Sweet and Low by Rich Cohen 2006

“Although Mr. Cohen is probably using this book to settle scores on some level, he has also managed to turn his family's rancorous history into a gripping memoir: a small classic of familial triumph, travail and strife, and a telling — and often hilarious — parable about the pursuit and costs of the American Dream.” from a review by Michiko Kakutani published in the NY Times on 4/4/2006

This is a story about a Jewish American family whose roots are in Brooklyn, NY. It’s easy to see the memoir as an archetypal American tragedy brought about by warring family factions enmeshed in a very successful family business.

Rich Cohen takes us back to the early days in the life of his maternal grandfather, Benjamin Eisenstadt, who was born in the first decade of the 20th century, the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe. Trained as a lawyer, he had trouble establishing a law practice during the Depression and, instead, went to work in his father-in-law’s diner in Brooklyn. His invention of the first granular sugar substitute – Sweet‘N Low – was a commercial milestone in America and became part of the legacy he left his descendants. It is a family business to this day.

Cohen sets this achievement in a historical and commercial context. He spends some time talking about the history of sugar production and consumption, especially in America, and then he moves on to the obsession with dieting and the drive to find a sugar substitute. He further contextualizes his grandfather’s story by providing information on Jewish immigration to America and on the migration to Brooklyn, in particular.

Cohen makes the point that the business and the family were totally intertwined.The emotional core of this memoir centers around the fact that Cohen's grandmother Betty, who outlived his grandfather Ben, disinherited Cohen's mother, Ellen, one of her and Ben Eisenstadt's four children. The author's anger is evident, especially in his choice to investigate extensively the 1990’s business scandal at the company which at that point was being run by his mother's brother Marvin Eisenstadt and Marvin's son Jeffrey.

Benjamin Eisenstadt's life is an example of the spectacular rise of a Jewish American son of immigrants. Although the memoir is in large part a tribute to his ingenuity, hard work and philanthropic endeavors, it’s also an example of what happens in a family when money is equated with love and power. 

This memoir includes a family tree (all members listed below), the obituary for his grandfather published in the New York Times, and family photos. 

To watch a you tube video of Rich Cohen read selections from Sweet and Low, discuss the book and answer questions, click here.


People
Isadore and Sarah Gellman
    Abraham Gellman – son of Isadore and Sarah
    Betty (Pessie, Bessie) Gellman – daughter of Isadore and Sarah; married Benjamin Eisenstadt
        Marvin Eisenstadt – son of Betty and Benjamin; married Barbara Buchwald
            Jeffrey Eisenstadt – son of Marvin and Barbara
            Jill Eisenstadt – daughter of Marvin and Barbara
            Debra Eisenstadt – daughter of Marvin and Barbara
            Steven Eisenstadt – son of Marvin and Barbara
        Gladys Eisenstadt – daughter of Betty and Benjamin
        Ellen Eisenstadt – daughter of Betty and Benjamin; married Herbert Cohen
            Sharon Cohen-Levin – daughter of Ellen and Herbert
            Steven Cohen – son of Ellen and Herbert
            Richard Cohen – son of Ellen and Herbert; married Jessica; author
                Aaron Cohen – Richard’s son
        Ira Eisenstadt – son of Betty and Benjamin

Paternal grandfather’s family
Morris and Rose Eisenstadt
    Bertha Eisenstadt – daughter of Morris and Rose
    Benjamin Eisenstadt – son of Morris and Rose, married Betty Gellman (see above)
    Robert Eisenstadt – son of Morris and Rose

Rich Cohen’s father’s side
Noah Cohen
    Morris Cohen – Noah’s son; married Esther
        Herbert Cohen – son of Morris and Esther; married Ellen Eisenstadt (see above)
        Renee Cohen Blumenthal – daughter of Morris and Esther
            David Blumenthal – Renee’s son
    Nathan Cohen
   
Places
Brooklyn, NY
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, NY
Brownsville, Brooklyn, NY
Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY
Fort Greene, Brooklyn, NY
Red Hook, Brooklyn, NY
Midwood, Brooklyn, NY
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
Lower East Side, NYC
Neponsit, Queens, NYC
Libertyville, Illinois
Glencoe, Illinois

Odd Men In by Harry Towb, 1983 (documentary)

"Towb's Jewish heritage was an important part of his career. In 1981 he starred in his own television play Cowboys, about a Jewish Irish-American returning to Belfast after many years. Two years later he fronted Odd Men In, a documentary about Belfast's Jews, a personal highlight coming when he interviewed the Israeli President Chaim Herzog, who was born in the city." from the obituary of Harry Towb in The Independent 8/3/2009

Harry Towb (1925-2009) was a very popular Irish Jewish actor born in Belfast, Northern Ireland who, in 1983, wrote and narrated a BBC2 documentary about the history of his Belfast Jewish community. He tells us about the early German Jewish settlers in Belfast, the Jaffe family, whose patriarch, Daniel Jaffe, founded the first synagogue in Northern Ireland. His son, Otto, was Lord Mayor of Belfast, but due to hostilities against Germans around the time of World War I, the family, despite being Jewish, was made to feel unwelcome and left.

The second wave of immigrants toward the end of the 19th century which included Towb’s grandfather came from Russia and areas of Eastern Europe, most particularly Lithuania and Latvia. Towb says that many assumed they were buying tickets to America but had been conned and landed in Hull. Those who settled in Limerick encountered entrenched anti-Semitism there, so moved up to Belfast where they felt welcome.

A Belfaster, Barney Hurwitz, along with other Belfast Jews, responding to the impending disasters in Europe in the late 1930’s, founded the Belfast Refugee Aid Committee to help Jews in Europe come to Belfast where Millisle Farm became the site of a Jewish refugee agricultural community. The goal was to train its residents to live a communal kibbutz-like life so that they could work in agriculture in Palestine. Most of the residents did immigrate, bringing their skills with them to the new-found state of Israel.

Belfast Jews were prominent citizens throughout the middle nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Towb discusses their contributions to the arts as well as commerce. His last interview is with Belfast-born Chaim Herzog, former president of Israel. They have an interesting discussion about the similarities (and differences) between Ireland’s troubles and modern day Israel’s and what it was like for Herzog to have lived through conflict in both places.

Throughout this 50-minute documentary, Towb draws from his own life and conducts interviews with Belfast Jews who are still part of a community, but whose numbers are diminishing as the younger generations move for opportunities elsewhere.

To watch the History of the Jews of Belfast, with Harry Towb as narrator, click on the following you tube videos. All four add up to less than an hour.
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV

To read a detailed article about the history of the Belfast Jewish Community which was originally published in Familia: Ulster Genealogical Review, click here.

People
Harris Sergai
        Harry Towb – Harris’ grandson

Harold Goldblatt
Chaim Herzog
Barney Hurwitz
Sam Jaffa
Daniel Jaffe
    Otto Jaffe – Daniel’s son
        Mark Jaffe – Otto’s son
Solly Lipsitz
Harold Meek
Harry Miller
Max Miller – Harry Miller’s cousin
Eugene Rosenberg
Ray Rosenfeld
Harold and Regina Ross
Harold Smith
Sydney Smith
Bob Redner
Leslie Zukor

Places
Belfast, Northern Ireland
Various locations in Israel

Letter to My Father (or Dearest Father) by Franz Kafka written in 1919, first published as Brief an den Vater in 1953

 "[Franz Kafka] feared [his father] principally because he felt annihilated by his very existence; it was as though he and Hermann Kafka were living contradictories, one of whom must be false if the other is true." from a review published in the New York Sun in June of 2008 by Eric Ormsby on the occasion of the publication of a new British translation by Howard Colyer.

Franz Kafka (1883-1924), one of the towering literary figures of the twentieth century, was a German speaking Jew who was born and lived in Prague, Czechoslovakia. In 1919, in what seems to be a response to his father’s negative reaction to the (latest) woman Kafka wanted to marry, he wrote his father a long letter of complaint that he actually never sent. This letter is one of the many works of Kafka’s published after his early death.

This long letter serves as a memoir-like window into Kafka’s state of mind at that moment, and at the same time it provides a window into the life of the Kafka family. It is important to note that Kafka’s harsh portrait of his father as well as comments about how his father similarly treated other family members are Kafka’s version of how his father treated them. He complains that his father is overbearing, has a hot temper, and is sure he’s always right. Franz Kafka thinks of himself of having more the temperament of his mother’s family and despairs that he and his father will ever be close. 

He uses many examples to make his point. One of the most interesting is his discussion of his father’s religious practice which he says amounted to an obligatory appearance at the synagogue where he seemed barely involved in the service. But his father insisted that Franz accompany him despite Franz’s objections. Kafka also calls his family seder a farce and ultimately faults his father for serving as a poor role model for religious observance. He goes on to state that when he (Franz) became more interested in Judaism his father was upset. He feels that like in all other areas of his life his father crushed any sense of independence.

This is essentially a version of a familiar generational struggle.  A young Jewish man grows up in a poor family in a small town, moves to the big city, marries, and works hard developing a business to support his family. He becomes “respectable.” His son acknowledges that his father has worked hard to give his family everything, but his son feels he has demanded too much in return. Since the father insists upon unquestioning obedience and loyalty, he is particularly irritated that his son has no interest in business, especially the family business. The artistic/creative son feels totally rejected, constantly humiliated, and is full of self-doubt.

Franz Kafka had been reading Freud and understood Freud’s theory of family dynamics. The conflict between Kafka’s desire to please his father and his need to go his own way fed his writing, and various permutations of the father/son conflict can be found in many of his works. Sadly, since most of Kafka’s works were published after his death, his family had no idea of the size of his talent and both they and their son were never to know the place he would eventually hold as a literary giant of the twentieth century.

To read an article that makes a case for Kafka's connections to his Jewish identity, click here.

People
Family
Jacob Kafka – married Franziska Platowski
    Hermann Kafka – married Julie Lowy
        Franz Kafka – son of Hermann and Julie; author
        Georg Kafka – son of Hermann and Julie
        Gabrielle (Elli) Kafka – daughter of Hermann and Julie; married Karl Hermann
            Felix Hermann – son of Gabrielle and Karl
        Valerie (Valli) Kafka – daughter of Hermann and Julie; married Josef Pollack
            Marianne and Lotte Pollack – daughters of Valerie and Josef
        Ottilie (Ottla) Kafka – daughter of Hermann and Julie

Minze Eisner Kafka (relationship unclear)

Jakob Lowy – married to Esther Porias
    Julie Lowy daughter of Jakob and Esther; married Hermann Kafka (see above)
   
Friends and Acquaintances
Carl Bauer – married to Anna Danziger
    Felice Bauer - daughter of Carl and Anna
Max Brod
Otto Brod – Max Brod’s brother
Dora Diamant
Albert Ehrenstein
Lise Kaznelson
Robert Klopstock
Isaac Lowy
Otto Pick
Ernst Polak
Julie Wohryzek

Places
Wossek, southern Bohemia
Podiebrad, Bohemia
Prague, Czech Republic
Straschnitz Cemetery, Prague, former Czechoslovakia
Kierling, Austria

1185 Park Avenue by Anne Roiphe 1999

"[B]y focusing more on the other characters -- on what they do and say -- than on her own thoughts and feelings, Roiphe gives her memoir the dramatic vividness of a novel." from a review in the New York Times by Karen Lehrman, June 6, 1999

Anne Roiphe’s mother, Blanche, inherited wealth. Blanche’s grandfather, Moses Phillips, a Polish immigrant, and his son Isaac, her father, had started out peddling shirts. Before long they were making the shirts they sold. The Phillips-Van Heusen Company was established through their efforts and eventually provided both careers and income to family members.

Blanche Phillips married Eugene Frederick Roth in 1931 and they moved into an apartment at 1185 Park Avenue on the East Side of New York City when they returned from their honeymoon. It was one of the few Park Avenue buildings to accept Jews, and Blanche’s brother and his family lived in the same building. Her two sisters and their families lived in two other hospitable buildings elsewhere on Park Avenue. Blanche’s husband was a lawyer who was quickly absorbed into the family business. The author was born in 1935; her brother in 1939.

This memoir is an engrossing but sad story of a wealthy Jewish family grappling with their newly acquired wealth and status. When Roiphe became old enough to make sense of arguments and behavior, she realized that her father married her mother for her money. Her mother constantly talked about divorce but was emotionally paralyzed despite years of psychoanalysis. In addition, her mother’s sisters, concerned about scandal, suggested she grin and bear it. Her father, always close to exploding, paid little attention to his children; when he did, he was often cruel.

In their great need to be accepted, to be considered full-fledged “Americans,” family members in Roiphe’s parents’ generation had a typically ambivalent relationship to their Jewish roots which included what they perceived as their Jewish looks. For example, Roiphe’s mother took her to get her black curly hair straightened. Her mother said she was at least lucky that she had an acceptable nose.

And of course this ambivalence extended to religious observance or non-observance.  Roiphe’s family had a Christmas tree. They belonged to the Park Avenue Synagogue where Blanche, her children and her siblings and their families put in an appearance on the High Holy Days, but not Blanche’s husband who refused to attend. When Anne Roiphe’s brother was getting close to bar mitzvah age his mother hired a tutor who became a surrogate father to her brother;  her brother even started to dress like his tutor which included wearing a black hat. This was the final straw for his father who angrily remarked that his son looked like he had "just got off the boat."  This obviously reflected Roiphe's father’s own discomfort with his Jewish identity and how close he was to his family's immigrant past.

Anne Roiphe traveled in a rarified atmosphere far from her grandparents’ Polish and Hungarian Jewish roots and it connected her with others who traveled in those kinds of circles. Her cousin Howard Gilman was one. Vladimir Horowitz who played canasta with her mother was another. Roy Cohn was a relative of a relative whom she saw frequently at family gatherings. Through him she met David Schine. Judge Irving Kaufman lived in her building.

As Anne Roiphe entered her teens she was more able to evaluate critically what she observed and experienced. For example, she learned that Roy Cohn sent some legal cases her father’s way, and she had long arguments with her father, goading him about his fierce anti-communist stance. But it took her many years to carve out her own life. In this memoir Roiphe takes us on a journey through the first half of the twentieth century as her family established itself in America.

People
author's maternal side of the family
Moses Phillips
    Isaac Phillips - son of Moses; married Anne 
        Blanche Phillips – daughter of Isaac and Anne; married (Fritz) Eugene Frederick Roth
            Anne Roth – daughter of Blanche and Eugene; author
            Eugene Frederick Roth, Jr. – son of Blanche and Eugene
        Sy Phillips – son of Isaac and Anne
        Libby Phillips – daughter of Isaac  and Anne
        Sylvia Phillips – daughter of Isaac and Anne; married to Charles Gilman
            Howard and Christie Gilman– sons of Sylvia and Charles

author's paternal side of the family
    Isadore and Sophie Roth
        Bea Roth – daughter of Isadore and Sophie; married to Daniel Kreisberg
        Eugene Frederick Roth – son of Isadore and Sophie; wife of Blanche Phillips (see above)
        Edward Roth – son of Isadore and Sophie
    Minnie Roth – Isadore Roth’s sister
       
        Dora Cohn – sister of Libby Phillips’ husband; married to Al Cohn
            Roy Cohn – son of Dora and Al Cohn

            David Schine
        Vladimir Horowitz
            Sonia Horowitz

Places
Sulvalki, Poland
Camp Songowood, Maine
Camp Wigwam, Maine
New York City, NY

 

The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany by Martin Goldsmith 2000

"An intensely moving memoir of personal discovery of family history, and a chilling story of increasing repression, persecution, and eventual mass-murder in Nazi Germany." from a review by Fred Child for National Public Radio.

Martin Goldsmith, the former National Public Radio’s host of Performance Today, recreates in this memoir the life his parents led growing up in Nazi Germany and the fascinating story of the Judische Kulturbund Orchestra where his father played the flute, his mother the violin. Having escaped in 1941 and settled in the United States, his parents rarely talked about their lives in Germany, but finally the author prevailed upon his 79-year-old widowed father to tell him the details of his experiences. Fascinated by all that his father had to say, Goldsmith fleshed out his father’s story with research about Nazi Germany and the Judische Kulturbund, The Jewish Cultural Society, an entity founded by Jewish artists.

Goldsmith tells many engrossing stories. He starts with his father Gunther’s family in Oldenburg, Germany where his grandfather Alex owned a prominent department store. Then he moves on to introduce his mother Rosemarie’s family who lived in Dusseldorf where his grandfather Julian Gumpert was a violinist who ran a well-respected music academy. These two threads merged when the children in these two families, Gunther and Rosemarie, met in Frankfurt where they both were asked to join the Kulturbund orchestra. They fell in love and married.

Goldsmith tells us a great deal about the Judische Kulturbund, about its formation in 1933, the importance of its leader and spokesperson - the charismatic Kurt Singer, its programs, its greatest triumphs, its faltering, and its demise in 1941. The formation of the Judische Kulturbund was initiated with the permission of the Nazis by Jewish artists in Berlin to provide work for unemployed Jewish artists. The proposal was that these artists would entertain the Berlin Jewish community whose members faced increasing restrictions in their daily lives. At its peak in 1936, there were branches of the Judische Kulturbund in 49 cities across Germany.

But despite the triumphs, there were many stresses. After 1936 more and more German Jews, artists included, emigrated. Others “disappeared,” or were sent to labor camps or prison. Morale eroded. In addition, the Nazis kept placing more and more restrictions on performances. Brownshirts attended performances and sat in the front row. Eventually the lecture series offered by the Judische Kulturbund was cancelled. Finally, the groups outside of Berlin were shut down and only the Berlin group was functioning when the Nazis shut it down in 1941. As Goldsmith notes: In 1941 the Germans no longer had a need to divert or placate the Jews. They had decided to implement the final solution.

Goldsmith spends some time toward the end of the memoir discussing some of the interesting controversies surrounding the existence of the Judische Kulterbund. Some of the questions that have been raised are: Were the Jewish leaders of the Kulturbund naïve in thinking there was an advantage to working with the Nazis? Was the existence of the Kulturbund worth the cover it provided the Nazis?  Did the existence of the Kulturbund and its successes make it easier for some who could have emigrated pass up emigration opportunities? Goldsmith seeks answers to these questions from his father, other survivors, and scholars.

All along he narrates events in his family’s life – how his parents thrived as members of the Kulturbund Orchestra and how they miraculously escaped Germany through the offer of sponsorship from a former pupil of Rosemarie’s father who had already immigrated to the United States. And he traces the tragic stories of both sets of grandparents, none of whom ultimately were able to escape the Nazis’ clutches.

This memoir includes family photos and reproductions of documents.

People
Goldsmith's father's family
Moses Goldschmidt – married Auguste Philipssohn
    Alex  Goldschmidt – son of Moses and Auguste; married Toni Behrens, daughter of Ludwig Behrens and Jeannette
        Bertha Goldschmidt – daughter of Alex and Toni
        Gunther Ludwig Goldschmidt – son of Alex and Toni; married Rosemarie Gompert
            Peter Goldsmith – son of Gunther and Rosemary
            Martin Goldsmith – son of Gunther and Rosemary; author
        Eva Goldschmidt – daughter of Alex and Toni
        Helmut Goldschmidt – son of Alex and Toni

Goldsmith's mother’s family
Julian Gumpert – married Else Hayn
    Rosemarie – daughter of Julian and Else; married Gunter Goldschmidt (see above)
       
Friends, Acquaintances and Contemporaries
Ruth Anselm
Julius Bab
Leo Baeck
Hans Bassermann
Kurt Baumann
Lawrence Berenson
Bert Bernd
Henry Bloch
Martin Brandt
Martin Brasch
Lotte Breger
    Nina Breger – Lotte’s daughter
Wolfgang Brettschneider
Franz Calvelli- Adorno
Adolf Cohen
Arthur Cohn
Heinz Condell
Richard Dresdner
Ernst Drucker
    Eugene Drucker – his son
Nathan Ehrenreich
Manfred Epstein
Albert Ettlinger
Emanuel Feuermann
Herbert Fischer
Werner Golde
Milton Goldsmith
Max Greenbaum
Herschel Grysszpan
Igo Guttmann
Willhelm Guttmann
Mauritz Henschel
Heinrich Hirschberg
Otto Hoffmann
Jascha Horenstein
Fritzi Jokl
Hilda Klestadt Jonas
Liesl Joseph
Walter Kapell
Richard Karp
Kurt Katsch
Alexander Kipnis
Alena Klein
Otto Klemperer
Max Kowalski
Leo Kreindler
Hannah Kroner
Max Lehrmann
Werner Levie
Walter Liebling
Arthur Lilienthal
Paula Salomon-Lindberg
Erich Liepmann
Max Loewe
Fritzi Merley
Henry Meyer
Fred Michaelis
Walter Olitzki
Joachim Prinz
Julius Pruwer
Joseph Rosenstock
Dolly Salkind
Georg Salzburger
Arnold Schoenberg
Franz Schreker
Rudolf Schwarz
Rudolf Serkin
Moritz Singer
    Kurt Singer - his son
Nellie Solms
    Sigfried Solms - her son
Martha Sommer
Kurt Sommerfeld
Heinrich Stahl
Hans Wilhelm Steinberg
Margot Stern
Walter Sulzbach
Bruno Walter (Schlesinger)
Michael Taube
Gerti Totschek Colbert
Leo Trepp
Morris Troper
Fritz Wisten
Hans Zander

Places
Sachsenhagen, Germany
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp
Oldenburg, Germany
Bremen, Germany
Deutsch-Eylau, West Prussia
Dusseldorf, Germany
Gumpert Conservatory of Music, Dusseldorf, Germany
Berlin, Germany
Hosel, Germany

Last Days in Babylon: The History of a Family, the Story of a Nation by Marina Benjamin, 2006

"This is a history unknown even to most Jews. Benjamin narrates it fluently and passionately." from a review by Moris Farhi published in the Independent  3/27/07

In this very informative memoir, Marina Benjamin (born in 1964), a British journalist, focuses on the life of her maternal grandmother, Regina Sehayek Levy, whose life spanned most of the twentieth century. Born in Iraq in 1905 toward the end of the rule of the Ottoman Empire, she lived out her last years in England where she died in 1992.

The author divides her story into three parts: The Lost World, Changing Times and Coming Full Circle. In each section she gives us a crash course in the politics that were in play at the time and with that background as context, she discusses how the Jewish community as a whole as well as members of her family in particular were affected by the Iraqi leader of the moment, the shifting British presence, and Arab world politics.

Benjamin starts by recreating old Iraq and Baghdad, giving us a crash course in early Iraq history, both Arab and Jewish. She notes that Jews had lived continuously in Iraq for 2700 years, living most of the time in harmony with their fellow Arab Iraqis. Early in the twentieth century one third of Baghdad’s residents were Jewish. Jewish men were successful merchants and traders and were also well represented in various departments in government offices. The author explains that they were successful because they were multi-lingual and had family and co-religionist outposts around the world that facilitated their business transactions. 

Like the Arab Iraqis, the Jewish Iraqis were culturally conservative. For example, all marriages in the early part of the century were arranged. Dowries were routine. Marina's grandmother Regina Sehayek was betrothed to Elazar Levy, a well-established businessman, who was thirty years older than she was. An only son with a widowed mother, he delayed marrying until he had married off and provided dowries for all of his sisters.

Throughout the decades of the twentieth century life got gradually more difficult for Iraqi Jews. There were many signs of trouble. Iraq, ruled by the Turks who sided with the Germans during World War I, was subsequently occupied by the British. The Iraqi Arabs were resentful when the Iraqi Jews aligned themselves with the British. In addition, Pan-Arabism as a movement became a real force in Iraq at the same time that Zionism was emerging as a movement in the west.

Benjamin then discusses the Arab Iraqi reaction to the creation of the state of Israel and how that impacted the Iraqi Jews. Living in Iraq became intolerable, and in the early 1950’s  325,000 Iraqi Jews were airlifted to Israel. Regina Levy chose a different path. Widowed with three children, she managed to arrange passage to Calcutta where her sister Josephine lived. After several years there she became an Indian citizen, obtained passports for her and her children, and left for England.

At the end of her memoir the author writes about the reception the Iraqi Jews received in Israel. She quotes the largely European Ashkenazi leaders who disparaged the Iraqi Jews as hopelessly backward. And she ends her memoir with some thoughts on a visit she made to Iraq in 2004. She mourns the death of a community with a rich, proud and extensive history.

This memoir includes many family photos, notes identifying sources,  a bibliography for further reading, and an index.

To read an abbreviated version of Marina Benjamin's memoir in the form of an essay she wrote for Tablet, click here.

People
Author’s family on her maternal grandmother’s side
Yehesqail Nissan
    David Yehesqail Nissan – Yehesqail’s son
        Salman Nissan – David’s son
            Salha Nissan – married Ezra Sehayek (son of Shlomo Sehayek, son of Ezra Sehayek)
                Solomon Sehayek – son of Salha and Ezra
                Marcelle Sehayek – daughter of Salha and Ezra
                Josephine Sehayek – daughter of Salha and Ezra
                Nessim Sehayek – son of Salha and Ezra
                Regina Sehayek – daughter of Salha and Ezra; married Elazar Levy
                    Haron – son of Regina and Elazar; married Ann Hewitt
                    Marcelle – daughter of Regina and Elazar; married Sassoon Benjamin
                        Andrea – daughter of Regina and Elazar
                        Marina – daughter of Regina and Elazar; author
                    Bertha – daughter of Regina and Elazar; married Victor Nourallah
            Violet – sister of Salha Nissan Sehayek; married Victor Battat
                Gourji Battat – Violet and Victor's son
            Farah – sister of Salha Nissan Sehayek

Author’s family on her maternal grandfather’s side
Agha Elazar Levy
    Yaeer Levy, son of Agha Elazar
        Elazar Levy – son of Yaeer
            Haron Levy – son of Elazar; married to Simha
                Elazar Levy – son of Haron and Simha; married Regina Sehayek (see above)
                Khatoun Levy– daughter of Haron and Simha
                Habiba Levy – daughter of Haron and Simha
                Farha Levy – daughter of Haron and Simha
                Dola Levy – daughter of Haron and Simha
                Muzli Levy – daughter of Haron and Simha
        Shimoun Levy – son of Yaeer

Lizette Battat – a relative of Salha Nissan Sehayek
Yusef Elkabir – a cousin of Elazar Levy
Goorji Levy – a cousin of Elazar Levy
Albert Levy – a nephew of Elazar Levy
Reuben Zeloof – a cousin of the Regina Sehayek
       
Friends, Acquaintances, and Sources       
Sion Aboudi
Meir Elias
Menham Salah Daniel
Sasson Hesqail
Elly Kadoorie
Khedouri Zilcha
Claire Dellal
Violet Masri
Farah Nissan
Rosie Fattal
    Louise Fattal – Rosie’s daughter; married Freddy Shohet
Anwar Kedoori
Abraham Masri
Salima Joury
Sion Koubi
Enzo Sereni
Ezra Kadoori
Avraham Mordad
Ibrahim Lawee
Reuben Battat
Shafiq Ades
Heskel Shemtob
Yudke Tajer
Shalom Saleh Shalom
Yusef Basri
Elmer Berger
Sassoon Khedouri
Ezra and Sayeeda Levy
    Emad  and Saleh Levy – their sons
Marcelle Daoud
Samir and Jacob Shahrabani (brothers)
Edwin Shuker
Dora Qashqoush
Tawfiq Sofaer
Violet Tweg
Rachel Zelon
Meir Basri
    Carole Basri - Meir Basri's niece
Eli Amir
Khalida Mouallem
                   
Places and Institutions
Baghdad, Iraq
Rashid Street, Baghdad, Iraq
The Shorja, Baghdad, Iraq
Laura Kadoorie School for Girls, Baghdad, Iraq
Frank Iny School, Baghdad, Iraq
Menahem Daniel School, Baghdad, Iraq
Bataween, Iraq
The Shurah
Baswa, Iraq
Ezra Daoud Synagogue, Baghdad, Iraq
Meir Tweg Synagogue. Batatweein, Iraq
Massouda Shemtob Synagogue, Baghdad, Iraq
Nes Ziona Camp, Israel

Anya’s War by Andrea Alban 2011 (young adult fiction)

"Based on the author’s life, it is a book with history, drama, and good writing."  from a review by Marcia Weiss Posner published in The Association of Jewish Libraries Reviews, Feb/March 2001

San Fransisco writer Andrea Alban has written an engaging young adult novel, based on a family story, that takes place in Shanghai, China in 1937. She explains in a post-script that her paternal grandparents fled from Odessa with their two children and settled in the Frenchtown section of Shanghai in China. The novel's main character, fourteen-year-old Anya, a young girl who is trying to puzzle out her place in a strange world, is modeled after Alban’s father’s sister Lily.

Anya’s story as it plays out over two days in 1937 provides an interesting look at three generations of a displaced Russian Jewish family living together in one house, living out their lives in an alien environment during this unsettling period leading up to World War II. The family members brought Odessa with them in their social codes, their dress, their food, and their religious observance, but like all immigrants, they had to work hard at maintaining their treasured old ways that seemed so “foreign” in the Far East.  Alban is very good at creating Anya’s character and voice which conveys the family tension – the bickering, the voices raised, the confusion and the moments of comic relief that helped to momentarily lessen the tension.
   
We accompany Anya as she negotiates purchases in the Chinese markets, we listen to her conversations with the Chinese cook who has learned how to make foods for them that they treasured from their life in Odessa, and we watch as her mother, a former opera singer, tries to manage the household help and raise her children the way she would have raised them in Odessa where the family had status and a secure place in their wider community. Also, along with Anya, we overhear the adults talking politics. For example, we hear about Victor Emmanuel and Mussolini and impending struggles between the Chinese and the Japanese for control of Shanghai as well as remarks about Hitler and “degenerate” art.

Alban’s family were early arrivals to Shanghai. In the years leading up to the war many more families fled Eastern Europe and settled there. Anya yearns to go to America. Shanghai is seen as a temporary stopping off point. Alban tells us in her postscript that Anya’s real-life model, her aunt Lily and Lily’s brother, the author’s father Yan Abramovitch, left for America after the war along with many of the Jews who waited out the war in Shanghai. Her father became a physician in San Fransisco.

To view a fascinating site that documents the uncovering and restoration of gravestones from four Jewish cemeteries that had existed in Shanghai, click here.

People
Israel Orjich
    Asya Orjich; married Issai Abromovitch; they divorced;
        Yan Abromovitch – son of Asya and Issai and Asya
            Andrea Alben – daughter of Yan; author
                Lily – daughter of Andrea
        Lily Abromovitch – daughter of Issai and Asya; married Bernard Gross
    Zelik Zelikovsky – second husband of Asya Orjich

Places
Shanghai, China
San Francisco, USA

When Memory Comes by Saul Friedlander, first published in French in 1978, published in English in 1979, reissued in 2003

"There is so much that is fascinating about Saul Friedlander's life, it is hard to know where to begin or how, even, to define him. Historian. Teacher. Author. Policy-maker. Survivor. It is the last, in fact, that defines all the rest." from a feature article written by Roberta Wax published in UCLA Magazine, Fall of 1999
 

Saul Friedlander, noted historian of the Holocaust and winner of a MacArthur “genius” award in 1999, wrote this memoir about his early years while living in Israel, Born into a totally assimilated Jewish family in Prague in 1932 four months before Hitler took power, he remembers the solidly comfortable, cultured middle class life his family led until panic set in as Hitler rose to power and his parents tried to escape over the Hungarian border. But they soon realized they would not be better off in Hungary, so they went back to Prague.

The desperate attempt by his parents to find a safe place continued. They fled to Paris in 1939; they wanted to go to Palestine but there was a wait of a year, and they didn’t have the proper papers. They stayed in Paris until the war broke out at which point they fled to Neris-les-Bain, a spa town in central France full of hotels with Jewish refugees in similar circumstances.

In 1942 when foreign Jews in France started to be rounded up, in an attempt to save their son, Freidlander’s parents placed him in a Catholic boarding school where, at the age of ten, he took on a new name and was baptized. He had a very difficult time adjusting to a whole new way of life and the disappearance of his parents was traumatic. But after a health crisis – the nuns told him he nearly died – he developed a new frame of mind and became a devout Catholic. He seriously considered becoming a priest.

When the war was over and his parents didn't return, a priest mentor talked to Friedlander about what had happened to them. It was at this point that Friedlander found out all about the war; he had no idea what Auschwitz was. He now understood the implications of his having been born a Jew and he immediately took back his real name.

 Friedlander became an ardent Zionist after being sent to a Zionist camp at Lake Chalain. He writes that it gave him a sense of community and purpose, and he subsequently added two years to his age so that he could join Betar, the youth group affiliated with the Irgun led by Menachem Begin. The youngest refugee aboard, he sailed to the new state of Israel on the Altalena, a ship loaded with arms, ready to defend Israel. He ends his memoir with the drama surrounding the arrival of the Altalena, and his eventual sailing into port where he would start the next chapter of his life.

Friedlander does not tell his story in strictly chronological order. Much of the retelling of his early years is deliberately interwoven with illustrations from his later life in Israel. When he is writing in 1977 about World War II, he thinks back to the 1973 Yom Kippur War and how much the trauma of that war changed Israelis. He continues to make many links between the conflicts and wars in Israel and the feelings of being under siege, the yearning for self-definition and peace that Jews have felt many other times in their history.

To read an interview with Friedlander in Der Spiegel, click here.
To read more about the arrival of the ship the Altalena, click here.

Family
Gustav and Cecile Glaser
    Elli Glaser, daughter of Gustav and Cecile; married Hans Friedlander;
        Pavel (Saul) Friedlander – son of Elli and Hans; married to Hagith;  author
            Eli, David, and Michal – children of Saul and Hagith
    Paul, Hans, Willy – sons of Gustav and Cecile

Aunt Martha – relationship not clear

Places
Prague, Czechoslovakia
Rochlitz, Germany
Lemberg, Galicia
Nira, Israel
Beit Itzhak, Israel
Shaar Hefer, Israel
Ben Shemen, Israel
Natanya, Israel
Bubenec, Prague, Czecheslovakia
Paris, France
Montmorency, France
Neris-les-Bains, France
La Souterraine, France
Montucon, France
Rivesaltes Concentration Camp, France

Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport: written and directed by Mark Jonathan Harris

"Most of the interviews are with the children, now mostly in their 70's, who recall the overwhelming facts of their childhoods with simple dignity and heart-rending power."  from a review by A. O. Scott in the New York Times, September 15, 2000

In the months before the official start of World War II, through an act of Parliament England agreed to provide temporary residence to Jewish children from European countries on the continent and to place them with British families. 10,000 children escaped to England in an operation called the Kindertransport and were cared for in England before, during and in some cases, after the war.

This moving and very informative documentary consists of interviews with eleven surviving adults who were part of the Kindertransport and through their own words we hear about life before the threat of war, their parents’ decisions to send them to England on the Kindertransport, their parting from their parents as they boarded the train, their placements and how they worked out, and what happened when the war was over.  Also, through interviews we get the perspective of one of the mothers of a former Kindertransport child. And we also hear from one of the English foster mothers.

Knitting the interviews together is footage from newsreels of the time, some of classic World War II scenes – people saluting Hitler, people using the London Underground train platforms as bomb shelters, bombs landing on British cities like Coventry, Jews being rounded up, Jews being liberated from the camps – but also movies of the children of the Kindertransport playing soccer, writing letters to their parents, reading, sleeping and eating in the hostels. 

As the former Kindertransport children talk, we see photos of them from before the war when they led normal lives without a hint of what was to come.  They talk about the anguish of separating from their parents, of their parents’ assurances that their stay in England would be only temporary. Because it was difficult for their parents to get visas out – countries had strict quotas – and normally you had to be sponsored by someone in the country you were trying to get to – they took advantage of this opportunity to get their children out.

Many of the children became real members in the families in which they were placed. Others were moved from family to family.Parents wrote frequently to bolster their childrens’ spirits, but once war broke out communication became brief and infrequent. Most stopped hearing from their parents and a few said that because they listened to the news they both did and did not know what not hearing from their parents meant.

When the war was over only a small number had parents who had survived. And of those whose parents did survive, reunions were often fraught. For example, Kurt Fuchel reports that in 1938 he was 10 years old when he had been placed in England. He was not reunited with his parents until 1947 when he was nineteen.

Two men who are interviewed about their part in working on the Kindertransport are singled out in this movie for special praise: Norbert Wollheim a German Jew who was asked to lead an effort in Germany to get this massive transfer of children underway, and Nicholas Winton, a British citizen, who did everything in his power to facilitate the arrival and placement of children from Czechoslovakia.

To watch a nine-minute  Canadian Broadcasting Company video that focuses on Nicholas Winton's role in rescuing Jewish children in Czechoslovakia and to arranging to get them to England, click here.

To read an article published in 1912 about a recent Kindertransport reunion click here.
To read an article published in 1913 about a recent Kindertransport reunion click here.

 People
Former children on the Kindertransport interviewed and where they were from:
Lorraine Allard – Forth, Bavaria, Germany
Lory Cohn – Breslau, Germany
Hedy Epstein, Kippenheim, Germany
Kurt Fuchel – Vienna, Austria
Alexander Gorbulski (Gordon) – Hamburg, Germany
 Eva Hayman – Celakovice, Czechoslovakia

Jack Hellman – Tann, Germany
Bertha Leverton - Munich, Germany
Inge Sadan - Munich, Germany (Bertha Leverton's sister)
Ursula Rosenfeld – Quackenburg, Germany
Lore Segal – Vienna, Austria – Franzi Groszmann – her mother
Robert Sugar – Vienna, Austria

Others interviewed:
Norbert Wollheim – rescuer 
Nicholas Winton – rescuer
Mariam Cohen – Kurt Fuchel’s foster mother.