We all thought the end had come in August 2010.  Dad suffered a massive heart attack while undergoing a procedure for his terrible back pain  Shortly thereafter, he had a stroke.  He remained in the hospital and in a rehabilitation facility for a month, but finally came home in September 2010.   His cardiologist and internist both told us it was just a miracle Dad had survived this long.  The stroke caused terrible headaches and an impairment of his vision.  It also prevented him from balancing.  The once vibrant and sturdy 83 year old, was now using a walker and was always dizzy.

But the real damage was done to Dad’s heart.  Eighty percent of the muscle was dead and despite our hopes for a medical or surgical cure, there was really nothing to be done.  In early October, the cardiologist called Mark to say that the children should visit very soon-Dad might not live another week.

But Dad was just not ready.

The doctors told him that the only way to improve was by exercising the 20% of the heart that remained.  Dad was never one for planned exercise, but even he could see that with physical therapy—even modest exercise, materially improved his condition.  It helped that the physical therapist also served bagels from his favorite bagel place.

Dad did not exactly thrive, but he lived for more than three years after that fateful phone call to come to Florida as soon as possible.  Mom and Dad travelled to Santa Monica three times to celebrate birthdays with his great granddaughter Illa Grace, the birth and bris of his great grandson Calder, Aunt Alice’s 90th birthday party, and many other mitzvahs.

During the extra time, Dad shared the graduations of Nick and Melanie from college and high school, Peter's decision to be a lawyer (Dad always knew he would be someday), Marc Kamin's wedding, Ben's engagement to Jess, Mom's 85th birthday, Mark and Eric's 60th birthday, Faith and Barry's move to Virginia, Eric and Carole Ann's new house in Norfolk, Cory's Millie, Illa's kindergarden and so much more. He also shared with Mark the good news that Mark's cancer was shrinking.

Dad visited Norfolk to see Eric and Carole Ann’s new home and spend some quality time with them.  They met new friends, were invited to a lovely Seder at the home of a VSO Board member and enjoyed visits by Mark and Ellen, and Elaine and Alice.

We all spent extra memorable days with Dad and Mom in Florida.  We took Dad to the beach, Doc’s for onion rings and French fries, Tony Wu’s for a nice Long Island duck, among many other places.  Dad and Mark had their hair cut by Larry (for just $10), the local barber about every 2 months, explored several Chinese and seafood restaurants to find the perfect, cheap lobster and tried out numerous kinds of ice cream at both Publix and various ice cream shops. 

And during his last week, we found both the best lobster and the best ice cream.

Dad seemed to rally whenever he had a visitor, whether local or long distance, and just like when he was healthy, when Dad rallied you needed a good deal of time to hear all that Dad had to say. He had a lot on his mind during the last 3 years, including stories about his childhood we had never before heard and Polish and Yiddish songs he had never before sung.  It was wonderful to have him, even with only 20% of a heart.  In our opinion, Dad’s 20% easily outpaced in love, affection and simple decency, people whose hearts were operating at 100%. Perhaps it was a zeal for life born in the witnessing of so much death.  Or maybe it was just that Dad had more to do, more to say and many more hugs and kisses to give, before he finally joined his family.  Whatever the cause, the doctors marveled at Dad’s will to live. It was no surprise to us!

Mom and Dad came to California in November 2013 for birthday parties for the oldest member of the family—Aunt Alice, and the youngest—Illa and Calder.  The trip was difficult for him and it was clear to his children that Dad was declining.  He wasn’t too interested in exercising and he didn’t even complain about the food at the independent living hotel Mom and Dad booked.  That should have been a giveaway.

Mom did not complain about the extra stress Dad was causing; there were more doctor visits, of course.  But the real stress was the fear that Dad really could die from any number of things—his diabetes, the extra oxygen he needed, another stroke and more probably, the failing heart.  When Mark and Ellen visited Florida a few days before Dad passed away, they reported both a decline in Dad’s physical and mental health.  Still, during that last weekend, Dad wanted to have lobster, visit the ocean and have a big double scoop of Kilwin’s ice cream (saving one of them for Mom).

On the morning of January 26, Dad couldn’t get out of bed by himself, but when he stubbornly tried, Dad fell.  Mom couldn’t lift him and Mom called their wonderful next door neighbor Nino to help.  A little bit later Dad asked Mom to call 911—he never wanted paramedics; he never wanted to go to the hospital.  Mom was worried.  Murray, Dad’s log time friend from Bayreuth, rushed to the hospital. The EMTs reported that Dad’s heart stopped in the ambulance but they revived him. By the time they arrived at the emergency room,  Dad seemed alert and comfortable.  He was talking (and kidding) with Mom and doctors.  Mom was told by the emergency room nurse that there was a small kidney problem, but that Dad would be okay. That is what she reported to Mark.  Dad even felt well enough to ask Mom to go buy some donuts, which she did.

While picking up the donuts Mom received a call from the hospital that Dad had taken several turns for the worse.  His heart had stopped a few more times but he was revived by standard CPR.  She immediately rushed back to the hospital to be at Dad’s side.  The cardiologist, who also rushed to the hospital, told Mom that there really wasn’t anything more to do.  The cardiologist repeated the same message to Mark when they spoke by phone from the emergency room.  “Let your father go; he deserves peace.”

By now Eric was on his way from Norfolk and Mom so wanted Dad to remain alive until Eric arrived.  That was not to be.  Shortly after 5 pm, Florida time, Dad passed away.  He was finally resting peacefully.

The traditional Jewish match (if a professional matchmaker is not used), works like this, at least it worked this way in Queens, NY in 1949.  One Jewish grandmother, not related to the “targets,” suggests to another Jewish grandmother, who is related to one of the targets, that she knows someone who would be the perfect husband/wife for the other target.  The targets do not know of the suggestion, but in short order everyone else in the universe does.

The unrelated grandmother establishes an intricate ruse, usually involving at least 10 people, with no shame for employing very old people and even babies.  The event is so perfectly orchestrated that the targets do not know they are targets.  The event may not be anything more than a brief look at each other at reasonable, but not too close quarters, and certainly without any conversation, especially when there is no common language between the targets.  If the unrelated grandmother has set it up right, the targets do not realize anything even occurred until hours or days later when the related grandmother asks her son/daughter, casually and with no hint of interest ”did you see that handsome/pretty  ____ the other day at Mrs. ___’s bungalow?”  Of course, by then, it is likely too late.

And so it was on Rockaway Beach in Queens, in the late summer of 1949.  Celia (the related mother and grandmother) heard from Mrs. Math (the unrelated grandmother) that a new handsome young man from Europe was visiting with Rose and Leon Rechnic, Mrs. Math’s next door neighbor from her bungalow on 35th Street.  Oh how handsome he was, Mrs. Math said, and he was a very hard worker.  Mrs. Math suggested the new arrival from Europe would be an ideal match for Celia’s daughter, Dorothy.  Mrs. Math candidly noted that the handsome young man next door wore very funny clothes, didn’t speak English (or Spanish, Celia’s first language), and had no money, but such things were small trifles, Mrs. Math noted, when two people were in love.

Celia had reason to be skeptical.  First off, her daughter and this young man were not in love; they hadn’t even met.  And Celia still held some unpleasant feelings about the Math family since Mrs. Math’s son Herbie, secretly married Celia’s daughter and Dorothy’s older sister Alice, when Alice was only 16. Actually, the feelings were somewhat more than “unpleasant.”

But if he was handsome, and if he seemed like a hard worker, things could be worse.  Celia, always thinking two or three steps ahead, was sure one of Dorothy’s friends would nab this new handsome young man from Europe if Celia did not act fast enough. And what a sad family story this handsome young man had; he needed a good match and there was none better than Dorothy.

So with a little reluctance, Celia agreed.  Here was Mrs. Math’s plan:  Herbie’s sister Irene (Mrs. Math’s daughter) would ask Rose Rechnic (the next door neighbor) if the handsome young man could help fix a radio at Mrs. Math’s bungalow, knowing full well that the handsome young man from Europe had a background in such things.  Rose would ask the handsome young  man if he could help—he could of course, and the handsome young man would tell Irene’s husband, Henry, who spoke Polish, the handsome young man’s native language, that he was happy to help with the radio, Then at the time the handsome young man told Henry he would come over, Mrs. Math would arrange with Celia to have Alice ask if anyone at Celia’s house on 72nd Street in Rockaway could take Alice’s baby (and Celia’s and Mrs. Math’s grandson) Stevie, to Mrs. Math’s bungalow on 35th Street.  Celia knew full well that her young son Moey couldn’t drive and Alice was working.  Only one person on 72nd Street had a car (a 1939 Plymouth) and had a license, and that one person was Dorothy.

Unaware of the mission or the highly professional manner in which it was being executed, Dorothy agreed to drive Stevie to Mrs. Math’s bungalow on 35th Street, right next door to Rose and Leon Rechnic’s bungalow where the handsome young man from Europe lived.

It must have been something of a surprise to the handsome young man from Europe while sitting in a corner of the tiny living room examining the radio, to have observed Mrs. Math’s small bungalow become very very crowded.  The young man was trying to fix a radio, which did not seem too broken.  Then Henry and Irene came by; then Leon and Rose stopped by. And then this young women and a baby came in, followed by Herbie and Alice. Shouldn’t all these people be somewhere else on a weekday afternoon, he thought to himself, in Polish?   

Everyone called the young woman Dorothy and the handsome young man from Europe took note of her, if only for a few seconds.  She was attractive and everyone was hugging her.  And he saw her car.  A young woman with a 1939 Plymouth was something quite extraordinary.  He wasn’t quite sure where the baby fit in or why all these people were still at the bungalow, but he chalked it up to nothing more than these crazy American customs. He was still very new to America, arriving on what he later learned was St. Patrick’s Day.  If all of America could drink green beer, turn the East River green and wear silly green hats and clothes on March 17, surely what he was observing at Mrs. Math’s small bungalow – great commotion on a weekday afternoon was not all that unusual.

He might have suspected something was amiss when he figured out there was nothing really wrong with the radio.  The handsome young man from Europe told Henry and Leon to tell Mrs. Math the radio worked just fine.  Then handsome young man from Europe took one more parting glace at the young woman and thought she was really quite beautiful.

Dorothy took brief note of the handsome young man fixing the radio; there were too many others in the bungalow to spend much time looking at the young man, let alone saying anything to him.  She did note two things—he was skinny but mysteriously handsome, and almost more importantly at the time, he wore ugly pointy shoes.

The plan was flawless; neither Dorothy nor the young man from Europe knew it was a set up.  But Celia blew the entire mission a little later that very afternoon when she asked Dorothy if she saw the handsome young man fixing the radio.  “What man?” Dorothy asked.  And then Dorothy realized that Celia could not know there was a man fixing a radio at Mrs. Math’s bungalow, unless…unless it was a Shidduch. Dorothy then questioned Celia and she confessed.  A little later in the afternoon, Irene called and asked the same question.  To both Irene and Celia, Dorothy said the same things: “But he had pointy shoes.”

Celia met the handsome young man from Europe, and she instantly loved him.  The handsome young man wanted to see Dorothy on a real date and Irene offered to double date with Henry, so he could translate.  Dorothy declined a few times, but as the family lore goes, Celia persuaded Dorothy to go once.  It was a movie so there wasn’t much translating (though the handsome young man must have known some English since he seemed to follow the movie). Then there were a few more dates, without Henry and Irene. When everyone left Rockaway for the summer, the handsome young man started coming around to Celia’s house where Dorothy lived.  He loved Celia and loved her (strange) Sephardic food.  He was skinny, but handsome; he was a hard worker and wanted to learn; and while he had nothing but his funny clothes, pointy shows and the pictures of his murdered family from Bendzin, Dorothy felt a spark, a connection.  Three months later Elias (Lou), Dorothy’s father, asked the handsome young man about his intentions (really!) and without any hesitation, he asked Elias if he could marry Dorothy. Then the handsome young man asked Dorothy.  She said “yes.” The Shidduch really was a match; the wedding took place just 8 months after those fateful glances at Mrs. Math’s bungalow on Rockaway Beach.

BTW, the handsome young man promised Dorothy an engagement ring when he could afford a beautiful one.  Thirteen years later, the handsome young man—still quite handsome, my father, Paul Borenstein, gave my mother her engagement ring.  Mom still wears it.  

Dad left the Gorlitz slave labor camp on May 5, 1945, after the liberation of the camp by the Russian Army.  The exact chronology of events between the liberation and Dad’s trip to the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1949 is not all that clear.  He wasn’t so good on dates.

Still, he was so fond of telling (and re-telling) about his exploits in a very chaotic Europe.  He must have been in ill health when he was liberated, and was for a short time in a displaced person’s camp.  But he quickly traveled east from Gorlitz to Bendzin to find his family.  He found only their pictures.  No one, he was told, had survived.  Dad could not believe – I bet few could believe, no one survived.  He told us about the survivors’ telephone system; there were no real phones—it was all word of mouth,  one person would tell another about seeing someone who looked like a family member in Dresden or somewhere.  I’m not sure how he traveled (especially without papers) or what he did for money (beyond the obvious petty thefts) alone at 17, but he did.

In late 1945, Dad heard that Ruchka Rechnic, his sister and Uncle Leon’s wife, survived the concentration camps and was living in Bayreuth, Germany, about halfway between Gorlitz and Stuttgart, in a small survivor’s community.  Here is how Aunt Rose wrote about the reunion in Bayreuth with Dad in her book, “Try to Survive…and Tell the World”:

“People were still searching for surviving relatives and wandering from town to town.  One day Lajbek’s (Uncle Leon’s) first wife’s brother appeared at our door.  A young, handsome man, Paul, was the sole survivor of his family. He had heard that Rozia (Ruchka) Rechnic was alive and he followed her tracks.  Coincidentally, Lajbek’s first wife’s name was Rozia, like mine.  Paul came to Bayreuth hoping to find his sister.  Instead, he found me.”

Aunt Rose and Uncle Leon had married at the Schwandorf Displaced Persons Camp in August 1945, after he knew Dad’s sister—his first wife, and their child were murdered.  Aunt Rose helped nurse Uncle Leon back to health after he had contracted typhoid. They welcomed Dad as a brother and the three together lived in Bayreuth until Uncle Leon and Aunt Rose left for the United States in September 1946, with the promise they would find him and send for him from America.  They did both.  Dad travelled to America on a Navy troop transport in 1949 and joined Uncle Leon and Aunt Rose (and their two babies, Elaine and Alice) in Queens.

But it was a wild time for Dad in the three years between when Aunt Rose and Uncle Leon left and Dad came to Queens.  He was quite the wheeler-dealer; he made friends with supply sergeants in the Army (to buy and smuggle cigarettes and other things in short supply in Europe), train conductors to travel (without papers or travel authorizations), MPs (to get him released from the occasional Army brig) and herring dealers near the coast.  Yikes!

Dad’s big score was going to be the sale of a train load of herring, desperately desired by Eastern Europeans in south eastern Germany.   Somehow Dad acquired (don’t know if the herring was bought or stolen) the large load of herring and again, somehow got the US Army to transport the herring (imagine how it smelled!!) on a troop train heading south.  Dad never said where he picked up the herring, but it must have been somewhere near one of Germany’s or Poland’s North Sea ports, about 800 kilometers away from Stuttgard, the city where Dad hoped to make a big killing in herring.  It was easily a 2 day train trip and Dad figured the herring could last 2 days without refrigeration.

The big herring score was not to be.  Several hundred kilometers from Stuttgard, two days into the trip, the troop train stalled and the soldiers removed the herring from the train.  They left it, smelling and soon, rotting at a small train station (Dad’s description of the removal was far more colorful).  There the herring and Dad were stuck for a week.  The herring did not survive post war Europe;  happily Dad did.

Dad never doubted Uncle Leon’s promise to send for him, but still he was alone and stranded in Europe for several years.  He heard that maybe someone survived and went to Palestine, though I don’t really think Dad believed it, especially considering the source.  In Stuttgard, sometime in 1948, two Israeli agents contacted him and told him there were surviving relatives in Israel.  They identified themselves as members of the Haganah and they offered to smuggle him, through Europe to Italy or France, and eventually to Palestine for free.  Dad wanted to get out of Germany and without travel papers that was a daunting task, even for Dad.  He agreed to go to Palestine, even though he knew there was a war there and Israel was not America.

But like the herring, Palestine was not to be.

The Haganah picked Dad up in Stuttgard as promised and took him slowly south.  It almost sounded like the American Underground Railroad.  The travel was slow and each night he stayed at the home of a friendly conspirator.  Somewhere in southern Switzerland or France, Dad disappeared;  the Haganah agents looked for him but could not find.

But just before Dad was scheduled to take the troop transport to New York to reunite with Uncle Leon, the Haganah found him.  According to Dad, they were not happy campers but they also were not going to force him to Israel.  Instead, they demanded $100 for the trip from Germany.  Before leaving Europe, he paid the Haganah the $100, which left him exactly $5 for his trip to America. (Over the years, Dad donated thousands more to Israel.) Dad arrived here with that $5, his pictures rescued from Bendzin, some clothes and "pointy shoes."  He could not speak any English. 

BTW, there never were any surviving close relatives in Israel.  I tried to find relatives in 1978 when I went to Bedzin and Auschwitz, and lived on a Kibbutz established before the war by refugees from Bedzin; Dad tried in 1990 at the World Reunion of Holocaust Survivors (along with Aunt Rose); and we all tried again when the Holocaust Archives in Bad Arolsen was opened in 2013.  The International Tracing Service found records for all of Dad’s siblings, except for Ester, his younger sister, who was about a year younger than Dad.  She would have been about 17 at the end of the war.   The records for all of the siblings except Ester merely say "detained in Bedzin" or "last message from Bedzin," and "disappeared in Auschwitz." There is a record in the Auschwitz Museum for an Ester Borenstein that indicates an Ester Borenstein was transferred from Auschwitz to a German forced labor camp in November 1944. She would have been 16 so it is possible this Ester is Dad’s sister. But we could find no other records in German archives and searches under her maiden name in Israel turned up nothing. There are still millions of documents not yet indexed at Bad Arolsen so maybe, perhaps someday, a new document will turn up, or child of Ester will find us.   

Dad was born on October 25, 1927, the fourth child of Moshe and Franya (Frajdla) Borensztejn in Bendzin, Poland (although the official city census indicated Dad was born in 1926), His older sister, Rose (Ruchka) was married to Uncle Leon Rechnic.  They had a daughter named Jochevet, who was born in December 1941.  There is a heart wrenching picture of the three in the photo gallery. His oldest sister, Fella (Frjgla), was married to Harry Hirshlikovitz; they also had a young daughter.  Dad’s other siblings, a younger sister, Ester and a younger brother, Alter, lived at their home on Kollataja Street, in the largely Jewish city of Bendzin. 

Dad’s father passed away before the war in 1938. But he was previously married and had two children.  Dad's older half siblings lived with Dad and his family, though until recently, Dad said very little about them.  He struggled to recall their names and never could quite get them.  According to the 1939 Bendzin census, Chana (born in 1914) and Machel (born in 1915) lived with Dad on Kollataja Street.

Dad's mother, Franya, owned a small restaurant that was on the first floor of the apartment house on Kollataja Street (it was still there in 1993).  Bendzin had the misfortune to be only a few hours from the German boarder.  The town was overrun by the German army on the first day of World War II; its leaders (including Aunt Rose’s father--more later) were murdered and Dad’s synagogue (and those praying in it) was burned five days later.

Dad had a few fond memories of his life in Bendzin, many of which he revealed only after his heart attack and stroke in 2010. The town had about 20,000 mostly Jewish inhabitants. He attended a Jewish school called the gimnazium Firstenberga, but he attended school only through the 8th grade, when the war started. Dad remembered trips with his father to ski and ice skate, and was particularly happy to travel to Częstochowa, where his cousins lived, and Zacopane, a winter escape in the Carpathian Mountains.  Dad took us to Zacoapane to revisit the town in 1993, and it was indeed quiet and beautiful.

But his most vivid and happy memories are of his mother.  He loved her cooking and told us many times how his father would invite strangers to holiday dinners, just to taste her great food.  Although Dad told us about many different dishes his mother made, he was partial to her napoleons (the Polish kind, not the French kind) and her hand made ice cream.  Dad said the milk and cream would be delivered in the morning (and he loved the double cream from the very top of the milk bottle); his mother would make the custard that became the vanilla ice cream.  Dad and his sisters would take turns churning the White Mountain-type ice cream freezer until the custard was set.  That ice cream was the most delicious thing he can recall from Bendzin and nothing—I mean nothing, compared to it.  We struggled for years to try to duplicate the vanilla ice cream recipe in Americaand failed…until Dad and I attended Penn State Ice Cream College in 2000. There Dad said we found the secret to his mother’s recipe.

Dad was only 13 when he was arrested by the Germans in early 1940.  Although Dad was never very detailed about how his mother prepared him for the war, the family lore is that his mother saw the terrible war coming, asked an electrician to teach him something about that craft and when the war came, Dad had a skill the Germans needed.  The Germans arrested all the able bodied men and boys in Bendzin, especially those with skills, at the beginning of the war.  Dad was supposed to report to a work camp, but instead was hidden by the priests in the Catholic Church in the hills above Bendzin and then with his cousins in Częstochowa.  The Germans announced that his family would be killed if he did not return, and he did.  Dad was arrested; his mother brought a small suitcase with clothes to the jail, where his mother was assured Dad would only be away for a few weeks.  That was the last time Dad saw his Polish family.

We know virtually nothing of Dad’s 5 years in forced labor and concentration camps.  He never spoke of it, except once when his great grand niece Orli, asked him to talk about the Holocaust to her 4th grade class. All of Dad’s family was murdered, except his brother in law, Uncle Leon, who was taken away to work camps early in the War and was away when Bendzin was finally liquidated in August 1943. Uncle Leon survived because he was a virtuosso violinist, a skill the Nazis valued.

Pictures of Dad's family are included in the video file dad.avi in the Video Gallery.

(NB--We do not know how the picture of Dad in the slave labor camp--the group in front of some wire or coil, with Jewish Stars on the clothing-- was smuggled out of the camp or even how Dad got it.  The pictures before 1943 were saved by one of those unexplainable acts of selflessness. Bendzin had a Jewish photographer who chronicled Jewish life and families before and during the war. The photographer buried his archives of pictures sometime after June 1943, just before the last Jews in Bendzin were taken from the city.  After the war, Dad searched for family survivors and returned to Bendzin one time.  He heard there were pictures of his family with the photographer's family.  Dad found these pictures, which he carried to America in 1949.)