מאגר סיפורי מורשת

I grew up in England after the Second World War, but very luckily my parents’ parents had all come to the UK before the first world war. That means that none of my immediate family still lived in Europe during the Holocaust – if they would have remained there, I have no doubt that they, too, might have perished.

My mother’s family came from Russia (my grandmother lived near Odessa, and my grandfather came from a small village – he used to say that the village was so small it only had one horse.  If the nose of the horse stuck out one side of the village, the tail stuck out the other side!). My father’s family came from Lodz in Poland and had moved to England when my father was just 8 years old.

During the first World War, my maternal grandfather left his young wife and family in London and returned to Russia to fight on behalf of the Tsar (a White Russian – supporting the monarchy ) against the ‘Reds’ (the communists, led by Lenin). That truly was a heroic gesture, and he could have avoided going to war – but he went to fight for something that he believed in deeply. He was there for several years until he returned to his family in London.  He and my grandmother had three daughters – my mother was the youngest. I can only imagine that those years in London must have involved great hardship for my grandmother, being alone in a strange country and having to raise three children by herself.

When I was born, my mother’s parents lived with us and helped to care for us children. My father had managed to open his own business by then and they were quite well off. He had two women’s clothing stores, and we lived in quite a large house in a good neighborhood of London. My family had lived through the 2nd World War in the UK – the ‘blitz’, was when England was being bombed by the Germans. The story my mother always told us that was that she had been sitting under the kitchen table for protection, holding my older sister who was just a tiny baby then. She said to my father that “if we live through the war we will go to America”. At that time America was known as ‘the goldene medina’ (the golden land). This was still before the establishment of the State of Israel, and I think it was probably before anyone in England really knew the details of the Holocaust.

My family lived in the US for about 7 years. My father had sold his business in England to his older brother and arrived in the USA with money. He was a good and honest man, but rather naïve. He wanted to open a business in partnership with someone that he met in the synagogue, and that man ended up defrauding my father of all his money.  Life was not easy then. My father went out to work rather than having his own business. I remember him working as a ‘mashgiach’ at one time, in charge of supervising ‘kashrut’ at a food processing plant. I was 11 when I returned to England, and by that time we had lived in about five different places and I had gone to four different schools. Although it sounds hard, I think that it contributed to the fact that, whenever I moved or went to a new job, I never had difficulty making friends

הזוית האישית

סבתא לינדה כותבת למאיה: מאיה שלי, אני מאחלת לך שתמשיכי תמיד להיות כמו שאת היום: ילדה עם לב רחב, עם המון אכפתיות כלפי הזולת, עניין רב ואהבת חינם, לכולם במיוחד במשפחתך האוהבת. יש בך המון יכולות אבל רק את יודעת מה הם הדברים הכי נכונים בשבילך, ובהם תשקיעי את המאמצים. תאמיני בעצמך תמיד, כי את ילדה עם לב טהור ואופטימיות אינסופית, אוהבת אותך עד השמים סבתא לינדה.

מאיה כותבת לסבתא לינדה: אז כן… עברנו לא מעט חוויות ביחד ואני מתכוונת להמון, נהננו ביחד מהפרויקט הרב- דורי, אך נהננו במיוחד מהביחד. יש בינינו קשר שאין לכל אחד, את לא סתם סבתא, את ה- סבתא שלי ואני שמחה שזכיתי בכזאת. תכנית זו עזרה לנו ולמדנו דברים חדשים זאת על זאת. לי היה מהנה בצורה יוצאת דופן, אבל ההנאה שלי היתה כזאת כי את היית לצידי. אני רוצה לאחל לך שתהיי בריאה כמו תמיד, שנשמח, שנצחק אבל בעיקר שתמשיכי להיות החברה הכי טובה שלי. זה לא חדש לך כי מאז ומתמיד היית האוזן הקשבת שלי בכל מובן: אם זה בפתרון בעיות, חוויה או אפילו סיוט, פניתי אלייך כי את היחידה שאני יכולה לפרוק איתה דברים, ואת היחידה ששולחת לי נשיקות מהטלפון. כדאי שיהיה סוף לברכה שלי אאלץ לסיים פה, וכמובן שכולם יהיו בריאים, בעזרת השם בלי נדר…