By Sharon Cramer

Letters obtained through Freedom of Information requests, with nearly all lines blacked out:  this is how I picture the history of my father and his three uncles.  Although I knew that my father’s uncles came to Chicago from Vienna after World War I, everything else about their history was obfuscated.  I knew my uncles only through their summer visits.

Throughout the summer, on Sundays, they would journey by train from downtown Chicago to our suburban home.  Uncle Jack and Uncle Eddie, confirmed bachelors, traveled with Uncle Sidney and his wife, Aunt Margaret. For them, recreation consisted entirely of sitting in the backyard.  Although my father did no cooking during the week, when his uncles arrived, he mounded charcoal briquettes in the grill, and cooked the Kosher hot dogs Uncle Eddie brought.  In the decades I lived at home, Sundays include the uncles, relaxing in the sunshine, and talking to my father.  Only one Sunday, something happened that always left me wondering, “Who were these uncles?  What parts of their lives did they share with my father?  What were their mysteries?”

One Sunday afternoon, due to a relentless summer rain, we all crowded into the den.  The uncles, Aunt Margaret and I were relieved when my father took out his photo album.  Rarely seen, it was one of the few things my father and his younger sister, Rose, brought with them from Vienna in 1938.   Anticipation widened my eyes, while my lips tightened, shrank; if I remained silent, small, perhaps they would forget I was there, and I would finally learn something new about my father’s early life.

The first pages of pictures in the album were of young men in the woods, climbing on rocks, clowning around waterfalls.  I’d seen these before, but had no idea where they were taken.

Uncle Eddie and Uncle Jack nodded, and smiled tightly, remembering.  No one spoke.  i watched all of them intently.  This much I had heard before.  I thought, “Maybe now – maybe this time I will learn something new.”

Then, my father turned the page, and revealed a picture of three people stiffly posed in front of a building:  a man, a woman, a child in a coat and hat.  Suddenly, the room exploded with sobbing – Uncle Sidney was crying.  The innocent picture made him fold into himself and wail.

I had never heard a grown man cry.  The frightening sounds got louder as others rushed to comfort him, softly murmuring in German, words I couldn’t understand.

Only much later did I learn that the picture was of Uncle Sidney’s first family, in Vienna:  the Nazis had taken his wife and child from their home.  Only because Uncle Sidney was away from home that day did he survive.   I pictured his return to his silent, violated home.  When I learned that Uncle Sidney immediately abandoned Vienna, for America (via Shanghai), I wondered if any fragile hopes for his family penetrated his fears.

Today, I realize that any remaining questions can never be answered, because I’m the only person from that room left alive.  Reflecting on that moment from my life’s vantage point, I now recognize the raw grief he spilled out that day.  Now, I wonder what happened after he left our house, and how the sight of his first family left him.  Did his sobs reconnect him with his vanished wife, lost child?

My recollections are now colored by the deaths that penetrated my own life:  my mother, my father, my husband.  Sometimes, when unexpected memory pounces on me, I lean closer to my husband.  Other times, the hopelessness of my sobs leaves me more empty and alone.  How about Uncle Sidney:  did those endless tears give solace, or blister up more pain?  In grief, across the decades, I reach out to him.

Sharon Cramer, Ph. D., Distinguished Service Professor, Emerita, is a member of Shir Shalom.  Based on research conducted by Dr. Chana Kotzin, she designed a tour of Jewish cemeteries on Pine Ridge for Explorer Buffalo, which she has been giving regularly since 2021.