My father’s paternal cousin Michal Aurbach, age 99, called me from her retirement community in Kvar Saba, in Israel. She wanted to let me know she was reading My City.
I was surprised for a number of reasons. For one, the book hasn’t been available in Israel, but it turns out it is now through Amazon US. I was also surprised as I had no idea Michal was still alive. On the final family tree in My City, I wrote she died in 2010. I’m not sure where I got that from, because with that German/English accent common to relatives who came to Palestine under British occupation, this was clearly her on the phone.
It was difficult to talk because she would ask me a question and then interrupt me a sentence into my answer because she couldn’t hear me. But she told me that she heard about my book from a woman in Kaiserslautern, Bernadette Künzel-Geiler, who was involved with researching former inhabitants of her city in order to place Stolpersteine, or stumbling blocks, the small brass plaques placed into city pavement in front of the houses of residents who were persecuted or murdered by the Nazis. Each mention the name, date of birth and place and date of death. Michal had never wanted to return to Germany, but she did go back three years ago to dedicate the stones placed for her parents, Anna and Leo Aurbach, and her sister Henny.
Michal was born in in Kaiserslautern Germany. Her name then was Erna, and she was the older of two daughters of my father’s father’s sister Anna. Her photograph was in my father’s album, documenting their visit to Vienna in the late 20s.
(To the right) Uri, Mia, and my father
According to my father, she traveled to Palestine in 1938. But it was actually in 1936. She was just fifteen. She eventually joined the Israeli Defense Forces and changed her name to Michal. I remember her as a tough, no nonsense woman. According to my cousins, she cut off relations with my father’s brother, Uri. He said it was because she disliked that he continued to call her Erna, her childhood name. That would have been just like my uncle.
You can see a video of Michal here.
I had trouble following Michal, but I think she said her parents and sister were sent east, but her father was turned back at the Polish border because his passport was expired, and he was sent back to Buchenwald while her mother and younger sister were sent on. Her mother left her younger sister Henny with relatives in Lublin and returned to Germany to try to get Leo out of the camp, but in the meantime he had been released. They tried to travel together to Lublin to retrieve Henny but were stopped at the Polish border, as war had broken out. They were later deported and murdered. My father wrote that Michal had told him Henny died in a pogrom in Lublin but I think Michal told me she died when the city was bombed. Bernadette had sent on her research in German. I’ll update once that’s translated.
I told Michal I was crying.
She told me “I have no more tears.”
My cousin Maya has now been by to see Michal three times, and they’ve had good conversations. I’m waiting on the details.
I look forward to others reaching out. Perhaps Susie is still alive and can tell me her side of the story. Or Paul Harband’s son. Or any one of the many who vanished.