As I sit at my sturdy and fashionable Pottery Barn dining
room table in my cozy, yet more than adequately sized town home looking at
copies of my paternal grandparents’ naturalization certificates, I’m
overwhelmed by gratitude and awe. My grandparents, Harry and Irene Harrison,
became American citizens in the years 1938 and 1943 respectively. I never met
my grandfather as he died in 1949 at the age of 50 just before his son’s (my
father’s) Bar Mitzvah. The circumstances surrounding his death made it so I
know little about his life other than he came to the United States from Latvia
in the years following World War I, worked in his family’s clothing stores, and
eventually (along with his future wife, my grandmother) opened his own branch
of Harrison’s Clothiers. My grandmother, however, lived a long and healthy
life, and I was blessed to have her integrally involved in my life until her
death in 1999. I know her story.
Chaya
Sulman, as my Grandmom Irene was named at her birth, was born in Poland
sometime between 1902 and 1904. At the age when most American kids head off to
college, my pint-sized grandmother and her sister, Branka, left Poland and
travelled separately to different destinations. My grandmother came to the
United States, to Des Moines, Iowa to live with cousins. Her sister sailed to
Palestine and was among the early settlers of the first Kibbutz, Ein Herod. I
am so often struck by the incredible courage, and frankly foresight, they each
had to leave the only home they knew in order to create a new life for
themselves. I have no information regarding what happened to the family they
left behind. Of course, I can imagine. One-fifth of Poland’s population
perished in WWII including three million Jews. Ninety-percent of Poland’s substantial
Jewish community was murdered by the Nazis.
This sheer awe
and gratitude I have for my grandmother’s and her sister’s courage and
foresight rose to the surface as I visited Odessa with the Associated’s CJE
Mini Educators’ Mission to the region this past week. Our visit got off to a rocky start
due to a delayed flight and subsequent missed connection, but the silver lining
to our unexpected veer off the planned itinerary gave us the opportunity to
take a quick evening tour of downtown Warsaw, Poland. While we only saw a
glimpse of the city, it provided an interesting back drop to our visit in the
Ukraine even as it made the next three days jam packed as our fearless leaders,
Amalia Phillips and Oksana Nelina, made sure we still fit in all of our visits.
I will be posting a reflection on each day of the Mission in subsequent posts. Stay tuned! And enjoy the pictures: 1) the group gathered at the PHJCC before drive to Newark, NJ to catch flight.
No comments:
Post a Comment