My great-grandfather Max Kalisch was one of 16 children, according to family legend, and when he died in 1947, his obituary mentioned “two sisters living in Europe.”  Two.  Out of 15.  This is one of them.  But I’m not sure which one.

See, Max was the only sibling to have emigrated to the United States and, as such, the only sibling truly safe when World War II began.  Most of his siblings lived in Central Europe -- in L’viv, Vienna, Budapest, Krakow, Zbaraz -- and that explains why only two of them were left after the war.  Granted, it is possible that some passed away before the war even began (Max was born closer to the end of the birth order) and it is also possible that other siblings survived, their post-war whereabouts unknown to Max and to me.  Indeed, I only know the death dates of 4 of Max’s siblings out of 15, so anything is possible.  The Iron Curtain that came down in many of the places Max’s siblings lived before the war would have made it near impossible to find them afterwards -- and would still make it difficult (though increasingly less so) to find their traces in records even now.

I am fairly certain I know which of Max’s two sisters were the ones still living in Europe, because I know that two of them (at least) were alive and well when he died. But I’m not sure if these two particular sisters were the ones my grandmother and her brother thought to enumerate in his obituary, just because I am not completely sure they were the only ones still alive and well.

Max’s slightly older sister Hene Sara was married in the early 1890s to Ezra Liebmann in their hometown of L’viv.  Ezra was a lumber merchant and I assume that it was some aspect of his business that resulted in their to Budapest with their 6 children in the early years of the 20th century. This move meant more than just a change of address, but also a change of name, as the family took more Hungarian and German, less Hebrew and Galician, names.  Ezra became Emil, Hene Sara became Sari, their second daughter Neche Lea became Lola.  Right before the war began, Ezra/Emil died and was buried in Budapest.  And somehow, Hene Sara/Sari and at least two of her children survived the war to emerge on the other side.  I don’t know how they did it -- if they were deported to camps and lived through them or if somehow they went into hiding or exile.  But they lived.  And Hene Sara/Sari died in 1948 at the age of 76 and was buried next to her husband in Budapest.

Max’s slightly younger sister Debora also survived the war.  In 1898, she married a grain merchant from a well-established Krakow family named Jakob Kronengold.  Their first child, a boy named Edward, was born in L’viv, but the family’s residence was really in Krakow, the city where their two daughters were born.  At the time of the German invasion in 1938, Edward left Krakow for Prague, London and eventually New York, where he would go on establish himself as a prominent Freudian psychoanalyst, but the rest of the family stayed behind in Krakow.  Jakob was deported to a camp and eventually died in Siberia, but Debora, her daughter Stefania and Stefania’s son Feliks lived in hiding, surviving the war by pretending they were gentiles with the last name Borek.  After liberation, Debora and Stefania eventually made their way to Israel, where Debora died sometime in the 1950s or 60s.

The lady in the picture above really could be either of these two sisters -- all I know is what my mother wrote on the back of the photograph in the 70s, when she sat down with her parents and captioned some family pictures.  Sometimes the labels are unbelievably informative.  This particular label just tells me this is Max’s sister -- but not her name.  I think it is probably Debora, but there is no real way to prove that.

I know that Max loved his family deeply and I know he must have been glad to see this picture -- if in fact it arrived before he died and wasn’t given to his children afterward.  He may not have seen any of his brothers or sisters after that day in 1899 when he left home for America, but they most certainly always lived in his heart.  He welcomed their sons (including Debora’s son Edward) to the States and made sure his children, especially his daughter Ethel, understood the value and importance of keeping those family ties. The words “two sisters living in Europe” might seem simple, even throwaway words, but that simplicity is deceptive, masking the full import of remembering these sisters.  For Max, the bond of family, of brothers and sisters, was of the utmost importance and meaning, despite any distance or time between them. 

Hene Sara (Sari) Kalisch Liebmann (1871-1948) or, more likely,

Debora Kalisch Kronengold (1876-after 1950)