Zaida: Remembering My Grandfather

This is a revised version of an article I published years ago on my now-defunct blog Seeking Her Voice. I’m reposting it here, inspired by the Hanukkah season. In the vanishing mist of my childhood I still remember my grandparents handing out Hanukkah gelt and latkes at their house surrounded by the clan of survivors.

I.

It is 1951. My Zaida is a greenhorn just arrived in New York City. He has spent the last 12 years trying to survive and save his family from pain and death at the hands of their foiled executioners, millions strong and armed with guns, warplanes, radios, and all of the resources of the most advanced country on earth. He has succeeded.

He cannot speak English. He is looking for his one surviving brother, who is much older than him. Because this one brother left the old country for America when my Zaida was a child, my Zaida was later kicked out of the Russian army for having American ties and sent to a Siberian labour camp. He survived that too. My Zaida's name, Myer, means “light”. His wife Raya, my Baba, has a name which means “beautiful”.

Myer is following another Jew down the street. They are speaking Yiddish together, and Myer has gone from being lost to being found.

II.