You Saved Me, Too: What a Holocaust Survivor Taught Me about Living, Dying, Fighting, Loving, and Swearing in Yiddish Read Online Free
Author: Susan Kushner Resnick
looked you over and offered a solution. Your first name, Shmiel, would have to go. Maybe he objected because he didn’t want a child named after God to die? Or maybe it had to do with the practice of assigning numbers to Hebrew letters; could the Hebrew spelling of Shmiel add up to something sinister? Who knows. But he subtracted Shmiel and added Matz, which means “gift of God” in Hebrew. So you became Aron Matz, exalted gift of God. And you got better. You would always be the runt of Zelda’s boys, never as muscular or coordinated as your brothers. But you might be the toughest. That name change bought you almost a century of living.
O CTOBER 17, 2007
Dear Admissions Department,
I am submitting an application for an eighty-seven-year-old Holocaust survivor who has no wife, no children, and little money. I ask that you give his application special attention because of the difficult life he’s led.
For the past four months, Aron Lieb has called 911 and gone to the hospital an average of twice a week for pain that no one candiagnose or treat. The general conclusion is that he is suffering from psychosomatic pain, probably a result of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He has refused long-term psychiatric care, though he is on psychotropic medications, which seem to do little for him. Though technically he is probably physically well enough to be alone, I, as his friend and health-care proxy, believe he can’t live alone anymore due to his emotional issues. I also believe that he goes to the hospital so much because he is seeking the kind of reassurance, care, and social contact your facility could provide. When he is among people and medical practitioners, he is sharp and charming.
Enclosed are all the required forms except the financial guaranty. Aron has no one to take on such a role.
Again, I hope you will consider this a very special case. The world has treated this man horribly. I hope, at this stage in his life, the Jewish community can help to soothe him.
Sincerely,
Susan Kushner Resnick
I still believed in them when I wrote that. I believed they were good and powerful and used all their money to make things better.
That’s a lie. I’d always been suspicious of the spending habits of certain large Jewish organizations. Why all that money for trees in Israel when there were hungry kids in America? Why all that money for fancy hospitals in that country when people in my country didn’t have homes? Of course I believe that Israel is important as a symbol of our survival, but it seemed so much more important than America to so many American Jews, especially those with cash to throw around.
It was never a competition in your mind. The day after 9/11, I came to your apartment.
“Zoo baby,” you said, pronouncing “Sue” the only way you knew how. “What did you do to the plane?”
You could joke because you weren’t in shock like those of us who’d grown up believing our Americanness inoculated us againstsuch unpleasantness. For you, it was just another really bad thing in a lifetime of really bad things. A horror, yes, but one that we’d live through like all the others. You were mainly offended that someone would attack the country that had been so kind to you.
“I knew the best soldiers in the world,” you said. “They feel bad for you.”
Americans saved you. America took you in and gave you another life, though certainly not the life promised in the brochures. Israel rejected you. You’d applied to emigrate, but after the doctors at the displaced persons camp found a spot on your lung, the Promised Land was unpromised to you. You would have given your money to your adopted country instead of Israel if you earned any extra.
At least I had faith that the Jews who kept all that money in the tribe would be there for a Jew in trouble.
Until they weren’t.
Our first encounter with this nursing home was wonderful. That was a few years ago, after the loony bin, when I thought it might be a good
O CTOBER 17, 2007
Dear Admissions Department,
I am submitting an application for an eighty-seven-year-old Holocaust survivor who has no wife, no children, and little money. I ask that you give his application special attention because of the difficult life he’s led.
For the past four months, Aron Lieb has called 911 and gone to the hospital an average of twice a week for pain that no one candiagnose or treat. The general conclusion is that he is suffering from psychosomatic pain, probably a result of post-traumatic stress syndrome. He has refused long-term psychiatric care, though he is on psychotropic medications, which seem to do little for him. Though technically he is probably physically well enough to be alone, I, as his friend and health-care proxy, believe he can’t live alone anymore due to his emotional issues. I also believe that he goes to the hospital so much because he is seeking the kind of reassurance, care, and social contact your facility could provide. When he is among people and medical practitioners, he is sharp and charming.
Enclosed are all the required forms except the financial guaranty. Aron has no one to take on such a role.
Again, I hope you will consider this a very special case. The world has treated this man horribly. I hope, at this stage in his life, the Jewish community can help to soothe him.
Sincerely,
Susan Kushner Resnick
I still believed in them when I wrote that. I believed they were good and powerful and used all their money to make things better.
That’s a lie. I’d always been suspicious of the spending habits of certain large Jewish organizations. Why all that money for trees in Israel when there were hungry kids in America? Why all that money for fancy hospitals in that country when people in my country didn’t have homes? Of course I believe that Israel is important as a symbol of our survival, but it seemed so much more important than America to so many American Jews, especially those with cash to throw around.
It was never a competition in your mind. The day after 9/11, I came to your apartment.
“Zoo baby,” you said, pronouncing “Sue” the only way you knew how. “What did you do to the plane?”
You could joke because you weren’t in shock like those of us who’d grown up believing our Americanness inoculated us againstsuch unpleasantness. For you, it was just another really bad thing in a lifetime of really bad things. A horror, yes, but one that we’d live through like all the others. You were mainly offended that someone would attack the country that had been so kind to you.
“I knew the best soldiers in the world,” you said. “They feel bad for you.”
Americans saved you. America took you in and gave you another life, though certainly not the life promised in the brochures. Israel rejected you. You’d applied to emigrate, but after the doctors at the displaced persons camp found a spot on your lung, the Promised Land was unpromised to you. You would have given your money to your adopted country instead of Israel if you earned any extra.
At least I had faith that the Jews who kept all that money in the tribe would be there for a Jew in trouble.
Until they weren’t.
Our first encounter with this nursing home was wonderful. That was a few years ago, after the loony bin, when I thought it might be a good
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