Category Archives: Family history

July 18, 2011 · 7:52 am

Reclaiming My German Citizenship

by Donna Swarthout (Berlin, Germany)

It was last June that my husband Brian and I completed our applications for German citizenship before moving from Bozeman, Montana to Berlin, Germany.  By reclaiming our German citizenship we hoped to come “full circle” as the descendants of German Jews who fled Nazi Germany in the late 1930s.  We are still waiting for the magical moment when we learn that our citizenship has been restored, but we both believe it will be worth the wait.

It was not a magical moment when we told my mother that we were moving to Germany.  The opportunity to connect with my past, become fluent in a language I fell in love with as a child, and to once again be Jewish in Germany meant nothing to her.  How could we bring her grandchildren to the place of horror and persecution from which she and my father had fled?  No answer would suffice.  She did not speak to us for six weeks.

I don’t know what it felt like for my parents and grandparents to be stripped of their German citizenship, to be stateless from 1938 until 1944, and to finally become American citizens.  My maternal grandmother seemed to remain stateless, eventually leaving America for Israel, then Switzerland, and finally going back to her beloved  Germany.  My paternal grandparents were more typical immigrants, creating their own oasis of German culture in the middle of New York’s Washington Heights neighborhood (complete with apfel strudel, kartoffel salat, and lots of wurstchen).

No form of Holocaust reparation is enough, but reclaimed citizenship has more significance for me than any financial restitution our family may receive.  My children and their descendants will have opportunities that my grandparents could never have imagined.  We will have access to Germany’s universal health care system and free system of higher education.  We will automatically become citizens of the European Union which means we can live, work, and study at a university in any EU country under the same conditions as nationals.  We will not have to give up our American citizenship, nor do we want to.

I will take full ownership of my identity when I regain the citizenship that was stripped from both my parents’ families.  As a German American Jew I can embrace each of these three elements of my identity to whatever degree I wish.  Just as I have always struggled with what it means to be Jewish, I will always struggle with what it means to be German.  But I am entitled to my German citizenship, and I may soon have it.

After months of fruitless attempts to track down my citizenship application, I learned in March that the all-efficient German bureaucracy had lost it.  The application contained many documents that I had painstakingly put together to establish my German Jewish identity.  These were my personal historical building blocks that had suddenly vanished.  The official who delivered this disturbing news politely apologized and suggested I file a new application and begin the process all over again.  His cold words hit me like a stamp that says “no one cares.”

Now it is June again, our first school year in Germany is coming to an end, and my oldest son is preparing for his bar mitzvah in Berlin this fall.  Avery’s bar mitzvah will take place on the anniversary of my father’s bar mitzvah in New York City in 1942.  My son and my father will have both taken this step as immigrants, and as German American Jews who belong to a vibrant and thriving Jewish community.

I also have high hopes that the stress and frustration of trying to move my  citizenship application forward are finally behind me.  My application was eventually found and is being processed in Rathaus Schoeneberg, the place where John F. Kennedy gave his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in 1963.  Kennedy not only said that he was a Berliner, but that “all free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin.” As we embark on our second year of living in Germany, I feel optimistic that Kennedy’s vision will become a reality for me.

Donna Swarthout came to Berlin with her family to explore her German Jewish heritage and identity and the nature of Jewish life in Germany today.  You can read more about her experiences on her blog Full Circle: www.dswartho.wordpress.com

And you can hear her reading a version of this story on NPR’s Berlin Stories: http://berlinstories.org/2012/06/27/donna-swarthout-on-coming-full-circle/

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July 4, 2011 · 9:59 am

Sweet Dreams

by Janet R. Kirchheimer (New York, NY)

Sometimes I dream I’m the one who kills Hitler.
It’s simple. I walk up to him,
shoot him in the face, and watch his head
explode into a million
glass pieces that clink on the floor
like a Saturday morning cartoon character’s.
Except he doesn’t get back up.

And sometimes I am Yael.
I invite Hitler into my tent as he flees from his enemies.
He tells me he is thirsty, and I
give him milk, and he falls fast asleep.
I pick up a tent pin and hammer. I drive the pin
through his temple until it reaches the ground.

Other times I’m part of the plot to assassinate him
aboard his plane. This time I make sure
the bomb explodes. He falls faster and faster, crashing
with such force the earth swallows him up, as if he never

existed, and I’m sitting on the back porch, the sun is shining,
and all my grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles
are laughing and telling stories.

Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us (2007), a collection of poems about her family and the Shoah. Her poems and essays have appeared in several journals such as the Connecticut Review and Limestone, as well as on Beliefnet. She is a teaching fellow at Clal.

This poem has been reprinted with the kind permission of the author and Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

For more about Kirchheimer’s work, visit: http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=janet+r+kirchheimer&page=index&prod=univ&choice=allproducts&query=Janet+R+Kirchheimer&flag=False&ugrp=2

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April 25, 2011 · 8:07 am

How I Knew and When

by Janet R. Kirchheimer (New York, NY)

Age 8 – My father hangs upside down on a pipe that was part of a fence
that separated our street from the next. All of his change
falls from his pockets. He looks so young.

Age 15 – “There were one hundred and four girls
in the Israelitisch Meisjes Weeshuis orphanage in Amsterdam.
Four survived,” my mother says.
“I remember Juffrouw Frank, the headmistress.  She made us
drink cod-liver oil each morning. She said it was healthy for us.”

Age 17 – My father tells me his father and sister, Ruth, got out
of Germany and went to Rotterdam. They were supposed to
leave on May 11, 1940, for America. The Nazis invaded on May 10.

Age 21 – My mother tells me Tante Amalia told her
that on the Queen Elizabeth to America in 1947, after she
and Onkel David were released from an internment camp
on the Isle of Man, she was so hungry she ate twelve rolls
every day at breakfast. She said it was the best time she ever had.

Age 24 – My father tells me, “Otto Reis got out of Germany
in 1941. He took a train to Moscow, the Trans-Siberian railroad to
Vladivostok, a boat to Shanghai, a boat to Yokohama, a boat to
San Francisco, and a bus to Philadelphia, his wife and three sons
staying behind. Carola Stein signed affidavits for them, but
the government said she didn’t make enough money.”

Age 31 – My mother’s cousin refuses to accept money a rich
woman left him. He says the money has too much blood on it.
My mother tells me that in 1939 her cousin had asked this woman
to sign affidavits for his wife and two daughters. She said no.

Age 33 – My father asks me to dial the number. His hands shake.
He asks my cousin Judy if she wants to send her three children out
of Israel during the Gulf War. She says she can’t let them go.

Age 42 – A waiter in a Jerusalem hotel tells my father
he should come to live in Israel, because it’s home.
My father tells him, “Home is anywhere they let you in.”

Janet R. Kirchheimer is the author of How to Spot One of Us (2007), a collection of poems about her family and the Shoah. Her poems and essays have appeared in several journals such as the Connecticut Review and Limestone, as well as on Beliefnet. She is a teaching fellow at Clal.

This poem has been reprinted with the kind permission of the author and Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

For more about Kirchheimer’s work, visit: http://productsearch.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?WRD=janet+r+kirchheimer&page=index&prod=univ&choice=allproducts&query=Janet+R+Kirchheimer&flag=False&ugrp=2

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January 31, 2011 · 9:01 am

Ernestine’s Fudge Ministry

by Sharlya Gold (Sarasota, FL)

Sometimes a kid, not necessarily the best looking or the smartest, stays in your mind long after you leave school. For me, that kid was nose-in-the-book, Bible-reading Ernestine Rogers. She didn’t call attention to herself, but if there was a riff in all the horsing around before our 8th grade math class started, you could hear the soft turn of a page. Or even while the teacher was explaining a problem.

The first time that happened, Mrs. Adams didn’t appear to notice. She was at the chalkboard, her back to the class, until somebody tattled. “Mrs. Adams, Ernestine’s not paying attention!”

The teacher turned around, holding the chalk like a baton, and I felt sorry for Ernestine. She’d only been in class for a week; still, she should have known better.

But instead of scolding her, the teacher fixed the rest of us with an angry glare. “People, my job is teaching, and yours is learning. Do you have to write it 100 times to make it stick in your brains?”

“No, ma’am,” we mumbled, and after that we just pretty much ignored Ernestine. When she read her Bible, we just kept quiet, and most of us pretended not to notice.

I noticed, though, because Ernestine was a wonder to me. Imagine! A mousy little thing like that, standing up to the teacher. It began to bug me, wondering how she did it, so one noontime I passed up having lunch with my friends and went to the table near the back wall where Ernestine always sat

I slid onto the bench across from her. “Hi, Ernestine.”

She’d been reading, and now she looked up, keeping her place with a finger. She smiled, a surprised, happy smile. “Do you want to eat with me?”

“Uh…I guess so.”

I didn’t expect to feel so uncomfortable.

“It’s… nice back here,” I managed to say.

“It’s lonely, though.”  She smiled again. “But not today.”

She wasn’t making it any easier, acting like we were good friends.

Finally, I just said it. “Ernestine, I’ve been wondering why you always read the Bible, plus how you get away with it.”

“It’s just something I do,” she said. “When you trust in the Lord, you try to follow what He says which means learning the Holy Scriptures.” She paused. “Let me ask you a question. How well do you know the Lord?”

“About as well as I know math. Why?”

Instead of answering, she reached inside her lunch bag and brought out two neatly wrapped squares. “Homemade fudge,” she said, pushing one toward me. “It’s pretty good.”

Pretty good? It was great! Full of walnuts and not too sweet. I’d never tasted fudge like that–and I’d never met anyone like Ernestine.

While I ate the fudge, she read the Bible to me, all about the eternal damnation lying in wait for people who don’t seek salvation through Jesus Christ. “I’m going to help you get saved,” she said, and later, much later, I realized that Ernestine’s ministry had begun with me.

We had lunch together the next day, too, along with a little conversation, more fudge, and Bible reading. My two best friends got mad. They said I could eat with that girl my whole life and wouldn’t let me walk with them to our next class which Ernestine wasn’t even in!

I hadn’t told them about the fudge, but it really was the high point of having lunch with Ernestine. It certainly made listening to the Bible easier. Although I’d gone to Sunday School, those Biblical stories were totally new to me, and before long they started interfering with my sleep. Whenever I closed my eyes, I’d see those poor tormented people. I had to stay awake to keep them out of my dreams.

But Ernestine didn’t always read the Bible.  Sometimes, she’d just talk. She’d tell me about regular people who’d played into Satan’s hands. Like the doctor who was too busy saving lives to get himself saved. And the pilot who intended to get saved, but died in a plane crash before he got around to it. And the kind, generous couple who believed that good deeds alone would get them into Heaven. “They’re all in agony this very minute,” Ernestine would assure me. “I just pray that their lives are a warning to others.” I didn’t have to ask what others. She meant me.

After one especially tragic story, I raced home, threw myself into my mother’s arms, and burst into tears. The story of what I’d been going through for almost two weeks tumbled out as did my overwhelming fear: our family was going to Hell. “We have to get saved!” I cried, half-choking in my hurry to spur my mother into action, “We have to do it right away before we die. You and Daddy are already old!”

My mother stroked my hair and held me close until I stopped crying. “Now, listen to me. There are many different beliefs about God and many different ways to interpret the Bible. We Jews believe in God,  but not in the existence of Hell or Satan.”

“Are you sure we’re not going to burn forever and ever?” I asked.

“I’m sure, but if you talk to the rabbi, you’ll understand more. He’s better at explaining than I am. Want me to call him?”

I already felt better. I trusted my mother. She didn’t lie to me. She never said that medicine wasn’t bitter when it was or that a shot wasn’t going to hurt when she knew it would.

“That’s okay, Mama,” I said. “I was just so scared.”

She tilted my wet face so she could look into my eyes.  “Is there anything else?”

“Yes. One thing.” I took a deep breath. “Ernestine says we have to pray to Jesus.”

My mother thought about this awhile before she said, “Jews pray to God. Not to Jesus. Jews believe that Jesus was a wise teacher and a good, kind man. But a man. Like Abraham.”

I started to cry all over again. “But what’ll I do about Ernestine?”

“I don’t know that you have to do anything but be respectful of her beliefs. You can do that without accepting them for yourself, can’t you?”

I said yes, kissed my mother, and went to wash my face. But I couldn’t wash away what was really bothering me.  It was the fudge.

My conscience pointed out that I couldn’t go on accepting Ernestine’s fudge since I had no intention of accepting her salvation.

But I’d be earning the fudge by listening, I argued.

My conscience wouldn’t give up. Is it a fair trade, knowing what you know? it asked

I preferred not to answer, and in the end my conscience was no match for the fudge. Ernestine and I had went on having lunch together. I never told her what my mother said and made sure I was respectful as always. Still, something had changed, a subtle shift in our positions. I think she sensed that I was no longer frightened by her stories or in awe of her. The day she stopped bringing fudge, I knew it was over. I made up with my friends, and Ernestine went back to reading the Bible to herself.

She moved away after that year, and I lost track of her, but, recently, a friend from junior high told me he’d heard that Ernestine had become a preacher. She even had a church of her own.

I hadn’t thought of Ernestine for years, but I didn’t have to dig deep for the memory of how I’d dropped her like a lead weight when the fudge ran out. Guilt has never lain much below the surface in my psyche.

But hearing about her success sent a burst of relief through me, much like the time my mother allayed my fears of Hell. All those years, I’d carried the secret fear that I’d ruined Ernestine’s life. How silly it seemed now. How egotistical to imagine that she’d given up because her fudge ministry with me had failed. Good for you, Ernestine! I felt like shouting. Good for you!

And good for my mother, too, I thought. She could have discouraged our friendship, viewing it as a threat to my spiritual development. Instead, she took the occasion to teach me respect for others and their beliefs. That lesson stuck, even though my passion for chocolate fudge faded. My heart and mind—and waistline—have never been sorry.

Sharlya Gold, the author of The Potter’s Four Sons: A Fable and The Answered Prayer and Other Yemenite Folktales, writes books for children, and articles and memoirs for adults.  She teaches ”Writing your Life, Without Starting at the Beginning” at Temple Emanu El in Sarasota, Florida, where she lives with her husband, Len (“who deserves a medal,” she says, “for Support, Endurance, and Patience”).

“I had always considered this personal experience distinctly Jewish,” Gold says about the experience that she shares  in Ernestine’s Ministry of Fudge. “Two children, one with an early calling to proselytize, the other frightened into rejecting her own belief system. But as I learned after sharing this story,  many non-Jews, too, had their own childhood conversion stories.”

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December 13, 2010 · 9:04 am

From the Promenade

by Mel Glenn (Brooklyn, NY)

My parents passed the Statue of Liberty,
refugees from the ravages of the second World War
searching for a piece of the American dream pie.
Child of immigrants, I stand now, some 60 years later
staring out at the same lady from the Promenade
in Brooklyn where earlier strangers to the shore
battled the British with meager resources.
Before me, across the busy East River,
lie the jagged teeth of the city skyline,
blocking the exposed cavity of 9/11.
Other immigrants, other times, same religion
came through the cavernous halls
of Castle Garden where they were
accepted or rejected for arbitrary reasons.
This harbor of my Jewish forefathers
seems less welcoming now, awash in the tide
of a resurgent radicalism loath to let in
anyone new and foreign and strange.
The port of New York sits warily
across the railing of the Promenade,
keeping its once wide open door cynically ajar.
Fortunate now, I see America in parts.
Then, would I have even been permitted in?

The author of twelve books for young adults, Mel Glenn has lived nearly all his life in Brooklyn, NY, where he taught English at A. Lincoln High School for thirty-one years.  Lately, he’s been writing poetry, and you can find his most recent poems in a new YA anthology, This Family Is Driving Me Crazy,  edited by M. Jerry Weiss. For more information about Mel’s work, visit his website: http://www.melglenn.com/

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December 6, 2010 · 9:18 am

Zaidie and Ferdele

by Carol Katz (Montreal, Quebec, Canada)

I loved Ma’s father, Zaidie Gedalia. He and Bubby Bobtze lived on City Hall Street near Mount Royal Ave. This was Montreal in the 1940s, the era and area of Mordecai Richler, Baron Byng High School, and Wilensky’s juicy smoked meat sandwiches on rye, served with a generous portion of greasy, salty French fries. But the unique geography of Montreal is its high mountain in the middle of the city. I also remember the marble grey statue of Jacques Cartier, the bandstand, and Beaver Lake. Zaidie and I spent hours together each summer watching the katchkes (ducks) and walking in the woods. What I cherished most were the horse and buggy rides.

I lived with Ma, Daddy and my younger sister Rona on Park Avenue between Bernard and Saint Viateur Streets. Our tiny one-bedroom apartment was situated above Duskes’ Hardware Store. Ma and Daddy slept in the living room. Rona and I shared the one bedroom. Park Avenue in the 40s and 50s was primarily Jewish. I remember Ben’s Delicatessen across the street and Pascal’s Hardware Store at the corner. I took ballet and tap dance lessons at Rialto Hall, now a movie theatre. Since Park Avenue was a main thoroughfare, the rumble of the streetcars often disturbed my sleep.

Passover Seders at my grandparents’ home were the highlights of each year. The number nine streetcar on Park Avenue took us to Mount Royal Avenue. We walked four blocks on Mount Royal Avenue, passing the Y.M.H.A, and the Jewish Public Library. As soon as I arrived at Bubby’s and Zaidie’s, I jumped onto Zaidie’s lap and showered him with hugs and kisses. His white, wispy hair blew from side to side as he shook his head and his large, dark-framed glasses fell onto the bridge of his nose.

His face lit up when I bit into those sweet, soft, half-moon Passover candies.  He didn’t mind my sticky, sugary fingers on his cheeks. Then I went into the warm cozy kitchen to kiss my Bubby’s red cheeks and greasy hands. She was at the stove with its black, thick, iron-stove pipe reaching up to the ceiling. I still taste her succulent roast chicken and potato knishes, filled with onions and pepper.

At every Seder, I was chosen to recite the Four Questions from the Haggadah. I began with the first one: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” But, each year, I added a fifth and sixth question: “Zaidie, what was life like for you in the old country? Why did you leave?”

Zaidie’s answer was the same: “Meydele, (little girl) I already told you my story last year.”  I would laugh and pretend that I did not remember.

Then he began: “I was born in a shtetl (small Jewish town) called Kamenetz-Podolsk in the Ukraine, which was part of Russia. I worked in a shop that made iron for stoves. One day, I noticed a young woman who had entered the shop. I immediately knew that I was going marry her. I fell in love with her beauty and gracefulness. Sarah and I were married within six months.”

“Your aunt Jenny was born in the first year of our marriage. Five years later your mother, Libby, came into this world. We spoke Yiddish and Russian. I read the Haggadah in Hebrew, which I learned in cheder” (Jewish elementary school).

“One morning, as I was about to leave for the iron shop, we heard a loud knock on the front door. I answered. A gun was pointing at my nose. Two burly, moustached Russian soldiers forced me backwards into the living room. Bubby was sitting on the couch, knitting a sweater. Jennie and Libby were in school. Bubby began to scream. I begged them to let us go. The younger one stared at us with piercing eyes and hesitated. Without warning they both walked out.”

We all knew the rest of the story—how Bubby Bobtze, Auntie Jenny and Ma came first, the long, tiring, ride on the ship, the seasickness, and the arrival in a strange country, not knowing the language. They stayed with Zaidie’s brother Berel on St. Urbain Street.

Zaidie found work as a scrap peddler soon after he arrived in Montreal. In the 1950s, horse-drawn wagons still plied the streets of Montreal. Zaidie owned a horse that he called “Ferdele” (small horse).  Ferdele had a light brown sheen with a silky, long black mane, a white, furry face and pink nose. The fur on her long white legs covered her hoofs. She gazed at me with such intelligence and understanding. Ferdele looked enormous beside Zaidie’s small stature and thin body. However, she neighed with pleasure whenever Gedalia stroked or fed her. I became attached to Ferdele. The stable was in back of his house on City Hall Street.

I begged Zaidie to let me accompany him on his selling jaunts. But his answer was always the same: “You are too young, maydele, and you are too small to reach the reins.” I put my wish aside and concentrated on my schoolwork.

But one day he changed his mind and called me. Zaidie had decided that 12 was old enough to hold the reins. I ran all the way to his house, my heart skipping a beat, my hands trembling and my legs weak. Hand in hand, we walked towards the stable. There was Ferdele, standing tall in all her majesty.

The wagon with its rickety wheels stumbled along slowly. Ferdele seemed to know when to adjust her pace. As we passed the houses, we shouted: “Bottles, Rags, Clothes.” People would come to us, pick some items and give us a few cents. I felt a sense of wonder at a world so different from the classroom.

Suddenly I wasn’t a poor school girl anymore. I was a princess riding in my gold coach with Zaidie the King. I held the reins in my royal hands and led Ferdele, our royal steed. On and on we journeyed down the avenue towards the palace. I began to relax the reins. Without warning, the wagon jerked, the wheels started grinding and the horse began to speed up. Before I knew it, we were in the air, soaring like a kite. I grabbed the reins and held on tight. Zaidie was laughing, saliva streaming down his long greyish-white beard blowing in the wind. His kipa (skullcap) slid off his head and whirled downward. Ferdele began climbing higher and higher, her black, silky mane drinking in the air. The whitish-grey clouds enveloped us in a soft, cotton blanket. My cheeks were flushed. I closed my eyes.

I heard a strange sound. I opened my eyes. Zaidie was shouting: “Bottles, Rags, Clothes.” A woman came out of her house and picked an old, long, flowery red skirt, a nickel in her hand.

Ferdele obeyed Zaidie’s commands most of the time. However, this horse had a stubborn streak in her. One day, as Zaidie sat in the wagon, pulling on the reins as he did every other day, Ferdele came to a sudden stop. Zaidie was jerked back in his seat. In an instant, glass bottles rolled out of the wagon, miraculously not smashing into smithereens when they hit the road. Dresses in all shapes and colours flew out of the wagon, helter-skelter. Cars honked. Drivers yelled. Some got out of their cars. People ran out of their houses and jumped into the pile of clothing, retrieving whatever they could. Two ladies were seen fighting over the high-necked, silky green dress.

But Zaidie remained calm, sitting in his seat, staring at the mess. After all he was King of the road. He was clothed in a red, velvet cape with white fur trimming, a golden, shiny sceptre in his hand. A silver crown, studded with diamonds, adorned his head.

Zaidie gazed at Ferdele. He was looking at a magnificent mare. Her white, furry face appeared majestic. Her brown sheen turned into white, silky fur, adorned with a long, silvery mane stretching across her back. Zaidie’s face shone like the crown on his head as Ferdele pranced gracefully on her golden, dainty feet along the red-carpeted road. She was no longer just a small horse from the shtetl. She was Zaidie’s royal princess. Without warning, Zaidie dropped his sceptre and climbed onto princess. They soared and soared, cape and mane flying in the wind.

The commotion on the street pierced Zaidie’s ears. His eyes looked down at his hands. With a quick tug on the reins, Ferdele began to move again.

“Bottles, Rags, Clothes.”

Carol Katz has worked as a teacher, librarian, archivist and administrative assistant, and her short stories, poems, articles, and book reviews have appeared in various anthologies and journals. Her most recent story, “Zaidie and Ferdele,” was published in Living Legacies: A Collection of Writing by Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women, Volume 2. Edited by Liz Pearl. Toronto: P.K. Press, 2010, and it’s reprinted here with permission of the author.

She lives in Montreal, Quebec, with her husband, Sol, a bibliophile, and has two wonderful children.  She can be reached at: katzcarol2@videotron.ca

For more information about Living Legacies: A Collection of Writing by Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women, visit: http://at.yorku.ca/pk/ll.htm

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November 15, 2010 · 8:45 am

My Grandmother’s Kitchen

By Ferida Wolff (Cherry Hill, NJ)

My grandmother’s kitchen smelled of
allspice and cloves,
hot frying oil,
pungent sour salad
all mixed up with summer heat
and years of family dinners.

Give me the recipes,
Grandma, I begged
as I sniffed at the pots
on the old-fashioned stove.
She smiled her Mona Lisa smile
and told me to take
a glass of this,
a soup-plate of that,
mix it and fry it
and there it is;
no magic about
the nose teasing smells,
the tongue pleasing tastes.

But when I tried it
somehow mine wasn’t the same.
Perhaps my soup-plate
was too big or
too small.
The pinch of salt
she neglected to mention
made a difference
though not enough –
something was missing.
When I asked her why
she shrugged with innocence.

It took me years to discover
that the food she cooked
was her gift to us,
our inheritance,
her life reflected
in the shimmering oil
of the frying pan.

Ferida Wolff’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Moment Magazine, Midstream, Horizons, and Woman’s World, among other periodicals. An author of seventeen books for children and three essay books for adults, she has also contributed stories to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and HCI’s Ultimate series, as well as online at www.grandparents.com and as a columnist for www.seniorwomen.com. You can visit her website for more information: www.feridawolff.com or her blog at http://feridasbackyard.blogspot.com/

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October 4, 2010 · 7:10 am

Mr. Blumen

by Chaim Weinstein (Brooklyn, NY)

Stiffly they sit, side by side
In sepia-flavored photo on the shelf
Their hundred-year synced stories
Now torn by jagged scythe most quick
From the banshee-screaming reaper:
The cossack’s rapier brandished high
In Warsaw, slashed and missed them.
The dysentery, the loneliness
Vale-filled tears, endless pain:
They survived it all,
Two lovers near burning in the ghetto;
Sixty years on, now one off
So how shall he presume?
Without her skin to smell,
Her wisdom and nags
Her giggles and word-arrows
Piercing his cast-iron armor
Or lighting his slow-built ardor
Why breathe? But he will
Most assuredly go on,
For the Eldest Cossack
Has missed yet again.

Chaim Weinstein taught English for more than thirty years at two inner-city junior high schools in Brooklyn, NY. His poem, “The Shul is Dark,” appeared on The Jewish Writing Project (February, 2010), and an early short story, “Ball Games and Things,” was published in Brooklyn College’s literary magazine, Nocturne. He is currently working in several genres and is hoping to  share a larger selection of his work in the future.

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September 27, 2010 · 7:34 am

Devotion to Faith

by Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc (New York, NY)
Translated from the Polish by Suzanna Eibuszyc (Calabasas, CA)

Painful though this will be, I have decided that she is right. I do this not so much to preserve my own story, but rather that my brothers and sisters will not have perished with their stories untold. I risk feeling again the tormented sleep on an open field with one, thin blanket between me and the sky. My stomach will again be gnawed away by the constant hunger.  I will see the German planes over Warsaw and hear the explosions of bombs. Will those who read of my life be ready for the lice, the humiliation, and the never-ending fever and chills of malaria? Will they understand that it is possible to lose one’s mother two times?  Should I describe the beatings that put Sevek at the edge of death, or the cold that seeped into my bones and never quite left? They tell me I am to ‘bear witness,’ that I ‘have an obligation.’   So be it.  It was beshert, meant to be that I live the life I’ve had, and I suppose beshert that I now write what I remember:

We lived in Warsaw in a tiny fourth floor apartment in an old tenement building on 54 Nowolipki Street. That apartment comes back to me in my dreams. I see the eight of us living in one room, although in reality I could never have seen this; I was a one year-old baby.  The First World War had not yet ended when my thirty-six year old father died.  It was a sudden death from something as simple as an ear infection.  When I was older, I remember going with mother to the cemetery. A cut down tree trunk marked his grave.

I can not imagine how mother managed with no husband and six young children in a city ravaged by war where most everyone was struggling to survive.  My oldest brother, Adek, was twelve at the time father died. It was a blessing that the owner of the textile factory where father worked let Adek take father’s job. I am sure that it was thanks to that owner’s generosity that we survived that first year, as well as later on. My twin sisters, Pola and Sala, were eleven, and as hungry as we were, Mother did not have the heart to send them off to work. That this was not the case with other parents says so much about my mother. Many children were sent to work at a younger age than twelve.  My sister, Andza, and brother, Sevek, were seven and four at the time of father’s death.

My first memories still haunt me to this day. I don’t know how old I was but I see myself with my brothers and sisters, hungry, cold, and alone in our room waiting for Mother to return. It is not difficult, even now, to feel the gnawing hunger and the cold in my bones from that day.  I sat on the edge of the narrow bed I shared with Mother and watched the door for hours, just waiting for her to come home. We didn’t know where she had gone but she had been gone all day.  My fear that she was never coming home grew stronger as darkness descended. We were forbidden to light the kerosene lamp when we were alone.  I remember how mother looked when the door opened. She was disheveled and out of breath as though she had been chased. She paused for a few seconds, walked over to me, and gave me the small piece of bread she clutched to her chest. I devoured it turning away from my starving brothers and sisters. Intellectually, rationally, there is no reason to feel guilty. I know I was too young to be accountable. But, in my heart, I ask myself over and over, how could I have eaten this piece of bread and not shared even a bite?

Regardless of how little money she had to feed us, mother secretly saved for the whole year to make sure we had a proper, religious Passover. She made sure we understood the importance of this holiday, and of celebrating the Exodus of our people from Egypt. Today, when I contemplate Mother saving like this, in view of the fact that on many days we had practically nothing to eat, I am struck by her devotion to her faith.

At age 50, after working in a factory all day long, Roma Talasowicz-Eibuszyc enrolled in night school and soon became fluent in English, was able to get a job in a bank, persevered and never gave up, and always tried  to better her situation.

In her youth Roma joined the Bund movement.Their philosophy had a great impact on her way of thinking for the rest of her life. While still in Warsaw she endangered her life many times fighting for workers rights, for socialism.

Before her death in 2006, she wrote her memoir, Beshert – It Was Meant To Be, from which this section was excerpted. To read more of the memoir, visit: http://www.theverylongview.com/WATH/ and click on “Mothers.” In the left-hand column you’ll see chapters 1 – 4 of Beshert – It Was Meant To Be.

Her daughter, Suzanna Eibuszyc, translated the manuscript from the original Polish in 2007. Born in Poland, Suzanna graduated from CCNY where she took classes in the department of Jewish studies with Professor Elie Wiesel, who encouraged her to translate her mother’s memoir into English. She now lives in Calabasas, CA and writes: “On the day my mother died, I opened the box containing the memoir which she had brought six years before from NY to Los Angeles.  Her handwriting, her words, connected me to her.  As I started to read her pages, she came to life. Translating and researching her story took me four years.”

All rights reserved to “Devotion to Faith.” No part of this work may be used or reproduced without written permission of the Author/Translator/Rights-Holder, Suzanna Eibuszyc. For more information about the work, write to: suzanna_eibuszyc@yahoo.com

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August 2, 2010 · 8:35 am

Shiva

by Leslie LaskinReese (San Rafael, CA)

Lori asked if we would sit shiva and  I said no, who would come that knows Mom?  That was my knee jerk reaction.  Raised a Jew but not trained a Jew.  We never sat shiva growing up. I didn’t even know what it looked like when I was young.  But the day after Mom died I realized I needed to sit shiva.  When I told Dad he sounded almost relieved.  Or maybe I was imagining things.

We are Reform Jews.  Orthodox Jews sit shiva for seven days.  That’s what shiva means: seven.  Reform Jews sit shiva for three days.  I don’t know who picked three.  Officially shiva begins as soon as the funeral finishes.  I checked in with my friend who is studying to be a rabbi and she said shiva can begin when I need it to begin.  So my shiva began on Sunday.  My dear dear friends brought lunch and dinner and spent time with me.  They let me talk and they listened.  They made me sit down and they fed me.  They gave me room to breathe.

Last night and tonight we had a service at home.  Our wonderful cantor and my friend who is almost a rabbi officially, and is clearly a rabbi in every other way, led beautiful services and gave me room to pray and remember and cry surrounded by friends who will wrap themselves around me and my family.  It gave me a place to begin.  I stopped holding my breath.  And I told them about Mom.

So yes, I did sit shiva Lori, and it was amazing.  Thanks for asking.

Leslie LaskinReese is a writer and restaurant designer living in Northern California.  Leslie’s writing can be found at something’s burning (http://leslieedie.wordpress.com/) where this piece first appeared.  When she is not writing, Leslie is either designing restaurants  or tending her family.  Someday, Leslie will have the courage to seek print publication for one of her many writing projects.

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