This book is my memoir. Recollections of my life in Israel between the ages 4 and 12 form the core of my story. It begins with scant information about my ancestry that was gleaned from my parents, my one and only first cousin, as well as the few remaining more distant relatives. That my mother was born in Oradea, Romania is an immutable fact. My father's birth certificate clearly registers the event in Reteag, Romania. Their common language was Hungarian. That their common communication was not Romanian muddies the search only a little but must be taken into account. That broadened the scope of my search for family. We visited the Dohány Street Synagogue and the Wallenberg Jewish Foundation in Budapest, a few years ago. We could not find any references in the archives to a Hirsch or Braun family. Examining tombstones in Jewish burial grounds was equally frustrating. Two years later, we visited Jewish sites in Berlin. In the Holocaust Memorial, The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, I found clear reference to my father's family in the small town of Békéscsaba in Eastern Hungary. Békéscsaba is on the border with Romania, about fifty miles from my mother's ancestral home, Oradea. At this time, I cannot reconcile locating Hirsch families in Békéscsaba, Hungary, and Reteag, Romania. Both towns are equidistant from Oradea. It seems likely that my father could have courted my mother from either place back in the mid 1930s. The continuing quest for my ancestry should focus on Békéscsaba, Reteag, and Oradea. As the span of years lengthens from the time of the great twentieth century Holocaust, the tracks of my ancestors will fade and disappear. Perhaps one of our many descendants will take up the torch and search for their forebears, scattered and murdered in the Holocaust. In a way, this memoir and others like it should discourage those who would seek to exterminate Jews, again. Were it not for the pluck of Sigismund (Simcha) and Magdalena (Miriam) Hirsch (z"l), my recounting would be a myth.
About the Author: Edith Leah Hirsch Rubin is a retired school teacher. She is the child of Holocaust survivors but not in the usual sense. Her mother and father were members of two large Jewish families that made towns in western Romania home for many generations.Biologically according to her DNA, Edith is nearly one hundred percent Ashkenazi. Therefore, her lineage is nearly pure Jewish. In the great twentieth century Holocaust that purged more than six million Jews from Europe, her ancestors are nearly untraceable. She has found scant evidence of her father's family Hirsch in two towns one hundred miles apart. They are Békéscsaba, Hungary, and Reteag, Romania. Her father's birth certificate records his birth in Reteag but he spoke Hungarian, only. Her mother was born to the Mikhaly and Erzybeta Braun in Oradea, Romania. After her parents married in 1937, her father, an ardent Zionist saw the scourge of Anti-Semitism mounting. He advised that the families take advantage of the services of the Jewish Agency and emigrate to Palestine. His plea fell on deaf ears. "Go and establish yourselves, then send for us." War overtook the remaining families. Edith was born in Palestine, the daughter of two people who demonstrated the pluck to survive. The search for her ancestors is only beginning.