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With the translation of the Dereczin Memorial Book into English now complete and behind me, I have been looking back over this experience and have some thoughts I would like to share. When I last wrote, it was about Collective Memory. I see an irony in the anxious desire of those original writers to create a permanent record of their own recollections so that it not be lost. The irony is their resort to Yiddish, a language now seemingly fated to obscurity at the margins, if not extinction. The lateYerachmiel Moorstein sensed this when he chose to translate his inputs for Sefer Zikaron Zelva into Hebrew. He made his motivation clear: he wanted to assure that his Israeli progeny would find this record accessible in generations to come. The benefit of hindsight allows one to see why an earlier immigrant generation should feel complacent about setting down their recollections in mameloshen. Yet these self-same people would drive their own children to adopt the language and culture of their new homeland, in many cases deliberately suppressing the use of the idiom of the ëold country' in which they were most comfortable. Now, nearly a half-century later, a translation into English becomes a pre-requisite if this record is to remain relevant to future generations of descendants in North America. This irony gives me all the more satisfaction for having undertaken the task in the first place!
With a little help from all of you, the
Dereczin Memorial Book will be in
print shortly. Hopefully this is not the last of the translations.
The entreaties of many of our martyred brothers and sisters, who ask
to be remembered, still lie inadvertently locked behind a language
barrier, ironically, in part of their own making. It is both my
pleasure and privilege to continue to remove that barrier, so that
future generations may be afforded the opportunity to look back, not
in anger, but with affection, love and respect for those who came
before them, but who were asked to pay an ultimate price because of
who they were, and what they wanted to be.
Dylan Andrew, named Reuven Leib in Hebrew, on February 24, 1999, a third son to Jeremy & Haley Mead, daughter of Charles & Leona Kasen. Mazel Tov to the parents, grandparents, and great-grandmother, Sarah Kasen...
Alexa Rae, born to Scott & Barrie Drapkin in December, 1999. She is named after both her great-grandmothers: Anne Ackerman and Rose Danenberg. Both mother and daughter are doing fine. Mazel Tov to the parents, and grandmother, Arline Ackerman...
Hannah Dolinko Moorstein,
passed away on October 12, 1999. Widow of the late
Yerachmiel Moorstein, she was born in Pinsk in 1907. She made
aliyah with her husband in 1935. Her granddaughter, Dr.
Ruth Lapid-Gortzak writes:
My grandmother was a very special person. When she came to Eretz Israel she didn't know Hebrew, although as a gymnasium alumna she was fluent in Russian, Polish, and German, besides her mameloshen.
We jokingly said she missed out on a great career in the Shin Bet - taking note of her incredible ability to ask people all the pertinent questions, and retaining the details for later encounters. But her true career was being a matriarch to our family. The children: Nitza (my mother), Avia, Yaacov, & Dorit, and later her grand and great-grandchildren, became the center of her life. This was the only thing that truly mattered to her. To recount how good a deceased person was, is probably the easiest cliche. When I sum up the most important lesson I learned from her, it is the way material matters didn't really count. Both my grandparents lived modestly, more than one could imagine in these times, in which materialism has replaced just about every other value. In May she learned she was ill, and decided that she has to live some more, because she was waiting to see her next great-grandchild, my Eran.
I hope to be a proud mother of a Jewish family, in her
tradition.
Maxima Neutra, age 61, passed away Saturday December 18, 1999. She had been hospitalized for more than 2 months in a valiant but debilitating struggle with lung cancer to which she succumbed. She is survived by her husband, Eli-Emil, her children, Ronen, Osnat Getz, & Ilanit and four grandchildren. She is also survived by her mother, Manya Ritz.
Funeral services took place on Monday December 20, 1999,
where more than 300 people attended to pay their last respects.
We extend the collective condolences of our entire readership to the bereaved families at this time.
Inside Feature
Odded Ritz wrote to me not only of the passing of his sister Maxima, but also of his increased concern for his aging mother, Manya, who had lived with her late daughter in Haifa up till now. I am writing this to state the obvious to some: that he is far from alone in this regard. People in the age bracket between 50-70 are increasingly finding themselves "sandwiched" between concern for maturing children on one end, and concern for aging parents on the other. For those of us in the Northeast US, with aged parents in Florida, a sudden trip to Florida takes on grim significance that has transformed what was once a pleasurable fun trip, into a chore with ominous implications.
There is no single best answer. For some it is a residence for the aged, for others independent assisted living. I know this personally, as do many others reading these words. We wish him and his mother Manya all the best as he grapples with difficult choices for her comfort and well-being.
Mae Lee Billet-Ziskin writes that her youngest son, Randy & Kathleen Granger had a baby boy on August 11, 1999. Jake Randolph Ziskin (named in memory of Mae's late husband, Jay) weighed in at 9lbs 8 ½oz, and 21 ½ inches long, and everyone is doing well. Randy is teaching in the public schools and completing a teaching credential at the same time.
Continuing in the ëbetter-late-than-never' tradition, Ruthie Lapid-Gortzak & husband Oren report their second son, Eran was born on July 11, 1999 at 19:50. Three days later, the Lapids moved into their new house...
Phil & Elaine Shapiro report a very touching item: Their daughter Corey and husband Rod Cherkas chose to name their recently born baby boy, Zachary Aaron, to recall the shtetl ëZelva...'
Hugh Rosenblatt, son of Alan & Fran Rosenblatt, has begun to practice dentistry in Boca Raton, FL...
On October 8, 1999 the New York Times announced that Paul R. Krugman would become a regular contributor to their Op-Ed Page. His writing began appearing with the commencement of the new year...
From Canada, Belle Millo writes that her family members are fine. Tali has begun kindergarten, Noam university, and Aliza is a sophomore in high school. Noam graduated from the international baccalaureate program last year and was the recipient of several awards and entrance scholarships to college. Ari is, as you may remember, serving in the Israel Defense Forces in the Golani Brigade, and is currently serving in and around Hebron...
Leah Rae Lambert writes that her daughter Lisa is having an original musical comedy she co-wrote, and in which she appears, produced by the biggest theater producers in Canada. The play, titled ëThe Drowsy Chaperone,' was featured on their website, and leave it to a mother to say: "It is all very exciting..."
Mazel Tov to Connie & Alan Fried on the occasion of the Bat Mitzvah of their twodaughters, Jamie & Jodi Fried on January 9, 2000. Perhaps this is the first of such events in the new millennium...
On December 12, 1999, Abe Friedman suffered a stroke in Florida. His son, Mike Friedman flew down the following day, and found his condition was quite poor. Fortunately, he has made considerable progress and is currently in a rehabilitation facility in Del Ray Beach. While much of the visible effects have subsided, there is still some damage to his memory, speech etc. All hope this will also improve...
As he reached his 90th year, Jack Fried was hospitalized on 04Jan00 having experienced some chest pains and discomfort. Fortunately this was not a heart attack, and he was released shortly thereafter....
In the Dereczin Memorial Book reference is made to Ukrainian Vlasovite troops aiding the Nazis in their extermination campaign against the Jews of Byelorussia. This brings to light one of the more bizarre and tragic aspects of the eastern front campaign during WW II.
General Andrei Andreyevich Vlasov was the son of a Russian peasant from the Nizhni-Novgorod district who, although far from rich, had been classed by the Bolsheviks as "kulak" and treated accordingly. These roots would ultimately place him at personal odds with the Soviet system. By the late 1930s, Stalin would forcibly collectivize the Ukraine, disenfranchise the kulaks, utilizing starvation imprisonment and exile, at the cost of over 5 million lives. By March, 1942 Vlasov had become Deputy Commander of the Volkhov Front. In mid-June of 1942, his forces operating on the Volkhov River were forced to surrender, and General Vlasov became a German prisoner of war.
As with members of many other brutalized minorities under the heel of the Soviet boot, General Vlasov allied himself with the Nazis to combat Stalin. Droves of anti-Stalinist Russians began to surrender to the Nazis, mostly Ukrainians. Anti-Stalinist deserters serving in the Nazi forces reached 900,000 in June 1944 under General Vlasov. At war's end, hundreds of thousands of Vlasov's supporters fled westward to for refuge from Stalin's vengeance, but were handed over to the Soviet Union to be murdered outright or sent to slave-labor camps in Siberia. The dimensions of the human suffering involved in this whole situation is beyond the human imagination. On May 12th, 1945, Vlasov was handed over by the Americans to the Soviets to be tortured and executed for treason in August, 1946.
A Russian historian, after the fall of the Soviet Union makes the following observation:
In my opinion there is one reason which explains everything: the general hatred of the Soviet system, a hatred greater than inborn patriotism and loyalty to one's own government. Those who have not seen the limitless degradation of man in what was the Soviet hell cannot understand that a moment may come when a man out of sheer desperation will take up arms against the hateful system even at the side of an enemy. The responsibility for his mutiny falls on the system and not him. Here the notions of loyalty and treason lose their meaning. If, in the eyes of many people, Germans who fought against Hitler were not traitors, why should the Russians who fought against the Soviet system be traitors?
