Crossing the Borders of Time: A true story of war, exile, and love reclaimed by Leslie Maitland

"A former New York Times journalist, Maitland has seized on her family’s far-flung tale of fleeing the Nazis in Europe and energetically made it her own."  from a review in Kirkus Reviews 2/15/12

Leslie Maitland has written a memoir that focuses on her immigrant mother and her family, refugees from Frieberg, Germany. Her thoroughly researched narration of their dangerous and difficult journey to America is both engrossing and edifying. It also demonstrates that although her family’s situation was unique in its detail, similar iterations of their experience were being enacted throughout Europe as Jews tried to escape from Hitler’s death machine.

The oldest of two children, Maitland repeatedly heard pieces of her mother’s story that entranced her. The research she embarked on to corroborate her mother’s version of what happened and to flesh out the details took her on several trips to Germany and France as well as to Cuba where she interviewed officials and survivors and met with archivists to help her search through records.

The author’s maternal grandparents, Sigmar and Lisel Gunzburger, had no interest in leaving Germany when Hitler came to power. Her grandfather, from a well-established family who had lived in Germany for many generations, co-owned with one of his brothers a successful business in Frieberg. Although many Jews had already fled, they, like others, felt that they could weather a temporary storm, but by the time her grandfather realized that he and his family were in real danger, it was extremely difficult accessing bank accounts, finding a country that would take them in, and securing visas and exit permits.

Maitland’s mother’s family was fortunate for a number of reasons: her grandfather had a friend who was a Christian brother, Joseph Fimbel, who helped them immeasurably. And he had wealthy and well-connected relatives in America and France who loaned him money and managed to help him get passage to Cuba. But their route was long and circuitous. They left Germany in 1938 and settled in Mulhouse, France. Maitland includes a map that shows how they wended their way through France with extended stays in Mulhouse, Gray and Lyon. When all paperwork was in order they left for Marseille where the American Joint Distribution Committee had arranged for Portuguese ships to transport Jewish refugees to Cuba. More machinations eventually got them to the United States where they arrived in 1944.

The story Maitland tells of their life in America (she was born in 1949), is a version of a classic immigrant tale. Her family settled in the German Jewish refugee community in Inwood in New York where they felt comfortable amongst fellow immigrants who clung to their language and customs. Maitland's grandfather read the German-Jewish newspaper, the Aufbau, and wrote constantly to Germany about the bank accounts and property he had left behind. Soon Maitland’s mother and her two siblings were married and each had an apartment in the same building as their parents. This extreme closeness lasted until the author’s American-born father decided that it was time to move on and up: they bought a suburban house in New Jersey where to some extent both the author, then eight years old, and her mother felt exiled.

The rest of the story focuses for the most part on her mother’s first love, a young Roman Catholic she had met when they lived in Mulhouse, France. Although they had made a commitment to each other and vowed to reunite somehow, somewhere after the war, the relationship was fraught with complications. Because he was Catholic her parents and other relatives sabotaged the relationship which included intercepting letters. So they lost track of each other and each assumed the other had lost interest. Although less compelling than the sections narrating the family’s life in Germany and their flight, the couples’ initially thwarted romance raises the enduring question: “What if?” But it also makes the significant point that war leaves its mark in many ways. So many people dead, survivors traumatized, so many families and relationships ruptured, displaced, reconfigured.

This memoir includes maps, photos, a bibliography, and a family tree with birth and death dates and places of origin. The author notes that she has changed some names to protect privacy but it is highly unlikely any names on the family tree have been changed by her, so I present the names below assuming they are correct.

To read an article about the difficulties refugees had in landing in Cuba, click here.
To read an article about the difficulties refugees had obtaining visas to come to the United States, click here.

Family
Author's mother's family
Simon Gunzburger – married Jeanette Bloch
     David Gunzburger – son of Simon and Jeanette
     Norbert Gunzburger – son of Simon and Jeanette
     Karoline Gunzburger – daughter of Simon and Jeanette; married Edward Winter
          Gretl Winter – daughter of Karoline and Edward; married Marcel Weil
          Herbert Winter – son of Karoline and Edward; married Estelle Sokoloff
     Max Gunzburger – son of Simon and Jeanette
     Sara Gunzburger – daughter of Simon and Jeanette; married Maurice Feldstein
     Hermann Gunzberger (Gunn) – son of Simon and Jeanette
     Marie Gunzburger – daughter of Simon and Jeanette; married Paul Cahen (Mulhouse)
          Emilie Mulhouse – daughter of Marie and Paul; married Maurice Goldschmidt
          Elie Jean Mulhouse – daughter of Emilie and Maurice
          Jeanine Mulhouse – daughter of Emilie and Maurice
          Jacques Mulhouse – son of Emilie and Maurice
     Edmond Mulhouse – son of Marie and Paul; married Elizabeth Hauser
          Francoise and Janine Cahen – twin daughters of Edmond and Elizabeth
         Michel Cahen Mulhouse – son of Edmond and Elizabeth
          Paul-Andre Cahen Mulhouse – son of Edmond and Elizabeth
          Robert Cahen Mulhouse – son of Edmond and Elizabeth
          Isabelle Cahen – daughter of Edmond and Elizabeth
   Heinrich Gunzburger – son of Simon and Jeanette; married Toni
   Sigmar (Samuel) Gunzburger – son of Simon and Jeanette; married to Lisel (Alice) Heinsheimer
         Norbert Gunzburger – son of Sigmar and Lisel; married Dorothea Ostheim
               Stanley Gunzburger – son of Norbert and Dorothea
         Hanna (Janine) Gunzburger – son on Sigmar and Lisel; married Leonard Maitland
               Leslie Maitland - daughter of Sigmar and Lisel; married Daniel Werner; author
                    Zachary Werner  – son of Leslie and Daniel
                    Ariel Werner – daughter of Leslie and Daniel
              Gary Maitland – son of Sigmar and Lisel
        Gertrude Gunzburger – daughter of Sigmar and Lisel; married Heinz Rawitscher (Harry Rawlings)
              Lynne Rawlings Maravin – daughter of Gertrude and Harry
             Michael Rawling – son of Gertrude and Harry
Max Wolf – cousin, relationship not clear

Author’s mother’s mother's family
Maier Heinsheimer – married Johanna Kahn
         Lina Heinsheimer – daughter of Maier and Johanna; married Sigmund Weil
               Carol Weil – daughter of Lina and Sigmund
         Jennie Heinsheimer – daughter of Maier and Johanna; married Joseph Guggenheim
         Rosie Heinsheimer – daughter of Maier and Johanna; married Natan Marx
               Hannchen Marx – daughter Rosie and Natan; married Julius Hamburger
         Lisel (Alice) Heinsheimer – daughter of Maier and Johanna; married Sigmar Gunzburger (see above)
         Sigfried Heinsheimer – son of Maier and Johanna; married Liesel
         Ruth Heinsheimer – daughter of Sigfried and Liesel

Cousins relationship not clear: Huguette Cahen, Francois Blum, Lynn Ullman, Suzanne Steinberg.

Author’s father’s family:
 Beresh (Bernard) and Fannie Friedman (changed name to Maitland)
       Mona Maitland – daughter of Bernard and Fannie
        Leonard Maitland – son of Bernard and Fannie; married Janine Gunzburger (see above)
Danielle Fakhr and Helene Putermilch - cousins of author's father - relationship not clear

Friends and Acquaintances
Meta Ellenbogen
Therese and Alfred Loewy
Isabelle Picard
Pauline Picard (sister of Isabelle)
Moise Levy
     Rene Baruch Levy - son on Moise
Roger Dreyfus

Places

Mulhouse, France
Freiberg, Germany
Ihringen, Germany
Eppingen, Germany
Breisach, Germany
Gray, France
Buffalo, NY
Cleveland, Ohio
Inwood, New York
Englewood Heights, New Jersey

The Secret of Priest’s Grotto: A Holocaust Survival Story by Peter Lane Taylor and Christos Nicola 2007

"[T]his is a unique and absorbing addition to the library of Holocaust testimonials written for younger readers." from a review in Kirkus Reviews, 4/1/2007.

This large format book, with material interesting to adults as well  as older children, is a compilation of narrative and photos written by two “cavers.”  In exploring extensive underground caves in the vicinity of Korolowka, Ukraine, part of what are called the Gypsum Giant cave system, they heard from local Ukrainians that Jewish families had survived in the section of a caves called Popowa Yama during World War II. At a length of 77 miles, it is the ninth longest cave in the world.

 

It took a number of years and a number of trips into the caves, searching for and interviewing Ukrainians who could tell them more, and searching for and interviewing the Jewish survivors, many now living in Montreal, to get a fuller picture of the life lived by 38 Jews. They were mostly members of a large extended family who lived underground for the better part of a year. The writers of this volume also relied on the privately printed memoir of the matriarch, Esther Stermer, who, in 1960, wrote "We Fight To Survive" about their experience.

 

It is common knowledge, of course, that many Jews went into hiding during the war – in attics, in barns, in holes in the ground. But this instance of hiding was quite remarkable. Thirty-eight people lived as best they could in an underground cave as a community, carving out living space, assigning chores, sustaining each other through the deprivation: darkness, cold and limited food, as best they could. We learn about the heroic efforts of some of the men who went out under cover of darkness to buy supplies from a few trusted Ukranians and to “appropriate” food from the fields. One son of Esther Stermer carried a 150 pound millstone back to the cave on his back so that they could grind wheat into flour.

 

This book uses short excerpts from the memoir as well as many photos of the family from their early lives until today as well as maps of the area and of the section of the caves where they hid. It also has photos of the contemporary cavers exploring the caves and photos of the objects that they found in the caves that had been left behind by the hiding family members, including the millstone.

 

 An afterword explains that Peter Lane Taylor published an article about exploring these caves and his interviews with the surviors in the June 2004 issue of National Geographic Adventure which generated a lot of interest in the press. In August of 2006 Nicola escorted some of the survivors and descendants of some of the survivors back to the cave and is spearheading an effort to preserve the caves for their historic value. A documentary entitled  “No Place on Earth” which contains interviews with survivors as well as re-enactments was released in April of 2013.

To see a segment on the Today show generated by the interest in the original article published in the National Geographic Adventure magazine, click here.
To see a trailer for the film "No Place on Earth" click here.
 

People

 Zeida and Esther Stermer

             Nissel

             Chana Stermer – married Joseph Richter

             Henia Stermer – married to Fishel Dodyk

                         Shunkale Hochman – daughter of Henia and Fishel

                         Pepkale Stermer – daughter of Henia and Fishel

 Shulim – married Czarna

                                    Erin Grunstein – granddaughter of Shlomo  

             Shlomo – married Bella

                         Lila – daughter of Shlomo and Bella             

             Etka Stermer – married Abe Katz

 

 Choncia Dodyk

             Mendel Dodyk – son of Choncia; married to Yetta

                         Regina Dodyk – daughter of Mendel and Yetta

             Fradel Dodyk – daughter of Choncia

             Yossel Dodyk – son of Choncia; married to Pepcia

                         Nunia Dodyk – son of Yossel and Pepcia (adopted after parents’ death and became Norman Kittner

             Meimel Reibel – daughter of Choncia

                         Mania Reibel – daughter of Meimel

 Dortcia (Dorothy) Karpf – daughter of Mania

  Mundek (Marvin) and Luzer (Louis) Reibel; sons of Meimel

             Etcia Goldberg – daughter of Choncia

                         Mania (Mariya) Gritsiv – daughter of Etcia

  Dunia (Daniel) and Marek Goldberg – sons of Etcia

    

 Ulo and Frida Barad – siblings; nephew and niece of Yetta Dodyk (see above)

 

Mayer and Hersch Kavelek – cousins of Fishel Dodyk (see above); exact relationship unclear

 

Siomo and Karl (Ziundi) Kurz – nephews of Esther Sturmer; exact relationship unclear

 

Leiche Wexler – sister of Esther Stermer; married to Munie Wexler

            Sol Wexler - son of Leiche and Munie 
                 Ed Vogel - son-in-law of Sol
            Lonchia Wexler – daughter of Leiche and Munie

 

Shimon Kittner

Leib Kittner – brother of Shimon

            Shunia Kittner – son of Leib
Usher Metzger

 

Shancie Kimelman – sister of Esther Stermer

 

Places

Ukraine

Popowa Yama (Priest’s Grotto) , Ukraine

Verteba Caves, Ukraine

Korolowka, Ukraine

Bilche-Zolote, Ukraine
Myshcoff, Poland

Montreal, Canada

 

Wedding Song: Memoirs of an Iranian Jewish Woman by Farideh Goldin 2003

"Memoirs like ... 'Wedding Song' by Goldin teach us as much about the history of Iran as they do about the authors by addressing larger themes of war, coming of age, veiling, immigration and alienation." from a review by Erika Meitner in the Jewish Daily Forward 12/29/09

Ferideh Goldin immigrated to the United States from Iran in 1976 when she was 23 years old, eventually married an American, and gave birth to three daughters. She says in the Prologue that she has written this memoir for her daughters to explain to them what growing up in Iran had been like.

The daughter of a mother from Hamedan and a father from Shiraz, Ferideh Goldin tells the story of growing up in a family where age-old customs prevailed. The theme of her memoir is marriage and family, and although the story focusses mainly on the marriage of her parents, it moves backward several generations and forward to her own marriage as well as to thoughts about what the future holds for her daughters.

What the author emphasizes is that women in Iran were chattel, married off when they were quite young, at which point each settled near or in the home of her husband’s family. Daughters from poor families were a particular liability. Each was another mouth to feed and marrying them off lessened the burden in a typically large family.  When the author’s mother was given over to her father, she was passed off as being fifteen, the legal age when girls could be married in Iran. She was actually only thirteen. Her father was 23. Two years after their marriage in 1951, at the age of fifteen she gave birth to her first daughter, Farideh.

The marriage came about because of hardships on both sides. The mothers of both the bride and groom were widows with large families. The bridegroom, obligated to help support his mother and younger siblings, took a bride whose role it would be to help her mother-in-law keep the household running. Young, far from her mother in another city, the bride never fit in, was labeled a peasant and made to feel inferior. She was depressed and angry.

The author describes many heartbreaking scenes that reveal that her father’s loyalty was to his family, not to his wife. When the author wanted to go to high school and college, her father acceded to her insistence on an education, but throughout her years in school her family looked around for an appropriate husband for her. She held her ground, refusing all suitors, eventually leaving for America over her father’s objections.

This family drama is played out against the background of the growing turmoil in Iran with the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. The rich detail the author provides about her Jewish family and their day-to-day customs reveals how much their lives were like their Muslim neighbors before Muslim extremism held sway. But when many Iranian Jews fled to the United States or Israel, her family chose to stay in Iran, finally fleeing when the Shah was overthrown. The author makes a point that throughout his life her father at increasingly great emotional cost maintained the cultural tradition of keeping the extended family together, and that his personal tragedy was that all this came to an end when members of his family scattered as they fled a hostile government in their homeland.

To read a review of a book about the history of Iranian Jews written as the catalogue to accompany an exhibit illustrating that history, click here.

In the last section of this memoir Ferideh Goldin explains that in writing this memoir she did not want to publicly criticize members of her family so she has changed names. I think it is reasonable to conclude that she uses the original names of the members of the earlier generations, especially those pictured with their names attached to the photos reproduced in this memoir. And from the page of acknowledgements it seems clear that she uses the real names of her immediate family. It is most likely that she has changed the names of members of her father’s family, many of whom the author portrays as being particularly uncharitable to her mother. In any case, she provides no last names except for women in very early photos on her mother’s side. I have included below only those names I am reasonably certain are the actual family names, but for the most part they are only first names.

People
Author’s mother’s family
Adina Sabba
    Dina Salem – daughter of Adina
        Touran – daughter of Dina
             Rouhi – daughter of Touran; married Esghel
                  Farideh – daughter of Rouhi and Esghel; married Norman Goldin; author
                      Lena, Yael, and Rachel Goldin- daughters of Farideh and Norman
                 Nahid Gerstein – daughter of Rouhi and Esghel
                 Freydoun – son of Rouhi and Esghel
                 Farzad – son of Rouhi and Esghel
                 Niloufar – daughter of Rouhi and Esghel
           Avi – son of Touran
           Shekoofeh – daughter of Touran
           Fereshteh – daughter of Touran
           Beejan – son of Touran
     Aziza – half sister of Rouhi
           Mohtaram – daughter of Aziza
                Parveez, Eshagh, Jamsheed, Maheen, and Farzaneh- children of Mohtaram

Hamineh Saed – mother-in-law of Dina Salem

Author’s father’s family
Bibi
    Tauvous – daughter of Bibi
         Esghel – son of Tauvous; married Rouhi (see above)

Places
Hamedan, Iran
Shiraz, Iran
Tehran, Iran
Israel

Virginia, United States
 

Fifteen Journeys: Warsaw to London by Jasia Reichardt 2012

..."[T]he format of the book ... reads as something of a collage. The letters and the illustrations ... and then the countdown of the 15 different journeys ... becomes this interesting mosaic." from an interview with Jasia Reichardt conducted by Jessa Crispin and reprinted in Kirkus Reviews 6/26/12

This moving holocaust memoir was written by a writer in the art world who came from a family of artists and musicians living in Warsaw. Born in 1933, Jasia Reichardt was quite young during much of the time leading up to the war and during the war’s early years. This, she writes, accounts for the fact that she did not really have a total picture of what was happening because her family shielded her as much as possible.

Her inheritance, 15 letters and 31 postcards sent by her mother and grandmother from Warsaw to her mother’s sister Franciszka Themerson, form the basis of the first half of the memoir. Reichardt finally read them fifty years after they were written, the contents too painful for her to confront. Franciszka and her husband Stefan Themerson had been in Paris when the war broke out and Franciszka fled to London where she worked with the Polish government in exile and worked to sustain her family back in Poland. None of Franciszka’s correspondence to her mother or sister in Warsaw has survived.

The first letter in the packet is from February, 1940. The last postcard is from June of 1942. Reichardt points out that mail was censored and that some of what her mother and grandmother wrote was in “code” which she “translates” for us. Letters were often sent through contacts in Portugal and Romania. The author's mother and grandmother fret about the fact that they were not sure Franciszka was getting all of their letters, nor they hers. Reichardt also points out that in reading the letters you can follow the deterioration of the family situation. In the early communication her family members were still living in well-appointed apartments amongst possessions like grand pianos. Eventually they were moved, along with all of the Jews in Warsaw, to the ghetto and were crammed into close quarters where nerves were frayed and disagreements broke out. In early communications the author’s mother and grandmother thank Franciszka for the packages of food she continually sends and they beg her to not spend so much of her own funds on food for them. They are fine. But as time passes, you can see that they are much more dependent on the packages and they convey this without trying to worry Franciszka. But the author makes clear that because of Franciszka’s connections to the Polish government in exile, she knew exactly what was going on.

The second half of the memoir is about Reichardt’s journeys once she is smuggled out of the ghetto with her grandmother in an ambulance, an act she later realizes must have cost her family a lot of money in bribes. History records that the first deportations from the Warsaw ghetto – the Grossaktion – started in July of 1942, so she assumes she was smuggled out in June. She and her grandmother are taken to the ghetto in Otwock where she gets instruction in the Catholic religion. She flees the ghetto with specific instructions about where to find a contact, and she receives papers that give her a new identity. Over the next months and years her journey takes her to a number of hiding places including to the homes of sympathetic Poles and to an orphanage where the nuns look after her. After the war she was reunited with her aunt Franciszka and her husband Stephan Themerson, artists, experimental film makers and founders of the alternative Gaberbocchus Press in London.

Included in the memoir are family photos, reproductions of art work by her grandfather, mother and aunt, and reproductions of documents. Also included is an annotated list of the people connected to her story, noting who survived the war and who did not, and a “Calendarium” which sets out the important dates of World War II, mostly as they relate to Poland and Warsaw.

To watch a short video of Jasia Reichardt talking about her life, click here.
To see photos from the Warsaw ghetto, click here.

People
Author's mother's family
Jakub Weinles – married Lucja Kaufman
 Maryla Weinles – daughter of Jakub and Lucja; married Seweryn (Sewek) Chaykin
   Janina Chaykin (took the name Maria Janina Ceglowska) – married Tony Richards; (became Jasia Richards, then Jasia Reichardt)
   Franciszka Weinles – daughter of Jakub and Lucja; married Stefan Themerson

Author’s father’s family
Herman Chaykin (Chajkin) - married Cecylia (Cesia) Zajac
  Stach Chaykin – son of Herman and Cecylia; married to Dasza (Daria) Lifszyk
     Wisia (Ludwicka) Chaykin – daughter of Stach
  Michal Chaykin – son of Herman and  Cecylia
  Pawel Chaykin – son of Herman and  Cecylia
  Seweryn (Sewek) Chaykin – son of Herman and Cecylia; married to Maryla (see above)

Antoni Libin – son of sister of Cecylia Zajac Chaykin; brother of Zdzislaw
Zdzislaw Libin (Libera) – son of sister of Cecylia Zajac Chaykin; brother of Antoni; married to Helena
   Antoni Libin – son of Zdzislaw and Helena
Wladek Kaufman – sister of Lucja Weinles and Leon Kamir
Leon Kamir – sister of Wladek and Lucja Weinles
Ludwika (Ludka) – cousin of Franciszka and Stefan; married Henryk (Heniek) Heller [Sobieralski – surname acquired during the war]
    Wanda (Wandzia) Sobieralski – daughter of Ludwika and Haniek; married to Genek Wilczynski
     Jas Sobieralski – son of Ludwika and Haniek
Anka Poznanska – cousin, relationship not specified

Stefan Themerson’s family
Mieczyslaw Thermerson
  Stefan Themerson – son of Mieczyslaw
  Irena (Irka/Irenka) Themerson – daughter of Mieczyslaw; married to Stefan Miller
Hania Kawa – cousin of the Themersons; exact relationship not specified

Places
Warsaw, Poland
Warsaw Ghetto, Warsaw, Poland
Falenica, Poland
Otwock, Poland
Zofiowka Psychiatric Hospital, Otwock, Poland
Treblinka Extemination Camp, Poland
London, England

Shanghai Ghetto - a documentary written and directed by Dana Janklowitz Mann and Amir Mann

"... [T]he documentary 'Shanghai Ghetto' tells the fascinating story of a group of Jewish survivors who narrowly escaped the full horror of the Holocaust but are still very much its victims and will always bear its scars." from  a review by William Arnold in the Seattle Post Intelligencer 5/15/2003

As the Nazis increased their discrimination against their Jewish population in the 1930’s, many Jewish residents looked for ways out of Germany. Before war was declared Germany was happy to have their Jewish population leave, but it wasn’t easy for the Jews to do so. They needed sponsors and visas to immigrate to other countries. Furthermore, countries had restrictive quotas, and even if they found a country that would take them in, they needed cash to pay for the paperwork and their transportation.

One route that was available for those who had no other way out and had money for travel and were willing to take the risk was to travel to Shanghai, China where, due to a specific set of circumstances, visas were not necessary. So as many as 20,000 Jewish refugees sold their assets for what they could get and embarked on a journey that in most cases took them overland to Italy and from there by ship to Shanghai.

This film tells this story through interviews with a handful of the refugees who, as children, had spent their early years in Shanghai. It includes archival footage of the Jewish community of Shanghai during the war as well as a few scenes of some of them returning to Shanghai as adults.

The interviewees tell versions of the same story: They and their families were shocked at the conditions they found in Shanghai. Most were sent to live in the poorest area, Hongchew, where accommodations were primitive. They did not have flush toilets, for example, a fact of life that the formerly well-off German refugees found hard to imagine. They had to find jobs, but many could not earn enough to support their families and they relied on the largesse of a large established Baghdadi Jewish community who had settled much earlier in Shanghai and on charity from the American Joint Distribution Committee. Conditions were especially difficult during the war in the 1940’s because of dwindling food supplies.

From the moment they got there, they formed a community and did their best to adjust. Like immigrants who settled elsewhere, they brought their culture with them, setting up small businesses to cater to their needs. They created newspapers in German and Yiddish, and schools for their children and entertainment for the adults, but when the war was over they wanted to leave. They again went through the process of looking for places to settle and scattered across the world, many emigrating to Israel or the United States.

During the interviews the refugees also remarked with their voices full of emotion, that as difficult as it was to live in Shanghai, most of them survived, unlike most of the members of their families and friends who never made it out of Germany and other countries in Europe.

To watch a trailer for the movie click here.
To read a travel article about visiting the former Jewish ghetto in Shanghai and the refugee museum that has been established, click here.
To read a post on this blog of a memoir, Strange Haven, by Sigmund Tobias who is interviewed in this documentary, click here.
To read a post on this blog of a young adult novel that tells the story of the author's Russian family's stay in Shanghai before and during the war, click here.

People
Those interviewed in the film: Alfred Kohn, Harold Janklowicz, Betty Grebenschikoff, Sigmund Tobias, Evelyn Pike Rubin; and Laura Margolis - employee of the American Joint Distribution Committee
Three interviews are included on the DVD as extras: Gary Matzdorf, Henry Meisel, Susie Lipsey

Places
Berlin, Germany
Germany
Shanghai

Ekaterinoslav: One Family’s Passage to America, A memoir in verse by Jane Yolen 2012

"Jane Yolen’s new work combines her talents as a poet with her skill as a storyteller." from a review by Laurel Corona posted on the Jewish Book Council blog

The writer Jane Yolen has written an engaging volume of 35 poems that explore the lives of her grandparents and their eight children who left their home in Ekaterinoslav in Ukraine to come to America. The poems deal with the personal and the socio-political: her family and its life in the old country and the new. She divides the poems into three time frames - “Ekaterinoslav: 1873-1913, Passage: 1910-1914, and Greenhorns: 1914 -1939.

In a two-page “Note from the Poet” that precedes the poetry, Yolen sketches in what she knows about her grandparents, their trip to America and the family’s early life in Connecticut. But now that she is a grandmother there are no family members left who can fill in the many gaps in their family story, and she expresses regret that her father had never seemed interested or willing to talk about the past.

So she does some of the work that genealogists do – she contacts cousins for scraps of information and looks at documents which sometimes become the basis for poems. For example, the facts on a ship’s manifest about family members inspire a poem she calls “Manifests.” And she includes a number of family photos that are the source of poems, taken both in Ekaterinoslav and in America.

Yolen writes that she comes from a family of storytellers. She knows that family stories passed down are made up of truths, half-truths and total fabrications – intentional or otherwise. In her poetry she uses what she knows and what she supposes  in order to recover her family’s past both as a way to acknowledge their lives and as a way to help her to better understand the personalities and accomplishments of the many family she did not know at all or did not know well. And through her poetry she tries to apprehend how their lives shaped hers. She has used her inheritance, her gift for story telling, to create this wonderful "memoir in verse.”

To read about the history of the Jewish community in Ekaterinoslav, click here.

People
Samson Yolen – married to Mina Hyatt
   Louis Yolen – son of Samson and Mina
      Ruth – daughter of Louis
   Eva Yolen – daughter of Samson and Mina; twin sister of Sylvia; married Abe Dranoff
   Sylvia Yolen – daughter of Samson and Mina; twin sister of Eva; married Hyman Plotkin
   Vera Yolen Krassner – daughter of Samson and Mina
      Marsha Krassner, daughter of Vera
  Samuel Yolen – son of Samson and Mina; married Rose Pinkus
  Rose Yolen Davidow – daughter of Samson and Mina
  Velvel (Wulf, William) Yolen – son of Samson and Mina
      Jane Yolen – daughter of Velvel; author
  Harry Yolen – son of Samson and Mina

Relatives tagged in photos, exact relationships unclear: Micki Plotkin, Minnie Plotkin, Alvin Krassner, Claire Dranoff, Dorothy Yolen Mark, Eli Dranoff

Places
Ekaterinoslav, Ukraine
New Haven, Connecticut
Waterbury, Connecticut

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Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary, The First Complete Edition 2004

"For those unfamiliar with the story of Hannah's exceptional courage, this is a moving collection." from a review in Publisher's Weekly 10/25/2004

Hanna Senesh (Szenes), born in Hungary in 1921 and executed in 1943, was a thoughtful, soul-searching writer whose diary is the centerpiece of this volume. Other writings by Senesh
included are letters she sent, mostly to her mother in Budapest, Hungary from her new home in Palestine, and poetry, some of it translated from Hungarian, some of it translated from Hebrew. In this volume the diary is introduced by a foreword written by the American poet/novelist Marge Piercy, a preface by Eitan Senesh, son of Hannah Senesh’s brother, a translator’s preface by Marta Cohn, and a short essay entitled “Memories of Hannah’s Childhood” by Catherine Senesh, Hannah Senesh’s mother.

The diary published in this volume starts with an entry written when Hannah Senesh was thirteen in 1934 where she writes about having just visited her father’s grave. It ends in 1943, five years after she had immigrated to Palestine and was about to embark on a secret mission to help Hungarian Jews escape from what was, at the time it was being planned, not yet Nazi-occupied Hungary. Reading from start to finish, we embark on a journey along with the writer as she formulates goals and makes deliberate choices to help achieve those goals. She is constantly going back and reflecting on past wishes and choices, analyzing her doubts and deciding what her next steps might be.

Early in her story, like many teenagers, Senesh is preoccupied with her place academically, writing about her studies and her teachers, but she is also concerned, as many teenagers are, about her social status, evaluating the boys in her social circle, wondering which one was right for her, despairing that she’ll ever find the perfect match. She is from a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family and is not particularly religious, but in her diary, every year at Yom Kippur she looks back over the past year and makes a serious attempt to analyze what she has done wrong and how she can improve. 

Overt anti-Semitism rears its ugly head during her years at the Protestant girls’ school where her mother has to pay double to secure her Jewish daughter’s education and where Senesh, because she is Jewish, is eventually denied the opportunity to be an officer in the Literary Society. In addition, overt anti-Semitism is more and more prevalent in day-to-day Hungarian life. Her response is to embrace Zionism and to plan to immigrate to Palestine when she graduates high school in Budapest. She applies to attend a two-year agricultural school in Nahalal. Accepted by the school, she leaves Hungary in the early fall of 1939 right after war is declared by the French and British.

The entries written in Palestine are very interesting. Partly it is because she was maturing and her thinking and writing are more complex. And partly it is because she is a careful observer of the geography of the land, its settlers – their personalities and their politics - and its structures, especially of Kibbutz S’dot Yam where she decided to settle after she finished the two-year agricultural program. At first she is excited to be in Palestine. It feels liberating to her to be in what feels to her to be a Jewish country where there is important work to be done, far away from the oppression of Jews in Europe. But a theme that runs throughout this part of the diary and becomes stronger toward the end, is her constant analysis of her status in Palestine. She believed totally in the socialist principles of kibbutz life, but often found the drudgery of kitchen and garden work mind-numbing and not the best use of her talents. She is constantly questioning her decisions. Is she sorry she immigrated to Palestine? No. Is life here harder and less gratifying than she expected? Yes. Is there something she could be doing in Palestine to take advantage of her previous education and talents? She continued to hope so.

Another topic she returns to frequently is her loneliness and the guilt she feels at leaving her mother behind. She suffers from more and more anxiety as the war engulfs more countries, so when the opportunity to go on a secret mission is offered her, she sees it as the big moment she has been waiting for.

At the end of the diary and letters is a section called “The Mission” which picks up from where the diary ends and narrates the end of Hannah Senesh’s short life up to her execution in November of 1943. "The Mission" includes two pieces by fellow parachutists, Reuven Dafne and Yoel Palgi, and an extended piece by Catherine Senesh entitled, “Meeting in Budapest,” which is about the months she spent with her daughter once Hannah Senesh had been captured and returned to Budapest to jail. The last essay is a short historical note written by Professor Judith Taylor Baumel of Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

This volume also contains endnotes keyed to entries in the diary and other writings, and it also includes photos. A note on the title page indicates that parts of this book were published as “Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary by Shocken Books in 1972.

If you would like to read more about the parachutists from Palestine, including photos, click here.

Note: The documentary Blessed Is the Match, directed by Roberta Grossman, released in 2008 and available on DVD, is the story of Hannah Senesh's life based on the same material that is in the memoir. Voice-overs read excerpts from Hannah Senesh's diaries and from her mother's essay which is included in the memoir.  The film is most valuable for its many photos of the family, interviews with her brother's two sons, a short archival interview with her mother, and with contemporaries who knew Hannah Senesh. It also has archival footage of wartime Europe and of pioneers working the land in Palestine. Least satisfying are the dramatic reenactments, mostly in the last third of the film, deemed visually necessary because there is no footage and there are no photos of Hannah Senesh once she leaves Palestine and goes on her mission.

The film starts and ends with the moving ceremony of Senesh's coffin being taken from the ship in the harbor in Haifa that brought it from where her body had been buried in Hungary. The film shows the coffin being transported throughout Israel so its citizens can pay their respects, and then the ceremony where it is received in Jerusalem to be reburied with the bodies of other parachutists who had lost their lives.

The context provided in interviews by contemporary historians and in archival footage is useful. Having a voice off-camera recite several of Senesh's poems is affecting. But the diary itself reveals the life of this unusual young woman in a way the film can only hint at.

People (from the book and the film)
Family
Bela Szenes – married Catherine Salzberger
    Gyuri Senesh – son of Bela and Catherine
        Eitan Senesh – son of Gyuri
        David Senesh - son of Gyuri
    Hannah Senesh – daughter of Bela and Catherine; author

Elizabeth Salzberger – sister of Catherine; married to Steve Sas
    Evi Sas – daughter of Elizabeth and Steve

Friends
Eva Beregi
Surika Braverman
Magda Csecsy
Reuven Dafne
Mihaly Fekete
Peretz Goldstein
Avigdor Hameiri
Judit Kiss
Ilona Krausz
Aharon Megged
Marta Ozary
Yoel Palgi
Gyuri Revesz
Dina Schechman
Enzo (Hayim) Sereni

Places
Budapest, Hungary
Dombovar, Hungary
Janoshaza, Hungary
Nahalal, Israel
Sdot Yam, Israel
Haifa, Israel

The Nazi Officer’s Wife: How One Jewish Woman Survived the Holocaust by Edith Hahn Beer with Susan Dworkin 1999

"A well-written, tense, and intimate Holocaust memoir by an author with a remarkable war experience." from a review in Kirkus Reviews 9/1/1999

This very interesting and moving memoir was written by the Holocaust survivor, Edith Hahn Beer with the help of Susan Dworkin. The author, 85 at the time of its publication in 1999, had grown up in Vienna, lived out most of the war years in Germany under a false identity, and then left for England after the war where she lived for over thirty years. After her second husband, Fred Beer died, she settled in Netanya, Israel.

The title of this memoir underlines the most unusual aspect of her life. Provided with false identity papers by Austrians who did not support the Nazi regime, Edith Hahn Beer married a German member of the Nazi party whom she met at an art gallery, and who, after a short romance, declared his love. She shared her secret, but although his politics were not pro-Jewish, his personality was such that he chafed at authority and felt compelled to protect her and her secret. When he was drafted toward the end of the war, he became a Nazi officer.

Because the author spent most of the war years in Germany, we get a detailed look at what it was like to first be a slave laborer on an asparagus farm, then a worker in a box factory.  Then, once she got her false identity papers, she became what she calls a “U-boat” – a person living amongst the enemy - and we see what it was like living amongst Nazis and Nazi sympathizers through her eyes. The details she provides allow us to become emotionally involved in her close calls – in her need to be careful in order not to give away her identity. This meant that she was constantly strategizing, constantly being fearful that she might implicate herself and others who had helped her.

Edith Hahn Beer survived for a number of reasons: she was lucky, and she met a few sympathetic Austrians and Germans who provided help and cover at crucial moments. Mostly it was because she was smart and made the right decisions. However, she never would have suffered as she did, she realized much later, had she decided to leave Austria before Hitler invaded, as her sisters had done. For a variety of reasons she had not wanted to leave her beloved Vienna and she, like many others, was convinced that Hitler, who she considered an “idiot,” was not a real threat.

Throughout the years she kept in touch with her Austrian Christian friend Christl Denner Beran who helped save her life by agreeing to hand over her papers so that Edith Hahn Beer could assume her identity. For this selfless act of humanity she has been honored by Yad Vashem.

To see a trailer for the movie of the same name which includes a short clip of an interview with Edith Hahn Beer, click here.
To read an in-depth article on Germany's use of forced and slave labor during World War II called "German Industry and the Third Reich", click here.

People

Author’s family (Father and mother were distant cousins. Both had Hahn surname.)

Author’s father’s family

Leopold Hahn – married Klothilde Hahn

            Edith Hahn – daughter of Leopold and Klothilde; married to Werner Vetter; married to Fred Beer; author

                        Maria Angela Vetter Schluter – daughter of Edith and Werner

            Mimi Hahn – daughter of Leopold and Klothilde; married Milo Grenzbauer

            Johanna (Hansi) Hahn – daughter of Leopold and Klothilde

Gisela Hahn Kirschenbaum – sister of Leopold

Isadore Hahn – brother of Leopold

            Selma Hahn – daughter of Isadore

Author’s mother’s family

Ignatz Hoffman – Klothilde Hahn’s uncle – exact relationship unclear

            Klothilde Hahn –niece of Ignatz Hoffman;  married Leopold Hahn (see above)

            Richard Hahn – brother of Klothilde; married Roszi

            Elvira Hahn – sister of Klothilde

                        Jultschi – daughter of Elvira; married Otto Ondrej

                                    Otto Ondrej – son of Jultschi and Otto

            Marianne Hahn – sister of Klothilde; married Adolf Robichek

Max Sternbach – author’s cousin; relationship not clear

Friends and Acquaintances

Bertschi Beran – married to Christl Denner

Liesel Brust

Kathe Crohn

Heddy Deutsch

Suri Fellner

Philippe Halsmann

Max Hausner

Steffi Kanagur

Sigfried Kanagur – brother of Steffi

Mina Katz

Lily Kramer

Erna Marcus

Felix Roemer

            Wolfgang Roemer – nephew of Felix

            Ilse Roemer – sister of Wolfgang

Josef (Pepi) Rosenfeld

Hermi Schwarz

Places

Vienna, Austria

Stockerau, Austria

Hotel Bristol, Badgastein, Austria

Hainburg, Austria

Osterberg, Germany

Munich, Germany

Brandenburg, Germany

Netanya, Israel

Assembling My Father: A Daughter’s Detective Story by Anna Cypra Oliver 2004

"Oliver's memorial to her elusive dad—and the way researching and writing it changes her own identity—is unforgettable." from a review in Publisher's Weekly 2004

In this interesting memoir Anna Oliver investigates the trajectory of her father’s life through to his suicide in 1974 when her father, Lewis Weinberger, was 35 and the author was five years old. Both her father and her mother were from well-established, wealthy Jewish families and grew up in Queens in New York. Lewis Weinberger married Teresa Oliver in 1960 when they were still college students. He was the son of a successful housing developer; she was the daughter of a Jewish mother and a father who was an artist from Chile and a lapsed Catholic. Trained as an architect, Lewis eventually moved with Teresa to Miami, following the relocation of his parents and older brother, and tried working for his father. But he was restless and Teresa was unhappy, so in 1970 they set out for New Mexico where they lived amongst many others who in the 1960s and 1970s had dropped out of living conventional lives and had joined the counterculture. Sometime after his death, the author’s mother joined a Christian fundamentalist sect. Anna Oliver lived with her mother and two successive step-fathers and eventually left when she went off to a Christian college in Minnesota.

Anna Oliver reconstructs her family’s history as a way of examining the past for clues that would unlock the mysteries that surrounded her father’s life and death. She was longing to know a father she did not remember, to find comfort in learning about him. She felt that doing so would bring him closer, help to make him real, and help her to better understand her own roots. In order to find the pieces of the puzzle and to be able to assemble them, she conducted many interviews, following up on leads from family and family friends. She explored historical archives and found useful resources in unlikely places. She rescueded a journal her father had kept from an old friend of her father’s who lived in New Mexico and who had found his body after the suicide and had kept some of his effects.She quotes relevant passages in her memoir and reproduces some passages in his handwriting.

In taking on this project, the author experienced the pleasures and frustrations of amateur genealogists. She met and got to know a number of relatives she had never met or barely remembered, including her father’s brother Joe who was able to pass on to her both facts and insights that she found invaluable. When her mother finally agreed to talk about her past she learned a lot about her mother’s earlier years and her relationship with her father. And she learned that an interview or source could very often lead to unexpected outcomes. For example, she contacted a friend of her father who, it turned out, had her father’s voice on audio tape. Finally, she came to realize that some of her assumptions were just that – assumptions not based in fact. From all the sources she consulted, she was able to draw informed conclusions and put together a textured portrait of her father although there are still many gaps that she doubts that she will ever be able to fill.

In a thread of the memoir Anna Oliver explores her own relationship to Judaism. She had always known that both her parents had been born into non-religious Jewish families but, having been brought up a Christian fundamentalist in New Mexico she knew nothing about Judaism. She had been close to her maternal grandmother who she visited fairly frequently in New York but she did not consider exploring Judaism as an option until she was well along in researching her father’s life and had spent extended time with members of his family and with some of his Jewish friends from when he was growing up in Queens. It took years before she could throw off the restricted life she felt was imposed on her by her mother's conversion to Christian fundamentalism. She felt the imprint deeply and ventured out into the world beyond Christian fundamentalism with trepidation. Partly, she was concerned about how it would affect her mother.

This memoir places her parents within the wider context of the turmoil of the second half of the twentieth century in the United States. In sketching in the chaotic socio-political decades of the 60’s and 70’s, she demonstrates that some young adults in her parents’ generation, including former friends of her parents, dabbled in alternative lifestyles and then moved on to live more or less stable and conventional lives. Not so her parents who seemed to have lost their way. For a host of reasons she explores they seemed vulnerable to the darker elements that were part and parcel of the counterculture. They had worked deliberately to put geographical and psychic distance between themselves and their upbringing, but they lost their way.

To read an article about Jewish Deadheads click here.

People
Author’s father’s family
Morris Weinberger – married to Kate
    Joseph Weinberger – son of Morris and Kate; married to Myriam
        Stephan Weinberger – son of Joseph and Myriam
    Miriam Weinberger – daughter of Morris and Kate; married Robert
        Michael – son of  Miriam
    Lewis Weinberger – daughter of Morris and Kate; married Teresa
        Peter Weinberger – adopted son of Lewis and Teresa; marries Julie
        Anna Cypra Oliver (Weinberger) – daughter of Lewis and Teresa; married to Stephan Klein; author

Author’s mother’s family
Nathan
    Rose – daughter of Nathan; married to Juan Oliver
        John Oliver – son of Juan and Rose
        Teresa Oliver – daughter of Juan and Rose; married Lewis Weinberger (see above)
    Anna – daughter of Nathan

Friends
Irwin Sollinger
David Levine
Bobby Blender
Ernie Kirschman
Jerome Yavarkovsky
Barry and Runja Klein
Donald and Elaine Singer
Robert Greenberg

Places
Miami, Florida
New Hyde Park, NY
New York City, NY
Mahopac Lake, NY
Roscoe, NY
Taos, New Mexico
Blaine, Minnesota