Owing to Schloyme’s important position in the community, the Engelbach family lived comfortably. My mother was born in 1900, the fifth of seven children from Schloyme's second marriage to my bubbe, Sima Lea Kronstein. Several of my mother’s siblings lived with their families in other apartments in the building.

My uncle Eliyahu Engelbach was known as the devout one, always studying Torah. Eliya and his wife Frima had a boy, Dov, who was born a year after me and was like my baby brother.