Monday, May 19, 2014

Lost in America: A Journey with My Father by Sherwin B. Nuland 2003

"Nuland brings the often-volcanic Nudelman vividly to life and makes it easy to see why this immigrant tailor (in Yiddish the family name means “needleman”) who worked in the city’s garment district had such a searing impact on his son’s life."
from a review by Bruce Fellman in the March 2003 Yale Alumni Magazine

Sherwin Nuland (1930- 2014) was a highly respected surgeon and writer – his 1995 book, How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter, won the National Book Award. When he finally turned to writing this engaging memoir his aim was to examine his upbringing in the Bronx as the son of Jewish immigrants. He especially wanted to explore  his debilitating relationship with his father.

Sherwin Nuland’s parents were both born in Europe.  In the Bronx they and their two sons lived in a four room apartment along with the author’s maternal grandmother and his mother’s unmarried sister, Rose. If six people living in such close quarters wasn’t trying enough, adding to the tension were negative feelings his grandmother and Rose had toward Nuland’s father and the negative feelings he had for them. Nuland’s father had an explosive temper which cast a pall over the entire family. Nuland remembers his mother trying to negotiate between the two warring sides, trying to hold the family together.

Throughout the years they had to cope with more than their share of illness and death.  Nuland himself had a serious bout of diphtheria, and his mother died of colon cancer when the author was eleven. His father became more and more debilitated with a shuffling gate and stooped posture, and had such difficulty moving his limbs that he became increasingly dependent on his sons, especially his dutiful but resentful younger son Shepsel. (Sherwin’s Yiddish name.)

In this memoir the author examines and tries to come to terms with the difficult circumstances of his gloom-filled childhood.  A bright and ambitious student, Nuland notes how he was embarrassed by his father’s shtetl roots, his having never learned to write English, his heavily accented English - partly gibberish of his own invention, and his physical disabilities. His father barely made a living and the family relied on money Rose brought in as well as handouts from wealthier relatives.

As he grows older he observes the often large gulf between life in his Yiddish-speaking religiously-observant home and the kind of lives he is exposed to in the home of his friends and at college. Increasingly torn between his family’s needs and the wider world that beckons, the author tries to distance himself from his roots and to position himself for a successful life in America. He and his brother change their last name from Nudelman to Nuland and  the author chooses to attend Yale Medical School instead of staying in New York and going to medical school locally.

Age often begets wisdom. Nuland looks back at his father’s life with more understanding, if not forgiveness. He has painted a detailed and rich portrait of one Jewish immigrant family’s life in New York, both before and after World War II. Their story touches on many of the circumstances that confronted other immigrant parents who could not find their way in America but who were willing to sacrifice so that their children could have a measure of success in the new world.

To read an article about the quota of Jewish students admitted and Jewish teachers hired at medical schools, click here.
To watch a video of Sherwin Nuland discussing Lost in America click here.

Family
Peshe Lutsky
   Vitsche (Violet) Lutsky – daughter of Peshe; married Meyer Nudelman (original family name- Weinberg)
        Maishe Nudelman – son of Vitsche and Meyer
        Harvey Nudelman – son of Vitsche and Meyer
        Sherwin B. Nuland (Nudelman) – son of Vitsche and Meyer; second marriage to Sarah
            Drew Nuland – son of Sherwin
            Toria Nuland – daughter of Sherwin
           Will Nuland – son of Sherwin and Sarah
           Molly Nuland – daughter of Sherwin and Sarah
   Rose Lutsky – daughter of Peshe
   Beattie Lutsky – daughter of Peshe; married Emmanuel Ritter
       Arline Ritter – daughter of Beattie and Emmanuel

Sam (Shmuel Chaim) Simenowitz – nephew of Peshe
Noach Nudelman – father of Meyer (see above)
   Meyer Nudelman – son of Noach; married Vitsche Lutsky (see above)
   Avram Nudelman – son of Noach
Shoil Nudelman – brother of Noach
   Willie (Nuland) Nudelman – son of Shoil

Friends and Acquaintances
Ronald Eisenberg
Dudie Polishook
Jerry Kass
Yosel Asherovsky (Joe Astrove) – married Fanny
 Betty Astrove – daughter of Joe and Fanny
 George Astrove – son of Joe and Fanny
Ralph Astrove – brother of Joe
Leo Hochfeld
Ronald Chapnick
Moses Madonick
Julius Beckenstein
Liebush Lehrer
Ruth Isaacs
Stanley Cohen
Leonard Leibowitz
Frank Gartenberg

Places
Novaradugk, Lithuania
Novoselitz, Bessarabia
Bronx, NY
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Camp Boiberik, New York

Monday, May 5, 2014

Looking for Strangers: The True Story of my Hidden Wartime Childhood by Dori Katz 2013

"This compelling memoir explores the impact of unspeakably traumatic events on familial relationships and the development of identity." from a review by Rachael Dreyer in Library Journal 7/22/2013

Dori Katz, a retired college professor born in Belgium in 1939, spent her entire life curious about her past as a hidden child during World War II and the circumstances surrounding her being hidden. Her father was deported in late 1942. She hardly remembers him, and her mother never wants to talk about those years, often giving vague or contradictory answers to her questions. The experiences she had between the ages of 3 ½ and 5 ½ lie buried until she decides, with much trepidation, to attend a showing of the documentary As If It Were Yesterday about hidden children in Belgium during the war. The film opens a floodgate to both vivid and half-formed memories and strong feelings which she decides to investigate.

What follows is an account of the author’s journey to Belgium to investigate her father’s death and to try to find the Christian family with whom she was placed. Her mother is less than pleased. She keeps asking her daughter why she wants to revisit the past. The burden of having grown up with a mother whose war years had scarred her – she was a widow at the age of 29 – and who continues to try to exert control of the story of their Holocaust past adds to the emotional tensions Katz experiences throughout her investigations.

In Belgium she visits archives where folders on all Jews in wartime Belgium are housed and where she finds information about her father as well as photos. It takes some effort, but she also finds the family who hid her. Although the parents have died, she is reintroduced to two of the children who are very happy to be reunited with her. She asks them about what those years were like. They recount her behavior, including how much her mother’s clandestine visits upset her.

The investigation allows Katz to reclaim much of her submerged past and to come to terms with her present. She realizes that she was two children at once – a Jewish girl named Dori who felt abandoned by her mother, and a Christian girl named Astrid who lived in a small town with alternate sets of parents, brothers and a sister.

She thinks about her father and whether what she’s learned about him makes him at all more real to her. She also tries to understand her mother’s wishes that she not explore her past. Although as she was growing up she often wondered why her mother never kept in contact after the war with the family that hid her, she wonders why she, too, lets the connection slip once she is reunited with them after she worked so hard to find them.  

She ends by writing that it was important for her to embark on the search and to write this memoir – in an effort to make as much sense as she could of a wartime childhood that had a profound effect on the rest of her life.

To read a short account of another Belgian child who was hidden at the age of ten, click here.
To read an article about Belgium finally acknowledging its complicity during the Holocaust, published in 2013, click here.

Family
Family of author's mother
Golda Dychtwald - married Moishe Chaim Katz
   (Astrid) Dori Katz – daughter of Moishe Chaim and Goldie; author
Chaim Dychtwald  - married to Aurelia Zelman; married to second wife Esther
   Fischel Dychtwald – son of Chaim and Aurelia; married to Rachel
       Leah and Abraham  Dychtwald – children of Fischel and Rachel
       Henna Dychtwald – daughter of Chaim and Aurelia
       Golda Dychtwald – daughter of Chaim and Aurelia
Dychtwald cousins:
Nathan and Henna Wunderman
    Bella, Max, and Simon Wunderman – children of Nathan and Henna

Family of author’s father
Ethel Katz
    Joseph Katz – son of Ethel
    Mannes Katz -son of Ethel
    Malka Katz - daughter of Ethel
    Moishe Chaim Katz - son of Ethel; married Golde Dychtwald (see above)
    Berel Katz - son of Ethel
    Devoirah Katz - daughter of Ethel
    Benjamin Katz - son of Ethel

Friends and Acquaintances
Arnold and Helen Golde
David Landau
Maurice Pioro

Places
Jezow, Poland
Svalava, Czechoslovakia
Skierniewice, Poland
Antwerp, Belgium
Brussels, Belgium