Category Archives: Family history

March 1, 2010 · 8:33 am

War Breaks Out

by Harry Lazarus (Tenafly, NJ)
(interviewed by Bruce Black)

When I was growing up, I used to love listening to my grandfather, Harry Lazarus, z”l, retell  stories about his childhood in Zharnov, a small village near Lodz and not far from Warsaw, and how he made his way to America. He was a baker, with bright blue eyes above a thick nose, a warm smile, and broad, strong shoulders, and he spoke with the thick Eastern European Yiddish accent of his youth. Before his death a number of years ago, I recorded one of our story-telling sessions in his apartment in Tenafly, NJ. In this segment he describes his life in Zharnov when  war between the Austrians and the Russians breaks out.

BB: So, you were saying the war broke out…

HL: Yes, then the war broke out. The Russians were in Zharnov. Then the Austrians chased them out and grabbed all the boys, fourteen-year-old boys, to chop stones. And then they took us and sent us away to make trenches.

We were there by a farmer, two boys laying on the floor or three of us covered up in our coats, and at 5 am we used to go to the place where the sergeant counted us, and then we ate something, and then we had to go to dig the trenches.

One time my boots fell apart. I walked about two miles without the boots in the snow. When I came there to the place, I warmed my leg under my jacket, and the sergeant hit me with a whip, the Austrian sergeant. He hit me with a whip. I had to stay with both feet in the snow.

And some fellow that spoke German came over and said, “What did you hit him for? He hasn’t got boots.” And he sent me in the place to peel potatoes until they were going to fix my boots.

They fixed my boots, and I came out, but instead of going to them I ran away. I couldn’t go on a train because I didn’t have any documents. So, I ran. When I came to a farm or somewhere, I went inside to the farmer and I crossed myself and I spoke Polish.

They didn’t know whether I am Jewish or not, and I begged for a piece of bread or something, and that’s what they used to give me: a piece of bread or potato or something. And I would sit around there, and then I’d run again.

I ran, I don’t know, maybe forty or fifty miles. I kept on running until I came to Kunsk. There was my sister. Not from my father’s first wife, but a sister, and she was no good. She was a terrible woman. When I came there on a Friday morning, she gave me something to eat and said, “When do you go home?” She wouldn’t let me stay over Saturday in her place. “When do you go back to Zharnov?”

So I had to run from her place to Zharnov. It was maybe another ten miles. When I came back to Zharnov, I went to my uncle. He was a very good man. He kept me there, you know, and I was by him a few days, until a soldier asked “Who wants to go to Vienna?” And I registered to go to Vienna, and another few boys registered to go to Vienna, too.

So, we came to Vienna. We were put in a barracks where the soldiers lived and they gave us something to eat, all right, and then they came in the next day or two and asked, “Who wants to go to Czechoslovakia?”

At that time Czechoslovakia used to belong to Austria, and I picked up my hand right away to go to work in a leather factory. And another boy picked up his hand. And they sent us away to Czechoslovakia. The city was, I think, Brinn.

And they took away all our documents, and then they gave me an apron and boots and a piece of iron to take out the leather from the lime and bring it to the machine to fix up. The machine cleaned this up to make leather out of it.

But lots of times I couldn’t hit the leather, you know, with the hook. I couldn’t hit it. It would slide out. So I used to grab it with my hand to pull it over to the machine and my fingers got burned up from the lime. And I thought, “This is not for me neither.”

So, I ran again. They wouldn’t give me my documents back. So I ran away to a train, and I hid myself under the bench, and I knew that the train goes back to Vienna, and I went back to Vienna.

When I came to Vienna, everything was rationed. You couldn’t get anything without a ration card. I didn’t have any money to go into places to eat. So I said, “All right, whatever’s going to be is going to be.” And I went back to the barracks.

I came to the barracks and the officer said in German, “What are you doing here?”

And I said, “I burned my fingers up. I couldn’t work there, so I ran away.”

And he called me all kinds of names in German, “Verfluchte Yuden! Verfluchte Yude! I’m going to send you back to Poland!” Oh, he hollered murder.

But I had one nephew there who worked in a very big factory. He found out that I am there, and he made a job for me in the factory. So the German let me out. He gave me another document and he let me out to go to work in the factory.

I went to the factory. It was a very big factory, about 20,000 people there, and they put me in, and I had to put electric lights in, you know? Electric lights.

I used to work in that place and we used to get one meal a day, just a little meal. One time everybody was kicking, and I said to a friend, “What are you kicking for?” And he said, “We’re eating horse meat.” So I had enough already. I didn’t eat it.

And then I lived in a place, you know, I used to pay there, I don’t know, two krone or five krone, to rent a room. And I used to live there as a boarder, and I brought over Manny, and he was a boarder there, too.

After work we used to go in a people’s kitchen to get something to eat, like a bowl of soup or something. And then we used to go home with nothing more than a piece of bread in my pocket. I used to have such a terrible life.

But I was with Manny, and he made a few dollars, and we used to share, and soon I was making a little money on the Black Market…

Next: From Vienna to Berlin…

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February 22, 2010 · 8:59 am

Growing Up in Zharnov

by Harry Lazarus (Tenafly, NJ)
(interviewed by Bruce Black)

When I was growing up, I used to love listening to my grandfather, Harry Lazarus, z”l, retell  stories about his childhood in Zharnov, a small village near Lodz and not far from Warsaw, and how he made his way to America. He was a baker with bright blue eyes above a thick nose, a warm smile, and broad shoulders, and he spoke with the thick Eastern European Yiddish accent of his youth. Before his death a number of years ago, I recorded one of our story-telling sessions in his apartment in Tenafly, NJ. In this segment he describes his early years.

BB: So, Grandpa, tell me about growing up in Zharnov.

HL: Well, when I was seven years old, I was a very lively boy. I used to run around in winter without skates–just with my boots–on the ice. I ran up and down the river and everything, and I used to go outside and I used to stay by the fire, and then I used to come home.

And my mother used to work in the bakery. She worked very hard, and I used to help her as much as I could. I used to run to buy everything, to help whatever I could. In the morning before I went to the Hebrew school, I used to carry out the rolls, the orders, to restaurants, and then I used to go to Hebrew school half-a-day, and then I used to go half-a-day in the Russian school, the Russian-Polish school.

And everything was going all right but I was never satisfied with what we had in the house. I always liked to take something more. In the summer the druggist man had a whole wall with grapes, and I went in there and took bunches of grapes. And I had another boy, a partner, and we went out and we had grapes for a whole day. We had grapes!

And it was the same thing with everything. I went in the teacher’s garden and I went over to pick up some cucumbers. I needed cucumbers? But I went there to pick them and I spoiled so much stuff by going in, and that boy was supposed to watch so that we could get away. But the teacher caught me, and he gave me a slap in the face, and took me in to my father and complained.

My father saw that he made me a red cheek and said, “Why did you hit him so much?” And he hollered at the teacher.

But, anyhow, that’s what I used to do in Zharnov.

BB: Anything else you want to say about your childhood?

HL: Then girls and boys weren’t allowed to walk together. Girls used to walk separate and boys used to walk separate. It was a very religious town.

So, I used to take down these stickers from the trees and I used to throw them on the girls. The more wild I was, the more girls I had that loved me.

I went in Hebrew school–there weren’t many students, I wouldn’t say much, about twenty-five boys in the school–and the rabbi’s daughter fell in love with me.

One time we had to give him our papers, and after that we had to write the whole thing over and over. I didn’t like his writing, so I didn’t want to give him the paper. Then he took me and he hit me with his strap. He gave me some slap! Not just me, you know, a few other boys–they didn’t like his writing either, so they didn’t give him the papers. But he knew that I am the leader, so he strapped me.  He hit me very much. And when I came back home, my brother, Izzy, went to the rabbi and told him, “If you’re going to hit him, I’m going to hit your head off, if you’re going to hit him so. You made him black and blue marks from the strap.”

BB: Why didn’t his daughter try to save you from the beatings?

HL: Oh, she was crying. She called her mother over, and they pulled me away. Her father wanted to kill me, you know, he was so mad because I didn’t give him the paper.

And that was my life. I was growing up. When I was twelve years old, I knew how to read Russian and Polish and Jewish, and an uncle of mine came from a big city.

BB: Which city did he come from?

HL: He came from Lodz. He made a theater, and he put together a show in Zharnov. He took one of the finest buildings and he made a show and he put me in the show. And everything was nice, everything was good.

But when I was about thirteen years old, my mother passed away. She was sick, and my brother Izzy wanted to be a doctor. He was in a hospital, an intern, in a big city, and we sent him a telegram to come back. And he came home, and she died in his hands, my mother.

When she died, my brother Izzy decided to get married so he could take care of us. I was twelve or thirteen years old, my sister Yetta was about nine years old, and my sister Tilly was six years old. He figured he would get married and would take care of us.

He was full of life. He made himself a little room where we had three mills and where we made oil for the farmers before Easter. He made there a room for himself to live there, a very poor room.

My father didn’t like that life. He liked to have another wife again, and he started to have arguments with my brother Izzy.

My brother Izzy said, “Nu, I’ve had enough.” He wrote away a letter to Meyer, our step-brother in New York, and Meyer sent him a boat card. At that time, a boat card was about twenty-five dollars to go with the boat to come here. I don’t remember if he sent him the money or if he sent him a card, a boat card, but Izzy went away to America.

He came to America, and, well, he couldn’t be a doctor in America. So, he went and learned how to be a dress operator. And at the same time he used to go in a place to help out in a barbershop–he knew how to give a haircut and a shave and he used to make a little money, you know?

Then, when he had enough money, he sent for his wife, Lutzie. She was pregnant when he left her, and she had the baby, Morris, in Europe. She had the baby there and then he took over his wife, and he took over Yetta, and he took over Tilly. He brought them over here. And he tried to keep them alive with the money that he made.

BB: Why didn’t he bring you and Manny over?

HL: Me and Manny? He didn’t take us over. We remained there, but he took over Tilly and Yetta.

BB: How did Izzy meet Lutzie?

HL: She was in my mother’s family, and he was in Lodz and got acquainted with her in Lodz. And he went around with her and everything, and then he married her because of my mother passing away. He married her, and then she got pregnant, and he thought he’s going to lead the business and everything and that’s what’s going to be, but my father didn’t like it.

So, he went away to America, and he brought over Lutzie with Morris, Tilly, and Yetta, and he had a poor life here.

And I was in Zharnov with Manny, and he worked with a tailor and he got a few cents and we used to share together, you know?

BB: And your father? Did he remarry?

HL: My father was in love, and he married again, a nice woman. He married, and he put her right away in the bakery, and I knew already how to work in the bakery, too. Everything was going fine, but a year later he passed away, and he left me an order that we shouldn’t leave my uncle in, but my uncle didn’t care. He came and he threw everyone out.

He threw out Lutzie… she was in Zharnov, too, you know? I was thirteen years old, I used to bring her a piece of candy and a little soda or something because I knew that she was pregnant. She never forgot this, what I used to do as a young boy.

When he came, Lutzie had to go back to her town, and she had the baby, and then Izzy took them over to America.

I remained there in Zharnov, and I had to make a living for myself.

For Pesach I went in another bakery and I worked by the matzahs. They made matzahs for Pesach. So I worked by the oven to shovel in the matzahs and bring them out, and I had to be very careful. When you put in the matzah, the raw matzah mustn’t touch the baked matzah. The rabbi would come, you know, and he’d look if I worked the right way. And I worked the right way. Whatever I made–two dollars or three dollars a week–I made a little living. That wasn’t so bad.

BB: And then what happened?

HL: Then the war broke out…

Next: The Austrian army chases the Russian army out of Zharnov and conscripts the village youth to dig trenches.

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February 8, 2010 · 9:03 am

Grandpa’s Shears

by Janet Ruth Falon (Elkins Park, PA)

I have a photograph of my maternal grandfather, Sam Frankel, sitting in the New York City sweatshop where he earned his subsistence living.  He looks rakish, wearing a cap and looking right at the camera, and even jaunty, not like the sour, beaten-down, shuffling old man I knew whose only pleasure was a Hershey bar.

But I never really knew my grandfather; he was deaf, and Yiddish speaking, and he kept to himself, wrapped in an off-putting cloak of bitterness and disappointment.

He only gave me one thing when I was a little girl, an inexpensive cut-glass pendant shaped like a heart.  I value it, even though its sparkle and clarity seem like the exception to our relationship. But I own a piece of my grandfather that’s even more important, which my mother passed on to me after his death more than twenty years ago: his shears.

The heavy, enormous scissors that he used to cut through thick layers of fabric in the sweatshop seem a more appropriate souvenir of Sam Frankel. These are scissors with serious intentions, scissors that would identify themselves as a tool, work implements in an entirely different class than the blunted scissors I used to cut out outfits for my paper dolls.  They’re meant to persevere, and to survive.

The blades are sharp, still, and the scissors are heavy, to be used by an adult who meant business.  As different from kiddie scissors as oil paints are from crayons, it’s clear that the goal of these scissors is to divide things, to separate them.  It would be someone else’s job to join things.  That fits.

Someone–maybe my grandfather, maybe his wife–wrapped both looped handles of the scissors with fabric tape, wound round and round to create a cushion that might soften the irritation of repeated use.  Without it the scissors would undoubtedly have caused blisters or, with time and persistence, calluses, those physical manifestations of surrender.

I never saw him use these scissors; instead, it was the women in his family who I associate with sewing and creating.  My grandmother used her treadle-pedal sewing machine, which was sold at her death when my mother was too grief-stricken to know she’d regret its loss. (She also knitted and made sweaters for my dolls from leftover wool which I still own.)

My aunts were both in the millinery field, crafting hats from all sorts of materials in the era when women seriously wore hats; I have some of these, too.

And my mother has dabbled in needlepoint, rug-hooking, mosaics and knitting.  To this day, she has never used a sewing machine; she sews everything by hand–even, equal stitches that hold together.

I’ve never liked sewing.  I had to take a sewing class in junior high school, and I wasn’t good at it.  I didn’t like the precision it required nor the fact that I had to follow a pattern. But the easiest part was cutting out the fabric.  I used my grandfather’s shears.

Janet Ruth Falon, the author of The Jewish Journaling Book (Jewish Lights, 2004), teaches a variety of writing classes at many places, including the University of Pennsylvania.  At the moment she is teaching journaling and creative-writing classes to people with cancer, and she’s working on a project that she hopes will be published as The Breast Cancer Journaling Workbook.

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November 16, 2009 · 8:07 am

The Pui Factor

by Ferida Wolff (Cherry Hill, NJ)

Half my family rails against superstition; the other half spits. Pui, pui, pui.

Mention that you are feeling well, thank you, and the spitting starts.

Just say that you had a good day on the stock market and you are bound to get pui, pui, pui.

Announce that your career is on the rise – Pui, pui, pui. Or as my friend says, poo, poo, poo. There are many variations on the spitting theme.  No actual spitting takes place; it is a verbal facsimile. Said three times, it is sure-fire protection against the evil eye, whatever that is, which is then blinded and can’t see you so it can’t do you any harm.

This curious form of behavior was introduced into my family by my grandmother who came from the “old country.” It makes as much sense as any for people who had no real way of protecting themselves from the ravages of religious prejudice. And it gave them a sense of control over an unfathomable universe.

There are other forms of protection in operation against the evil eye. When my sister was born, a red ribbon was tied to her crib so she would be safe when she slept. She never left the house without a red ribbon somewhere on her – in her hair, tied around her wrist, pinned to her underwear. No harm was going to come to her as long as the red bendle was in place!

My sister remembers hunting for the hard candies my mother put under her newborn son’s crib mattress. Mom claimed they kept the demons of nightmares away and brought sweet dreams. My sister said they attracted sweet little bugs. But the baby slept soundly.

My mother never said anything flattering about my sister or me. She said that other people should be the ones to give us a compliment. She didn’t want to give us a kinnehara. And if something good were said, it would be met with a “knayna hara,” meaning without the evil eye. I discovered that it stems from not flaunting your blessings because it might cause pain to someone who is not as fortunate, an honorable notion that morphed into not bringing attention to one’s own fortune, which you never wanted to do, should some evil being hear it and do mischief.

My grandmother, an accomplished seamstress, wouldn’t sew on something a person was wearing unless the person bit on a piece of thread while she was sewing. Traditionally, only a shroud was sewn on a person. Biting on the thread was a way of showing the angel of death that the person was still alive and active.

And should anyone ever spill salt on the table, it was essential to throw a pinch of it over your left shoulder right into the eye of the devil waiting there.

If you say something is good, make sure you knock on wood. This even works when there is no wood available. All you have to do is say the words, “Knock on wood.” For example, “My son is doing well in his new job, knock on wood.” The protection works through intention. Some people have been known to knock on their heads. The symbolism of  “woodenhead” or “blockhead” seems to get translated into the ethereal language with no trouble at all. I’m not sure that this is a Jewish thing but it was so ingrained in my household that I grew up thinking it was.  Like spitting.

Years ago, when we took a family trip to China, my children, husband and I were all confused about a sign that seemed to be everywhere. It was a picture of lips in a circle with a red, diagonal stripe through them. We knew that we were being told not to do something, but what? Our first guess was that it meant no kissing. Perhaps there was a public lewdness law of which we were unaware. Then we thought it might mean no talking. But Chinese cities are not quiet places. The signs were all over including in open spaces like parks and city streets. There was enough conversation going on to tell us that wasn’t the correct interpretation. We finally asked our guide who said it meant no spitting. They meant the real, juicy kind of spitting, not the pui or poo kind. Yet a sign like that might make a good present for the non-spitting relatives.

And there are several. Don’t say, “God bless you” to my father-in-law when he sneezes unless you want an argument. “Superstition!” he sneers. I think a blessing is a fine thing no matter what. So when he’s around, I say it softly.

My husband is a spitter in jest only. He doesn’t take the evil eye protection seriously but saying pui, pui, pui gets the point across. I know that he is aware of the value of something.

I guess I fall somewhere in between. I don’t believe the spitting itself does anything but I do believe the intention is powerful. When a thought is sent out into the universe, it creates energy. So I praise my children a lot for their fine qualities but it is not to the exclusion of others because I say nice things about them, too. I believe in seeing the positive in people whenever possible.

And I celebrate the successes of the people I love, rejoice in their happiness, and applaud their good fortune in whatever form it takes, adding my intention for more of the same. I know that the good things in life come from hard work and connections and courage.

My mother, may she rest in peace, would have loved her great grandson, my sister’s first grandchild, but would not have praised him. My sister calls him the cutest baby in the world. I do, too. Knowing the philosophy of his parents, both rabbis, I am sure they will help him to understand that the beauty of a compassionate soul is more important than physical beauty and that gratitude is greater protection against the vicissitudes of life than all the salt and spit and wood can provide.

And yet, there is something endearing about the pui factor. Maybe it is the amusement that it engenders when it is invoked.

Then again, maybe it’s like chicken soup. It couldn’t hurt.

Ferida Wolff’s newest book of essays, Missed Perceptions: Challenge Your Thoughts Change Your Thinking, is available from Pranava Books, an imprint of Andborough Publishing, a publisher based in North Carolina.

Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Moment Magazine, Midstream, and Woman’s World, among other periodicals. She’s a contributor to the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, HCI Ultimate series, and Chocolate For a Teen’s Dreams, as well as the author of Listening Outside Listening Inside and The Adventures of Swamp Woman: Menopause Essays on the Edge, and seventeen books for children. She’s written elsewhere online at www.grandparents.com and www.seniorwomen.com. You can find out more about her work at www.feridawolff.com.

This story originally appeared in Midstream in July/August 2007. It’s reprinted here with the author’s permission.

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August 17, 2009 · 9:01 am

Papa Chazanow

by Marianne Goldsmith (Oakland, CA)

“Eat, don’t talk.”

I received this advice from the only grandparent I ever knew – Frank (Papa) Chazanow. The occasion was lunch at Papa’s house, when I was 5 1/2, old enough to manage my own fork, and tall enough to sit (avec booster) in a grown-up chair. Seated next to my younger brother, I observed my grandfather as he ate soup, wiped his moustache with his napkin, and then launched into an intense discussion with my mother across the table.

“Tachter (daughter),” he would say, and proceed to speak rapidly in Yiddish.

Whenever I heard  “de kinder” (the children) mentioned, I would perk up, and attempt to join the conversation. I had significant news to share. For example, I could now write my entire name.

Papa responded with a waving of spoon and direct eye contact  (his watery grey, mine dark brown). “Eat, don’t talk.”

I giggled and glanced over at my mother, who nodded gently. Papa grinned slightly and then turned to my mother. I played with my soup, stirring the noodles and carrots, smushing the peas until the broth turned a murky green, still trying to make sense out of what was being said.  Forever it seemed I would never find out.

I wanted to ask questions. Why was my older sister called the “shayna madel” (“pretty girl”) and I was the “guta madel,”(good girl) which I interpreted to mean “good tomato”?

“Eat, don’t talk” was the cruelest of punishment.

Papa was always in shul before we arrived. He was standing at his shtender against the wall near the bima, the back of his balding head covered with a black yarmulke, the cream colored tallis draped in long folds over his small, bony shoulders. He davened with dignity, swaying back and forth.

When there was a break in the service, we greeted him. He leaned over to embrace each one of us, the tallis falling over us like a curtain as we kissed him, lips brushing against his wiry grey mustache. “Good Shabbos.”

He often took part in the torah service on the bima, reciting blessings or conferring with the Rabbi or the cantor on proper procedure. At times, he even brought the service to a halt.

“Papa’s mad. Must be a mistake,” my mother whispered, with a wry smile. The whole congregation had to wait until Papa was satisfied that the liturgical error was corrected.

I know my grandfather arrived in Texas about the same time as the men he rebuked on the bima, escaping the pogroms of Russia, sailing from Bremen to Galveston during the early 1900’s. The Jewish community helped one another to survive, and Papa was one of many who made his way peddling fruit in the country towns of central Texas. At night, he slept under his wagon.

I wonder, did he recite his prayers before sleeping under the big, flat Texas sky, gazing up at the heavens, the bright stars glinting against a black night?

Marianne Goldsmith grew up in Waco, Texas. She has lived in the San Francisco bay area for over 30 years, and has worked primarily as a communications consultant and writer. Her work has appeared in The Jewish Bulletin, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, Dark Horse Literary Magazine, and a self-published anthology.

This portrait of her grandfather, Frank Chazanow, and the community synagogue, Congregation Agudath Jacob (est.1888), is excerpted from a 1979 journal entry she recently discovered and which she hopes to develop and expand in the future.

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July 20, 2009 · 7:19 am

A child is waiting for you in Australia

by Nava Semel (Tel Aviv, Israel)
translated from the Hebrew by Dan Gillon

I am on my way to meet my child in Australia.

I’m going to visit Iyar my son who, for the last three and a half years, has been living on the other side of the world. Whoever it was that said, if only half seriously, that my son had “run as far away from you as he could” had a point. Maybe there he could discover something about himself that he was unable to find in our midst.

At my end of the world, it is intolerably humid. Midsummer in Israel. Dragging my suitcase stuffed with winter clothes, I remind myself that there are times when one needs to get as far as possible just to come a little closer.

I am going ‘Down Under’ to visit my son in a part of the world where everything is upside down. He lives in a place I had never even heard of until he chose it as his place of study. Soon, following a chain of flights spanning two whole days, his place will become real to me. At first, he studied sound and music technology over there. Later, in an abrupt U turn, he began to study music itself from A to Z.

His father, Noam, called him “Rabbi Akiva,” after a famous Jewish scholar who decided to go to school when he was already a grown man. Sometimes Noam says it with a sigh, but I detect a hint of admiration, too.

I’m also going to meet my child’s girl friend whom I have never seen. Her name is Lucy Elliot and she is not Jewish. She is twenty two, a student of Chinese medicine and Iyar’s sweetheart. It is she who caresses him, sleeps with him, and comforts him — the young woman who provides him with a warm nest, a home away from home.

I’ve only seen her in pictures sent by Iyar. A winning smile, a dimpled cheek, wavy honey-coloured hair, her lips touching a yellow, very ripe, lemon.

As I set off on my journey, I am utterly drained. All the empty space within me is filled by sorrow, as in Michael Ende’s book, The Neverending Story, where encroaching nothingness gradually gobbles everything up. Because just a week ago Adi my beloved brother-in-law passed away. On his death bed, his eyes blazing an eternal blue, he whispered to me, “A child is waiting for you in Australia.”

I’m on my way and the grief bites ever deeper. The shoulder carrying my wintery suitcase aches, probably maimed by the bitter parting from Adi and our helplessness when facing his suffering. I am going to see Iyar who was not physically present in the room where Adi lay but was nonetheless by his side. Because he and Adi are twin spirits sharing the same view about expanding our horizons and pushing the boundaries of self-experience no matter what.

I embark on my journey emotionally torn and ravaged. “My soul drips with sorrow” as is written in the book of Psalms; now the phrase keeps ringing in my head, mingled with the repeated calls for my upcoming flight.

Tomorrow my husband Noam, my sister-in-law Sarah and her two daughters, Techelet and Toam, will end the Jewish seven days of mourning and I will be far away.

Lucy Elliot had sent a letter of condolence from Australia. She wrote that he who dies is reborn elsewhere. She added that the end is also a beginning. Beautiful, fine words. Compassion in English, which is not my native tongue. Yet this is the language in which my son’s sweetheart whispers words of love to him.

Her Australian accent is heavy. In our short, snatched telephone conversations, I have difficulty understanding what she is saying. Once she called me “Ima” –“Mom” in Hebrew– and in the background I could hear Iyar’s rolling laughter.

I set out on my journey carrying with me an empty notebook, hoping to tie up the loose ends of the last chapter of a novel I’ve been writing for the last year and a half. Like me, the novel is full of sorrow and loss, and I have so far lacked the strength to finish it. Perhaps Australia will help me find a way of concluding a haunting tale of Jews hiding in Italy under Nazi occupation.

“Mom, there’s a story waiting for you here,” Iyar tells me. I am on a journey to look for that story, though in the past it was the stories that found me. I don’t know what kind of tale is waiting for me over there; and maybe this was merely bait to lure me to cross continents, and the moment I land the story will slip away. But that is of no importance. It is a year since I last saw my son. And over the past six years, since he finished his army service, he has been roaming the world, a restless pilgrim in search of inspiring sites, grasping everything in awe. He is driven by a constant desire for adventure. Is this, I wonder, a sign of belated rebelliousness? Observing Iyar’s urge to travel to the earth’s furthest corners  reminds me of my grandfather, Gabriel Herzig, who left Europe so many years ago, abandoning my grandmother and the baby who was to be my father, seeking his destiny in America which in those days was no less the end of the world than is Australia today.

Will we be strangers to one another? After all, I’m a woman in mid-life. Embarrassed as I am to apply these words to myself, even though in my heart of hearts the same ‘youthful me’ has lost none of her intensity and refuses to wear the mantle of old age. Deep down there’s still that old insecurity, those same fears of darkness and built-in childishness that are the cornerstones of my nature.

Will we get on? Will we quarrel? And where will I sleep? Iyar wants me to share his room but I have already sent him a panicky text message that I will take a hotel instead

Above all, I want to avoid a rift between us. Many years have past since we shared a room, curled up together, mother and son.

On Independence Day last year he was twenty eight years old yet I still call him “my child.”

Born in Jaffa- Tel Aviv, Nava Semel has worked as a journalist, art critic, and TV, radio and recording producer, and has received numerous literary prizes for her work, which includes sixteen books, four plays, and opera libretti. Many of her stories have been adapted for radio, film, TV and the stage in Israel, Europe and the USA, and her books have been translated into many languages. Her acclaimed novel, And the Rat Laughs, which was made into an opera and composed by Ella Milch-Sheriff, has run on the stage of the Cameri Theatre of Tel Aviv for the last five years. The novel came out recently in English from Hybrid Publishers in Melbourne, Australia.

For information (in Hebrew) about Semel’s work, visit her website: http://navasemel.com/

For information (in English) about Semel’s work, visit the website of The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature that represents her work: http://www.ithl.org.il/authors.html

And if you’re interested in reading more (in Hebrew) about Australian Wedding, the book from which this is an excerpt, take a look at:
http://navasemel.com/index.php?page_id=141

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July 13, 2009 · 8:27 am

Searching for Melvin

by Patty Baumann (Hillsdale, NJ)

I never met my cousin Melvin.  The first I heard of him was when I was little, maybe 4 or 5, playing in the Bronx apartment of my great-aunt, Lena, and her husband, Morris, back in the 1950’s.  I can picture the adults socializing; my parents, my grandmother, her three sisters plus their husbands.  The room smells of coffee and cakes.  My brother and I are keeping busy as we are the only children present.  Perhaps we’re playing tag, or cards, or a board game.

The buzz of the conversation is background noise to what my brother and I are doing.  Yet a fragment of conversation makes its way into my head, unnoticed.  It clings tightly, as if it is so important the child that I am would want to remember it years later as an adult.  Above and beyond the din of chit chat and European accents come the words “He fell out of the window.”  I don’t remember who said it or in what context or what came before or after it.  And I continued playing on the living room floor.

A few years later, the sentence came to me.  “Mom, who fell out of a window?” I asked one day.  “Aunt Anna had a son,” she said.  “It was a terrible accident.  His name was Melvin.”  And then, perhaps sensing that I could fear that happening to us, she added, “he was very little.”

Melvin’s parents, Aunt Anna and Uncle Joe, lived in the Bronx, not far from Aunt Lena and Uncle Morris, on the Grand Concourse. What made them so adorable was that she was big and he was short and stocky. My only problem with Uncle Joe was that I could hardly understand a word he said. He had a gravelly voice that only adults could decipher. Melvin had been their only child.  After his death they had only each other.  Aunt Anna was expressive and warm with her love for us and for all the children of her nieces and nephews.  She had a lot of love to give, and no child of her own to dote on.

When I was fourteen, Aunt Anna died suddenly. A few days earlier, she had broken her hip. She had been in a Long Island hospital where her nephew worked as a doctor, so he could check in on her.  That day, suddenly, a blood clot finished her off.

Uncle Joe naturally took care of the funeral arrangements, and I remember Aunt Lena and Grandma being upset that Joe was not including them in the plans or giving them any of her property.  Both rightly felt that their Anna had mementos that were meaningful to her sisters.  But they were apparently not consulted.  I don’t think Joe had any contact with his sisters-in-law after the funeral.  He suddenly was out of the picture. Our lives moved on.

In the last few years I’ve attempted to piece together my family tree.  It has become a booming industry on the internet, and the amount of information available at the touch of a few key strokes is staggering.  As I remembered details stored in the recesses of my mind, one sentence leaped out at me: “He fell out the window.” It took its rightful place front and center, having waited quietly all these years for me to notice it.  But my mom, my aunt, and their cousins were dead.  My dad, if he ever did know, had long ago forgotten the information I wanted.  So the tidbits I had stored away tumbled out, as needed.

It pained me that someone, anyone, could have lived, been loved and lost, never to be thought of again as the few who cared about him left this world.  It would be virtually impossible to find anything about my distant cousin, the boy who fell from a window.  But I wanted to try.

Naturally, I needed a name.  First name, Melvin.  But last name?  For the life of me, I could not remember Anna and Joe’s last name.  Instead, I searched the vast New York Times archive of articles, pairing “Melvin” with “fatal,” “fall,” “windows,” etc.  Nothing.  Yes, lots of children fell out of windows, but apparently none were named Melvin.

On a whim, I leafed through page after page of last names on a genealogy website, hoping one of them would ring a bell.  When I got to the “P”s, the bell rang.  I settled on Pollack and it sounded right.

Quickly back to the New York Times archives, I entered “Melvin Pollack” into the search site and…. nothing.  No other New York papers had an extensive online archive; the Times had been my only hope.  Could I be at the end of the road so soon?

Call it fate, call it compassion from long ago and far away, or call it a heavenly kindness.  And maybe just coincidence.  My dad asked me to come over to his apartment and help him get rid of an enormous amount of junk; a lifetime accumulation of every day stuff that was part of our daily lives for so many years.

He and I came upon a box of photos, mostly from my parents’ wedding and early years together.  Both came from very large families, and their wedding featured dozens of aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws.  But, surprisingly, in this box was just one greeting card celebrating their upcoming wedding.

“Congratulations on your Engagement” it read on the outside with colorful but faded streamers decorating the border.  The inside continued the sentiment, and was signed, “Aunt Anna and Uncle David Paulian.”  I stared at the signature, then looked at my dad.  “Who was Uncle David?”  Dad shrugged.  He had no idea.  He too looked at the card.  Still, he didn’t know who Uncle David Paulian was.

Apparently Aunt Anna had been married twice.  More importantly, I realized that little cousin Melvin’s real last name was Paulian, not Pollack.  What a treasure trove this small box of mementos had been.

I returned to the on-line archives of the New York Times.  This time, I confidently typed “Melvin Paulian” and hit “search.”  And… zero.  “What does one have to do to get into the New York Times?” I wondered.  I decided to search just the last name.  Of the few hits that I got, one was “David Paulian.”  It was an announcement of his funeral less than a year after my parents’ marriage.  It gave his address in the Bronx but did not name his survivors.

Some of my relatives had been buried in Queens, and a number of cemeteries out there had websites.  In a matter of minutes, I found his grave.  Then I entered Melvin’s name.  And his gravesite, near his dad, appeared as well.  The sadness consumed me.  His date of burial, July 21, 1933, was fifteen years before his father’s.  How painful those years must have been for Aunt Anna and Uncle David.  A search of the 1930 New York City Census revealed their little family of three living in the Bronx.  Melvin was just a few months old.

My mission now was to find any information available.  My ultimate goal, with luck, would be a picture of him. I wrote to the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office for their reports on Melvin’s death.  A few weeks later the documents arrived.  They spoke of an average, four year old boy, well nourished, with brown hair and brown eyes, who had suffered a fractured skull when he fell from his apartment window on Washington Avenue to the courtyard below.  He died an hour later at nearby Bronx Hospital now called Bronx-Lebanon.

My eyes filled with tears.  I could picture my distraught Aunt Anna as she paced the hospital halls, surrounded by her family, praying for a miracle that would not come.  She had been an “older” mom in her mid-thirties when she had this baby.  Now, there would be no more children.

On a hunch, I searched the archives for what the weather was like on that terrible day.  I learned that it had been the second hottest day of the summer.  With no air-conditioning, apartment windows were wide open.  It explained why, in my initial archival search for Melvin, I found so many children who had fallen out of windows.  It was, sadly, a regular occurrence many decades before window guards were required.

I needed some sort of closure.  Certainly, any of Aunt Anna’s memorabilia was long gone, left to the machinations of her second husband, Joe.  Again, the box of mementos from my Dad came to the rescue.  In it I found a laminated newspaper announcement of my parents’ engagement published in a newspaper called The Bronx Home News.  If the Home News had reported on the accident, it would mean that for one day in his brief life, Melvin would have been known. Perhaps there would be a picture.

Through a series of e-mails, I learned that The Bronx Home News was on microfilm at Lehman College in the Bronx.  I was willing to go there, but first I wanted to make sure the particular issue existed.  I sent an e-mail to one of the library administrators.  Generously, she wrote back that she would have her assistant double-check.  Then, incredibly, she wrote again.  While checking for that issue, her assistant had spotted the article on Melvin.  She was mailing it to me.

Days later the envelope arrived.  The page of the Home News had separate stories of two children who fell from windows and died.  The story of Melvin’s fall appeared in the middle of the page, but referred to him as Marvin and his mother as Bertha.  It reported that his mother had left him playing with his toys on the living room floor, and he had fallen from their third floor apartment to the rear courtyard below.  There was no picture of this little boy, loved and lost like hundreds of other children left alone for a moment or two on hot summer days.

It so pained me to think of Aunt Anna.  As a child, I had no notion of how much she had suffered; I was small and she, despite her tragedy, was not a sad woman.

I felt the need to explore one more avenue.  My parents’ wedding at the majestic Concourse Plaza Hotel in the Bronx had been filmed by my uncle, and about 90 seconds of jumpy, dark film had been transferred to a DVD.  I loaded it into my computer and gazed at the familiar faces of my long gone family having the time of their lives.  When the camera focused on the table where Lena and Anna were sitting, I immediately recognized them and Uncle Morris.  But the man seated next to Aunt Anna, whom I always just assumed was some unnamed relative, was my Uncle Dave. No longer a stranger, he was now part of my family history.

There was one more obligation I felt compelled to complete.  On a beautiful fall day my husband and I traveled to Queens to the cemetery where my cousin Melvin had been laid to rest, eventually to be joined by his grief-stricken dad and mom.  We walked the rows of the well-kept cemetery, following a map given to me by the office.  And there, in front of me, stood the headstone of my cousin Melvin. Ironically, there was a space on the stone which once held a picture of him as was the custom back then.  But now it was gone.

I do not know when someone last visited it. If I had to guess, it would have been more than forty years ago.  But I was here now.  I placed a small stone from my own yard on the headstone.  My husband and I said the Mourners Kaddish.

A symbol on the headstone captured his story eloquently.  It was of the trunk of a tree with the upper part hacked and tilting off, as if the tree had been cut before it had a chance to grow.

Patty Bauman worked as a producer and researcher for Good Morning, America for over twenty years.  She has spent the past five years tracing her family roots, and is currently working on a book about her mother, herself, and medical malpractice. She lives with her husband and their 16 year old daughter in northern New Jersey.

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