became fewer and fewer and the movement passed almost entirely into Jewish hands.
The Jewish anarchist circles of the East Side played a major role at that time. The most prominent figures were Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Saul Yanovksy, and Johann Most, who was the leader of them all and also the eldest of the group. As a specific Jewish section within the anarchist movement, Jews published Fraye Arbeter Shtime, of which the aforementioned Yanovsky was the editor.8 Most didn’t have much to do with the Fraye Arbeter Shtime since he was a Christian and didn’t know Yiddish.9 He published his German newspaper Freiheit here.
Of the love affairs that occurred during those years between Johann Most, Emma Goldman, and Alexander Berkman, Goldman has already written in detail. Among others, she mentioned two sisters, Helene and Anna Minkin, who were members of this circle.10 The intimate relations between Emma Goldman and Johann Most lasted several years. Later, an argument occurred between them and their love changed into intense hatred. The younger of the two Minkin sisters then became Most’s lover. He lived with her for thirteen years and had two sons.
Most has now been dead for twenty-six years. The articles that we begin publishing here were written by the younger of the two Minkin sisters, Helene, the widow of Johann Most. Some of the things that Emma Goldman writes about in her memoirs, Mrs. Most describes as well, but she relates the same history in her own manner and from her perspective. Her goal, however, is not to polemicize. The main point of her memoirs is to relate various things from her personal life with Most and her experiences in the aforementioned group: her personal observations and so forth.
She relates many interesting things, and everything that she says gives an impression of striking sincerity and simplicity. It’s obvious this is a person who speaks from her whole heart, and that the author is without artifice, a person who is absolutely incapable of embellishment, self-promotion, of taking her own part and tearing down an enemy. Her lines speak the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And it is an unflinching and an interesting truth.
Mrs. Most’s marriage to Most had a special, truly unusual quality. A young woman, not yet nineteen years old, was eager to live with an older man—twenty-eight years older—a man who could have been her father even if she would have been much older. He was certainly no great physical specimen: an older, graying man with a misshapen face. What kind of enthusiasm for marriage was this? This is an interesting question, and the reader will find an answer to it in Mrs. Most’s own memoirs.
One additional note: Johann Most, this frequently imprisoned volcano of dynamite and bombs, was a totally different man in his family life with this younger woman. He practiced and lived free love, but once together with this Jewish woman from Bialystok, he became a totally different person.11 He became a gentle family man to his wife and a tender father to his children. Whenever he was in jail, he maintained the spirit of this family life in his heart. He always had a photo of his two sons in his jail cell.12 The brothers hung by a nail to the wall. Here is the photo of his two sons when they were still children, and the nail-marks are on the photograph.
From one Most there are now two: the passionate, fiery, plotting Most and the Most of his family nest. As we have already told the reader on another occasion, Mrs. Most keeps the ashes from her dead husband Johann Most in a little box. The box is always beside her on a table. She never parts from it. We now give the floor to Mrs. Most.
Storm in my heart
My Father, My Sister, Me, and Emma Goldman
In 1888, that is about forty-four years ago, a young man arrived in America with two almost-grown daughters. The elder of the girls was sixteen and the younger fifteen. The elder was named Anna Minkin, the younger Helena Minkin.13 I am the Helena Minkin about whom Emma Goldman wrote in her book. I am now a woman approaching sixty. My whole life, from its beginning to now, seems to me like a bad dream. This bad dream began a long time ago already, and yet…
Often when I sit in my room in the attic and look back on my life, I cannot remember everything that I have gone through up until now, but I can certainly feel it, sense it, and see it again. I can see clearly before my eyes every corner where the many dramas and tragedies of my life and of the lives of those near and dear to me took place. The whole procession marches before my eyes like a circus parade. Oh how bitter, painful, and hateful many of those things were! It is very difficult for me to express everything I have endured in my life. I have often had the desire to write everything down before I leave this beautiful world and then I ask myself “to what end?” Who would understand me and who would benefit from it? And also, I didn’t want to tear open my wounds and let the blood flow again.
But now, when the famous Emma Goldman has come out with her book, in which she allowed herself to drag in other people and offer incorrect facts in an often wholly unsympathetic and partisan light, I feel it is my duty to not be silent and to reveal the other side of the story. Why wasn’t Emma satisfied with her own life experiences? Why drag in other people who had the misfortune to come into contact with her and play a part in her life? Why does she write whatever her heart wants about these people? Her heart does not want to write the truth. It suits her better to portray these people in an unflattering light, while she portrays herself in a pleasing one. And she can feel confident in her depictions, since some of the people about whom she writes are no longer among the living, and they cannot defend themselves. For example, my father, whom she slanders, is no longer living.14 Most, whom she drags from his heights and through the mud of her story—he is also no longer living. And me: she thinks that I am already as good as dead; but I have not yet died. She writes that my sister was sickly. But Emma knows well that this is not true, and that my sister was a healthy, blossoming, developing girl when they first met. Emma knows that it is her evil conscience that speaks when she says that my sister was sickly.15 Yes, Emma knows very well that it’s because of her that my sister became sick and suffered throughout her life, ultimately passing away while still very young. I was the sick, pale, undeveloped one when we met. I suffered from weltschmerz16 and headaches, while my sister was filled with a lust for life.
Intersection of Norfolk and Hester Street, Lower East Side, New York, 1898.
(Zenodot Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, www.zeno.org)
When I first met Emma, in Sachs’ restaurant (where the Jewish anarchists used to gather), I lived in a small two-room flat with my father and sister.17 Anna had taught herself how to make clothes and cut material soon after we arrived in America. Emma told us that she was a garment-maker, so she and my sister decided to go into business for themselves. My father and I were happy that my sister wouldn’t have to go to work in a shop, and since Emma had just arrived from Rochester and didn’t have anywhere to stay, we took her into our home.18 My father moved in with a neighbor in order to make room for her. Emma brought her sewing machine, and she and my sister began to make clothing.
My father would visit us every day. I think it’s extremely hateful of Emma to say that my father didn’t look at my sister with the eyes of a father, but rather as a man looks at his wife, and that he hated me, his youngest daughter. My father loved my sister more than he loved me, that’s true, but it’s absolutely disgusting and untrue to say that his love for my sister was sinful or sexual, and that he hated me. My sister was the firstborn: a beautiful, healthy, cultivated girl with a sweet and pleasing voice; she would always sing so sweetly and delightfully. My father himself had a very fine voice and he sang beautifully.19 It is therefore no wonder that he loved his elder daughter and looked at her with fondness and love. Only Emma could interpret my father’s feelings toward my sister negatively, as she did in her book.
I recall that when I was very young, I used to listen to how my father and sister sang so beautifully. I loved them both so much because of it. Deep in my heart I love their singing,
