CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
1941–1950
The year 1941 didn’t prove to be much happier than the year that preceded it. Ben, after enduring a relentless headache for more than a day, was walking up a flight of stairs to an appointment with his cousin George Shucker, a medical practitioner in Philadelphia, when he was struck by severe pain that paralyzed most of his body.
Conscious, but weak and unable to walk, Ben was athletically fit at thirty-three years old. He used his astounding upper body strength, which he had relied on years earlier to pitch fastballs, to save his life. Using his arms, he crawled up dozens of steps and managed to get to the office. Dr. Shucker and his secretary took one look at Ben and immediately phoned for an ambulance.
Ben’s condition baffled his team of doctors. Eventually, they diagnosed him with polio, a disease common in those days that was often associated with sudden paralysis in young, otherwise healthy, patients. On the upside, Ben was sidelined from serving in the war; on the downside, he was confined to bed for more than a year, weak and unable to walk. Anne suddenly found herself with the sole responsibility of caring for an ailing husband, an active toddler, and a hands-on business, which was their only means of financial support.
As the strength in Ben’s legs and body slowly improved, doctors wisely suggested that he spend time in the fresh air of the mountains, where work involving physical labor would be therapeutic in his recovery. The couple, with their baby Marcy, took a long drive up to the heart of the Adirondacks and stopped to look around in Lake George, New York, a spectacular resort town famous for its panoramic views, boating, and fishing.
While stopping at a motel in Lake George, his pretty wife went ahead of Ben to inquire about a room for the evening and was told that there was a vacancy; she signaled for her husband and baby to get out of the car and come inside. When Ben approached the office to check-in and pay the bill, the desk clerk took a look at him. Suddenly, the room became unavailable to Jews. This was the first time that Anne ever felt the sting of blatant anti-Semitism in her adopted homeland.
Upset and shaken, the couple got back into their car and kept driving farther north, stopping next in Schroon Lake, a quaint upstate town frozen in time. The town was situated next to a nine-mile body of water with mini beachfronts framed by mountain peaks and tall evergreens. An entire rainbow of colors splashed across the top of the water; the young couple followed its sparkling trail to a little lakefront property where cottages were rented. There they met an elderly white-haired couple, Dr. Ernest Pratt and his wife, Emma, who were relaxing on wooden Adirondack rockers while enjoying the evening’s breathtaking view of the lake.I Within days, the Pratts sold Anne and Ben their summer business, which they renamed Marcy’s Beachfront Cottages. The fresh air and the tranquility of the mountains helped Ben to rebuild his strength and recuperate from his illness.II
A few years later, Ben received an unexpected phone call from his first love, Bebe, who had broken his heart by choosing another man for his money during the onset of the Depression. This man, who became her husband, had become abusive toward her, and she turned to Ben to come and help her. Anne was shocked but was understanding when Ben dropped the receiver and rushed to his former flame’s side. Anne knew that he was simply checking on Bebe’s safety and had every intention of returning to his life with her and Marcy, which he did. Anne and Ben remained together for sixty-six years.
Weighing heavily on the minds of almost every Jewish family in America during this decade was the lack of information about, and communication from, their loved ones, who remained in the Old Country during the Holocaust years. Isaac and Rebecca had not heard a word from their families in Europe in almost a decade and just prayed that they had survived the war. During her lifetime, Rebecca never heard again from her brother Shalum or her sister Hiya.III She never knew if they had survived or perished during the Holocaust, or if it was simply that they could not trace each other’s whereabouts.
Isaac, however, was unyielding in his search for his two sisters, Shifka and Piya (Pollya), who’d remained in Stavishche after he fled Ukraine. During the late 1940s, he had Russian-speaking interpreters from Jewish agencies send out letters to different cities inquiring about their whereabouts. Finally, a glimmer of hope brightened the end of a trying decade.
At Last—Isaac Receives a Letter from Europe!
After an exhaustive search for his sisters, Isaac, at last, heard some news of his long-lost family from Stavishche. In response to his letter sent with the assistance of a Jewish agency worker, Mrs. Esther Friedman, Isaac’s niece, the daughter of his younger sister Piya, responded from Simferapool, the Crimea, to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:
January 31, 1948
Dear Uncle, Aunt, and Cousins!
This letter is being written by your niece and cousin whom you do not know, the daughter of your sister Pollya T.—Sophia.
I have no words to express our great joy at receiving a letter from you Esther Friedman. Mama actually cried from joy that she could hardly be calmed down. It’s already ten years that we have not corresponded, during which time there have been so many changes, and you most probably thought that we were no longer alive. But we did not know anything about your life. Mama often cried as she thought about her only brother and his family, for whom we have been separated for so long. She said, “I would be so happy if I only could get a letter from my brother!” And now this joy has smiled at us. However, when we received your letter and photographs our joy was doubled. Dear Uncle, you are most certainly already a grandfather, and Auntie a grandmother.
Sophia updated her family in the United States on their lives in the Crimea. She wrote about her father’s death before the war and the hardships that her mother faced, having to work to support the two of them despite having a heart condition. She, herself, signed up for a degree at the Crimean Teacher’s Institute in the Faculty of Foreign Languages in the English Department. She hoped that after she finished her first year, she would be able to correspond in English.
Sophia wanted Isaac’s entire family to know how much her mother wishes she could see them and asked about the details of their lives in America. In addition, she wrote Isaac that his sister Shifka, her husband, and their children were living in Central Asia. Shifka was already a grandmother. Sophia promised to send her aunt Isaac’s letter along with his address in America.
She lives far from us, but of course is closer than you are.
Sophia included Shifka’s address in the city of Chardzhou, TSSR (Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic).
Dear Uncle, Mama is interested in how Malya, Bassya, and AbramIV are, and where they live. Be well, dears. Mama and I kiss you and all the children a million times.
Your sister Pollya and niece Sophia, who wish you much happiness, life, and health; we impatiently await your letter.
“Good bay”V
Correspondence continued between the two families; both sides were overjoyed to be reunited, if only by mail. An old black-and-white photo of an attractive young woman was tucked away and saved with this letter. It was a photograph of Sophia, who wrote a sentimental inscription in Russian on the back: “As an eternal and fine memento to my dear uncle, aunt, and cousins. Please keep the photo and please do not forget me or my mother. From your cousin and niece, Sophia.” It was dated five months later, on June 7, 1948, an indication that other letters were exchanged after the initial one.
Isaac greatly cherished these letters and photos from his lost family in Stavishche. Unfortunately, the treasured notes and keepsakes that traveled across the ocean would long outlive their recipient. Shortly after experiencing the thrill of finding his sisters, Isaac died of heart failure. During the early-morning hours of October 21, 1950, he suffered his fourth and final heart attack and died peacefully in his sleep.
Anne’s eleven-year-old daughter, Marcy, hesitated to answer her grandmother Rebecca’s early-morning phone call, as she knew in her heart that her grandfather was gone. Anne then telephoned Sunny and told her to meet her at their parents’ home on North Warnick Street. She said, “Come over quickly; Papa is ill.”
Sunny rushed over in a taxicab from her home on Oxford Circle. Her teeth were chattering during the entire ride as she relived in her mind the events of the preceding day, when she had taken her father to a top cardiologist in Philadelphia, who had given him a clean bill of health. Sunny told her eight-year-old daughter, Bobby, riding beside her in the taxi, that she knew it was much more serious than her sister had let on over the telephone. “I know he’s dead. I know that Anne wasn’t telling me the entire truth. I can feel it; I can feel that he’s no longer alive.”
When Sunny arrived at eight thirty in the morning, Anne could see by the expression on her sister’s face that she already knew. Anne had covered her papa’s body by pulling a bedspread over his face, but Sunny insisted on seeing him one last time. She gently placed her cheek next to his and cried, “Oh, Pop, Oh, Pop…” Her father had truly loved her unconditionally.
With their father’s passing, much of the sweetness in their lives disappeared.
On a table beside Isaac’s body sat an old prayer book that he’d cherished since his arrival in America twenty-eight years earlier. Before the final passage, which the grandson of Rabbi Meir Caprove had no doubt read hundreds of times, clear instructions for the Kaddish were written in English: “Kaddish to be repeated by sons during the eleven months after the death of their parents, also on Jahrzeit, i.e., the anniversary of such death.”
Isaac’s only son, his beloved Kaddish, had predeceased him, leaving only close adult female relatives, a wife, two daughters, and two sisters, in North America, Europe, and Asia, to recite the mourner’s prayer in his beloved memory.VI
1. I. Over the years, Ben built many structures on this peaceful property that included a long strip motel, a handful of rustic cabins, and a dock used by fishermen that extended out many feet over the lake. For nearly thirty summers, their customers enjoyed nightly campfires, shuffleboard, table tennis, canoeing, and row boating.
2. II. Years later, after Ben suffered a massive stroke during old age, he insisted that this medical scare in his young adulthood was the result of an aneurysm and not polio as the doctors had suspected.
3. III. In 2007, four years after Anne’s death, her granddaughter Lisa, the author, discovered a page of testimony at Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names on Leib Cutler (Kotlyar), a son of Anne’s uncle Shalum Cutler. Leib was thirty-seven years old when he was murdered during the Holocaust in Darnitsa, Ukraine, while in the Soviet army in 1941. The testimony was written by Leib’s child Kira, who was no longer living at the Kiev address that was given when she had submitted the form ten years earlier. Lisa was unable to locate her.
4. IV. Sophia is referring to Rebecca’s siblings, Molly, Bessie, and Avrum. Pollya was friends with them in Stavishche.
5. V. These short excerpts of Sophia’s letter were translated from Russian into English by David Goldman, MA. In an attempt to use her newly learned English, Sophia herself misspelled the word “goodbye” in her letter.
6. VI. Years later, Rebecca shocked her children by marrying a man she hardly knew. She went on a vacation to Florida and instead of bringing back a souvenir, she returned with a man who would soon become her second husband. When Rebecca first introduced her new flame to her children, they instantly understood her attraction to him—he looked just like their father. Unfortunately, the honeymoon was short-lived; while he resembled Isaac in looks, his personality was totally different, and she tired of him. Shortly after their marriage, he suffered a minor stroke. Rebecca nursed him back to health—a full recovery—but decided he wasn’t for her and had the marriage annulled.