Last of the Three Brothers
Iconic baker helped found a cornerstone of Jewish community
Sigmund Jucker, the last of the original founders of the iconic Three Brothers Bakery that has served as a cornerstone of Houston’s Jewish community for generations, died Friday. He was 98.
Born in the town of Chrzanow, Poland, on Feb. 23, 1922, Jucker was the second- oldest of four children in a family whose small bakery was established around 1825. He and his siblings were the fourth generation to work at the bakery known as Morris Jucker’s Bakery.
After war broke out in Europe in 1939, Jucker was sent to a series of concentration camps during the Holocaust, surviving to see V-E Day, May 8, 1945, when Germany surrendered, marking the end of World War II in Europe. According to his family, one of Jucker’s duties was to wake the people in the camp each morning, and on Liberation Day he found there were no guards watching the camp — the SS officers had fled without turning on the electrified fences — so he used wire cutters to open the gate. With his first breath of freedom, according to his family, “he fell and literally kissed the ground.”
Jucker and his twin brother, Solomon; brother Max; and sister Janie survived the Holocaust, but their parents, Morris and Bertha Siegal Jucker did not. Both perished in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz. Several years later, the brothers, who lived in Germany after the war, followed their sister to make a new life in Houston.
The brothers found work in the bakery at Henke & Pillot, a grocery store in downtown. Deciding they could do better on their own, the brothers in May 1949 purchased a bakery from the Meschkat family on Holman
Street across from Temple Beth Israel and renamed it Three Brothers Bakery.
At their new bakery, the brothers learned to make American cakes and pastries, but theywere known for their original Eastern European recipes for rye bread, challah, Kaiser rolls, bialy rolls, and bagels. According to the company’s website, 3brothersbakery.com, the Juckers were the first to bring the bagel to Houston.
In 1955 Three Brothers moved to Almeda Street, and again to
4036 S. Braeswood in 1960. That store became an integral part of the growing Jewish communities of the Braeswood and Meyerland neighborhoods. While there are now two other locations in Memorial and on Washington Avenue, the South Braeswood bakery is best known and remains and important purveyor of baked goods for Jewish holidays. The bakery, which marked its 70th anniversary in 2019, has survived numerous flood damage, including historic flooding from hurricanes Ike and Harvey.
According to son, Robert Jucker, a fifth- generation baker and the owner of Three Brothers, Sigmund Jucker never really retired,
remaining active in the business for decades and after the death of his two brothers. He worked 16hour days six days a week for more than 50 years to establish a business that would become Houston’s premier kosher-style bakery, his family said.
Sigmund had a passion for health and exercise and followed a strict diet of mostly vegetables and his famous rye bread, according to the family. He could still do 100 push-ups at 80, Robert said.
Throughout his life Sigmund was conscious of the devastating effects of hunger, said Robert, who started working professionally at the bakery in 1983.
“People don’t understand what it is to be hungry. I never understood it myself because my dad made sure we were never hungry. But my dad knew hunger. If someone needed help and needed bread, he gave bread to people. He started giving our day- old bread to the homeless and people who feed the homeless,” Jucker said.
“My dad had a lot of dough, but
itwas the wrong kind. But he said he felt like a millionaire because he survived a horrible situation and came out of it. If you could eat, youwere a wealthy man. And in his eyes, he was a wealthy man.”
Sigmund Jucker is survived by his ex-wife, Edith Jucker; his sister-in-law-Estelle Jucker; children Robert Jucker, Susan Goldberg and Michelle Jucker; five grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews.
The family asks to consider donations to the Holocaust Museum Houston, Emergency Aid Coalition, or a local food bank.