{"id":31744,"date":"2019-01-25T03:45:18","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T11:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=31744"},"modified":"2019-01-24T10:15:04","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T18:15:04","slug":"an-unexpected-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/01\/25\/an-unexpected-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"An unexpected journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The author\u2019s maternal aunt, Sara Basson (at age 23). (photo from Libby Simon)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was the long, cold winter nights in Winnipeg\nthat made me do it. With my husband working late and a preschooler asleep in\nher room keeping me housebound, what else could I do? I finally tackled the\nonerous task of sorting seemingly hundreds of musty, dusty family photos that\nlay scattered inside battered cardboard boxes saved by my parents, their lives\nobviously too busy living the moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who were these people in these tattered and\ntorn brown photos? Some, I had been told, were Aunt Lorna or Cousin Sylvia.\nOthers were total strangers. The clothing and hairstyles against an unfamiliar\nbackdrop told of another time and place in history. Places I had never seen nor\nbeen, yet vague memories from childhood floated in my mind. Some pictures had\nwriting on the back in a foreign language I could not read or understand.\nNonetheless, I carted these decaying remnants along with all the important\nhousehold belongings wherever we moved. Why had I not discarded them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I now painstakingly placed these memories of\nbits and bytes under protective sheets in photo albums, one by one. Organizing\nthem in some fashion was just too daunting a task. For the moment, preserving\nthem was the goal \u2013 for whom I did not know. That question wouldn\u2019t be answered\nuntil many years later, when I received a letter that launched an unexpected\npersonal journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bold, black type on unfamiliar letterhead\ndemanded my attention \u2013 Lois Feinberg, Financial Consultant, Hollywood,\nFlorida. I was about to toss out what I thought was spam sent by snail mail\nwhen one short sentence leaped out at me: \u201cI\u2019m your second cousin on your\nmother\u2019s side,\u201d it read. \u201cMy grandmother and your grandfather were siblings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it was more scam than spam but I had to\npay attention. What did she want? Credit card numbers? Bank account numbers?\nTransfer a million dollars out of some remote African country? I read further\nwith guarded skepticism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the process of my genealogical research,\u201d\nshe wrote, \u201cI found our mutual cousin, Sylvia, who gave me your contact\ninformation. I would like the names and birth dates of your family in order to\nregister this information with the Yad Vashem in Israel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yad Vashem. I knew it as the memorial centre\nfor the murdered six million Jews and a symbol of the ongoing confrontation\nwith the rupture of families engendered by the Holocaust. My doubts began to\ndissipate as the letter took on a flavour of authenticity. After confirming its\nlegitimacy with Sylvia, I provided Lois with the information she requested. I\ndid not pursue further personal contact, however, because, frankly, I have not\nbeen blessed, or cursed, with the need to search out relatives who could be\nmore of a blemish than a blossom on my family tree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But things were about to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Circumstances arose the next winter that would\ntake my husband and me to Florida. I contacted Lois and invited her for lunch.\nWhen I greeted this pretty, dark-eyed, dark-haired lady, we hugged each other\nwarmly. She appeared similar in age, slim, well-dressed and refined in manner.\nLois had been a teacher turned financial consultant, divorced from her doctor\nhusband, with two grown children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI discovered two other cousins who live in\nFlorida whose grandparents are also siblings of our grandparents,\u201d she said. I\nwas stunned. Two more family members \u2013 right here!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"photo
The author\u2019s maternal grandfather, Abraham Basson (at age 60). (photo from Libby Simon)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ll arrange a brunch at my home so you can\nmeet them,\u201d she promised with a smile. And, true to her word, the cousins all\ngathered at her home the following week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A strange mix of emotions coursed through me as\nthe past and present began to meld. Until recently, we were totally unaware of\none another\u2019s existence. Suddenly, we had a common thread tying us together \u2013\nour grandparents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lois told me that the grandparent siblings,\nincluding my maternal grandfather, had all come to the United States in the\n1930s to escape Hitler\u2019s rise to power, but he was the only one sent back,\nbecause of a leg deformity. Not from disease, mind you, but the result of an\naccident. In the course of operating his paper company business, a heavy object\nhad fallen on his leg yet he continued to run a successful business. I was told\nhe and several other relatives were among the six million Jews murdered in the\nHolocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a seismic jolt of lightning, the brown\npictures flashed across my mind. For the first time, my grandfather became more\nthan a lifeless face on a faded old photo. Sadness and anger pulsed through me.\nHe was my mother\u2019s father \u2013 a living, breathing person whose life had been cut\nshort. Not by a natural disaster like a tsunami, a flood or earthquake, but by\na human-made catastrophe, the Holocaust. Nature\u2019s cataclysmic events kill\nrandomly but humans ravaged and murdered with deliberation and purpose. While\nwe had been spared the agony of their deaths, history had changed the lives of\nthose who lived, splintering family shards across the globe, many of which will\nnever be repaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet it was heart-warming to meet Marty, the\nsupervisor IRS lawyer in south Florida; Arnie, a retired businessman; and their\nwives. After a four-hour brunch came to a pleasant end, plans were discussed\nfor \u201cThe Brunch\u201d next winter, ensuring a future for this fractured family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These images gradually transcended time and\ngeography and were now transplanted into my world in the 21st century. They\nwere channeled from a dismal and distant past to live again in the present. In\nfact, in April 2012, I learned the names of six of my maternal relatives who\nwere murdered in the Holocaust. My Israeli family had listed their names at Yad\nVashem in Israel. I have now added them to Winnipeg\u2019s Holocaust memorial on the\ngrounds of the Manitoba Legislature to further ensure they will never be\nforgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exciting promise of a journey of discovery\nstill lies ahead, as traces of life continue to sprout new branches on this\nfamily tree \u2013 blemish or blossom. I knew now for whom these pictures were\npreserved. I preserved them for me and for future generations of Jewish\nhistory. L\u2019dor v\u2019dor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Libby Simon<\/strong>, MSW, worked in child welfare services prior\nto joining the Child Guidance Clinic in Winnipeg as a school social worker and\nparent educator for 20 years. Also a freelance writer, her writing has appeared\nin Canada, the United States, and internationally, in such outlets as <\/em>Canadian Living,\nCBC, <\/em>Winnipeg Free Press, <\/em>PsychCentral and <\/em>Cardus, a\nCanadian research and educational public policy think tank. She wrote this\npiece with International Holocaust Remembrance Day (Jan. 27) in mind.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The author\u2019s maternal aunt, Sara Basson (at age 23). (photo from Libby Simon) It was the long, cold winter nights in Winnipeg that made me do it. With my husband working late and a preschooler asleep in her room keeping me housebound, what else could I do? I finally tackled the onerous task of sorting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3429,4242,53],"class_list":["post-31744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-op-ed","tag-family","tag-history","tag-holocaust"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}