Two Years Since My Father Died...

Sidney Spiegelman, Z"L, 1920- 2016

It's now two years since my father, Sidney Spiegelman, passed away.

His generation was larger than life.

All of my grandparents made their ways from Eastern Europe to New York when they were young. Both of my parents were born in Brooklyn, New York. So was I, but we moved to Bell Park Gardens, Bayside, NY when I was an infant.

My father's father came from Nesielsk, Poland. His family had a business there, and within a few years, most of them started businesses in New York, also. My father's mother was born in Rogotshov, Belarus, the second of six daughters. Even though my great-grandfather Brynien had little money, he hired a teacher so his daughters would have an education. All of my father's grandparents eventually moved to New York, so he grew up within two large clans of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

My father was the second son born, a year and a half after his older brother. They spoke Yiddish until they began school. Around then their younger sister was born. All of them were expected to succeed and get good educations. They all went to college, which was rare for that generation.

My father studied Accounting  in City College and did it as quickly as he could. He wanted to have an academic degree before enlisting in the United States Navy. World War Two had already begun, and he didn't want to be an ordinary soldier.

In order to get the position he wanted, my father also had to hide the weakness in his left eye, which he did. He was trained to use and repair radar on the enormous Navy ships, which was a new technology. They discovered that the radar needed care and repairs to what had been predicted, but his problem solving talents were perfect for the challenges.

After the war, he married my mother, Shirley Shankman, whom he first met before going overseas. No, they hadn't kept in touch while he was serving in the Navy. They took advantage of the Veterans Benefits and moved to Bell Park Gardens when I was a baby. We were living there when my brother and sister were born. My father worked for the New York State Insurance Fund, studied for his CPA certification and began a private practice as an accountant. In 1962, we moved to Great Neck, NY.

My father didn't have hobbies and never watched sports. He was not a spectator. When he had the opportunity he liked to swim. My father liked watching the news and read the New York Times everyday.

Although my father was a proud Jew and called "The Jew" when in the Navy, religious practice didn't appeal to him. He was secular by nature. It was incomprehensible to him that I, his daughter, had become religious. Once he got to see Israel, he was attracted to the dynamic growth and could understand our living here.

A few years before his death, my father lived here in Shiloh with us. At that point my mother was in early stages of dementia and couldn't care for him. We had hoped that she, too, would come to Israel to live. But when she insisted on living near my sister in Arizona, that was set up for both of them. My older son and I took him to join her in Arizona, where they both died. They are buried in New York.

Re: My Father's Father's Family "Three Minutes in Poland"

While I was sitting shiva for my father on the Eve of Passover, my friend dropped a bag next to my chair:

"There's a book and coffee."

Later that day, during a lull in the shiva, when nobody was there to comfort, I opened the bag and found  "Three Minutes in Poland." Now that I'm "up from shiva" I'm reading it. It's the amazing saga of Glenn Kurtz, who tells how he discovered and researched the short film his grandfather took in pre-World War Two Poland.

I plan on reviewing it after I finish reading it.

Now why is it so exciting and so fitting as reading material during the mourning period for my father? It was even one of the props/tools/visual aids I had at my service when sitting shiva along with pictures.

So many of my neighbors are immigrants or children of immigrants, including Holocaust survivors, so a common and favorite question one asks a person sitting shiva for a parent is about the family background:

From where was your father/mother or his/her parents?

When someone is a good few generations in Israel it's rare. With the help of this book I was able to talk about my father's father's family, their European background and their way of thinking. "Three Minutes in Poland" is about the Jewish community of Nasielsk, where my paternal grandfather's family had lived until well before the Holocaust.  Unlike many Jewish families from Europe, it seems that the Spiegelman clan, my father's father's family, were not optimistic about life in Europe. They were ambitious businessman and decided that their futures would be better in America.

Not just my grandfather and some of his siblings left Nasielsk, but his parents, aunts, uncles and cousins were also in the states. Most arrived before or after World War One. My father was raised in a large clan including both sets of grandparents, because even my grandmother's parents and most of her siblings had left Rogotshov, Belarus prior to World War Two. Not that long ago I was contacted by descendants of cousins of my father's mother, and we are now in touch pretty much daily on facebook.

All of this is rather amazing, as far as I'm concerned. I'm very glad to have an amazingly suitable book to read after sitting shiva. Here's a video about Nasielsk, Poland, 1938, and the author of the book: