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