My grandparents—my father’s parents—Moses and Lina Fürsetzer, never made it to Auschwitz. Neither did my Uncle Max. Nor Aunt Klara. Neither did Uncle Willy’s wife and son.
Like almost all the 1,200 Jews of Ottynia in Galicia, in what is now Ukraine but back in 1941 was a small town in Poland, they were taken to a nearby forest and gunned down by Nazis and their local henchmen.
Willy evaded death that day because he already had been hiding in fields and, sometimes, in barns belonging to sympathetic peasants. He hid for some two years until the Russian army liberated the sector at which point he was drafted and sent to Siberia for military training.
In America since January 1939 my father knew nothing of his family’s fate as the few postcards that managed to come from his mother stopped arriving in the mid 1941. The progression of the war can be discerned from their stamps and postmarks. Polish stamps on the first. Russian stamps with CCCP letters on the second reflecting Ottynia’s location in the half of Poland controlled by the Soviet Union as part of the country’s partition with Germany in September 1939. CCCP stamps on the last postcard as well, but a fading postmark of a flying eagle carrying a swastika in its talons conveyed a message of impending doom.
After the war my father reunited with Willy in New York but the two never talked to their American families about what happened in Ottynia. Until one Passover about 30 years ago when my brother Bernie and I videotaped their memories of life in the shtetl and got Willy to recount his harrowing evasion from death.
We have no idea what happened to my mother’s family. Her father, Louis Gerson, perhaps Gershonovitz before being anglicized at Ellis Island, came to New York in 1920. His wife Sarah and their four children—Solomon, Pola, Sylvia (my mother) and Vicky—arrived in 1921. A fourth daughter, Lily, was born in America.
The Gersons came from Lodz, one of Poland’s largest cities. During World War II the Nazis confined Jews from the region in the Lodz ghetto, one of the most populous they established in conquered territories. Hundreds of thousands lived in the ghetto before dying there or being transported to concentration and extermination camps.
I have no doubt members of the Gerson family were among the dead. My mother and her sisters never talked about it. Louis and Sarah died in 1951 and 1955, respectively.
As I have previously written about our experience at Auschwitz I had not intended to write anything about the commemoration of the liberation of the death camp 75 years ago Monday (use the search engine at the top of the blog to read past articles about Auschwitz).
Amidst all the articles on the impeachment trial and international commemorations of the liberation of Auschwitz, perhaps you missed a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that permitted the Trump administration to proceed with a plan to deny green cards to immigrants who might need public benefits like Medicaid, food stamps and housing vouchers. The plan is being contested in court, but the justices permitted interim implementation (https://nyti.ms/2RTmJPf).
Now Trump’s plan should be an impeachable offense. Not on a legal basis. On a moral one. Trump says he is against chain migration yet that is how his current wife’s parents came here. He is against illegal migrants working here but his resorts and golf courses routinely employ illegals.
How many of our ancestors would not have been granted entry to America had Trump’s heartless guidelines been in effect when they landed on our shores?
From rags to riches is a foundational American story. Yet Trump’s policies would probably kibosh that ever happening again for an immigrant.
Auschwitz and Holocaust Memorial Day are reminders not only of mankind’s potential bestiality but also of what may transpire when people who have the power to help don’t. When people and governments who could extend comfort and protection don’t. When leaders hide behind conventions of government and do nothing instead of rising to the occasion to show their humanity.
