon can be said that he was by no means a stranger to worldly weaknesses. He was attracted to women and gambling. In his own mansion on Proresnaya Lev Brodsky established a club “Concordia” – a collection of privileged card players. He was also interested in theater (by the way, the building of the Solovtsov Drama Theater – the present-day Franko Ukrainian Drama – was his property). Businesses were weighing him down, and in 1912 he gave up the management of the Alexandrovsky partnership of sugar factories, selling his share to a syndicate of banks”.
Speaking about the other members of this family, it is worth mentioning that Samuel Brodsky (1846-1896), Abram’s son married the daughter of the famous writer and journalist Osip Rabinovich. He too, like his father, was appointed vice-mayor of Odessa, despite the fact that Jews were forbidden to be elected to this position.
The vast majority of Brodsky’s descendants left Russia after the revolution.
Alexander Brodsky, son of Joseph, cousin of Lazar and Lev, also left this country. In Kiev, as local historians write “on Zhilyanskaya Street one can still see the production buildings that belonged to him. Now it is a milk factory, and earlier on this site operated a beer company called “Jurapivo” (South Russian Joint Stock Company of Breweries). The managing director of the company was Alexander Brodsky. He graduated from the Law Faculty of St. Vladimir’s University, and was one of the organizers of the Society for Assistance to Poor Students, and like all the Brodskys he took a very active part in various large-scale charitable projects. In particular, during the First World War he organized a hospital in his two-storied mansion. Alexander Iosifovich and his wife Eugenia Veniaminovna had three sons and five daughters. Researcher V. Kovalinsky traced the history of one of them – Nina. She was born in 1892, studied painting at the Stroganov School, in Berlin, in Weimar and in St. Petersburg. During the First World War she returns to Kiev and goes to work as an orderly in a hospital. Then she publishes an art magazine and writes, writes poems. Here is one of them written about the 19th year in Kiev:
Scary. I’m scared out of my wits.
Outside the window there is stomping and screaming.
Someone is being beaten, shot,
searched.
I clench my eyes and see
a faceless horror.
I clench my legs and know
that there is a swamp under them.
Stinking, viscous slime.
And there are many of them, many
floundering there
panting heaps.
And I know, I know,
that I’m going the same way.
To get out? No way.
What if it’s a miracle?
And as the historian writes: “A miracle happened: the family of Alexander Iosifovich Brodsky managed to leave for Berlin. In Berlin, she is engaged in scenography, creates sketches of scenery for the famous “Hamlet” Reygarda. Moves to Paris, works in the Comédie Française. The Germans occupy France, and Nina writes:
We who are spared,
we who are half-rescued,
we who are half-saved are shameful.
Thunderstorms are for others,
but suffocation is for us all:
the horror between thunderstorms and dens.
We ran away from the red
and brown
and came to a dead end.
We cannot save our souls,
nor our skins.
Terror will come. It’s coming.
As Kovalinsky writes, “the war was a merciless hammer on Nina Alexandrovna’s close and distant relatives. The family of her sister Tatiana, her aunt Klara Iosifovna, cousins Joseph and Mark Aronovich, her second cousin Klara Lvovna and her daughters died in Paris…. But Nina survived the war. After the war she lived in Paris, restored frescoes for the Jewish Museum, published a collection of poems, translated a lot, published in periodicals. Died poet and artist in Paris on July 28, 1979.
Another descendant of the Brodsky family already in the 21st century – Mikhail Yurievich Brodsky – lived in Kiev and was the leader of the Ukrainian party “Yabluko”. In 2004, he decided to restore in Odessa the very synagogue that his ancestors had built and where the Odessa archive is now located.
And now we would like to return to the very beginning and tell you about the research undertaken by the Am Azikaron Institute on the roots of the Brodsky family. As a number of researchers rightly point out, the surname “Brodsky” is not their ancestral surname. And here we should at least briefly touch upon the history of the town of Brody (located relatively close to Lviv), from which at first unsophisticated glance this surname originated. By the decree of Joseph the Second Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1778, the city of Brody was declared a free trade city, i.e., as they later put it – “porto-franco” or even later – “free trade zone”.
According to the Encyclopedia of Brodaus and Ephron, in Brody “a new era began, lasting 100 years and favorable in all respects.” A flood of Jewish entrepreneurs poured into Brody. Soon the Jewish population of the town was almost one and a half times the number of Christians. During these hundred years, Brody experienced its heyday. But in 1880 the status of “free town” was canceled. The prosperity of the town’s inhabitants began to decline rapidly. As a hundred years ago, the Jews began to move again, only now not to Brody, but out of Brody.
At one time, apparently at the height of the industrial boom, the family of Meir Shor settled in Brody. From the sons of Meir and his wife Mirjam, as we mentioned earlier, the dynasty of the “sugar kings” emerged. Meir Shor was the first person in his family to engage in commerce. His parents, as well as the rest of the family, most likely saw in him a continuer of the spiritual traditions and studies that his ancestors had practiced. But Meir chose a different life path At the very beginning of the 19th century, he, as if anticipating the future financial fall of Brody, moved from Austria-Hungary, to which Brody belonged, to Russia in the town of Zlatopol – the parish center of Chigirin district (at the moment, both Brody and Zlatopolye is the territory of Ukraine). Meir receives, at first, apparently, a nickname, and then the surname Brodsky – according to the city from which he came; moreover, just at that time in the Russian Empire came out a decree on the compulsory adoption of surnames by all Jews. So the actual surname of the future “sugar kings” should have sounded like Shor-Brodsky. Meir indeed, having started practically from scratch, was extremely successful in the commercial business, and his children and grandchildren, as the reader already knows, created a multimillion-dollar business.
Now, in our opinion, knowing the future of this family, it is worth considering its past. After all, as readers know, nothing comes from nothing. Talents and abilities are passed on from generation to generation. While researching this family, we discovered that it belongs to a famous medieval rabbinical family. The first of the famous representatives of this family was Isaac Shor, who was born in the first half of the 12th century. His son was the famous rabbi and poet Joseph Bechor ben Isaac Shor. He lived in Orleans and was the author of famous commentaries and explanations to the Torah and to the Talmud. He was a student of such illustrious figures as Yaakov Tam, Yosef Karo, and Shmuel ben Meir (Rashbam). Yosef Bechor composed several great poems and hymns, particularly those dedicated to the memory of the Jewish communities tragically killed by the pogroms in Blois and Brei. Joseph Bechor considered himself a commentator of the Rashi school and contemporaries noted his remarkable pedantry, often exceeding that of Rashi himself. In addition, he was known for being able to explain almost all the miracles of the Torah with a considerable degree of rationality. His works were repeatedly reprinted until the end of the 19th century. His manuscripts were kept in the libraries of Leiden and Munich as early as the beginning of the 20th century.
The son of Yosef Bechor Shorah, the famous poet and commentator was the celebrated gaon Saadia ben Yosef.
Of the other members of this family, it is worth noting such powerful figures as the famous descendant of Joseph Bechor Shorah, Rabbi Naftali Hirsch ben Zalman of Moravia, a favorite student of Rav Moses Isserles (Ramo) and teacher of Rav Yoel Syrkes.
His son, Avraham Chaim ben-Naftali Hirsh Shor, a famous Talmudist, died in Balti in 1632, and was buried in Lemberg (Lvov). He was rabbi in Satanov and Belz. He wrote a collection of short stories “Torat Haim” in two parts published in Lublin in 1624, a collection of short stories to Talmudic tractates and a commentary to the section on divorce in the “Shulhan Aruch”.
Another son of Naftali Hirsch – Ephraim Zalman Shor, writer and rabbi of Brest-Litovsk and later of Lublin, became the author of a supplement to Joseph Kapo’s work entitled “Tevuot Shor”. This work became so famous that Ephraim Zalman Shor was called Tevias, after the name of his work. Hence the double surname of the family – Tevias-Shor. Ephraim Zalman died in Lublin in 1633. Ephraim Zalman’s son Yaakov was rabbi of Brest-Litovsk and head of the Beit Din (rabbinical court) in Lutsk and Brody. He is the author of the work “Beit Yaakov” – to the Talmudic tractate Sanghedrin.
Rabbi Avraham Shor, grandson of Ephraim’s brother Zalman Tevias-Shor, was born before 1658 and died in 1674.
The son of Avram Shor -Alexander-Sender Shor, born in 1670 in Lvov, was rabbi of Zholkiev and died in Zholkiev in1735. He is the author of the famous work “Simla Hadasha”
Alexander-Sender Shore had a daughter named Deborah. Deborah married Israel Babad. Deborah and Israel’s son, Alexander Haim, received not only the hereditary name from his grandfather Alexander-Sender, but also his surname, Shor.
Alexander Chaim Shor who married Raisel Rappaport gave birth to two sons Israel Isaac and his brother Meir, the same Meir Shor from whom the “sugar kings” descended.
It only remains to note that later the family of sugar kings and their numerous relatives were scattered all over the world – some of them settled in the post-revolutionary emigrant centers of Europe, some of them moved even further away – to America. Only rarely are there references to the offspring of this family. One of the branches was related to the exiled from Russia Barons Ginzburgs, the other to the famous Porgeses.
G-d willing, the star of this noble family will once again burst forth, and we will see descendants of the Shor-Brodskys succeeding in philosophy, commerce, and philanthropy, as we did in the past.