From Minsk to Manhattan

My mother-in-law's name was Sarah. I loved her very much. This is the first time I've set down my thoughts about her and it's a tribute that's way overdue.

Sarah grew up poor, like almost everbody else, in the Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe. I'm not entirely sure what country she was actually born in as the borders moved constantly. I believe she met (quite possibly on her wedding day) her husband Morris in what is now Poland. Shortly after they married my father-in-law had the opportunity to come to America---alone.

He left his wife not realizing she was pregnant. Jack's father Ben was born in 1913--seven months after his father's departure. The plan had been to bring Sarah to the US as soon as possible. However, WWI and the Russian Revolution intervened. Sarah and her young son were forced to flee into the Jewish Pale in Russia where they lived with her blind grandparents.

Because the revolution heightened the almost ominpresent danger of pogroms for the Jews, Sarah's family kept a Gypsy lodger in the tiny house. He didn't pay rent but he would answer the door and insist "No Jews live here."

It was not always an effective ploy. Sarah and Ben spent over 13 years escaping into the woods, hiding in the cellars and of course, starving. Sarah would jump aboard a moving train to forage for garbage in the city. Ben said he recalls as a young boy hearing his aunt being raped in the same room as he was hiding. He only spoke of his years in Russia once that I recall---and no wonder.

Finally, in 1926 my father-in-law was able to bring Sarah and their son to Cincinnati where like his fathers before him, he was a shoemaker. It was not a happy reunion and it proved to become an toxic and twisted relationship between father and son. In all probability Morris questioned Ben's paternity and in any case literally refused to speak a word to his embarassing "greenhorn" son. Ben never recovered from his devastating reception.

Being a dutiful immigrant wife Sarah cared for her husband until he died. Ben and I lived with them after he was discharged from the army after WWII. To this day I don't know how it was she never became twisted by the abuse. Despite the hideous twisting of arthritis she was unfailingly gentle, good-humored and full of simple faith. Sarah was the light in my life---a loving mother to me in a way my own mother had never been.

The early years of my marriage were happy only because of her---and then Jack. Sarah and I shared a love for Jack that bound us even closer. When she died, the light went out for me in that house. I think it did for Jack too.

I still think of and talk about Sarah almost daily. So many things remind me of how much I loved and learned from her. And that brings me to my nurturing relationship with my own precious daughter-in-law Carole and my granddaughter, the young NYC Sarah whose picture is at the top of this post. Like her namesake, young Sarah meets challenges unflinchingly and with great resolve.

What greater legacy could there be for this new Sarah---or for me?