RE: [Cz-L] Do you love Czernowitz ?

Just a quick note. We have corresponded before. My parents left in the
summer of 1939 on the Staatendamm, and landed at Ellis Island on August 22.
They were interned there for a few days (my father's first frightful
experience - Coca Cola) and left by rail for Canada thru LaColle arriving on
the 29th. He wrote their parents in Czernowitz a week later (Sept. 4):
"Well, they declared war here yesterday ...". Their parents expected it was
just a matter of travel arrangements for them to leave, but ... every
attempt fell apart. They finally got exit visas and travelled from Constanta
to Turkey on the Vitorul (which broke up just as it got into Constantinople
harbour; they could not get on Die Struma. Eventually they reached Cyprus,
and then on to Palestine. My father's parents flew to Beirut and then to
Lydda. My mother's father died on Cyprus in 1942, but her mother got to
Palestine - I don't know how. My mother's sister and her new husband
travelled overland to Palestine. Shortly after the war, my parents were able
to bring everyone over. My father's mother was a partner in a weaving mill
(Lermer Fratii e Budabin. The Lermers never bothered to become Romanian
after the first war, and - of course - could not get exit visas. So far as I
know, only one (Fritz) survived. (Although there was an Anna Lermer, a very
old lady then who lived in a huge home in a stately part of Toronto (of
course, it's a high end condominium now), who must have been able to get out
somehow, but I never found out what the story was). The Lermers disappeared
in the war. Fritz was liberated from a death camp, and we brought him out.
Fortunately his TB was not evident when he landed, and he got in. A few
months after, he was in a TB sanitarium in Hamilton, Ontario (for about 6-8
months, then he disappeared from our lives.

It's said that Jews know when to run, but, sadly, not all of them did.

I have never been to Czernowitz, and have no inclination to go. My parents
lived lives there that no longer exist. And whatever may be left (the Jewish
Hospital my great-grandfather built, the soapworks/tanning factory or the
agribusiness lands) is, I'm sure, either derelict or something altogether
transformed.

I read so many stories on the website, and a lot of what seems at times to
be picayune "dancing on the head of a pin", but I'm sure it was and is all
very real and a substantial part of the identities of the people who lived
through those experiences. I only get to live with the incomplete stories
that my parents and a few other relatives told me.

Best regards,

Bob

Robert Burton
Cobob Holdings Limited
307 Sheppard Avenue East
TORONTO, Ontario M2N 3B3

Tel: 416 226 6895, Ext. 29
Fax: 416 223 0321

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-63424136-3499409_at_list.cornell.edu
[mailto:bounce-63424136-3499409_at_list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Miriam Taylor
Sent: Monday, August 20, 2012 7:35 AM
To: HARDY BREIER
Cc: CZERNOWITZ-L
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Do you love Czernowitz ?

Obviously, my family and I, also left Czernowitz.
We left in the summer of 1945, through Tereblesti, together with 12000 other
Jewish Czernowitzers.
And in the winter of 1944 - 45 we almost crossed the border to Romania
illegally.

But we did so because my parents did not want to live under Communist rule.
And because they intended to get to Palestine.

I am not sorry that we left when we did, but I still love the city and
appreciate what it once was like.

Mimi

-snip-
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Received on 2012-08-20 13:24:33