THE GARDEN A little garden Fragrant and full of roses The path is narrow And a little boy walks along it. A little boy, a sweet boy Like that growing blossom When the blossom come to bloom, The little boy … Read More
Penned up inside this ghetto But I have found my people here. The dandelions call to me And the white chestnut candles in the court, Only I never saw another butterfly, That butterfly was the last one. Butterflies don’t live … Read More
This is a guest post written by my friend and colleague, Leslie Zurla. She was inspired to write it after seeing this simple picture – four people standing on a wood pile. But this one included my mother and her brother, taken circa 1916 somewhere in Germany. That this simple photo could inspire such feelings . . . that’s what I find beautiful about it.
I count eight people who in one way or another changed my life. Had I not discovered at age 52 that I was really a Jew, I would never have had the pleasure of finding so many wonderful friends. Each one added valuable insight … Read More
To recap where we left off at the end of Act 1, Lily’s recent return from her six week sabbatical back home to Hannover was not a happy one. First she was greeted with the news that Kurt had lost what remained of … Read More
feud | fyood | noun: a state of prolonged mutual hostility, typically between two families Take a fistful of jealously, add a share of resentment, some greed and mistrust, then inject a mother’s suicide, wrap it all in a cloak of secrecy … Read More
….or Pete & Linda’s Excellent Adventure! Reporting about a recent week in my life is not a subject I normally blog about. But it was a special week crammed with memorable events and marvelous people. Within the span of nine days I experienced enough … Read More
Few Jews were Marine Corps pilots in WWII – Mike Zanger was…! The story behind the search for Mike Zanger has intrigued me ever since I heard it from his niece, Marcy Hanigan, back in 2011. Like so many stories that came out of WWII, … Read More
A Letter from the Shoah Foundation? It was an uneventful day back in 2002 , until I happened to go out to our mail box. That’s when I noticed a strange envelope postmarked “the Netherlands”, stuck in between the usual collection … Read More
This was posted in JewishGen’s “Success Stories” on June 2, 2015 As incredible as it may sound, I didn’t learn that my family was Jewish until I was 51 years old. That secret was sustained while I was growing up … Read More
Marion Blumenthal Lazan is a Holocaust survivor who has dedicated her life to delivering a message of racial and religious tolerance to audiences all over the world. I finally had the opportunity to meet this incredible woman in person, just a few … Read More
Since I wrote my original post, Eugenics, My Cousin and the “Final Solution”, enough new information has crossed my desk that I feel it’s necessary to write this update. The original post began with my discovery of a cousin by the name of … Read More
This headstone is in the Weissensee Cemetery in Berlin, Germany. It helped me solve a long term question of mine, who is Sally Rehfisch? Or more specifically, what was Sally Rehfisch’s gender. I must give credit to a fellow Jewish Genealogical … Read More
Shock & Awe So, how would you feel if you learned at the ripe old age of 53 that you were a Jew? Probably come as a shock, right? It did for me, but not in quite the way you’d … Read More
Because of a Wishing Well It was dark when Linda and I arrived at our host’s apartment. We were in an older section of Los Angeles called the Silverlake District, an area that had been known as a showcase for the houses … Read More
“My husband tried to tell me his mother was a German Jew, a few months before we were married. I was shocked, but tried to focus on the German, ignoring the Jewish part.”
Sharon S.
Part 1 introduced the notes I took in 1993 regarding my mother’s mental state nearly fifty years after she’d been institutionalized. That’s when she finally revealed to me the secrets within the netherworld that she had created inside her head. Part 1 also introduced the … Read More
In 1944 my mother suffered a severe emotional breakdown, and was committed to a mental hospital in Compton, CA. Although released seven months later, she never fully recovered. But it would be another 50 years before she finally allowed me into her secret nether world, the place into which … Read More
During my family research, I discovered that I had a cousin by the name of Felicitas Weinlaub, who died in 1942. There was very little additional information about her other than her birth date, date of her demise and the fact … Read More
