they were unable to bring two members of Ida’s family to the safety of America. On the holiday of Shavuot on June 4, 1919, after they had arranged for their passports and were just months away from leaving, Ida’s father and a brother, who had served in the Russian army, were both shot and killed during a pogrom. Shaken by this, Harry and Ida would later name two of their children in memory of Ida’s father and brother.
Without the efforts of Harry and Ida, the Attman and Shapiro family lines would undoubtedly not have survived the violence that swept through their towns in Europe during the coming two decades. Both areas were overrun by the Nazis and engulfed in the Holocaust. It is estimated that of the Jewish population of 3.3 million alive in Poland at the start of World War II, only 369,000 Jews—11 percent—survived.
Meanwhile, in Baltimore, Harry and Ida were creating a family that would not only survive, but flourish over four generations and into the 21st century.
Chapter Three
BUILDING A BUSINESS,
RAISING A FAMILY
“We’re proud of our heritage.
We’re proud of our family members.
That means a lot to us.”
— Marc Attman
When Harry and Ida started their married life in 1918, Baltimore City was a tapestry of burgeoning ethnic communities, the third most populated city in the country. Baltimore was then such a prominent force in America that the current President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, had been nominated for the presidency in Baltimore’s Fifth Regiment Armory, then the ninth presidential convention Baltimore had hosted. Only New York City and Philadelphia had more population. Baltimore’s prominence was due in large part to its being both a major East Coast shipping port and the hub for the B&O Railroad, America’s first railway system.
As a port city, it became America’s second leading entry point for the thousands of immigrants arriving by ship. The city’s processing center for new immigrants at Locust Point, situated near Fort McHenry, rivaled New York’s Ellis Island for size and significance. Many immigrants—non-Jews arriving from Europe and the Mediterranean, as well as Jews from Eastern and Western Europe—settled into the city’s burgeoning immigrant communities that preceded them. Another segment in the increasingly diverse ethnic populace was a small but growing black population as they moved away from oppressive Southern states, entered Maryland on their way north, and stayed. In fact, a contingent of black families lived in several narrow streets radiating from the Jewish area of Lombard Street.
However, Baltimore was also becoming one of the most segregated of American cities. Some of this was by personal preference, as Jews often chose to live among co-religionists, and Germans, Irish, Polish, Greek and Italians eagerly formed their own neighborhoods. Little Italy persists today as a reminder of that era. But African-Americans found themselves restricted to living in certain areas of the city, first by unwritten but openly known segregated ‘redlining’ directives and then by formally legislated codes. Jews, too, faced restrictive neighborhood covenants that prevented them from buying homes in various high-end communities, such as Roland Park and Guilford. The result of both informal and formal segregation was that the various blocks around Lombard Street in East Baltimore were, for practical reasons, associated with religious, ethnic or racial communities that grouped themselves together. By the 1950s, restrictive covenants were ruled unconstitutional, and Jews and blacks could more easily live throughout metropolitan Baltimore. Such changes helped speed up the move by Jews away from East Baltimore, such that Lombard Street was no longer a magnet for attracting shoppers to Jewish-owned stores.
Attman’s Delicatessen survived these population shifts. One explanation for its continued presence on Lombard Street is that Harry and Ida and later their family conducted their business in a way that reached out to everyone, not only to Jews but also to non-Jews, whites and blacks, those of high social status and the poor. As a result, many Baltimoreans still have fond memories of the couple and of Attman’s Delicatessen, and have remained friends and patrons. Among those is Maryland State Senator Nathanial McFadden, a leader of the state’s black legislators and now chairman of the Baltimore City Senate Delegation: the Attmans gave him his first job as a youngster working in the deli, an experience he tells others he has treasured; he also recounts how they also encouraged him to get a college education and pursue a career. In fact, the Attmans’ relationship with African Americans may have ensured the delicatessen’s survival. During the Baltimore riots in 1968 in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., blacks living in the neighborhood only let fire trucks into the area when flames threatened the Attman’s store so that it could escape the fires consuming many other shops along Lombard Street.
How did Harry and Ida build a small delicatessen into a Baltimore food icon that has survived and thrived for nearly a century? After all, few if any companies or organizations endure for 100 years. And the Attmans have accomplished this in the face of hard times, both on personal and national levels. They had to deal with the disruption of a world war, a major pandemic (the worldwide Spanish influenza of 1918 struck the city particularly hard, with Baltimore experiencing the fourth highest death rate among U.S. cities), the Great Depression (during which the delicatessen almost went bankrupt, numerous periodic economic downturns, a race riot, prolonged traffic obstructions, road closings, changing neighborhoods, family deaths, all while rearing three children: Edward (born May 31, 1920), Seymour (April 27, 1926), and Leonard (February 18, 1934).
They also attempted to join with two other partners intending to launch a chain of food markets with deli departments. The partners opened one of these stores on Garrison Boulevard near Belvedere Avenue. When that store was not successful, Harry and Ida bought the 1019 East Lombard Street location from the partner who owned the building.
Consider, too, that Harry and Ida suffered from the shady dealings of a partner they took into their business when they bought the store on Lombard Street. Harry renamed the business A & L Delicatessen to incorporate the initials of their two last names. When he eventually discovered that “L,” who opened the store in the morning, had been stealing cash from the register, Harry confronted him. Caught red-handed, a red-faced “L” immediately left and never returned.
So how did Harry and Ida accomplish so much and pass on to their children and grandchildren the lessons that led to the family’s continued successes?
The first instruction was an attention to the products they sold. They offered good quality food and the better cuts of meat prepared with spices and seasonings in a special recipe Harry and Ida developed. That recipe has remained a secret, known by only a few Attman family members and the current manager. Some of Ida’s recipes for baked goods are also still used. Harry purchased with an eye to keep costs down and to respond to changing tastes of customers. He would buy cucumbers at the height of the season in August and put them up as pickles in big barrels. The Attmans also put up their own tomatoes, storing them in cold storage until they were ready for sale. They imported herrings from Norway (for making pickled herring), Scotland (to make matjes herring), and Iceland (for schmaltz herring), and put them in cold storage for later sale, often selling several barrels of herring a day. They also sold, in bulk, dried lima beans, split peas, and a variety of grains.
In preparation for Passover, they featured 100-pound burlap bags of walnuts, hazel nuts, butternuts and almonds; barrels of kosher salamis and bolognas; and wooden cases of dried apricots, sweet and sour prunes, and various-size pears. To serve the Passover needs of Jewish customers in small towns, the Attmans distributed circulars throughout the South and shipped orders to them by American Railway Express. “I remember staying up at night after the store closed to fill these orders,” says Ed. He also remembers the matzohs then in demand: Wittenberg Matzoh (the least expensive at 10 cents a pound), Manischewitz (12 to 13 cents per
