Our Family Roots Dig

All these places had their moments, with lovers and friends I still can recall. Some are dead and some are living. In my life, I’ve loved them all.

The Beatles

Finding Rivka

When Susan and I are asked what Changing Lanes is about, we often reply that it’s about realigning who you are with what you do. The many change artists we interviewed demonstrated that living a more authentic life allowed them to tap into wellsprings of creativity and joy that they didn’t anticipate when they first embarked on their lane change.

This quest for authenticity involves taking a fresh look at the issue of identity. “Who am I?” should be addressed before we tackle the question “Why am I here and what should I do with my life?” In my case, I wanted to revisit the question “Where am I from?” in the belief that my family history played a major role in determining the person that I am.

Back in 1977, the miniseries of Alex Haley’s Roots spawned many such family investigations. Last month, I went on my own family roots tour. The experience impacted me so profoundly that I was inspired to share the story with all of you who are seeking the renewal that comes from changing lanes.

I was 15 years old before I learned that I had two sisters who had died before I was born. I was interviewing my father as one of my few living resources for an assignment all school children of my era worked on, called “These Are My Roots.”

I listened to my father’s words in a state of shock. I had grown up with a brother eight years older than I but had never heard a word spoken about other siblings. The story in my head was this—my  parents escaped Poland as the Germans were invading and survived WWII by heading East, moving deeper and deeper into the then Soviet Union until they reached relative safety in Samarqand, Uzbekistan.

As their child, lucky to have been born in America, I had often heard about how my family survived depravation and the bitter cold in Russia. My favorite involved my mother who had been a dress designer and milliner in her home town of Radom. Survivors whom I met as I was growing up told me how she had saved their lives—literally. By creating Paris knock-offs for the Soviet commissars’ wives, she was given extra food and provisions which she shared with her small band of Jewish refugees. A treasured story, but in general, I was in the dark about the hardships my parents experienced during those horrific war years.

Another 19 years passed, my son, David, was born, and my Aunt Sheindel flew from Toronto to L.A. to be my baby nurse. My parents had both died while I was in my teens and my aunt was (and is) my cherished connection to the generation before me. While working together to fill in the family tree in David’s baby book, Sheindel shocked me with the revelation that my parents had lost yet a third child, a boy, who died before he reached his 30th day. What incredible sadness they must have carried in their hearts all those years, never speaking of it, I assume, in order to spare me the pain of their suffering.

As a mother at 34, I coaxed as much information as I could from my aunt who filled in the blanks as best she could. In one tearful conversation, she told me about the circumstances of my family’s escape from the Nazis. She was 12 years old, the youngest of my mother’s eight siblings, and was visiting with my parents when the war broke out. My father’s 19 year old sister, Rivka, was also at their home as he made the decision to get the hell out of Poland. Sheindel was too young to have a say in the matter and was taken with them into Russia. Rivka had a mind of her own and chose to go home to her parents. We don’t know for sure, but she probably perished in the Maydanek death camp along with the rest of the family that stayed behind. To this day, Sheindel weeps as she tells this story as I do when I hear it. 

With this background, it’s no wonder that I jumped at the chance to explore my family’s roots in Poland as part of a mission to Israel with the American Technion Society , the support group for Israel’s MIT. As an add-on to the group tour of Warsaw and Krakow, ATS arranged for donors to go on guided family roots trips, tailored according to the information we could supply in advance. I persuaded my brother and sister-in-law to travel with me, partly in hopes that it would jog my brother’s obscured memory of his first 8 years of life before immigrating to the U.S.

Armed with only my parents’ and grandparents’ names (spelled the unfamiliar Polish way with many c’s and j’s absent in the American versions), their home towns, and the address of my mother’s dress shop, we set out to learn what we could about where and how they lived in the country that was once home to 3.5 million Jews—the largest population center for Jews in history before the holocaust.

We walked the streets our parents walked in Lublin, Radom, and Krasnystaw, taking in the beauty of country and marveling at the recent renovations made possible by Poland’s booming economy since joining the EU. Our guide, Vaclav, was a fount of historical information and a helpful translator as we filled out the archive request forms in each city and town where we searched for birth, marriage and death records.

Visiting these storied places was a revelation, especially when we stood in front of the women’s fashion shop in Radom owned by my mother, the liberated woman of 19. But we were unsuccessful in the tedious effort to unearth the records we had hoped to find. Each day, we climbed up rickety stairs in grey Soviet era offices, followed the bureaucratic process of filling out endless forms, and each day we came away disappointed.

On our last day of the trip, we visited Maydanek, the Nazi’s death camp in Lublin, which is now a museum visited by thousands of Polish school children. Since it is the closest camp to the places our family members lived, we can only assume that this is where the ever efficient Nazis took them to slaughter. Very tough for me to take, and even harder for my brother. Later in the afternoon, we visited Krasnystaw, the town where my father’s parents lived. Here again, the clerks came back empty handed after researching my request for information on my parents and grandparents. I turned to leave, but turned back to make a final request—was there anything in the archives about a Riwka Rozencwajg, born around 20 years before the outbreak of the war?

This time the clerks returned with huge smiles and a heavy book that contained the birth record entry for my aunt, the very one whom my father watched leave his home in 1939 to return to her parents as he led what family he could out of Poland. He never saw her again. But at least now, I have a piece of paper that commemorates the fact of her life. Just a piece of paper, yet it feels as though I had touched her—and the thrill of that, I can’t begin to describe.

It has taken me a while to digest the information I learned on this trip It will take even longer to process my emotional responses. But one thing I know—I have a better sense now of where I am from. A better sense of who I am. And hopefully, I also have a clearer path for aligning who I am with what I do.

 For more ideas about midlife renewal, pick up our book, Changing Lanes (Radom Press, 2008). 

Do you remember writing a These are my Roots report for school? Have you gone back to the places of your family’s origin to explore your own connections? What impact did it have on your sense of who you are and how you want to live your life?

We and our readers would love to hear from you.        

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