She Threatened to Drink Poison at Ellis Island If They Denied Her Again: The Fiery Life & Death of Sarah Kalmanowitz Portnoy

By Michael Kelman Portney

She threatened to drink poison in Ellis Island after immigration officials tried to send her back to Russia a second time, and later burned to death cooking dinner when her dress caught on fire. The life of Sarah Kalmanowitz Portnoy is a dual epic of maternal defiance—one chapter written in ink, the other in flame. Born in 19th-century Russia, Sarah endured forced migration, family separation, and patriarchal injustice, ultimately sacrificing herself for a better future she would not live to see. Her tale is not just a family story—it's a microcosm of the Jewish immigrant experience at its most visceral and violent.

Chapter 1: Roots in Poltava

Sarah Kalmanowitz was born in the Russian Empire—likely in or around Poltava, a city known for its turbulent history, particularly for Jews during the Russian pogroms and waves of antisemitic repression. While the exact year of her birth remains uncertain, records suggest she was likely born in the 1860s or early 1870s.

Jewish women of her era and region were often the silent engines of survival: raising large families, managing home economies, and acting as informal nurses and midwives. Sarah was no exception. Oral family tradition and documented history both note that she was a midwife, a role held in high regard in many Eastern European Jewish communities. This work required not only knowledge of medicine and childbirth, but immense emotional resilience. She didn’t just deliver babies—she delivered hope.

Chapter 2: Marriage to Samuel Portnoy

Sarah eventually married Samuel Portnoy, a tailor by trade. Samuel was born in 1869 to Elias and Sarah Portnoy. Like many Eastern European Jews during this time, the Portnoy family faced limited economic opportunity and growing hostility from the Czarist regime.

Together, Samuel and Sarah had several children in Europe: Al (the eldest), and twin sons Jacob and Irving. These children were raised in the harsh political and economic climate of late imperial Russia, where Jews were subject to violence, conscription, and forced assimilation. It’s little wonder that Samuel, like millions of others, looked to America as a promised land.

In 1904, the family decided to emigrate.

Chapter 3: The Crossing and the Crisis at Ellis Island

The Portnoys’ journey to America was not without incident. After Samuel arrived first and saved enough money as a tailor to send for the rest, Sarah made the journey across the Atlantic with their children and her elderly mother-in-law, also named Sarah.

But upon arrival at Ellis Island, disaster struck. Their son Irving was denied entry due to an eye infection—likely trachoma, which immigration authorities viewed as highly contagious. He was refused entry and had to be returned to Europe.

Sarah, faced with the impossible, took Irving back to Europe herself. This was not a minor ordeal—it meant another ocean crossing, another round of financial strain, another dance with bureaucratic cruelty.

When she attempted to return a second time with Irving, the immigration authorities again refused her entry.

That’s when Sarah pulled out a bottle of poison and threatened to drink it right there in the office if they didn’t let her and Irving in. This wasn’t just desperation—it was strategy. It was a battle cry from a mother who would not let the system dismantle her family.

The bluff (or threat) worked. The authorities gave her the necessary papers, and Sarah came back to the United States—this time victorious.

Chapter 4: Life in Brooklyn

The Portnoys settled in Brooklyn, a hub for Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. There, Sarah gave birth to two more children: Mary (b. 1908) and Ruben, or Bob (b. 1906). The family’s life wasn’t easy. Samuel worked long hours as a tailor while Sarah held the household together, likely supplementing their income with midwifery and community care.

She also maintained close ties with her sisters, Nahamka and Rosie, both of whom also made it to the United States. The Kalmanowitz family’s network sprawled across Brooklyn and Philadelphia, their kin intermarrying with Rudermans, Michelmans, and Weiner families. Her brother Joseph even entered the U.S. illegally, taking the name Joseph Romo.

These were not quiet, anonymous immigrants. They were the connective tissue of a growing community—a web of support that built the infrastructure for generations.

Chapter 5: The Fire

In 1918, tragedy returned to Sarah’s doorstep.

That year, while cooking on a coal stove—likely preparing food for her family, as she had done a thousand times before—Sarah’s dress caught fire. Accounts suggest that she was severely burned and died shortly thereafter from her injuries.

The image is harrowing. A woman who had traveled thousands of miles, defied the U.S. government to keep her family together, and built a life from scratch—undone by a moment’s accident. It is both poetic and devastating that fire, which had once symbolized the hearth and home she created, became her undoing.

Her death marked the end of a chapter, but not the book.

Chapter 6: Legacy

Her son Jacob (Jack) married Sara Gross, merging the Portnoy and Gross family trees into a powerful union of survival stories. The children of this lineage would become teachers, dentists, optometrists, lawyers—and one day, writers and storytellers committed to preserving these complex legacies.

Sarah’s influence is unmistakable. Every descendant who lives in relative freedom and comfort owes a debt to the woman who once dared Ellis Island officials to test her resolve with a bottle of poison.

Her story is not one of sainthood but of power. The kind of power born of necessity, wielded not with swords or speeches but with tenacity, presence, and a refusal to be erased.

In a world that often forgets the names of immigrant women who built its cities and birthed its future citizens, this article is a reclamation. Sarah Kalmanowitz Portnoy did not vanish in that fire. She remains in every act of resistance, in every bold choice her descendants make.

And now, she lives again in this story.

In Memoriam

Sarah Kalmanowitz Portnoy Midwife. Immigrant. Matriarch. Fighter. Survivor of a poison bluff and border crossings. Consumed by fire.

Your flame still burns.