Heller, Sarah Gofseyeff (1902-1997) | Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Sarah Gofseyeff Heller was born in Russia in December 1902 to Morris Gofseyeff and Rifka (Rebecca) Nissenbaum. After being held as prisoners of war by the Germans during World War I, Sarah and some of her immediate family members immigrated to the United States in 1922, when they settled in the Bronx, New York. Morris acquired an occupation first as a meat inspector and then as an insurance agent, and Sarah and her sister made women's hats. Two of Morris and Rifka's children, Jankel and Rubin, lived in Palestine and did not immigrate with the family. Other relatives remained in Eastern Europe and were murdered in the Holocaust twenty years later.

Sarah Gofseyeff married Emanuel Heller (1900-1986), a newsdealer from Grodno (modern-day Belarus), October 18, 1928 in the Bronx. The couple had two children: Mortimer Bernard "Morty" Heller and Tauby Heller Weichsel Shimkin, who would marry University of Illinois-professor Demetri Boris Shimkin. Heller died May 13, 1997 and is buried at New Montefiore Cemetery in Suffolk County, New York alongside her husband.

National Archives and Records Administration; Washington, DC; NAI Title: Index to Petitions for Naturalizations Filed in Federal, State, and Local Courts in New York City, 1792-1906; NAI Number: 5700802; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: RG 21.

New York City Municipal Archives; New York, New York; Borough: Bronx

New York State Archives; Albany, New York; State Population Census Schedules, 1925; Election District:12; Assembly District: 07; City: New York; County: Bronx; Page: 8.