On This Day, Time to Remember

On the eve of the Festival of Sukkot (tabernacles) which began today according to the Jewish calendar, the Jewish population of Ottynia, a small town in eastern Galicia, variably part of Austria-Hungary, Poland and Ukraine, was essentially eradicated six decades ago. Sources differ on whether it happened in 1941 or 1942. There’s reason to believe mass executions took place both years—October 5, 1941 and September 25, 1942—on the eve of one of the more joyful Jewish holidays, a time usually set aside to celebrate abundance and gratitude. 

It doesn’t matter. The “aktion” was the same: On that fateful day 61 and/or 62 years ago, German and Ukrainian beasts rounded up the Jewish residents of Ottynia and transported them by truck to a nearby forest where mass graves had been dug. They were lined up and shot. In all, some 1,400 souls departed. Though nearly 400 Ottynia Jews survived the war, Jewish life ceased to exist there. My father’s family lived in Ottynia. He had come to New York in 1939. All were slaughtered in Ottynia except his brother Willy who fled into the countryside.

Now part of Ukraine, Ottynia remains a not very hospitable place for outsiders, though one should hardly classify Jews as outsiders to Ottynia considering they had lived there since at least 1635. 

A cousin in France visited Ottynia and nearby Dora in the summer of 2011, searching for family records. Laura reported in an email that in Kolomya she met with the “last living Jew of Ottynia,” a 90-year-old man called Greenberg. He remembered my grandfather, my father and uncle. Twenty-nine members of Greenberg’s family died in the mass killings. "He was there and saw it. He saw the mass graves and the ground still moving.” 

In Ottynia Laura met an old woman who remembered our family name, Fürsetzer. But she found nothing more.

“What I was personally looking for, I found it in Dora, where my grandmother was born,” Laura wrote. “There, we met people who remembered her parents Chaim and Rivka Fürsetzer. We found the place where their shop was. We found the mass graves where they are probably buried. And most important, in the archives building of Stanislawow, we found a complete file showing that my grandmother had tried to save them by taking them to France in 1934, one year after Hitler came to power. She did not succeed but the file is still in the building, with letters, visas, everything.”

Last summer another descendant of Ottynia, a man from New Jersey, ventured back to his family roots. I came across his video on YouTube. Ottynia was never a garden spot of the world. It surely did not improve in the years under Soviet domination and as part of an independent Ukraine. There was little to make one empathetic to the life of our ancestors there.

At the conclusion of Sukkot services at temple this morning, I stood to recite the kaddish memorial prayer for my relatives from Ottynia. In front of me, arrayed on the steps leading up to the bimah, about 30 children sat, giggling, fidgety, happy, expressive proof the Nazis were not successful. I thought back to a time when children in the sanctuary of our synagogue were not very welcome. Dan was three, Ellie roughly six months old when we began bringing them to services. 

We sat in a makeshift back row of portable chairs up against the rear wall with other young families, among them the Lauchheimers. Michael Lauchheimer and I had attended summer camp together, he as a camper, I as his counselor. Together with other families we forced a change in temple protocol. No longer were children persona non grata. 

Twenty-three years ago, on the first day of Sukkot, Michael passed away. His friends still miss him.

Anniversary's Over, Now Back to the News

Almost a week since my last post, not that there weren’t things to write about but I chose to take some quality time to enjoy a long family weekend celebration of Gilda’s and my 40th wedding anniversary which officially was Monday. This last year of our four decades together has been quite eventful—Ellie married Donny, and Donny started a new job; Dan and Allison produced their second child, Dagny, they moved into a new home and Allison started working outside the home again, as a kindergarten teacher in a town near their new residence; Gilda’s spine surgery medical practice shifted to a new hospital, Mount Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan; and I earned my real estate salesperson license. Lots of good things to be thankful for. 

The festivities over, time for some thoughts on current events ...

As the national debate on immigration reform is propelled forward by pronouncements from President Obama and a plan from a bi-partisan group of senators, I’m reminded of a Forseter family story of illegal entry into the United States by one of our cousins (for the record, my mother beat the quota in 1921 when she came from Poland, while my father arrived in 1939 from Poland, half a year before the start of World War II).

My father’s cousin Jack Fürsetzer snuck into New York in the early 1920’s, I believe. Hearing that a roundup of suspected illegal immigrants was about to happen, he asked around for a good place to hide. He was told Minnesota, so off he went to the hinterlands, settling in the Twin Cities area. He changed his name to Brushman. In the 1930s there was an amnesty for illegals, which explains why some of his six children have his assumed last name and some have his real last name. 

About 20 years ago I met with my cousins during one of my trips to Minneapolis, but sadly I did not keep up contact. ...

Immigration is but one of the hot topics being debated these days. Since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, gun control has been topic one. Sadly, during a forum last night in Hartford, pro-gun advocates heckled the father of one of the young victims as he called for stricter gun control measures. 

Even if tighter laws on guns, especially on assault rifles, are passed, the chances of a meaningful reduction in deadly firearms availability is unlikely. As Dave Ross explained in a recent commentary I heard on CBS Radio, gun runners are already passing along ideas on how to get around any potential ban. Read his short commentary: http://mynorthwest.com/813/2184540/Just-calmly-getting-ready ...

Less than a week to go before the Super Bowl, a time to ponder why we are so enthralled with watching athletes, from high school age through their late 30s, abuse their bodies in pursuit of glory and, at least on the professional level, financial gain, however fleeting that might be. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy watching my New York Giants as much as any fan relishes rooting on his or her preferred team. I will watch some pro games in which I have no rooting interest, mostly out of curiosity or lack of anything better to do. After all, I do want to be able to be up to date on trending sports news and conversation, even if I don’t have a water cooler to hang around at work. But given repeated revelations about the medical complications football bequeaths its behemoths, don’t you wonder why so many parents permit, nay even encourage, their children to take up a sport that will torment them for life, or possibly even lead to their suicide?

The other day, president Barack Obama indicated if he had a son he might not let him play football. It’s a sentiment expressed increasingly by many parents, including sportscaster Michael Kay on ESPN Radio. Kay and his wife recently celebrated the birth of their first child, a daughter. I remember when Dan was a tween and interested in catching a football in our yard, Gilda let him know in no uncertain terms he would not be permitted to play organized football. He pouted for a while, but soon got over it. 

He played soccer, instead. Goalie. During one game he blocked a hard, close-in shot with his head. Down he went. The game stopped as the referee and coaches tended to him. On the sidelines, Gilda had to be restrained from rushing out onto the field. In her frustration she asked, “What type of game is this where a mother can’t go out to her injured son?” Dan quickly recovered and finished the game, but Gilda rarely went to see him play soccer again. She did, however, enjoy watching him play Ultimate Frisbee. ...  

Want to be truly scared? I’m not talking some creepy Nightmare on Elm Street/Freddy Kruger horror flick. I’m talking real world, red and blue state election results. 

While Democrats savor Barack Obama’s second term, and his progressive inaugural address, there’s mayhem underfoot, as Republicans wax up their plans to put the skids on any future possibility of a Democratic president. In states where Republicans control the legislature and the governorship they are exploring changes in the way Electoral College votes are allocated. Here are two links worth taking the time to explore. Unless you’re a bedrock conservative, they'll have you quaking in your boots:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/republican-vote-rigging-electoral-college_n_2546010.htmlutm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=012513&utm_medium=email&utm_content=FeatureTitle&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/423163/january-23-2013/alpha-dog-of-the-week---virginia-state-senate-republicans?xrs=share_copy

Social Networking

Highly unusual occurrence on the softball diamond this morning. As the first player, a young man perhaps 30 years my junior, stepped into the batter’s box against me, both teams cheered, “Let’s go Murray.” I quickly ascertained the batter shared my name, an anomaly I hadn’t encountered in close to 30 years of playing in the Sunday Jewish organization softball league. It’s most unusual to meet anyone younger than I with the name Murray. As I’ve written in the past, Murray is a moniker usually confined by script writers to policemen or dogs (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2009/11/whats-in-name.html). 

My last name is even more unusual than my first. People often mistake it for Forester, like the Subaru car, or Old Forester bourbon. But it’s Forseter, an Americanization of Fürsetzer. When we grew up, my brother, sister and I thought the only post-World War II surviving Forseters were our family and that of our father’s brother, Willy. All told, eight of us.

So when a St. Louis-raised colleague remarked he’d gone to school with an Elliot Forseter, I told him it was not possible. No doubt Elliott spelled his surname differently, I said. Naturally, an argument ensued. We wagered 10 bucks on who was right. To settle the matter, I trekked down to our fifth floor office to look in a St. Louis phonebook used by our directory division. Sure enough, Elliot Forseter was listed there in black and white. After forking over the $10, I called my father to ask who was this guy, Elliot Forseter. “Oh, that’s Allen’s son,” he said. “Allen!?!,” I screamed into the phone. “Who are these people? Where did they come from? Why hadn’t we heard about them before?”

My father didn’t really have a good explanation as to why he didn’t stay in touch with his St. Louis relatives, or for those in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that used a Fursetzer spelling, or a Forseter cousin who had lived in Queens but died in the mid 1950s. Since I traveled the nation quite a bit back then, I was determined to meet Elliot next time I was in St. Louis. Only trouble was, I rarely visited St. Louis. 

Several years later, in 1986, en route to Las Vegas, I had a one hour layover in St. Louis, too short a time to leave the airport but time enough to contact Elliot by phone. He wasn’t home. As I explained who I was to his wife, I could visualize her looking into the phone and saying, “Yeah, right.” I told her I’d follow up with a letter. On the plane ride to Las Vegas I long-handed a legal-sized, seven-page letter detailing our family history. Elliot checked with his uncle, Isadore Forsetzer, in Florida before replying. Elliot, too, had no idea he had any Forseter relatives, as his parents had divorced 26 years earlier when he was 13 and his father moved to Los Angeles (by weird coincidence, to a home around the corner from my sister). He enclosed a picture of himself and his family. He could have passed as one of my father’s sons. 

A few years later I actually visited Elliot and his family, as well as my cousins in Minnesota. We all said we would stay in touch. That was 20 years ago. I have not stayed in touch. Sadly, I inherited my father’s anti-social gene when it comes to distant family relations. Maybe it was a universal Fürsetzer gene. My cousins haven’t stayed in touch, either.