The Stories Our Parents Found Too Painful To Tell. Henry R Lew
to personally mention and thank all my translators:
Miriam Dashkin Beckerman of Toronto, Canada.
Miriam has a Diploma in English Literature with Honours from York University. She is a well-known translator of numerous Yiddish and Hebrew works into English. In 1998 she shared the Dora Teitelboim Foundation Prize for translating “The Return of Noah Amshel” by David Katz from Yiddish into English
Jack Berger of Mahwah, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Jack is a graduate of the Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art and has a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois. He is a former Vice-President of Citibank, for whom he worked for thirty years, and as a hobby he has done a number of Yiddish translations for Yizkor (Remembrance) Books pertaining to the Holocaust.
Helen Burstin of North Caulfield, Melbourne, Australia.
Helen survived the war as a young girl together with her mother in Russia. She and her husband Simcha were accountants for most of their working lives in Melbourne. Prior to that, Simcha had worked for the Yiddish section of the Melbourne Jewish News, for several years, during the 1950s. Helen, Simcha and their daughter Ena are well known identities in local Yiddishist circles. When Helen first came to Melbourne she lived in the Bialystoker Centre together with my parents and Rafael Rajzner. When I visited her home to pick up her translation, she asked me if I knew a lady named Genia Lew who lived in the Bialystoker Centre in 1948. Genia, of course, was my late mother.
Anna Clarke of Ottawa, Canada.
Anna survived in Poland from 1939-1944, first in the east under the Soviets, later as an internee of the Warsaw Ghetto, and finally in hiding, with documents stating she was a gentile. In 1944, she was sent to Germany as a Polish slave labourer and worked as a housemaid until liberation. After the war she acted as an interpreter for the British Government. It was in this capacity that she met her husband, an intelligence officer with MI5. They remained in Germany until 1954, then migrated to Canada. In Canada Anna graduated M.A. from the University of Ottawa, did some freelance broadcasting for the Canadian Broadcasting Commission, and also taught at college.
Victor Cohen of Elizabeth, New Jersey, U.S.A.
Victor’s schooling was at a Yeshivah. He obtained an M.A. degree from New York University, majoring in Jewish Studies and Philosophy. His working life was spent in education, as a teacher in the New Jersey Public School system, as an adjunct Professor of Philosophy at a county college, and as an administrator in the field of Jewish Education. He is the author of “The Soul of the Torah - Insights of the Hasidic Masters on the weekly Torah Portions,” and during his retirement is currently working on another book.
Meir Fass of Rego Park, New York, U.S.A.
Meir was born in Israel after its independence. He moved to New York where he had a career in import/export shipping services. He has recently retired and heard of this project second hand. He therefore differs from my other translators in that he approached me, not vice-versa. His brilliant translation of the last fourteen pages of Rajzner’s book helped complete the project.
Luba Goldberg of South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia.
Luba, a 14-year-old girl, and a recent graduate of the ORT Girls’ School in Bialystok, had just returned to her small home town of Ciechanowiec, when war broke out in September 1939. She remained there under Soviet occupation until Germany attacked Russia in June 1941. She was then relocated to the ghetto at nearby Sokoly, until the commencement of its liquidation. She was fortunate enough to escape from the ghetto and after a number of harrowing experiences managed to survive with partisans in the Bransk Forest.
Ruth Fisher Goodman of Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.
Ruth was born in New York City. She graduated from the Workman’s Circle Yiddish School in 1945, got a Bachelor’s Degree in Elementary Education from the City University of New York in 1949, and a Master’s Degree in Reading from the University of Delaware in 1968. She has been both a teacher and a professional translator. She is widely travelled. Her publications include the video “How to Teach Reading to Adult Illiterates through the Language Experience Approach.”
Beni Gothajner of Elsternwick, Melbourne, Australia.
Beni is a former teacher, whose specialties were Yiddish, English and History. These skills proved to be the perfect combination for this project. Thank-you Beni for suggesting that I divide this foreword into segments.
Mindle Crystel Gross of Boynton Beach, Florida, U.S.A.
Mindle graduated from the Sholem Aleichem School in Brooklyn, New York and Brooklyn College and she also attended a Jewish Teachers Seminary in Manhattan. Her various occupations include having been a bilingual secretary in Yiddish and English, teaching Yiddish both at Sunday School and at Adult Education, and working as an Ophthalmologist’s technician and office manager. She plays classical piano for recreation. If I could present a special medal as an “Honorary Bialystoker” to one of my translators I would award it to Mindle. I think of her as my personal “Oliver Twist.” Every time she completed a translation she would ask, “Could I please have some more.” In all Mindle did six translations of ten pages each and they were all great. Mindle also proof-read the entire original completed version of the translation. Good on you Mindle.
Israel Kipen of North Caulfield, Melbourne, Australia.
Israel was born into an Orthodox family of Jewish manufacturers in Bialystok. He survived the Holocaust by taking the eastern escape route through Russia, Japan and the open port of Shanghai, where he resided for 6 years, prior to arriving in Australia in 1946. Israel has involved himself in a wide variety of Jewish communal activities and has made significant contributions to organised Jewish life in Melbourne. He has played a most important role in the establishment, growth, and consolidation of Melbourne’s Jewish day-school system. This has recently been recognised by his having been awarded a Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa from Melbourne University. His autobiography “A Life to Live” was published in 1989.
Ruby Kohn of Kingston, New York, U.S.A.
Ruby was born in Canada into a Hebrew and Yiddish speaking family. As a 10-year-old Ruby visited relatives in Poland, all of whom except for a solitary first cousin later perished in the Holocaust. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a Master’s degree in Social Work, both from the University of Toronto, and a Master’s degree in Library Sciences from Queen’s College at Long Island. She worked for twenty years as a social worker and later on as a librarian for a number of years prior to retirement.
Ben Korman of Dianella, Perth, Western Australia.
Ben grew up in Melbourne, where he attended the I. L. Peretz Yiddish School, first as a pupil and then as a student of its Teacher Seminar. He graduated from the University of Melbourne with the degrees of B.Sc. in 1969, M.B. B.S. in 1971 and M.D. in 1996. Nowadays he works as a practising anaesthetist in Perth. He has been the President of the Holocaust Institute of Western Australia since its inception in 1990.
Don Marejn of Toorak, Melbourne, Australia.
Don, a Bialystoker, studied chemistry in France during the early nineteen-thirties, after which he returned to Bialystok to work in his family’s tannery business. When the Soviets invaded Bialystok in 1939 he was forced, as a capitalist, to flee first to Lithuania and later, clandestinely, into the Soviet Union. After the war he was repatriated back to Poland and left for France a few months later together with his wife Sonia. They migrated to Melbourne in 1950. Don and Sonia are well-known philanthropists in Melbourne.