Abraham S. Horwitz Family
Abraham Horwitz was born in Riga, Latvia, in October, 1887. The family name was Schuman and Abraham was one of eight children, four brothers and four sisters. The family emigrated to the United States with the name on their passports as Horwitz.
They first lived in Michigan where the children were educated; Abraham was valedictorian of his high school graduating class.
From Michigan the Horwitz family moved west to Bellingham, Washington. Unable because of the family financial situation to attend university, Abraham apprenticed in his father’s furrier business.
On April 17, 1910, Abraham married Bertha Budashov, who had come from Odessa to Portland, Oregon, in 1905. At the time, he was working for a cousin, travelling the countryside buying scrap metal.
During a working visit to the British Columbia interior, he met a Mr. Gesheit, who had a scrap metal business in Calgary and was looking for a buyer.
By this time, Abraham and Bertha had two children, Annette and Cecil. When Abraham asked Berta about moving to Calgary, a city she had never heard of, she assured him: “Wherever you go, so shall I.”
So in September, 1918, the family arrived in Calgary. Their first home was a small bungalow on the corner of 13th Avenue and 11th Street W. Abraham’s business was started as Calgary Scrap & Metal Co., on 2nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues E.
Abraham and Bertha immediately became active in Jewish communal affairs. Bertha helped form the first Jewish Ladies’ Aid Society, an immigrant welfare group, and Abraham became involved as an expediter of Jewish immigration to Alberta.
Keenly aware of the pot-war plight of European Jews clamoring to move to Canada, Abraham Horwitz became an associate of M. A. Gray of Winnipeg as an agent for the Baltic American Steamship Line.
Horwitz found immigration work demanding but satisfying. There was considerable paperwork, arranging visas, underwriting fares, and personally supplying guarantees of work for many hard-pressed immigrants. Many Western Canadian Jews owe a debt of gratitude to the work of Morris Gray and Abraham Horwitz, without their efforts these immigrants might have remained in Europe to be counted among the Holocaust victims.
Abraham Horwitz remained a community leader until his death in 1951. He was an active member of the House of Jacob Congregation, and was a B’nai B’rith stalwart. He was presented with a gold disc as a B’nai B’rith Honorary President for 1920-21. Bertha died in 1981, at the age of 90.