It turns out, the cousin in charge of implementing Aunt Suzanna’s carefully arranged cremation plan was on a safari in Zimbabwe — with no cell phone,
FRAGILE WEB Would we be able to do the amazing mitzvah of giving Aunt Suzanna a kosher levayah even while others felt that we were trampling on her dying wishes? Would our close-knit family survive this disagreement?
W hen Aunt Suzanna arrived in America from Europe the first thing she did was have a nose job. It took me a while to realize that this wasn’t funny: It was 1938 and her father had disappeared on Kristallnacht to return home a week later a broken man.
We never really figured out how her brother my husband’s relative got out. He wasn’t able to get a visa and was sent out on the Kindertransport. He arrived in London on Shabbos and when nobody appeared to pick him up he was returned to Europe. We know that he must have traveled — it could have been to Paris and from there to Spain where he got on a boat to America. First thing he did when he arrived in America was join the army to fight the Nazis.
In Europe the family owned a store which they kept open on Shabbos though they avoided touching the money. When they left Europe all traces of Yiddishkeit disappeared along with the receding shoreline.
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