Gayle Saks: Whereabouts Unknown

lawrencebush

September 18, 2011

Gayle Saks lives and works in the Boston area and blogs at http://mylifeinthemiddleages.blogspot.com.

When my mother committed suicide somewhere between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, 1985/86, someone made the decision not to tell her mother, who was about 90 at the time. This was a woman who watched four of her six children get taken away to concentration camps, saw her husband was shot on a street in Belgium, and worked miracles to keep my mother and my uncle, the two youngest children, alive. She somehow found her way to the Jewish underground and found a couple to hide them in their Bruxelles-area basement for about two years.

The way I understand it, she was told that my mother was living in Arizona in a restful and peaceful place where she couldn’t be contacted. I can’t imagine that she believed this, and when I found out about it, I was stunned. I know it was to protect her but I didn’t agree with the decision.

My grandmother was a very loving woman, barely 4′11″, who spoke only Polish and Yiddish and a smattering of English. She lived in a teeny little apartment in Brooklyn, and was most proud of a painting she had of a fountain that, when plugged in, lit up and simulated falling water. When she knew I was coming to visit, she’d fill her bowl of sour balls and go out to buy pound cake. She would wait outside for us and would beam with delight when she saw us, and walk us to the car, waving her sweet little wave when we left. She spent most of her time sitting on a bench outside with her friends, with her cash stuck into her bra. She lived to be close to 100, subsisting apparently on boiled potatoes and Manishewitz.

My mother and her mother had a very strange relationship. On the Jewish holidays when my grandmother would come over and help cook Passover dinner, there was a lot of yelling in Yiddish. My grandmother would say “SHA” to quiet things down. I have absolutely no idea why my mother seemed to dislike her so much. My grandmother seemed so desperate for my mother’s love, and my mother just seemed annoyed all the time. One of my biggest regrets in my life was not taking the time to know my grandmother, instead of emulating my mother’s indifference and annoyance.

When she slept over, my grandmother would take her hair out of her tightly wound bun and I would be sort of freaked out by her silver hair that reached 3/4 down her body. She would brush it while wearing her white nightgown, and often would brush my hair — but I got annoyed whenever she accidentally brushed my face. She would take her clacking teeth out and put them in a glass and leave them in the bathroom. She never went out without lipstick.

Many years ago I found a document, written in French and addressed to my grandmother, which came from an Israeli governmental agency. My loose translation: Dear Mrs. Kempinksi, I regret to inform you that . . . that three of my four aunts and uncles, listed by name with their birth and death dates and the concentration camp numbers they were assigned, had died at the Malines concentration camp.

Malines (Mechelen) was situated in a former barracks by the river in the city of the same name in Belgium. It was appropriated by the Germans in 1942 to serve as an assembly camp for all the Jews of Belgium and other ‘undesirable’ groups. The camp was divided into several groups including those to be deported; nationals of neutral countries or Germany’s allies; borderline cases (i.e., mixed race); political prisoners and, in the final stages of the camp’s existence, Gypsies.

There was a set of boy/girl twins. The girls first name was Minda, which is now my daughter’s middle name. One of the sons is listed as whereabouts unknown.

Gayle Saks: Whereabouts Unknown

I’m Arielle Angel, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents. Before you go, there’s something I need to ask.

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