YOU LOST ME AT BARRY GREEN — Sharon Mark Cohen

How many people remember a book after they read it or a movie after they see it? The question has me curious because I’m one of those who simply can’t even remember the title of the book or the name of the movie the next day.

My brother-in-law Bryan gives me a pass by determining that I got the entertainment and don’t need to keep the information stored. Mel, someone else I look up to, made me feel whole again when he said that he doesn’t remember books or movies either. Digressing here for a moment, it seems that I can’t get enough of the degrees of separation. Mel had been a chemistry teacher at Brooklyn Tech. Our friend, who was together with Mel at one of our children’s milestone celebrations, discovered that he was his high school student 30+ years earlier.

How is it that even though I cannot recall a book or a movie, I can remember every detail of a conversation from one of the darkest days of my life? While sitting shiva for my father, we were joined by my mother’s best friend‘s younger sister Ethel, who regaled her childhood antics. Those years included frequent visits to play with my mother’s younger sister who died prematurely at the tender age of 11, from a congenital heart disease.

I even remember the words that Ethel used to start the conversation. When I showed her the family tree book I had just completed on my mother’s paternal side of the family, Ethel declared emphatically, “Your grandfather is like a current event.“ (He died in 1955 before I turned two.) Feverishly, she then exclaimed, “Ask me about your grandmother!” (She died in 1935.) How fortunate that I thought to have my husband tape-record the ensuing conversation.

After scurrying through mounds of recordings we have stored, my husband recently found that cassette tape from 1997. It was included in a stockpile of cassettes from the earlier years of my husband’s hosting The World of Work radio show, Fridays at 4:00 p.m. on WDVR-FM, which can also be heard online at wdvrfm.org. Cassettes were used to record each hour-long broadcast before the station modernized to CDs, then thumb drives, and finally embarking on the current digitalization of shows.

Luckily, right after Ethel and her husband walked out of the door, I had the foresight to speak into the machine and repeat the part of the story Ethel told before my husband brought in his recorder. Ethel recollected with precision their experiences in the 1967 Newark riots. To this day, I can recall all those details. I am now working on making a copy of the tape to share with Ethel’s family. Her adult granddaughters are especially interested in hearing their grandmother’s testimony.

Another example of how my mind works was addressed by my cousin Esther when she visited from Los Angeles and we met for lunch. A sabra herself, she had just been to Israel this past fall and visited places she works with through NA'AMAT USA, an organization of which she is past-president of the San Fernando Valley Council.

Before returning from lunch to the afternoon session of the NA'AMAT USA's first meeting of its 2020 National Board, which she was attending in Newark, on January 27-30, Esther briefed my daughter-in-law and me about the work of this all-volunteer organization.

Esther, Publicity/PR on the national board, informed us, “The new national president is Jan Gurwitch of East Windsor, NJ. The board is made up of women from across the country. Their backgrounds include an Israeli sabra, a Holocaust survivor as well as children of survivors, a Bronx yeshiva alumna, retirees from Florida, and a native of a small Midwest town. All Jewish women dedicated and working to help women and children in Israel.”

Upon hearing the details of the success of NA'AMAT, started in 1925, and continuing thereafter to fund preschools, high schools and a domestic violence shelter, I announced that we have a cousin living in Israel who would be interested because she did similar work. I quickly added that her name is Caryn Green and her father was Barry, our third cousin (Esther and I are second cousins).

I rambled on…Barry’s mother was Ida and her mother was Sheindl, a first cousin to your grandmother and my grandfather. It gets even more complicated since my grandparents were first cousins to one another, Sheindl was a first cousin to my grandmother, as well.

With her endearing huge dimpled smile, Esther chuckled as she swung her hands out to indicate I have the whole family tree in my head. Giggling, Esther, an old-movie buff, admitted, “You lost me at Barry Green.” You bet…ask me about a movie or a book and I’m dumbfounded, but revert to the family tree and ask me about anyone at any time.

During our discussion, Esther and I spoke about her uncle who was killed while serving in the Red Army in the early 1940s, and the fact that her mother never talked much about her life in the Soviet Union. I remembered that after being injured in battle, her uncle escaped and found his way to two of his sisters for refuge. They were Esther’s mother Anna and Esther’s aunt, Raya. Unfortunately, while they begged him to stay, he insisted on returning to the front line to avenge the deaths of their parents…where, he was killed.

Although Esther said that she didn’t know the entire history of her uncle’s life, and didn’t have any pictures of her maternal grandmother, what was interesting to me was that actually she just didn’t recall these things, like me with books and movies. I suppose it’s what we chose to fill our memory banks with….after all, there’s only so much they can hold.

Upon her return to sunny California, Esther contacted the Spielberg Foundation and they sent links for anyone in the family to upload the testimony of her parents, Anna and Harry Langsam. I painstakingly watched as Anna told the story about her brother. I noticed, also, the end of the tapes included the photograph that I have of Anna’s mother, my father’s paternal aunt, whom he looked much like.

Either Esther never got around to watching the original videotapes or she forgot the details she now craves at 70, the approximate age of her parents when they sat for the Spielberg Foundation interviews. I, on the other hand, interviewed and videotaped her parents ten or more years earlier, when they were staying at my house for an extended vacation, and have several hours of film filled with important personal tidbits of information.

While Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring this year, I think there will be enough time left this winter to snuggle up indoors and re-watch those lengthy tapes while making copies to send along to fill in many gaps in the family history.

Since my paternal grandparents Nathan and Sarah were first cousins to one another, they were both first cousins to Barry’s grandmother Sheindl. Nathan, Fruma, Sheindl and Sarah’s parents were all siblings. Since my grandfather Nathan and Esther’s gr… — Since my paternal grandparents Nathan and Sarah were first cousins to one another, they were both first cousins to Barry’s grandmother Sheindl. Nathan, Fruma, Sheindl and Sarah’s parents were all siblings. Since my grandfather Nathan and Esther’s grandmother Fruma were siblings, Esther and I are second cousins. Since Barry’s great-grandmother Rose and Esther’s and my great-grandmother Rachel Leah were siblings, Barry was a third cousin to Esther and me. Here’s where it gets really confusing. My great-grandfather Yehuda Hersh was also a sibling of Rose and Rachel Leah, making me doubly related to Esther and Barry, z”l.