Morris' Suitcase

My grandfather on my father's side, Chaim Hirsch Hochbaum, was one of 8 children.  And all his siblings and half-siblings had children, so  my father had 34 first cousins that I know about. 

Among them were people you may or may not recognize -- the "two Reginas"  (Regina Rappaport and Regina Singer), Jerry Schaufeld's mother (Rose Schaufeld), Duftsha Schoenberg,  Aliza Link's mother (Golda Hochbaum Mendel), Tamar Landau's father (Pincus Hochbaum),  my mother's aunts and uncles (Ida, Minnie, Yetta, Max Schorr, etc.) and Lena Barber Mandelbaum and her brother Morris.

I re-connected with Paula Barber -- Morris' daughter -- at her mother's funeral in May.  Paula is a second cousin, but I hadn't seen her since we were kids.  When I introduced myself, these words tumbled out of her mouth:  "Your father is the reason my father got to America."   I hadn't heard this story, and I wanted to, so recently I sent her an email and she invited me to dinner with her and her husband,  Howard Buxbaum, at their home in Morristown.

I brought her some pictures of her father taken in Europe in 1947 and a copy of the ship manifest that showed him arriving in New York on Christmas Day, 1947.  The ship manifest (below) shows Morris' destination as 10 E. 198th Street, in the Bronx -- the apartment Mom and Dad and Esme and Charlie and I were all living in at that time.

Morris, born in 1925, was 15 years old when the war began, and 20 years old when it ended.  As you can see from this picture, taken in 1947, this was the good-looking branch of the family.  He and his sister, Lena, had been born in Beuthen, in Germany, where his parents. like my father's family,  were in the wholesale fruit business.  They had been deported to Poland in 1938 because their parents were Polish.  Morris and Lena and an older sister, Regina Barber, were in labor camps for most of the war, which probably helped them survive.  That, and the fact that they were young, resilient teenagers.  It also helped that they spoke German fluently. Their mother, Pesl Hochbaum, their father, and their two younger brothers were sent to Auschwitz and died there.     




Morris Barber - 1947

 



Lena Barber - 1947

I'll write more in a future post about the labor camps and Morris' and Lena's experiences during the war, but what I've been focused on lately is what happened AFTER the war?  The war ended in the spring of 1945, and Morris didn't come to the US until December, 1947.  Lena and her husband Joe Mandelbaum, came in March, 1950.  Where did they live during that time?  How did they survive?  How did they find each other?  And how did they find my father or vice versa?  Last week, I visited Lena and Joe Mandelbaum and learned something about this, and will have more to say in a future post.

While we were talking about all this at Paula's house, however, Paula’s husband disappeared from the kitchen and came back with the suitcase Morris had brought with him when he came to US. 

 

 

 

On one side are Morris' name (Morritc here, Morritz on the ship manifest, and Morris in the US) and "Epfenhausen" -- the name of the Displaced Persons' camp he was in.

 

 

 

On the other side, are my father's name (the German version) and our address in the Bronx.

 

 

 

 

I thought this was an amazing heirloom.

Morris and Shirley and their children (Paula and her older brother, Stanley) lived in Co-op City for much of their lives, and then retired to Delray Beach.  The EWR tags on the suitcase are from when Morris and his wife Shirley moved from Florida to an assisted living place in NJ.  Morris and Shirley have both since died. 

 

Here's a picture of Shirley from the 1949:

 

 

Morris didn't talk about his experiences in the war, and Paula was 12 before she realized that her grandparents had died in Auschwitz.  When Shindler’s List came out, Steven Spielberg started sponsoring testimonials from survivors, and Morris talked about his experiences.  Paula gave me a copy of her father’s testimonial.  By the time he gave the testimonial, Morris was beginning to suffer from Alzheimer’s, so the DVD is both full of information about his experiences -- which I'll also address in a future post -- and moving on a couple of different counts.

And here are a couple of footnotes to this post:

*  Morris made his living in the US as a tailor and “finisher” working on high end couture for Mollie Parnis (a well-known dress designer).  One of his claims to fame was that he made the dress that Pat Nixon wore when Nixon went to China!

*  Paula said, "Your father sponsored my father.  Brought him to this country and the first week he was here took him to a Yankee game."

I loved that last story, but it is probably not literally true, since Morris arrived in the US on Christmas day.....

Ship manifest

Some Charlie Stories to Start the New Year (2012)

Happy New Year, everyone! 

I thought I'd start the New Year by capturing some stories about Charlie.  These came from David and Megg's wedding, where I got to catch up with Alice and Michele and Dana and Jeannie.  It was wonderful to see them all.

Charlie wrote Michele letters when she was away at college.  Alice said this would take 3-4 hours, with Charlie sitting at the typewriter with a hat and gloves on because the house was so cold.  The letters would say that Nana was fine and everything was okay.  Charlie would include some words from the dictionary for Michele to learn, some Yiddish words, and some knock-knock jokes.  After Charlie died they discovered that the joke book had check marks for the jokes he had already used. 

Michele said Charlie loved reading to little children.  He started reading to her kids when they were basically newborns.  Lexi remembered Charlie reading to her, which she loved, and said Charlie was the only older adult who didn’t intimidate her.  Here are a couple of pictures of Charlie reading to David, taken at my house when we still had the beloved blue and white loveseats.  (Some things you should never throw away.)

Someone (Jeannie?) said that Charlie didn’t talk about the holocaust until Shindler’s list came out.  She asked him why, and he said that he wanted them to grow up in a normal environment – he didn’t want them to grow up with that hanging over their heads.

Other stories:  Charlie kept the house at 63 degrees all winter.  Alice said he and she and her mother would be in the same room, and her mother would say, "Ask Charlie to turn up the heat."  And Alice would say, "He’s right here, ask him yourself."  And Charlie would say, "Mrs. Steiner (he never called her anything but Mrs. Steiner) put on another sweater."

Dana’s version of this story was different.  She said “Nana was the only one who could get my father to turn up the heat.  She said it and he did it.”  My guess is that both are true.

Alice said she once asked Charlie why he wouldn’t get air-conditioning in his car. (Charlie never had a car with air-conditioning.)  He said, he never wanted to be too comfortable.