Daughters of Absence: Transforming a Legacy of Loss Read online

  In the 1950s, Los Angeles saw the arrival of many similar refugee families, and as was their tendency, they banded together according to country of origin. It was not just we who heard other languages spoken at home, who knew nothing of American cuisine, it was our new friends as well. As an adjunct to some of these other facts of our lives, almost down to the last refugee family, the number of children they had was two. Some of my “American” friends had larger families. It was something we accepted.

  We were close to our parents, and we were cherished by them, for they were the only family we had. We were happy in our existence, lucky to be free of deprivation. The trouble was, by the time we reached our preteen years, we thought we had absorbed a great many things about our parents’ desperate times: my father’s punishing years as a slave laborer, my mother’s constant flight to conceal her true identity. But there were entire chapters as yet unaddressed. It did not occur to us that there was still the possibility of new anguish.

  I still do not recall the sequence of events that led up to the discussion I had with my mother, but during that exchange she revealed to me that not only was she my beloved father’s second wife, but that he also had been a father to some other little girls. I could not bear the thought. To my childish mind it seemed like a betrayal. Did he not refer to me as die goldene, his golden child? There were photographs. Two serious, beribboned, dark-haired girls with their heads inclined toward each other. Did I really resemble the older one? My jealousy was short-lived, however. In an amazingly brief time I came to view this new revelation as something positive. It would set me apart from my peers, it would lend me a certain cachet. Realizing that my mother was not adversely affected by the knowledge that she was not the first, I took a similar stance and then took it further. I made them my sisters. Suddenly, I came from a larger family. I managed to share this “secret” with many of my friends and turned this initial heartache into something else entirely. In fact, I had always longed for an older sister, so now I had two. This special fantasy had to substitute for the real thing. Unless, of course, the corollary fantasy came true—that through some miracle they had survived and would soon appear.

  This memory of that time overtook me when I was looking up the street spelling in the old siddur. Although I knew where to look for that, because undoubtedly I had seen it many years earlier, there was something else for which I was absolutely unprepared. There, on the flyleaf, in my father’s bold and achingly familiar hand in Hebrew, appeared the names, Rivka and Mindl, and accompanying them, the following: daughters of Yosef Meir, Yahrzeit, 26th of Elul.

  I absorbed the terrible sadness of that inscription. It was quite a shock to read it, for surely he had never spoken of them to me, ever. I reflected on when he might have decided to record their names and surely with a heavy heart. Did he record it for himself? Did he think maybe someday I would come across their names? These are not among the questions I wished I could have asked him.

  I thought again about the map. How I mused over the serendipitous way in which it came into my possession. So this was the justification, or perhaps only the reason I requested it on that visit to the Institute. It was a catalyst. Much more than pinpointing a location, that map was the vehicle I rode to reach my father’s spirit again. It was his weathered siddur and his elegant script that evoked within me the image of his warmth and the knowledge of his wisdom.

  While he shared his life with me, it was only within the circle of our family that he entrusted his recollections. He was a most private man, full of dignity. As I reveal the only glimpse I had of the foreshortened lives of two young girls, I would ask his acceptance of my need to share this knowledge. My longing for him, for the two little sisters I will never know, stays with me.

  Born in Munich, Germany, and raised in Los Angeles, SYLVIA GOLDBERG works in tourism as a professional bilingual Hebrew guide in Washington, D.C. She has also been a writer and editor at Near East Report in Washington, D.C., and a freelance writer for the Baltimore Jewish Times.

  Chapter 9: Starting Over by Rosie Weisel

  I would like to dedicate this work to the past, present, and future of the Jaskovits-Chanes family

  The past is the roots

  The present is the trunk

  The future is the fruit

  The Future

  Adir Joseph Weisel, Raphael Moshe Weisel, Gavriel

  Shlomo Weisel, Chanan Weisel, Yididya Weisel, Tzur Weisel

  The Present

  Eugene Jason-Jaskovits, Jutta Chanes Jason-Jaskovits

  The Past

  Joszef Jaskovits, 55; Hinda Rifka Jaskovits, 53;

  Majsi Jaskovits, 35; Babcsi Jaskovits, 35; Ilanka Jaskovits, 30;

  Moshe Jaskovits, 9; Esther Jaskovits, 7

  Abe Gottliebb, 31; Sari Gottliebb, 29

  Abe and Sari had six children

  Sari was pregnant with her seventh child

  All died in Auschwitz in May 1944

  Joseph Chanes, 80, Died in September 1945

  from a gunshot wound sustained in May 1945

  Gita Chanes, 55, Died in 1954

  Rosie Weisel, my lovely sister-in-law, lives on a kibbutz in Israel. Rosie is an only child who now has six sons of her own. Her intimate diary of coming to terms with her personal history is profound and most touching. –MW

  I am afraid I don’t know quite where to start. I have many mixed emotions. Right now, I feel sad. I watched a movie yesterday called The Music Box, a Holocaust movie. My fifteen-year-old son, Gavi, brought it home from the library. We watched it together. Very powerful. Too powerful. Too much pain.

  Not a good idea to have watched the movie. It brings me into a world that I usually like to put away. Deep down where no one can see the pain I carry around from that world that has come to be known as the Holocaust. Each time I enter that world, it literally sucks out the living energy that I need to function in everyday life. It leaves me sad and heavy. Heavy with all the hurt and pain of so many people killed. So many families destroyed. A great, great tragedy.

  I usually say, enough! You have no time to sit here now with these feelings, Rose. You have so much to do. You need to leave this Holocaust world behind. Start thinking positive thoughts. Re-energize yourself with the beauty that exists all around you. Focus on being positive and raising my six boys. I mentally fold up my Holocaust world and place it back into the deep crevices of my mind until the next time. And there will be a next time. There always seems to be a next time. Even looking at the beautiful face of my youngest son, Tzur. So round and full of life—such a happy little boy. Then those thoughts seep in. How many round, beautiful faces were destroyed? How many mothers looking lovingly into their children’s eyes were destroyed? Mothers searching for the right words to explain away the horrors wrought by a generation of evil.

  Day 2

  I feel much better this morning. The heavy sadness I felt yesterday after watching the movie has receded into the background. It’s 3:12 A.M. and the house is quiet. A house safely cradling my sons. Two of my sons have moved into their adult worlds outside the warmth of this house and are doing fine.

  This is my time. My personal time, when I can choose to do almost anything. Sometimes I read. Sometimes I pray. Sometimes I exercise. Sometimes I fold laundry. Almost every morning I check e-mail and do my La Leche League work.

  Sometimes I choose to put on my earphones and enter a very private special world of music. I play the piano loudly. It’s just me and the music. I am forty-seven years old and learning to play the piano. We bought the piano for our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and my forty-fifth birthday. I make space for it in my small home on the kibbutz where I live, in Israel.

  I always wanted to play piano. But when I was a young girl, we didn’t have money for the luxury of piano lessons, much less a piano. I was okay with that fact. It was part of the givens of my childhood. I didn’t seem to mind it much.

  When I was about eight, I would go with my good friend, Janet Waterstone, to her pia
no lessons once a week, on the way home from school. I would wait outside the door for a half an hour listening to the beautiful music, after which we would walk a couple of blocks to her grandmother’s house for cookies and milk, just like in the movies. Going to Janet’s grandmother’s after school was a daily ritual.

  Janet’s grandmother lived in a large colonial house with lots of rooms. And, of course, there was a piano on which Janet could practice. I spent many wonderful times with Janet at her grandmother’s. Janet and I were very good friends and I decided to adopt her grandmother. She is the first grandmother I remember adopting. I would subsequently adopt a few more grandparents, parents, and sometimes whole families along the way. But Janet’s grandmother was the first. She seemed perfect. Of course, this was from the perspective of an eight-year-old only child without grandparents of her own. I have painted this picture-perfect memory of Janet’s grandmother with gray hair, cookies and milk, a big colonial house, and a piano. And what a warm memory it is.

  Day 3—two weeks later, July 12, 2000

  It’s very interesting how the writing of this chapter is taking shape, with day-by-day recordings. Recordings of my thoughts and feelings, and first recollected thoughts about hearing about the Shoah—the Holocaust.

  I was in sixth grade, twelve years old. I was an independent child, what people would probably refer to today as a “latchkey kid.” I was an only child with two very hard-working parents. I had to take care of myself. I had a great deal of freedom, peppered with the right number of values and responsibilities to keep me in tow. I knew boundaries well and never took advantage of them. But within my boundaries. I had lots of freedom. I enjoyed that feeling of freedom.

  I was born in Paris, France, in 1953 and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, from the age of two till fourteen. Nice southern town. I have lovely memories of growing up within a warm family with loving and caring parents, who were not around during the day because they had to work. It was a given, and I understood that, sort of like not having money for the piano lessons and the piano. I can’t say I wasn’t lonely sometimes, but it was something I just accepted. I had a lot of time to think, be creative, play, and explore. I already enjoyed my world of art. Another one of my favorite worlds was the local library.

  When I was twelve, I saw a movie on TV, The Diary of Anne Frank. I was infatuated with it. I can’t remember if I really understood what this movie was really about, but I do remember that I was very moved by Anne’s story. I ran to the library, got the book, and devoured it. I identified with Anne. We were similar in age. I felt we looked alike, she was Jewish, and I hadn’t read any books before about someone Jewish. I lived in the South. Not a lot of stories about Jews down South. She introduced me to a world that I knew existed but that we didn’t really talk about in our house. This was a different world of hiding, war, and first love. Hers was my first love story. I was infatuated by this book. I started writing my own diary.

  Day 4

  The Diary of Anne Frank became a part of me. I was very curious. I think I sort of knew my parents were survivors, but we never really talked about it. I didn’t have any living grandparents. My father’s parents and my mother’s father died in the Holocaust. My mother’s mother died when I was two, and then we moved to America. Most of my father’s brothers, sisters, and their families died in the war. All the old pictures my parents had of all these relatives fascinated me.

  My father had one surviving sister, who moved with her husband and daughter from Paris to Louisville six months after we did. They also would have only one child. She was six months younger than I was. She would be the closest I would ever get to having a sibling. She had beautiful long hair and fancy dresses. I had short hair and I was a tomboy.

  My aunt and uncle were also survivors. I don’t know how my uncle survived. My aunt was in Auschwitz and had a number. I don’t remember when I really started asking questions. But again, we never really talked about it much. I think my father would answer some of my inquiries. But I was never really able to talk to my mother about this. It was too painful for her. I got the idea at a very young age that it was not good to cause my parents pain. They had suffered enough. I was going to be a good girl.

  My father had an older surviving brother, Shani, who lived in Israel with his second wife, Ilanka. I can’t remember when I first saw the pictures of Shani’s first wife and his two beautiful children, Esther and Moshe. They were a beautiful family. I can’t remember how old I was when I first heard the terrible tragedy of their death in Auschwitz.

  When they arrived in Auschwitz there was a selection. My uncle went to the right. His wife and children went to the left. The little girl tried to run after her father, and a soldier picked her up by the legs and smashed her into a wall, crushing her skull. The little boy ran after the sister and was shot in the head. I can’t remember being told that Shani saw it all. I can’t remember when I was first told this story and when it became engraved onto my soul. But engraved it is. Another childhood memory.

  Day 5

  I have good memories of growing up in Kentucky. By day, my father was a kosher butcher, my mother worked in a factory, and I went to school. But the evenings and weekends were ours. I was very much part of their world, as they were part of mine. They would take me everywhere with them, vacations, movies, shopping. We just fit together.

  Our home was full of warmth, a home open to everyone. An Orthodox home full of tradition, Shabbat candles, Shabbat meals with guests, songs, going to synagogues weekly, and wonderful holidays. My father had an open door policy. Living in the South, there weren’t a lot of kosher places for visitors and strangers to eat a home-cooked kosher meal. Being the extrovert he is, my father would invite people who were passing through and needed a kosher meal or a warm place to stay overnight or for Shabbat. There were soldiers from Fort Knox and visitors from Israel.

  My father was deeply committed to being religious. His deep commitment to Judaism helped him survive the war, and that same commitment helped him raise a family. I am convinced that my parents’ deep commitment was successfully transferred to me. This is what has given me the strong base to raise our family.

  My father has a close friend named Mike, close in age to my father, who had survived the war without any family. He never married or had any children. We were Mike’s only family. He became very successful financially. Many, many years ago, while my parents were trying to make ends meet, and my father was working six days a week in his butcher business, Mike had asked my father to go into business with him. Mike was not observant, and this meant my father would have had to work on the Sabbath with him. Deeply committed to his faith, devout, and observant, my father refused to go into business with him. This truly was a sacrifice, financially, but he would not sacrifice his beliefs now that he was in a free country and could practice those beliefs freely.

  I have found great strength and comfort in my parents’ religious observance. Now, all these years later, Mike just celebrated his eighty-fifth birthday. I am sad knowing he is still alone.

  Day 6—August 28, 2000

  My life is overflowing with the excitement of the daily routine of raising a family, working, and being area coordinator of leaders for La Leche League International in Israel. LLLI is an international organization that offers information and support to women who want to breastfeed their babies. There is no time to write.

  In Kentucky, I have fond memories of a family named the Sturmans. Shelly Sturman was my best friend from age ten to fourteen. She came well equipped with the all-American family: two American-born parents, three sisters, an African American maid who made us wonderful breakfasts, a dog, and a big two-story corner brick house (complete with attic, basement, den with TV, formal dining room, etc.). We were inseparable. I spent a lot of time at her house and many weekends with her. No European accents in this house. It was all-American apple pie. I can still call forth the scent of the house, the warmth of her parents, the rivalry of her siblings. These memories
bring inner warmth and a smile to my face.

  I went to the local Jewish day school from kindergarten through sixth grade, half-day English studies, half-day Hebrew. The school ended at the sixth-grade level. For seventh and eighth grade I went to the public junior high school. I had lots of friends, both Jewish and not. My parents were okay with that. What became difficult for them was when I began asking questions like, why can’t I go to the Friday night parties and be like everyone else? The combination of starting to ask a lot of questions and becoming an adolescent encouraged my parents to start looking for other religious schools for me. The other alternatives meant my going to high school a few hundred miles away from home and living away from home. My parents had one child, and they weren’t quite ready for that. After twelve years of hard work and establishing roots, they decided to move to a new city so that I could receive a Jewish high school education. This meant selling everything and starting over from scratch, almost like when they moved from Europe.

  Day 7—September 8, 2000

  We moved to Los Angeles, California, when I was fourteen years old. Being an adolescent, having to leave all my friends and move to a new community, was very difficult for me. I was very angry and I made life very unpleasant for my parents and myself. I couldn’t appreciate the total dedication and devotion they had to Judaism and to what limits they would strive to help insure that I was given a strong Orthodox upbringing. This was truly a sacrifice on their part, to give up everything they had worked so hard to achieve and started to realize in their life in Kentucky.

  Starting over is hard for anybody. But for survivors, who have had their childhood, families, and homes stolen, establishing roots is a top priority. The last thing a survivor wants to do is start all over. But now I can appreciate the strong devotion my parents have to their deep belief in God and being observant. The Holocaust will always be a part of them. What happened to them altered their lives forever. But their main connection to Judaism is living an observant Jewish life, and passing on that inheritance to their child and grandchildren.