In these days of war and terror, I’ve been thinking a lot about graves. In particular, graves in Israel. And of Jews dying in and for their country, their land. Too many. The grieving. The gut-wrenching burials of the young who paid for fulfilling their duty to the nation with their lives. I am reminded …
Introduction: Roots to Routes: A Family Saga
This blog focuses on my personal history. The saga begin with my grandparents, first generation traditionally minded Jewish immigrants to New York from Eastern Europe. It continues with my parents, born in New York just before (my father) and during (my mother) the Great Depression, their childhoods shaped by the Holocaust and post-war America. The …
My Great Uncle Shmulke: Mysteries Revealed and Remaining
Everyone it seems has an ancestor whose life is a mystery. Someone who lived on the margins of family, whose behavior was both excused and inexplicable. The black sheep, part of the family yet seldom spoken of. Perhaps a loner. Perhaps inflicted with a disability about which no one dared speak. These qualities describe my …
Zambrow During the War Years: Part 2–the Soviet Occupation
For nearly 21 months, from the end of September, 1939 until June 22, 1941, the residents of Zambrow lived under the control of the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this period was but an interlude between the initial Nazi occupation in September, 1939, until their 1941 reoccupation, during which they would destroy Zambrow’s Jewish community. Yet, …
Zambrow During the War Years: Part 1–September, 1939
When World War II began on September 1, 1939, my great grandmother Sheindl Wierzbowicz, her daughter, Paiche (pronounced pie-che), Paiche’s husband Shimon Rosenbaum, their 10 year old son, David, as well Sheindl’s teenage daughter, Hinde, all lived in Zambrow, Poland. By January, 1943, they had all been murdered. What was their experience–the experience of Zambrow’s …
Sketching a lost life: my great aunt Paiche
Everyone deserves to be remembered, to have their story told. But how to tell the story of someone I never met, who lived so far away, left no survivors, and for whom not a scrap of genealogical information exists? No birth document. No marriage record. No physical trace of a life lived. Not even a …
The List
People create lists for all kinds of reasons. Projects to complete. Things to do. Shopping. As the owner of a paper goods store on the Lower East Side, my grandfather, whom I knew as Zaide, must have created all kinds of lists. Inventory. Expenses. Receipts. These lists, like the store itself, no longer exist. All …
Peeling off layers of the past
I am drawn like a magnet into my family’s past. Not out of nostalgia, but as a way of projecting my own future, a future rooted in deep history. Yet much of that history is clouded and, to my sorrow, mostly unrecoverable. My grandfather’s generation is gone, having died in America or been killed by …
The organizations that mattered (part 1): HIAS
It’s difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of my Zaide’s (grandfather’s) generation. Their lives were uncertain, preoccupied with the issue of migration. For one central feature characterized the lives of so many Jews before World War II: dislocation, and the attendant struggles to leave Europe and redefine themselves in a new land. Having experienced …
Immigration strategies: the New World option
Half of my grandfather’s family made it out of Poland before World War II. The other half didn’t and were killed. My grandfather’s brother was one who did leave Poland. He was known as Shmulke (Shmuel or Sam) Wierzbowicz, and in this post I explore his journey from Poland to America. As with most Eastern …