Renee Kasman honors her grandma Yetta Gottman Kasman, whose entire family perished in the Holocaust, save one brother, Meyer. Yetta Gitel Gottman Kasman was born in 1902 in Ostrowiec, Poland, to an Orthodox family. She chose to travel to Canada in the 1920s, where she met her husband, Oscar Kasman. He worked as a tailor in New York City and saved enough money for Yetta to bring her brother Meyer to Canada; unfortunately, they were unable to bring over the rest of Yetta’s family. After meeting a neighbor in the Bronx who came from the same village as Yetta, she eventually found out more details about what had happened to her family. The news caused her to fall ill, and caused her tremendous grief. Throughout her life, she did not like to talk about the loss of her family in Poland.
The Nashville Holocaust Memorial