The Klinger's and the Weisberg's

Today in South Pasadena Klinger family members from three continents, myself amongst them, met for the first time since 1915. Cousins, from 5 to 80 something years old met, some for the first time during the get together. We delved into our common past. About 100 years ago my father’s family journeyed from the Russian Tsar’s empire in Poland to England.

Different, exotic and colorful stories abound. We found one picture that was common to our British, American and Australian family branches. It was of four young men, one young woman, two small children and one old lady. They are all staring at the camera very intently. They are dressed in formal attire, the men resplendently displaying fine moustaches. When I first saw the picture I thought it was a joke. How had someone photo shopped me into a picture from nearly a century ago? But it turns out that I share a face with my previously unknown great uncle. Of course he is a particularly fine figure of a man. Actually my grandfather, staring confidently at the camera, is the best looking man in the picture, and I don’t look much like him. I will write more fully about this in the future.

We then started to talk with each other and old family histories were unearthed and old journeys re-trod. There was a fine picture of my uncle Max in the uniform of the Imperial Russian Army. He looks very snappy but there is another truth. I well remember my Poppa Gershon telling me how his brother, the man in the picture, was ruthlessly beaten by his Russian commanders on a regular basis, purely because he was Jewish. It was because of his treatment that his family re-considered where they should live. In those far off days the Imperial army took one brother at a time into the army. When one came back the next had to take his place, unless he was killed earlier. Apparently his tormentors permanently injured my great uncle and the decision was made to leave.

Therefore, in some twisted grand design my great uncle’s maltreatment meant that we could all meet in Pasadena. With more benign treatment I suspect that there was a very good chance the family would have stayed in the Polish part of the Russian Empire. If we had done so about thirty years later the invading Nazis would have decimated my father’s family.

I say this with some certainty because it did happen to my father’s mother’s side of our family, the Weisberg’s (I guess it could be spelt Weissberg) of Warsaw. Sixty-three of them were murdered in the Holocaust. According to our family story my grandmother, Dora, returned to her native Poland with my father, then a small boy, before the war, to try and get her family to leave. She was only able to convince one sister. That sister agreed to make the journey to England with her two children, but their application for papers was refused. They are all lost to us now. That family will never enjoy a sunny reunion anywhere as there are none of them to meet.

Ironically today is Holocaust Memorial Day. Although I am not religious I shall go to the ceremony in the nearby park and offer up a prayer for those that were lost in my family, the Weisberg’s, and millions of other families. I fell I have to do it for my late grandmother as there is no one else to do so.