Mosze Dobrejcer

Today‘s dress is from a super secret place near Philadelphia. It’s tight but it fits. I love navy and white together. It makes me feel like I’m in another era. My grandpa died today. I called him Zeida, but his name was Mosze Dobrejcer and he was 96 years old. He would have been 97 in April. He was born in Poland, near the Russian border, in a town called Pruzany. I’ve never been there. He was the only survivor in his family. They all perished at Aushwitz. He had 3 siblings. He was the oldest, and the one who had the best chance to escape. There’s a lot I don’t know. He ended up in a displaced persons camp near Rome, after the war. He heard there was a jewish family in the area, and he wanted to meet them. He had nothing and nobody left. My Buba, Sonia, was an attractive young Italian woman and they began courting, although they couldn’t even communicate. She spoke only Italian and he Polish and Yiddish. But they decided to marry in a civil ceremony and leave Italy. They had a few ideas of where to go, but the most appealing was Australia. It was 1949. They settled in Melbourne and had 3 daughters and a son. My mother, Anny, is the youngest daughter. Growing up, I felt like I didn’t really know my grandparents. They lived so far away. I grew up in NYC. We only visited as a family two or 3 times. They came for my 2 siblings and my bar and bat mitzvahs. They would stay in our apartment, which was sort of intense after not being around them much. They felt less like grandparents and more like older people we occasionally heard about. When I’d see my Zeida, he’d say, “It’s my American granddaughter!” When I was little, I went to a jewish school and we commemorated holocaust memorial day. I remember learning that Zeida was a survivor. It was hard to understand how something so horrific could happen to someone so close to me. I didn’t know how to process it. How can anyone? Once I wrote that Zeida was my hero because he started a brand new life in a new country after such loss. It was published somewhere, and he loved that. I don’t have a lot of strong memories. I have more with my grandmother because she was zany and she also wrote me emails. Once i had a date pick me up from her house and she decided to clean his car. zeida was more quiet. He and Buba were an odd match, once they learned to communicate. But they stayed together for decades. Some years ago, Zeida needed more care and moved into an old age facility. Buba stayed in their house for another year or so. When Buba needed to move to a home, she chose a different one. They lived in their separate old age homes until a bit before the pandemic. Zeida was lonely and depressed and my aunt Doris suggested he move into Buba’s home. He had his own apartment, but they saw each other from time to time. My mother tried to go back every year or so to visit them. On December 24, 2020, Buba died. My mother couldn’t really get back there. The quarantine laws in Australia have been the strictest in the world and she would have had to quarantine alone in a hotel for two weeks. She stayed in New York and we had a few zoom shivas for Buba. They were amazing. People joined from all over the world and my mom told incredible stories that I hadn’t even heard before. I wonder how this zoom shiva will go. It feels sad that this is the last of the holocaust survivors.

I moved to Sydney in 2006, after graduating from college. I’m a dual citizen and wanted to try living there. People asked me what brought me there, and I’d sometimes say that my mother was from there. But why not Melbourne, they’d ask? Part of it was because I found Sydney stunningly beautiful in a way I didn’t find Melbourne. But the other factor was that I didn’t feel the need to be so close to family. I was forging my own path. I would occasionally visit my grandparents and my two aunts and uncle, but it wasn’t entirely comfortable. Buba and Zeida’s house was dark inside, their shades always drawn. There were pictures up of family. Buba had stopped cooking, although at one time she made gnocchi. She would always have various dips. Once I visited them with my then boyfriend, on our way to China. Our relationship wasn’t going well, but I was happy he got to meet them, since they’d never met a boyfriend of mine before. As someone with a diagnosed personality disorder, I can get into a place of resentment. But I try to focus on the survivor and resilient aspects of that side of my family. I believe everything happens for a reason and I’m proud to carry on that legacy. Zaida recorded his survivor story, but I haven’t heard it before. He didn’t like to talk about it and he never went back to where he was from, although my parents did. In June of 2019 my dad and I did the ride for the living, a bike ride from Auschwitz to Krakow. The trip symbolizes going from death to the vibrant jewish life of Krakow. We had toured Auschwitz a few days earlier. We found my family’s names in the huge book of people who were murdered there. I know pieces of Zeida’s story, but not most of it. I know he hid in the forest and under snow. He must have been so scared and alone. I wish I could have talked with him more about all sorts of things. But it felt so hard to connect. When I first saw them after moving to Australia, buba handed me a large folder of letters we had sent her over the years. There were many from my mother, writing about starting her own family, so far from them. I couldn’t handle it. All I wanted was for my mother to have normal parents and for me to have normal grandparents like I did on my father’s side. The ones who had privilege, success and a large family. Buba was estranged from her brothers, even the one who lived in Australia. I just didn’t understand and it made me angry. Many times when my mother would make the long trip, I felt protective of her. I wished she didn’t have to go and see them because it would be such an ordeal and stress her out. People always say how sorry they are when someone dies. I say it too. And I’m sure there will be moments of sadness, but for today, I’m glad Zaida is finally at peace.