New York City is a refuge built through migration, work, and reinvention in the history of the Burnstein family. The Atlantic crossing separates three surviving siblings from the relatives murdered in Europe, while the city gives Sal Burnstein the opportunities and political connections that later underpin his campaign against the networks sheltering Nazi fugitives.

Arrival and refuge

The family’s escape from Korczyna carries the weight of those left behind. A photograph taken in the Burnstein home on 12 April 1919 shows sixteen relatives; by 21 May 1946, only two people pictured there were still alive. The pogrom had killed Abraham Burnstein, and the later Nazi camps and Warsaw Ghetto destroyed most of the family who remained in Europe. The three siblings who crossed the Atlantic were the only Burnsteins from Korczyna to survive.

New York City became the destination and refuge for the siblings whose departure began with the help of their uncle Elyahu Berkowitz, Sara Burnstein’s only brother, who had emigrated in 1907. By the time Efraim and Saul arrived, Elyahu had established two fish shops and a small fleet of three delivery trucks. He had already taken responsibility for Sara’s eldest son before immigration authorities and then arranged for the other two brothers to join them.

Work, education, and chosen names

Arrival also meant adjustment to a new city and new names. Elyahu and his nephew changed their names to Louis Berkowitz and Lewis Burnstein, respectively, but Efraim disliked the change and continued to use his own name. He and Lewis began work as truck drivers for their uncle. Louis had promised Sara that Saul would not be made to work, and enrolled him in a public high school, where he completed half the coursework for a year he was about to finish by taking examinations in German.

That promise did not remove Saul from the demands of work. During the summer he delivered for his uncle’s fish shops while learning English. Scholarships, one after another, allowed him to continue his education even as he kept distributing fish throughout New York City. His academic success became the most distinguished in the Burnstein family’s history, a trajectory made possible by the combination of family assistance, public schooling, paid labor, and scholarship.

The city also offered Saul a powerful sense of belonging. He and his older brother Lewis were fascinated by the United States from the moment they stepped onto a Manhattan pier. Saul adopted the shortened name Sal, chosen by his first girlfriend: brief, memorable, and familiar in a city where Italian immigrants might adopt Salvatore as Sal. His new name marked a chosen American identity, though it did not erase his Jewish origins.

Community, politics, and the postwar struggle

Sal lived largely outside New York City’s Jewish community. He did not attend synagogue, read Yiddish newspapers, or speak his mother tongue beyond his family; he had no Jewish friends, girlfriends, or business partners. He never concealed his background, but only intimates knew he was Jewish. Among them was Sam Cohen, whom he had met at NYU. Cohen’s support later mattered to Sal’s political career, alongside that of his father-in-law, Democratic senator Bill Mattioli.

As a congressman, Sal formed a group of Democratic politicians working with Cohen’s lobby. Its immediate purpose was not simply to remind Americans of Nazi crimes in the extermination camps. The group sought to counter those who argued that any means were justified to avert another war with Stalin’s Russia. In the political climate after the war, Sal found that sympathy for Nazi victims did not necessarily translate into a willingness to risk careers on their behalf. Public expressions of compassion, even sincere grief, rarely produced effective pressure through legal channels.

By the first anniversary of the Third Reich’s surrender, rumors were spreading that Nazi war criminals of many nationalities were leaving their countries with alarming ease, hiding elsewhere or escaping under false identities. Sal made the networks protecting them his principal target. He hoped that making those routes public would oblige the government in Washington to help dismantle them. New York City thus figures not only as the place where migration secured the Burnsteins’ survival and Sal built a public life, but also as the base for his attempt to turn private family catastrophe into political action.