Jacob Marinoff Papers and Photographs

Jacob Marinoff was a founder and the first superintendent of the JCRS Sanatorium in 1906. He served as the field secretary for four years, doing press and propaganda work in Yiddish. He was also involved in The Sanatorium, a journal from the JCFRS Press and Propaganda Committee. Jacob Marinoff was born in Russia in 1869 and immigrated United States in 1893. He came to Denver in 1895. He married May Charsky, the sister-in-law of Dr. Charles Spivak, in 1899. They were divorced and Jacob Marinoff went to the New York JCRS office in 1909. In New York he collected money for the JCRS from Jewish fraternal orders, unions, ladies' auxiliaries, and many more sources. After he moved to New York, he began publication of the “Big Stick,” a Jewish magazine of satire, humor, and cartoons, which he operated for 19 years. The magazine included such authors as Sholom Aleichem, Sholem Asch, I. J. Singer and Alexander King. Jacob Marinoff also wrote many volumes of poetry and prose in Yiddish. In 1948, he returned to the JCRS in Denver for the 25th anniversary. He died in 1964 at the age of 94 in the Bronx, New York. His sister Fania Marinoff was associated with one of the most vibrant artistic circles in the United States and Europe. Fania Marinoff and her husband, Carl Van Vechten, played a prominent role in the bohemian social and artistic life of New York, particularly of the Harlem Renaissance. They hosted parties and salons that included Gertrude Stein, Eugene O'Neill, Georgia O'Keeffe, Paul Robeson, Langston Hughes, Ethel Waters, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, and many luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. She and her husband continued to entertain a large circle of friends in the arts until his death in 1964. Fania Marinoff died seven years later, on November 16, 1971, in Englewood, New Jersey.