By 1940, they were settled in Brooklyn. Regina found work at Lily Daché, the milliner with the movie star clientele who was known for her turbans. Isadore began working out of the family’s new apartment, making what are known as Persian paw plates — lamb pelts sewn together to make a single sheet of fur — and hired a young man named Jacob Schachter, known as Jack, to help him.
Jack and Hedda fell in love, and they married in 1941. She was 17 and still in high school, and he was 21. As she recalled in an oral history for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, it was illegal to be married and attend school, so Jack used to drop her off a block away in his Pontiac.
Isadore’s fur business was successful, and soon they had a small store, then a larger one, named I. Kleinfeld & Son — that would be Jack — from which Isadore, Hedda and Jack sold furs and Regina’s hats and, later, cloth coats and evening gowns. It was Hedda who sought out the fashionable clothing…
This article was written by Penelope Green and originally published on www.nytimes.com