Tracing the lineage of the Herrmann/Elstein…I guess it would be simple and sensible to start with the great-grandparents.
In Germany, around the 1920s, Werner Herrmann was born to two German parents. Despite the tumult of Germany during this time period, the real reason my great-grandparents decided to leave was for a “personal” reason. They wanted to be together and build their relationship and family in a new place, so they came to Manhattan when Werner was only twelve. He was drafted for World War II in his early twenties, and granted citizenship on the exact same day (neat little short-cut, isn’t it?) Somewhere in all this, he met and married my grandmother, Agnes. She grew up in a coal-mining town in Pennsylvania before moving to New York with her family. Werner and Agnes moved into the Bronx and started a family together, consisting of my father Peter, and his three other older siblings.
Flash back to Europe, but this time during 1930 and in Warsaw, Poland. Here we meet my Jewish great-grandparents on my mother’s side, who had just welcomed Esther as their youngest child of three. Esther’s story is devastating and heart wrenching, but I will attempt to summarize it justly. Her town-turned-ghetto was occupied by the Nazis when she was just a young girl, and as the families were being rounded up to board trains to the concentration camps, Esther’s mother pushed her out of the line when the guards weren’t looking. Her Aryan complexion of blond hair and blue eyes acted as a shield for the duration of the war, but especially in that moment when the guards were convinced she wasn’t a Jew and refused to let her back with her family. Esther desperately wanted to be with her family, even if it meant dying with them, but knew when her mother made that decision that it would be the last time she would ever see them. Esther was an orphan at twelve, and struggled trying to survive; being so young and alone, hiding that she was Jewish, working as a nanny or maid. Even after the war ended, Poland was not a safe or welcoming place for Jews, and Esther no longer saw it as home. She met and married Abba, a Jewish doctor, and together they immigrated to a place they knew would be welcoming of their religion: Haifa, Israel. They had my mother Ziporah there, but moved to Mount Vernon, a town in Westchester, when she was nine. They saw America as a place they could both broaden their occupations and family. They had another child, and Esther, being an amazing seamstress, opened a lingerie store. New York, for the Elsteins, was a place of growth and escape from a difficult past of religious persecution and degradation. They hoped, and were successful, in finding a place to raise children in a welcoming environment with good education where they too could explore options of higher achievement.
I had never realized how much war shaped my existence, and I think it’s incredible that both of those countries from which I am descended were in such conflict, yet still produced a solid union. Its always interesting to watch the expression on someone’s face when I tell them I am of German and Israeli descent, but I know that under the circumstances of both of my parents being primarily American, it’s really not so odd. Given, it was not easy for Ziporah to convince Esther to be open-minded about her boyfriend, but I think in some way, knowing that he was a good man with pure intentions helped break down her bias. After all, New York was the destination for all looking for a new start, and everyone could relate to that dream.
