The founding of Black Star is a story told against the backdrop of the looming war in Europe, the Great Depression in America and the promise of opportunity in New York.
Benjamin J. Chapnick remembers Safranski as "the linchpin in the creation of Black Star," Kornfeld as the "public face of Black Star" and Mayer as "the heart and soul of Black Star."
"Their families had been a happily entwined clan in Germany and they settled them now in Westchester County, thirty minutes north of midtown Manhattan. Each morning the men would climb aboard the commuter train in New Rochelle, where they lived just blocks away from each other, and together the three comrades, the three flüchtlinge of the Eastern Seaboard, would ride the New Haven Line into Grand Central."
(from the essay by Michael Torosian)