Joseph Berman, 89, a retired wholesale jewelry salesman, lifelong Zionist and accomplished Yiddishist who witnessed the Russian Revolution, died Tuesday, Jan. 9, in the Self Help Home on the North Side. Mr. Berman recalled waving a little red flag at a parade in the small Ukrainian town of Nemirov for the 1917 revolution. After his father immigrated to America, Mr. Berman and his three sisters and mother lived through a pogrom by hiding in a basement. His father read their names on a list of survivors printed in the Jewish Forward, and in 1922 sent an agent to get them. They escaped by hiding in a wagon and crossing a frozen lake into Poland, then traveling steerage to Ellis Island. The 11-year-old Mr. Berman, who spoke only Yiddish, quickly learned English. He graduated from Tuley High School and received a college degree in accounting from Crane College. He was an early socialist and lived in the Humboldt Park area, where he met Tybel Lerman, a devotee of Yiddish theater and music. He moved to New York, where they married and he worked as a salesman and a wartime clerk for the 5th Army Command Records Depot. Mr. Berman returned to Chicago’s West Side, later moving to the Albany Park neighborhood, and built a business selling costume jewelry wholesale at small factories and business offices and on Maxwell Street. He prided himself on being able to negotiate in numerous languages, including Spanish and Assyrian. He wrote Yiddish poetry and impeccably metered English rhymes commemorating family milestones. He was an active member of the Labor Zionist Alliance and Chicago YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research. “They had a really rich expatriate life of Jewish and Yiddish culture,” said his son Chuck, a Tribune photographer. Mr. Berman suffered the premature losses through illness of his 28-year-old son, Michael, and of his wife. When he was in his 60s, he married the former Pearl Bloom. He read Yiddish poetry to her in the evenings until her death in 1996. Mr. Berman is also survived by another son, Dr. Nolan; a sister, Ann Kwitko; a brother, Louis; and four grandchildren. Services will be held at 11 a.m. Friday in the Piser Original Weinstein Chapel, 3019 W. Peterson Ave., Chicago.
