Professor B.B. Morris, dressed up as a newspaperman of yore, after educating his students about journalism.
I remember the day I realized that my cousin Bernard Moskowitz—my father’s nephew—was nothing like my other relatives.
The realization came in a flash as I spotted a newly arrived letter on the dining room table at our home at 4722 Avenue I in the Midwood section of Brooklyn. Two pages. Typewritten. It remains in my mind’s eye. I recognized the scratchy signature: It was my “Cousin Bernie.” I went back to the first page because that seemed like it was from somebody else It was embossed with these words:
My mother, her eagle eyes in play, gazed through the opening from the kitchen and walked up behind me.
“Is this…,” I said
“Yes,” she replied, smiling. “Cousin Bernie got a good job. Daddy is so proud.” She paused. A worried look took over her face. “He changed his name. Maybe they don’t like Jews there.” Another pause. More worry. “It must be very cold.”
I imagined my mother sending Cousin Bernie a sweater. Or two. Or ten.
What else? A Star of David tie clip? A Hebrew prayer book? The possibilities were endless. Read more »
My refugee grandfather, Isaac Siegel, in his New York City watchmaking shop, on St. John’s Place in Brooklyn, probably in the 1940s. The black and white sign on the wall behind his head is an advertisement for an accountant—my father, David Fischkin, who was his son-in-law. Family photo.
In 1919, after a brutal anti-Semitic pogrom in a small Eastern European shtetl, my grandfather knew that his wife and three young children would be better off as refugees. He prepared them to trek by foot and in horse-drawn carts from Ukraine to the English Channel and eventually to a Scottish port. Finally they sailed in steerage class to the United States. My grandfather was a simple watchmaker—and one of the visionaries of his time. Europe, he told his tearful wife, was not finished with murdering Jews, adding that things were likely to get much worse. And so, my grandmother became a hero, too. She said farewell to her mother and sister, knowing she would never see them again. In Scotland, she descended to the lower level of a ship with her children—my mother, the eldest, was seven years old. My grandmother traveled alone with her children. My grandfather was refused entry to the ship. He had lice in his hair. He arrived in the United States weeks, or possibly months, later.
My grandfather, Ayzie Zygal of Felshtin, Ukraine became Isaac Siegel of Brooklyn, New York, where he lived for the rest of his life. In his later years he spent summers in the Catskill Mountains, always asking to be let out of the family car a mile before reaching Hilltop House, a bungalow colony. My grandfather wanted to walk that last mile along the local creek. It reminded him of the River Felshtin. He never regretted coming to America.
My grandparents died, in Brooklyn in their early sixties. My grandfather had been poisoned by the radium he used on the paint brushes in his shop to make the hours glow. He licked them, with panache, to make them sharper. My grandmother had a heart condition, exacerbated by diabetes. They were both gone before I turned three.
They had lived much longer than they had expected they would in 1919.
I was told my grandfather left Europe to save his family’s life. And because my mother narrowly escaped death. I was told he did not believe there would be any more miracles. Read more »
