Janet Sobel was born as Jennie Olechovsky in 1893 in Katerynoslav, Russian Empire (now Dnipro, Ukraine). Her father, Baruch Olechovsky, was killed in a Russian pogrom. In 1908, Sobel moved to Brighton Beach, Brooklyn with her mother, Fannie Kinchuk, a midwife, and her siblings. Two years later, she married Max Sobel, a fellow emigrant from Ukraine, with whom she had five children.
Disappointment, Janet Sobel, 1943
