Category Archives: Trauma

Cousins Reunited by a Photo and a Family Tree

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Bereda, Family, Genealogy, Israel, Kolski, Photographs, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Pre-World War II, Survival, Trauma, Warsaw, World War II, Włocławek

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I met my cousin Pini Doron in 2013 when I found his family tree online and wrote to ask if we might be related. He asked for proof, so I sent him the photo in the header of this blog, which he recognized from his own copy. He wrote back “welcome to the family” and ever since I have felt embraced by my extended family in Israel, with Pini at the heart of it. The photo, which includes both of our grandmothers, confirmed that we are cousins.

Last week, we were contacted by Nitay Elboym, who writes for the MyHeritage Hebrew-language blog. He decided to write about our family in commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s a story of connections and separations that span a century.

You can find it in Hebrew at the Internet news service YNet:

אחרי 70 שנות נתק: גילה בארה”ב בני משפחה שנעלמו לאחר השואה

I’ve attached the text in English. I used Google Translate and then edited it. This is the article that appeared in the MyHeritage blog. The YNet version only has minor differences.
1916BabiasFamily_color

Colorized photo of the family from about 1916. Marysia’s grandmother is sitting on the left and Pini’s grandmother is standing on the right

Thanks to a photo and a family tree: a Holocaust survivor son has found family members who disappeared

 By Nitay Elboym

April 21, 2020

74-year-old Pini Doron of Hod Hasharon is a longtime MyHeritage user who built a family tree for many years dating back to 1800. Pini thought he had already finished his search, when he received a message with an old family picture. This time, he realized immediately, it was an extraordinary discovery.

“I get a lot of inquiries from people who think they’re related to me,” Pini says. “I am usually skeptical of my relation to them, so I politely ask everyone to explain how we are connected. In this case too, when I received the message, I responded that I would love to know what our family relationship is,” he recalls.

“Actually, at that time, I was pretty much at the beginning of my family history research,” recalls Marysia Galbraith, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama, USA. “I was looking for bits of information wherever possible. But when I saw Pini’s family tree on MyHeritage, I knew it was about me, I just didn’t know how. In short, I had no idea how to prove to him how I was related to his family tree, so I just sent the only picture I had. Besides my grandmother, I didn’t know who the people were. Then he answered me ‘Welcome to family.’ His reply almost made me cry. ”

Operation Rescue

The Piwko family lived in the town of Wloclawek, Poland. At the outbreak of World War II, Pini’s grandparents – Pinchas Kolski and his wife Rachel (nee Piwko) – and their two children, Mirka and Samek, were left there while Pini’s father was saved because he and his two brothers were sent to Israel before the war to work the family lands in Kfar Ata. “Because their city of residence was close to Warsaw, they were transferred to the Warsaw ghetto right at the beginning of the war, around 1940,” Pini says. “In the ghetto, Samek was murdered, and my grandfather died of illness. So my grandmother and her daughter Mirka were left alone, looking for a way to survive.”

1941RachelMirkaKolskiAtPinchasGraveInGhetto

Mirka and Rachel Kolski at Pinchas Kolski’s grave in the Warsaw Ghetto

Meanwhile, Rachel’s sister, Halina, lived in relative safety outside the Warsaw ghetto, because after divorcing her first Jewish husband, she remarried a Christian man named Zygmunt Bereda. “Rachel and Halina’s father were not ready to hear about this relationship. So, when she married a Christian, he sat shiva on her,” said Pini. “Her sisters tried from time to time to keep in touch, but because of their father, the connection got weaker.” Halina and Rachel’s father, who passed away around 1930, could not have imagined that it was precisely the person who, because of his religious identity, he rejected, would save not only his daughters, but also his other descendants.

When Halina told Zygmunt that her sister was in the ghetto alone with her daughter, he decided to come to their aid despite the risk involved. “Zygmunt was a very successful businessman with a lot of property. In addition, he probably had many connections, which opened doors to him that were closed to others,” explains Marysia. “He used these connections to forge documents for Rachel and her sister, which allowed them to escape the ghetto.”

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Halina Bereda, Marysia’s grandmother. She and her Christian husband saved the family

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Zygmunt Bereda. A Polish Christian who saved the family of his Jewish wife

But the matter did not end here. Zygmunt and Halina protected the two after they left the ghetto and hid them in buildings they owned throughout the war. At the same time, they were able to forge additional documents that allowed them to leave Poland to Switzerland, and from there, in 1949, the two immigrated to Israel.

“Years of disconnection ended thanks to a surviving photo and family tree on the MyHeritage website. Ever since we started chatting, I have found that Marysia isn’t only a wonderful person, she is also a thoughtful researcher,” says Pini. “She has set up a blog where she writes personally and collects her interesting findings. Everything she does is well organized, backed up by documents, and she knows how to find almost everything. She even studied Polish, which probably helps her a lot in genealogical research.”

The wheel turns over

At the end of the war, Warsaw was devastated by the bombings. The many businesses and houses that Zygmunt owned were also destroyed. He and Halina lost their property and had no place to live. The rescuers now needed help, and the one who came to their aid was the former wife of Samek, Rachel’s son who died in the Holocaust. After the war Halina and her daughter Maria, Marysia’s mother, immigrated to the United States and settled there.

“The truth was kept from us,” says Marysia, who has grown up as a Christian all her life. “For years, family members have been whispering about being Jewish, but never really getting into it. I have spent a long time trying to figure out why my mother and grandmother hid their Jewish heritage and why they were not in contact with Rachel. I think the trauma of the Holocaust left a deep scar on my grandmother. She thought, “If they don’t know, then it won’t hurt them.” That’s probably why they didn’t keep in touch with Rachel and her descendants in Israel.”

Since the family tree has linked Pini to Marysia the two speak regularly, and they have also met in Israel and in Poland with other family members. “When we went to the graves of our families, the sight was unusual. On one side of the cemetery wall are Jews with a rabbi, and on the other side are Christians with a priest,” Pini recalls. “But what is important? In the end, we are human beings and destiny connected us together.”

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During the roots journey to Poland. Pini stands to the left and beside him Marysia

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Pini’s Tree showing the family connection between Pini and Marysia

The image that led to the discovery – now in color

To revive the old image that made the exciting discovery, the company’s investigators used the MyHeritage In Color ™ auto-coloring tool and sent the result to Pini and Marysia. “It’s wonderful,” says Marysia. “I’m going to share the colorized picture with my family, including my 90-year-old aunt who will be especially happy.”

1916BabiasFamily_color

Colorized photo of the family from about 1916

Healing Collective Trauma: Jewish Heritage Work in Poland

18 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in Cemeteries, Commemoration, Fieldwork, Heritage work, Memory, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Trauma, Wronki

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Healing Collective Trauma: Jewish Heritage Work in Poland is the title of the paper I presented at the Society for Psychological Anthropology Meeting in New Orleans on March 12. Here is the abstract I submitted:

The legacy of the Holocaust weighs heavily on Polish communities that were witness to unspeakable events. The paper examines how collective and personal trauma and recovery are intertwined, particularly in relation to Jewish heritage work in Poland. It emphasizes the affective engagement of heritage workers, most of whom are Catholic Poles, working on local projects intended to bring the history and culture of the community’s absent Jews back into the public sphere. Person-centered ethnography helps to reveal how participants talk about the work they do in relation to notions of self and society, and associated personal and social meanings. It further reveals their particular narratives about past and present relationships between Catholics and Jews in Poland, which they often pose as a challenge to the silences of the socialist era and the present-day reemergence of xenophobic nationalism. As members of the post-memory generation—they grew up with stories about former Jewish residents and the destruction of their communities, but they did not actually experience these events themselves—heritage workers are able to work towards reconciliation in ways that older generations could not. They have coming-of-age stories associated with the moment historical events became real to them, and their emotional distress about the past became the force that compelled them to do something about it in the present. Their personal narratives suggest motivation stems from the convergence of attachment to their native place, a sense of responsibility to those who are no longer present, and a desire to realize a more inclusive community that accepts past and present diversity within the Polish polity.

In memory of the Jewish community that inhabited Wronki from 1507-1939. Lapidarium of tombstones from the destroyed Jewish cemeteries of Wronki
Lapidarium of Jewish Tombstones, Wronki
Piotr Pojasek pointing to one of Wronki’s Jewish cemeteries. Some pedestals of tombstones remain buried, as well as a large spruce tree that was planted when the cemetery was still functioning.

The paper starts with the story of Piotr Pojasek, who grew up in an old farmhouse near Wronki. From childhood, he knew that the curb on his street had been made out of Jewish tombstones during the Nazi occupation, but it was only as an adult that he really realized how wrong that was. And once he became engaged emotionally and morally, he knew he had to do something about it. It took many years, but in 2014, the lapidarium of the tombstones was completed. Applying the categories of memory as defined by Aleida Assmann, I use this case to explore how individual memories can shape social memory, and in turn national and cultural (collective) memory. The point is that individual connections to the past, as Piotr had through the uneasy presence of the tombstones outside his front door and the stories his father told him, are what compelled action. By collecting and sharing historical evidence and the stories of witnesses, social memory about the impact of the Holocaust grew, and developed a resonance for others. Eventually, a large coalition of local, national, and even international sponsors succeeded in building a public monument that revives and perpetuates collective memory of the Jews who lived there, of the inhuman circumstances of their death, and of the Polish citizens who recognize this as an important part of the history of their community.

Commonly, scholarship on collective memory focuses on public symbols and commemorative spaces, and has little to say about the transmission of meaning on the individual level. In my work, I am trying to show the relevance of individual memory workers and their personal engagement with the past as well as their local community. They are the ones who can bring things together, forging personal, affective links that make others care about far distant people and events.

Tornado and Trauma

09 Monday May 2016

Posted by in Memory, Trauma

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On May 1, some friends and I ran 7.4 miles from one side of town to the other tracing the route of the tornado that tore through the heart of Tuscaloosa five years ago. I’d run the same course just a few weeks after the storm. I took photos both times.

Six sweaty runners!

With my running buddies after we traced the path of the Tuscaloosa tornado five years after it came through town. Some greenery behind us, but before the storm there would have been tall trees.

In retrospect, it is remarkable to me how little attention I paid to the severe weather predictions throughout the day on April 27, 2011. It was nearing the end of the semester so I was busy with final classes. Besides, National Weather Service warnings, tornado sirens, and weatherman James Spann’s call to “get into your safe place” had become commonplace over my 14 years in Alabama. Of course, when the sirens went off in my neighborhood, I went down to the basement with Ian, who was seven years old at the time. I also checked in on Jeremy, who had been teaching on campus. He was waiting out the storm in the basement of Phifer Hall, which had been a fallout shelter during the Cold War. So I felt reassured Jeremy would be okay there.

Jeremy is a belt and suspenders man, so our unfinished basement has a television, camp chairs, and a battery-powered radio. I watched as James Spann, who knows every town and intersection in Alabama, reported on dozens of tornados tracking through the state.

One of the biggest came straight through Tuscaloosa, leaving a trail of rubble and downed trees six miles long and a half mile wide, running diagonally from one side of town to the other. Until it happened, I would never have imagined it ever could happen. Even as reports came in about the path of the tornado, I couldn’t quite grasp it. In Northport where I live, just two miles to the north, it wasn’t even raining. It was ominously still and an eerie yellow glow filled the sky. The rain came only after the tornado passed

Understanding the scale of the damage was also slowed by the destruction of infrastructure—phone lines and cell towers down, roads impassable. Our family was lucky. None of us were harmed. The tornado ran south of campus. We never even lost power, phones, or Internet. But nevertheless, the storm touched us deeply, and in a way that still affects us.

Rosedale Court 2011
Rosedale Court 2016
Wood Manor neighborhood 2011. Metal wrapped in tree
New apartments where Wood Manor used to be 2016

Fifty-three people died in Tuscaloosa (and 252 in the state). Considering the extent of the physical damage, we’re lucky the number was not much higher. In an instant, 12% of the city was destroyed. Follow this link to a video of the tornado, filmed from the parking lot of University Mall. The voice at the beginning is James Spann reporting on the track of the storm.

The experience gives me a glimpse of what it might have been like to endure the trauma of war. In an instant everything is changed. The physical world that seemed so permanent is suddenly obliterated. And it doesn’t make a lot of sense why some people survived and others died. But as horrible as the storm was, it can’t compare to the scale of World War II. And I can only imagine how much more emotionally damaging it would have been to face a human threat rather than a natural one. The former requires accommodating the fact of human agency—that people chose to wreak that destruction on others.

The five-year-anniversary run left me unsettled. I was transported back to the shock of the days following the storm, when the magnitude of the destruction sank in. I passed by the places where people died—Rosedale Court, a housing project that was nearly leveled; Charleston Square Apartments, parts of which lost all but their foundation while others stood battered but whole; the corner of 6th Avenue and 27th Street where a University of Alabama student was sucked out of her home and dropped in a field across the street. I also passed by the places where I helped clean out destroyed homes together with a crew of two-dozen anthropology faculty and students.

Shopping Center Mcfarland Blvd. and 13th St. 2011
Apartments McFarland and 13th St. 2016
9 1/2 Street E. Alberta City 2011
10th St. E. Alberta City 2016

For days, we all lived the storm. It seemed the whole city came together to give food, shelter, and comfort to those who needed it. But after a period of intensive engagement, I had to block it all out. I didn’t want to see any more videos of the twister. I even avoided driving through the tornado zone because each time, my shock was renewed. I couldn’t get used to the long vistas, more like the deserts of the southwest than the southeast’s dense forests. Without the tall trees dividing them, places that used to seem so far apart appeared to be much closer. The blue water tower near Rosedale Court and the Druid City Hospital became landmarks visible for miles. Even Forest Lake stood out as a blue patch surrounded by barren land.

27th St 2016. The Blue Water Tower, now a landmark, used to be obscured by trees.
Lake Ave. 2016. New bike trail.

Today the city is rebuilding. Shopping centers and apartment complexes are filling in the corridor along 15th Street and McFarland Boulevard. Greenery has returned to the landscape, though it will be decades before the trees grow tall enough to once again block the view of the water tower and the hospital.

Five years after the storm, social and economic inequalities continue to be inscribed in the landscape. The fancy houses on the hill were rebuilt almost immediately, while just a few blocks away, whole city blocks remain empty fields. Stores and shopping centers east of the university have not returned. But there are also some signs of change. Subsidized housing, functional brick boxes before the storm, have been replaced by gorgeous two-story buildings with steeply pitched roofs. The new Alberta Elementary has been designated an arts magnet school. A bike trail will wind through the heart of town. Plans have just been revealed for a new park with three fountains. You could call it a rebirth. Still patchy. But remarkable considering the magnitude of the destruction.

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The scar left from the tornado is fading. See more here: https://weather.com/storms/tornado/news/tuscaloosa-tornado-scar-fades