Yahrtzeit Of Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Observed

On the 100th yahrtzeit of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Manhattan that claimed the lives of 146 workers, a memorial ceremony was held Tuesday at Mount Richmond Cemetery on Staten Island, final resting place of 22 of the victims. The ceremony was conducted by the Hebrew Free Burial Association, which arranged the burials in 1911. Amy Koplow, right, executive director of the Hebrew Free Burial Association, places a stone on a victim’s gravestone.

Further commemoration events will be held this month throughout New York for the tragedy, the costliest industrial accident in the city’s history, which took place on March 25, 1911. Most of the casualties were immigrant women, young Jews and Italians.

The fire, whose anniversary is marked annually outside the building in Greenwich Village, galvanized the labor movement in the United States and led to the passage of worker-protection legislation.