{"id":3842,"date":"2011-03-23T08:00:30","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T12:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=3842"},"modified":"2013-05-03T13:26:42","modified_gmt":"2013-05-03T17:26:42","slug":"searching-for-galicia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/23\/searching-for-galicia\/","title":{"rendered":"SEARCHING FOR GALICIA"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

My father, Toby, <\/strong><\/span>was a lot like his mother.\u00a0 One of Toby’s mother’s favorite expressions was “Geven-zhe nit a yold<\/em>.”\u00a0 (Don’t you be a chump.)\u00a0 Toby’s mother owned a candy store, raised four kids almost singlehandedly, buried a three-year-old daughter, and during her retirement years, owned a four-suite apartment building. \u00a0She was nobody’s sucker.<\/p>\n

Anna Soltzberg (n\u00e9e Seiger) occasionally called her grandchildren — like me — foyl <\/em>(lazy).\u00a0 She lived at our house for a while. I called her Bub — short for bubbe<\/em> (grandmother). \u00a0\u00a0I wasn’t going to call her Bubby. Too effeminate.<\/p>\n

Bub was not into baseball; she was into casino (a card game), the television show Queen for a Day<\/em>; borscht, boiled chicken and cows’ feet.\u00a0 She could eat.<\/em> She <\/em>had sugar diabetes.\u00a0\u00a0 Bub wore bubbe<\/em> shoes.<\/p>\n

\"Anna

Anna Soltzberg (1884-1964). Circa 1951.<\/p><\/div>\n

I couldn’t figure <\/strong><\/span>out where Bub was from.\u00a0 I couldn’t even find her hometown on a map.<\/p>\n

Bub said she was from Galicia, a province in Austria-Hungary. She was from the shtetl <\/em>(village) of Grodzisko.\u00a0 She came to America at 20.<\/p>\n

In junior high I told my friends, “My grandmother is from Austria.”\u00a0 That was dead wrong, but it made sense.<\/p>\n

In her old age,<\/strong><\/span> Bub lived at my aunt’s house before she moved in with us.\u00a0 At my aunt’s, Bub complained about the level of kashrut <\/em>(kosher observance).\u00a0 Bub wanted my aunt to not<\/em> keep kosher.\u00a0 Keeping kosher was too expensive.\u00a0 Bub was an apikoros<\/em> (non-believer), socialist and cheap.<\/p>\n

\"Bub,

Bub, circa 1904.<\/p><\/div>\n

At Bub’s funeral — at the shiva <\/em>(mourning) meal — the question of kashrut <\/em>came up again.\u00a0 My two aunt Lils (Lil from Delaware and Lil from Washington), plus my Uncle Itchy, were at our dining room table.<\/p>\n

Uncle Itchy, sitting next to Delaware Lil, asked, “You keep a kosher house?”<\/p>\n

“Yes,” said Delaware Lil.<\/p>\n

Itchy, slapping his hand down on the table, said, “Then why are you eating this meat?\u00a0 It’s not kosher!”<\/p>\n

Washington Lil,<\/strong><\/span> also slapping her hand down, said, “Ain’t that a hypocrite!”<\/p>\n

\"Washington

Washington Lil (left), Julia Stratton, Delaware Lil. 1964<\/p><\/div>\n

“In other words, it’s either everything or nothing?” \u00a0said Delaware Lil.<\/p>\n

“Yes,” said Washington Lil.<\/p>\n

“That’s a very simple philosophy,” said Delaware Lil.<\/p>\n

“Yes, it is,” said Washington Lil.<\/p>\n

My mother, Julia, interrupted with: “Pass the treyf<\/em> meat.” (Non-kosher meat.)\u00a0 \u00a0Mild laughter.\u00a0 My mom was the peace-maker.<\/p>\n

And the Lils didn’t talk to each other for a long time.\u00a0 Years.<\/p>\n

.<\/strong><\/span> <\/span>. . Grodzisko, Galicia,<\/strong><\/span> Austria-Hungary. \u00a0I found it about 20 years later, in the mid-1980s, on the Shtetl Finder <\/em>map. The village’s Yiddish name was Grodzisk (pronounced GRUD-zhisk), about 60 miles west of Przemysl.\u00a0 The various shtetls<\/em> (villages) had so many different names.\u00a0 That was the trick. \u00a0And there were several Grodziskos.<\/p>\n

\"Mili

Mili Seiger 1939<\/p><\/div>\n

During my research, I came across a family postcard, postmarked “May 1, 1939, Grodzisko.”\u00a0 It was from cousin Rachela Seiger.\u00a0 It was in Polish and said, in brief, “How are you?”\u00a0 On the flip side was a photo of\u00a0 Rachela’s\u00a0 sister Mili.<\/p>\n

The Germans invaded Poland four months after the postcard was mailed.<\/p>\n

I looked up<\/strong><\/span> “Mili Seiger” and “Rachela Seiger” on the Yad Vashem (Israeli Holocaust museum) online archives.\u00a0 There were so many Seigers, Siegers, Zygers, Zaygers and Zeigers, I couldn’t find Mili or Rachela.<\/p>\n

There are three types of Jews.\u00a0 Not Reform, Conservative and Orthodox.\u00a0 Try American, Israeli and victims of the Holocaust.\u00a0 Each about a third.\u00a0 These are my people.<\/p>\n

—-<\/p>\n

This story was cross-posted on\u00a0 The Forward<\/a>, online, last month.<\/small><\/p>\n

Thanks to Yiddishist Lori Cahan-Simon<\/a> for help on the expression “Geven-zhe nit a yold.”<\/small><\/p>\n

Footnote . . . \u00a0Plotting Grodzisko by Teddy Stratton, 1998:<\/small><\/p>\n

\"map-2-grodisko-by-teddy-1998\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My father, Toby, was a lot like his mother.\u00a0 One of Toby’s mother’s favorite expressions was “Geven-zhe nit a yold.”\u00a0 (Don’t you be a chump.)\u00a0 Toby’s mother owned a candy store, raised four kids almost singlehandedly, buried a three-year-old daughter, and during her retirement years, owned a four-suite apartment building. \u00a0She was nobody’s sucker. Anna […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family-history-not-boring","category-kinder-the","category-toby-stratton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3842"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14633,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3842\/revisions\/14633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}