Mamaloshen

 

Got Books?

Little did she realize her usual weekly volunteer day would not be another ‘business as usual’ one. It would present a mysterious finding prompting her to take unusual action. She also didn’t fathom that by that action she instantly became part of a rescue operation over forty years in the making, the likes of which the world had never witnessed, and may never witness again ……

Each week Debra* spends a day at Listen, a bustling thrift store in Lebanon, NH. Her assigned task consists of combing through and sorting the prodigious pile of donated books the store processes each month. 

As she separated biographies, mega-page classics, pulp fiction, best sellers, travel guides, etc., etc., into piles, she came across a fragile, older volume written with a bizarre font in a strange appearing language, perhaps Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, or ? Being concerned it might be a holy book, Debra set it aside for respectful TLC handling. Shortly afterward she called me to help investigate. 

The next day, as we sat at my dining room table examining the volume, it was immediately clear to me the book’s title did indeed use the Hebrew alphabet, but the text was not Hebrew, it was actually Yiddish, a language once considered …. dead.  

In the late 1800s Yiddish flourished as the vernacular among Jews of Eastern Europe. The language was rich with expressions blended from its German base with a ‘gemishe’ of contributions from Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic and Romance languages. Despite its ubiquity, during the Holocaust in the 1930s and 1940s Germany’s Third Reich murdered the majority of the world's Yiddish speakers. Currently it is spoken by perhaps a million people globally, primarily within ultra-Orthodox communities in the United States, Israel, and Europe. The epicenter of Yiddishkeit in the US, however, happens to be in of all places, on the campus of Hampshire College in Amherst, a town in Western Massachusetts. 

Yiddish also just happens to be ‘mamaloshen’ for me, my mother tongue. It’s the language my parents and I spoke at home as was common for recent Eastern European immigrants in the 1950s. But once I enrolled in public school and my parents continued focusing on the job of assimilation, English gradually replaced Yiddish. So it took digging into my brain’s Yiddish archive combined with Debra working the Google to decode the book title. 

 

Turns out, the mystery book was veteran newspaperman Samuel Isban’s chronicle, titled Illegal Jews Part the Seas. It was about Aliya Bet, the clandestine mission to smuggle European Jewish refugees past the British blockade and deliver them to Palestine during the restrictions of the UK’s Paestine Mandate. Isban reports as an eyewitness of the voyage which attempted to ferry 1,500 concentration camp survivors cramped aboard a barely  seaworthy vessel.

Despite a growing interest in revival of Yiddish, it wasn’t a stretch to believe the book would likely attract more dust on Listen’s shelves than interest. Fact is, these days there remains a paucity of Yiddish readers. However, I knew where Illegal Jews Part the Seas would be welcomed ..... the Yiddish Book Center, of course! Not only would the volume be welcomed, it would be translated, digitized, catalogued, and cared for so everyone on the planet could have access to enjoy and learn from it.

The story of the YBC’s success is stranger than fiction and truly a miracle. It all began with the impossible dream of a young graduate student, Aaron Lansky of New Bedford, MA. Aaron was pursuing a degree at McGill University in Montreal about Mendele Mocher Sforim (Mendele the Bookseller), considered to be the Grandfather of Yiddish Literature. He soon ran into a major stumbling block - there were no Yiddish books. What to do? 

In Chapter 4 of Lansky's memoir, Outwitting History, he describes the moment when he felt in his bones that Yiddish culture was disappearing at a staggering rate.  

Thinking precious Yiddish books might be hidden in the personal libraries of Montreal’s senior Jewish community, Aaron started a door to door campaign to find and save these books, ultimately leading him in 1980 to found the Yiddish Book Center. By then Aaron had assembled a team of volunteer book collectors, aka zamlers, to help with the legwork of canvassing local communities in the hunt for Yiddish ‘gold’. 

 

To date approximately 1.5 million volumes have been rescued. The vast collection serves as foundation for an institution encompassing Yiddish-language instruction, university scholarships, translator training programs, academic conferences, a publishing house for translated works, oral history archives, a podcast, and a digitized library of classic and lesser-known Yiddish texts. Among Lansky’s accolades, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, i.e., a "genius grant”, in 1989 as a cultural preservationist.

Circling back to Debra, her mysterious find did receive the respectful TLC it deserved. It also reconnected me to the rescue effort. Back in the ‘90s my son and I proudly served as zamlers. 

I recently re-upped my deployment. 

My son Josh with part of our 'zamler-collected' Yiddish books.
The stash was soon sent to the Yiddish Book Center

***************************

Debra* - not her real name

photos and scans - David Greenfield

Arch Support

 

St. Louis, MO

Alert: Although my Photo-blogs are ’99 and 44/100th % pure*’ of commentary about current news, in this posting I do venture into those turbulent waters. After recently  reading an article that had me shaking my head, I felt a compulsion to write. If you choose not to read more, no worries, I hope you’ll return for the next Photo blog.

*****************

Dear Mr. President,

One of your imperatives in reshaping our nation’s  Capital skyline with gilded monuments to your legacy is a triumphal arch. It is of course destined to be the largest arch in the world, perhaps even visible from outer space without the need for a Hubble telescope.

Arc deTriomphe
Paris, France

 A phalanx of groups, not limited to architects, historians, the FAA, lower court judges, and veterans, not to mention members of Congress, is not enamored of the idea and has lined up in opposition. 

Not to be deterred, you dusted off your favorite ‘go-to’ playbook and now cite national security as justification for proceeding full-steam ahead. You claim the arch would actually be ‘a top grade Military Complex/Triumphal Arch to house, store, and have the ability to rapidly dispatch large numbers of drones, plus snipers on rooftops, and hold large quantities of sniper ammo’. In essence the project would position a Trojan Horse-like arsenal in the midst of America’s Capital. You’re brushing aside security need questions about this ‘Monument cum military complex’ in the vicinity of an already established network of  military facilities.

After liberating Paris in 1944, 
American troops march through,
not from within, 
the Arc de Triomphe

Mr. President, we don’t need another arch. We have one in St. Louis, the majestic ‘Gateway to the West’. 

St. Louis Arch - Gateway to the West **

Initially envisioned by Thomas Jefferson to honor the country’s exploration and expansion westward, it also happens to be the world’s tallest arch. And if the Gateway Arch’s silvery coat is not to your gold gilded taste, 

McDonald’s has at least 14,000 burger outlets in the US of A each with a pair of golden arches.

Sincerely,

David Greenfield

* '99 and 44/100th % pure' was the advertising byline for Ivory soap. The line was famously touted to promote the product's appeal to those not approving of perfumes and chemical additives. Since cleanliness is next to Godliness, the Ivory's Mad Man writers felt the slogan would help sales. 

** Gateway to the West arch photos © David Greenfield

Back to the Future

 

“Is this your first time in Austria? 

“No, my second … I was born here”.

That was a frequent Q & A exchange as I met various government officials and colleagues of our host. But what drew me back now, and why were so many Austrians eager to meet me? 

My father and me

Braunau DP camp 

Austria 1947

Chapter I

The story begins one evening at the turn of the 21st Century when my father was sitting in his den exchanging email jokes with friends on his internet enabled dial-up device, a.k.a., WebTV. Out of the blue, he received an email from Karl Ramsmaier, an Austrian academic in the city of Steyr researching history of forced labor from the notorious concentration camp, KZ Mauthausen. Steyr was home to one of Mauthausen’s complex of forty-nine labor sub-camps and where my father tasted freedom for the first time after his years of Nazi imprisonment. US forces liberated the camp in May 1945. 

 

Karl and his wife Woltraud

While conducting his research in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum archives, Karl came across photos my father took following liberation and wanted to connect for more info. 

My dad could NOT believe that someone from across the world found him through that little WebTV set top box! Being too excited to handle the discussions, he handed the mission over to me. That began more than twenty years of cyber exchanges with Karl, and more recently with Martin Hagmayr, a young historian and museum curator from Steyr.  

Martin and I reviewing additional photos at my home 

during his research visit to Boston, Washington, and NY last fall. 

The Leica camera my dad used during his documentation of life in the post war Displaced Persons camps rests on the table.

Culling from my family’s archive, I’ve supplied Martin with a host of additional images, documents, and answers to a long list of questions about my parents’ experiences. He was happy to report that with support of the Austrian government, construction is underway for a Learning Center in the former Lenort Synagogue of Steyr, the synagogue my father helped re-establish after the war. The Center will be dedicated to never forgetting the atrocities of the Holocaust and to preventing fascism from ever creeping back into the country.

    The Austrian government has a checkered past during the Holocaust, so this is huge. Initially it claimed that Anschluss, Nazi Germany’s 1938 annexation, indicated Austrians, not Jews, were the first victims. However, images of über enthusiastic ‘seig heiling’ crowds welcoming Der Führer as he triumphantly strode down Vienna’s boulevards in his Mercedes staff car debunks that version of history. 

    The Center, currently on schedule for an official opening in early 2027, will also be home for a permanent exhibition of Jewish life in Steyr. My dad’s photos will be prominently featured. 

In May of this year the official announcement of the Center took place. Knowing that it had government backing, the governor of Upper Austria and the Mayor of Steyr wanted to be at the press conference where Martin Hagmayr presented the plan for creating the Learning Center.  

In Martin's presentation he shows a 1946 image of the Lenort Synagogue
with some of the group members working to re-establish it after the war.
My father is third from the left.

As the son of a survivor of the Mauthausen camp and a contributor of archival material, I was invited to participate in the official broadcast announcements and speak about my father. They all considered me a celebrity!  

Martin, me, Governor of Upper Austria Thomas Stelzer, and Steyr Mayor Markus Vogl at the press conference. Simultaneous German translation was provided for me. In the foreground is a Hanukkah menorah crafted by my father which my family was donating to the Center's exhibit.

That’s why I am here now.

But that’s hardly the only reason I made the journey. More of that story will unfold in Chapter II.

Stay tuned …… 

Order Out of Chaos

Finding personal order 

amidst Planet Earth’s inevitable chaos 

What’s the prescription for how we can cope with the continuous turmoil engulfing our times? Consider the following stories and a suggested MO …….

Passover 2026 (or year 5786 if measuring time on the Hebrew calendar) is now history. It’s late at night and our last Seder guests have just left. Seder means order. The ritual Seder meal provides structure for annually recounting the Exodus story which Jews are obligated to pass down from generation to generation. 

Wearily strolling back from the front door, I momentarily held my breath when catching sight of the kitchen sink brimming with dirty dishes and adjacent counters piled high with the overflow. It was a balagan*! Cleaning up those towering cairns of Seder residue and restoring order in the kitchen was destined to be a big time job. 

But I wasn’t phased at all! 

Making order out of chaos has long been my MO. 

Let me offer two examples.  

The setting for the first was at Harvard’s School of Dental Medicine in 1971. I’m in the third year of the program and the pull of pursuing post-doctoral specialty training has descended upon me. The option of a public health residency with the Indian Health Service topped my list of interests. That program provided an opportunity, arm in arm with physicians, to serve a population with considerable health care challenges. I would be rendering sorely needed care for folks presenting with a multiplicity of advanced dental afflictions while gaining valuable experience to sharpen my operative skills. The residency would be a sweet spot for making order out of dental chaos. 

A win-win.

 

a simple before and after case 

of a patient with a common problem 

who at least still had most of his teeth

As it turned out, later on in my third year the magnetic pull of another dental discipline became even stronger. I ended up pursuing advanced training in periodontology, the foundational basis for all dental care. It more perfectly blended my bent towards artistry and surgery and was a true ‘dental chaos busting’ discipline.

Now let’s move on to another ‘making order out of chaos’ example. For this one, the scene shifts almost 6,000 miles to the east. I’m now on an IDF (Israel Defense Forces) base in Israel about to fulfill a volunteer stint providing civilian services in support of base operations.

 

One of my tours of duty was right after the 2014 war against Hamas in Gaza. Positioned just outside the northeastern border of the Gaza Envelope, the base served as a staging area for mobilized troops. Arriving reservists camped there before moving on to the front. After deployment, these soldiers hastily dropped off their gear in helter-skelter fashion before anxiously returning home. What remained was another balagan for base crews to sort through and organize for the next time. Sadly, a next time always seemed to come to pass. So, along with a cadre of fellow volunteers from all over the world, we set out to make new order out of the disarray left behind.

  

vests, helmets, field mattresses, etc, needed to be sorted 

and tents to be repaired and stored

Are you seeing the connection yet? In both cases I was fulfilling my MO, making order out of chaos.

Circling back now to Passover 2026 ... prior to the first Seder my rabbi challenged the congregation with this question, similar to what I posed at the start of this Photo-blog: 

How can we find personal order 

with the world on fire and engulfed in chaos 

as we wish one another a ‘Happy Passover’?

 

not my rabbi but a rabbi nonetheless

posing a question 

Far Rockaway, NY

His suggestion was to find something that provided structure in your life, something you can turn to every day. The repeated routine can ground you, leaving you with positive energy to offset the chaos of our times. 

As you can see, I’m always trying to ‘make order out of chaos’. Perhaps that pension for order can be a universal MO for these times. 

consider order in the kitchen restored

* Balagan is a Hebrew slang term, borrowed from Yiddish/Slavic, meaning a state of complete chaos, mess, disorder, or a fiasco. It is commonly used in Israel to describe messy situations, disorganized places, or unruly scenes. It often carries a tone of exasperation or humor.