International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Celebrating Valley Jewish history

In recognition of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Mahoning Valley Historical Society joined WFMJ Today on Thursday to provide a glimpse at some of the Valley's most successful Jewish family-owned businesses.

The segment included highlights of Schwebel's Bakery, Kravitz Deli, and the first Arby's Restaurant.

Traci Manning with the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, notes:

Dora Schwebel and Schwebel's Bakery

• In 1906, Joseph and Dora Schwebel began baking 40 loaves of bread per day, selling door to door to their neighbors.  In a few short years, they were serving a growing number of mom and pop stores by horse and buggy.  By 1923 they opened a small bakery that baked 1,000 loaves a day and had six delivery trucks on the road.
• In 1928 Joseph Schwebel died.  Many advised Dora to sell the business, but Dora was equal to the challenge.
• She guided Schwebel Baking Company through the stock market crash and the Great Depression, while at the same time doubling sales and helping feed those in need.
• Throughout the 1930’s and 1940’s Schwebel’s continued to flourish, building a brand new bakery in 1936 and expanding again in 1938 and 1941.  
• Dora died in 1964.   

Rose Kravitz and Kravitz Deli

• Rose Kravitz’s was born in Croatia, and she came to Youngstown with her family in the early 1920s.
• The family settled on the North Side. 
• In 1939, after she married at age 20, Rose and her husband, Herb Kravitz, opened a delicatessen on Elm Street, near Thurston Avenue.  As she explains, they didn’t really know what they were getting into.  With the help and plenty of credit from other local businesses, they were able to open the shop. 
• They faced difficult times keeping the store going during World War II.
• A few years after the war ended, they were able to purchase a building which would house the store downstairs and an apartment for the family upstairs, overlooking Crandall Park.  They kept the deli there through the 1960s, when they began to experience trouble in the neighborhood. 
• In 1970, Kravitz’s moved to a strip mall in Liberty, on Belmont Avenue.

Leroy and Forrest Raffel – Arby’s

• The first Arby’s restaurant — named after Raffel Brothers or R.B. — opened July 23, 1964, on U.S. Route 224 in Boardman.
• The Raffel brothers started their restaurant with no investment.
• By the next year, a second location opened in Liberty Township and the company continued to grow, with about 400 locations by 1976 when the company was sold to Royal Crown Cola.
• Before starting their restaurant, the Raffel brothers ran a food-service layout business.  To add to their business, they decided to start a roast-beef restaurant.
• When Leroy told his wife about the new business venture, she said, “I wouldn’t cross the street for a roast-beef sandwich.”  But their idea blossomed and they perfected the product: a Youngstown-born Schwebel bun made special for the thinly sliced roast beef and the well-known and well-loved Arby’s sauce to top it off — all for just 69 cents.
• “Develop the product the people want and then price it,” Raffel said. “We didn’t invent roast beef, we just developed the concept.”

James Ross and Ross Radio

• James Ross and Dr. Edith Levin Ross emigrated from Russia in 1925, and settled in Youngstown in 1930.
• That year James founded Ross Radio Company, a distributor of radios, televisions, and related components.
• Ross Radio moved to 325 West Federal Street in 1935, and operated here until 2008. James and Edith Ross were active leaders and philanthropists in the Mahoning Valley and for international Jewish causes.
• In 1947, amid rising tensions in the Holy Land before the declaration of the state of Israel, when the British Army confiscated guns from Jewish settlements leaving them defenseless, Ross Radio was a depot for weapons collected from World War II veterans by local members of the Young Zionists of America. These guns and ammunition were packed in crates marked "radio parts" and shipped to New York, where they were cleaned, matched, re-crated, and smuggled into the Holy Land.