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J. My first question is: Do your parents have the same story or do they have separate stories? S. They have separate stories until they married during the war. J. Okay, so let's start with your mom. Where was she from? S. She was from Poland; I think the town might be Bytom. She went to nursing school and became a nurse. I don't know a lot about her childhood. She had a sister and a brother. She would talk about going to dances and being very social when she was young. The only school in their village was a Catholic school, so she went to the Catholic school and she learned Mass and everything. But she was very observant and very religious, kept kosher, because her faith was very important to her. She would say her Hebrew prayers every morning: I can remember that as I was getting ready to go to school, she was walking around the house getting the kids ready and saying her prayers at the same time. That's really all I know of her early life J. How did she get caught up in the events of the time? S. She was a nurse in a hospital in Poland, Russia, Belarus, and that's how she met my father. We found out very recently, my brother went to the Holocaust Museum and did research there, and found evidence of her father and her sister being killed. But we don't have a lot of details, we just found their names. Her brother escaped to Israel and is now deceased. She never saw him after the war, and dreamed of going to Israel to meet him. She did meet his daughter and son-in-law, who now live in Memphis. They wrote letters constantly and kept in touch. I remember that when he died, my mother was obviously very upset, and I remember the Friedbergers coming over to console her J. Did your parents meet before the war? S. No. My father was wounded and came to the hospital where she was a nurse. That's how they met. J. So she was living in Poland, and when the war broke out, was she put in a ghetto or otherwise detained? S. No. I am guessing that because my father was in the Russian army, it must have been a Russian hospital. Let me start by saying that my parents were very careful and deliberately did not tell us much about the war. My father simply did not talk about it. So unfortunately we don’t know a whole lot. I think that some of my older relatives who have now passed away might have known something. J. Okay, so now please talk about your father. S. My father's family came to the United States probably, I'm guessing, in the 1920s, and he was the only one that stayed behind. He was married and had two children, a son and a daughter. We don't know the children's names; we tried to discover them but can't find them. I can remember as a child, you know when a kid looks in her dad's wallet, and there's a picture of this lady in his wallet, and I would say, "Who’s that?" and he would just say "A friend." I am pretty sure that was probably his wife. My mother knew he had been married, but they kind of hushed that up. I learned about his family probably when I was in college. J. So then what happened? S. My father, I guess, was drafted into the Russian army and his wife and children were lined up with others and shot in the head. I don't know if the Soviets or the Nazis did that. I was told the Nazis but I wonder if it was done by Stalin's people. I don't know. I tried to do some research about this, because it would have been in the late 1930s, or maybe the early 1940s, but I don't know. J. So he was drafted into the Soviet army. S. Because he lived in Russia J. If he was wounded in war, it would have been after July 1941, because before that the Russians were not at war. S. That's right. And in one of the documents – we think that some of the dates were intentionally incorrect, because it will say that my mother and father were married in 1939 and we're pretty sure it would have to be after that because of her age. I don't know what the reason would have been. She was born in 1920. He was a lot older than she was. It says he was born in 1906; we're thinking that it might have been a bit earlier, but we don't know. Anyway, he was wounded and they met, and I think they did marry pretty quickly after that. J. Were they at that time in Nazi territory or Soviet territory? S. I'm thinking Soviet territory, Ukraine… J. So what happened? S. We don't know a lot of where all they went, but they moved a lot. I think they were on the run. They would sometimes tell stories to our friends, and our friends would tell us. One story that we heard involved leaving and running so quickly that my mother picked up the wrong suitcase. She had all her earthly belongings in her suitcase, and they are on a train somewhere, and she picks up the wrong suitcase and somebody gets hers, and when she gets to where she's going, she opens it up and looks at a suitcase filled with nothing but hats. So she lost everything and has just a bunch of hats. In another story mother told about being on the run, a bomb or shrapnel or something came so close that it burnt her hair, and she talked about her hair having to grow back. I think they had a few years of moving around. I think she told me she was a nurse in one of Stalin's camps. Before the war my father had a good job. He worked in a forest near the Radziwill Castle as a tree grader, which was his profession. I think he was happy and made a mistake by not coming to America with everybody else. His father and brothers and sisters all came and settled in Mobile. After the war, none of my father's relatives in Mobile knew what had happened to him, and my father wrote a letter addressed to "Louis Maisel, Mobile, Alabama," and Uncle Louie got it. J. So that's how your parents got to Mobile. Were your parents ever in any ghettos or camps? S. They were never in camps. They never told us they were in ghettos, but they did talk about going without food a lot because my father would brag that he would not break down and eat the broth that was made with horsemeat. That wasn't kosher. But my mother said, well, I'm starving. You know, very hardline, vitamin deficiency. It was apparent they had nothing. J. So they spent all that time on the run. S. I don't have the dates, but yes. J. Was there a moment of liberation for them? S. I don't have the story of how they were able to get out, and I don't know who helped them, but obviously somebody did. They could not come to the United States because of quotas, so they went to different places in Europe. Unable to come to Mobile, they lived in the Dominican Republic until they were able to come into the States. I don't know how they supported themselves. Mother would not have had the proper credentials to work as a nurse, but I'm sure they did some kind of work, construction or whatever. They were friends with other Jewish people named Gerstein who were in the same circumstance and ended up moving to Miami. My parents stayed in touch with them. J. Did your parents' wartime experience have a lasting impact on them that was visible to you? S. With my father, he internalized everything, he didn't talk about anything, so it wasn't as obvious. He had a lot of family members here, so I think it was easier for him, I think, even after everything he had gone through. But my mother, here she is, a lot younger, she has no family. They were very careful to raise us as little Americans. They spoke Yiddish to each other but not to us, and it's unfortunate, I wish I had learned it. They had different strategies for coping, I guess, but food was a very big deal, their having gone without it, and that was always talked about in our house. But that's a Jewish thing anyway, I guess. J. Would you say they were obsessed with food? S. Well, my mother would say, "Eat, eat, eat, because you don't know what it's like to go without food." It was like people who went through the depression, I guess. So I think there was some unhappiness that my mother always carried, and I'm sure my father did too, but he just closed it off. He would talk with other survivors in Mobile -- Mr. Lubliner and the Friedbergers -- and that's when they shared their feelings. But never with us: I think they wanted to shelter us. J. When did they die. S. My father died in 1979 and my mother in 1983. And I remember when this sweet lady in the synagogue said, "You know, the way your father lost his wife and children in the war and could rebuild a new life, it's such an interesting story." I looked at her and I said, "You must have him confused with one of the other survivors. My father didn't lose a family." And she went, "Oh!" I went home and I said to my mother, "Mom, guess what Aunt Bell said." And my mother said, "Well, your daddy never wanted you to know; you can never tell anyone you know, but that was true." That's when I found out, and I was probably in college. So that's about all I know. When they got here, my Uncle Louie had a construction business and I think my daddy worked for him until he had enough money to buy a grocery store, because everybody had a corner grocery store. His first one was on Washington Avenue, or maybe Charleston. There were a few moves. One for the longest time was on the corner of Texas and Rapier Avenue. J. Did your mother work in the store? S. She worked very hard in the store, from 7 in the morning to 7 at night, six days a week, and raised three children. Education was always very important. There was never any question of whether we would go to college: that was a given. My mother always talked about wanting to go back to nursing, but she never could. J. Let's talk about family losses. Your dad's family was safe over here. What about your mother? S. She lost a sister and her father, that we know of. There may have been others. |