I am drawn like a magnet into my family’s past. Not out of nostalgia, but as a way of projecting my own future, a future rooted in deep history. Yet much of that history is clouded and, to my sorrow, mostly unrecoverable. My grandfather’s generation is gone, having died in America or been killed by …
The organizations that mattered (part 1): HIAS
It’s difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of my Zaide’s (grandfather’s) generation. Their lives were uncertain, preoccupied with the issue of migration. For one central feature characterized the lives of so many Jews before World War II: dislocation, and the attendant struggles to leave Europe and redefine themselves in a new land. Having experienced …
Immigration strategies: the New World option
Half of my grandfather’s family made it out of Poland before World War II. The other half didn’t and were killed. My grandfather’s brother was one who did leave Poland. He was known as Shmulke (Shmuel or Sam) Wierzbowicz, and in this post I explore his journey from Poland to America. As with most Eastern …
Poland-Palestine-America: A journey to U.S. citizenship
My relatives didn’t arrive in the U.S. during the period of mass immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe from 1880-1920, when over 20 million people, including two and a half million Eastern European Jews, arrived on these shores. As the doors of immigration to the U.S. began closing after 1920, my grandfather’s entire family–his parents, …
The Lomza Yeshiva: Connections Past and Present
Before I began researching my family history, I had never heard of Lomza. But it turns out that I have connections to this city, connections of the past that stretch into the present, and future. Lomza is located in northeastern Poland. It played an important role in the history of Jews of Poland. Jews first …
From Germany to Palestine: 1920-1922
I begin with a photograph. It’s the first photo I have of my grandfather, Yosef Weirzbowicz (Waxman). It was taken in 1922, in Berlin. Next to him sits his mother, Sheindl. Standing alone, a photograph is lifeless, unreal, imprisoned, as Susan Sontag wrote in On Photography. To bring it to life, a story needs to be told, …
From Poland to Germany
Sometime in 1920, about a year after being drafted into the Polish army during the Polish-Soviet war, my Zaide (grandfather) absconded and made his way to Germany. In this post I explore why and how he made this fateful decision to leave his family and native land and to enter, illegally, into Germany. When he …
Escape from Poland: 1920
Sometime in 1920, my Zaide (grandfather) made a fateful decision. Having been drafted into the Polish army, he absconded from his unit and made his way to Germany, never to return to Poland. This post attempts to reconstruct the historical circumstances of that decision, one to which I owe my very existence. He was born …
Polish citizenship?
I’m looking into applying for Polish citizenship. No, I haven’t lost my mind, though my grandparents, if they could know my mind, would think so. Not only would consider me meshuga (crazy), but they would also recoil at the notion of identifying myself as part of an anti-Semitic nation. For to them, as for many other …
Polish Mezuzahs and their traces
Nothing marks the presence of Jews as much as a mezuzah. A mezuzah is a scroll that contains verses from the Torah encased in a rectangular box and affixed to the entryway of a home. Here is what a typical one looks like: The mezuzah …