20 Facts About Esther Shemitz

Esther Shemitz was the youngest child of Rabbi Benjamin Shemitz and Rose Thorner.

In 1926, Esther Shemitz roomed on East 11 Street on the Lower East Side with writer Grace Lumpkin, and they both worked at The World Tomorrow magazine.

Esther Shemitz served as the advertising manager at the New Masses in 1926.

In December 1926, on behalf of the World Tomorrow, Esther Shemitz took Rebecca West to see the Passaic Textile Strike at the Botany Worsted Mills.

In 1929, Esther Shemitz was one of many signatories to form the John Reed Club in New York.

Esther Shemitz illustrated books for International Publishers, notably Labor and Silk by Grace Hutchins, with a cover designed by Louis Lozowick.

At year-end 1929, Esther Shemitz partook in the first-ever art exhibition of the John Reed Club, held at the United Workers Cooperatives apartment buildings on Bronx Park East.

In 1930, Esther Shemitz worked briefly for the Soviet-controlled Amtorg Trading Corporation, AMTORG, a job found for her by Hutchin's partner Anna Rochester.

In May 1930, Esther Shemitz joined scores of artists, writers, and educators, all members of the John Reed Club, in signing a protest against "Red-baiting" protest.

Esther Shemitz cut short her own art career when her husband entered the Soviet underground in mid-1932.

Later, following a grand jury investigation in December 1948, Reuben Esther Shemitz told the press:.

Esther Shemitz told the receptionist that Miss Grace Hutchins wished to see Mr Shemitz.

Esther Shemitz rushed to the only two people he could think of who might know where we were.

Esther Shemitz managed the family's Pipe Creek Farm from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s.

In December 1948, with indictments in the Hiss Case pending, Esther Shemitz struck an elderly female pedestrian with her car; the woman soon died.

Hutchins was the source of many such rumors: another she spread to the Hiss defense team was that Esther Shemitz had told Hutchins that Chambers had spent time in the Westchester Division of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum, a claim she later withdrew.

Esther Shemitz's marriage was witnessed by Grace Hutchins and her life partner Anna Rochester.

Esther Shemitz made her first and only trip abroad, to Europe, with Chambers in the summer of 1959, during which they met Arthur Koestler and Margarete Buber-Neumann among others.

All of Esther Shemitz's paintings are held privately by her family or friends.

Esther Shemitz's illustrations appeared in the Daily Worker newspaper, the New Masses magazine, and the book Labor and Silk and include:.