The Hubers of Mordy
My son Sam said, “There’s this guy who came into the restaurant claiming he’s your cousin. His name is Len Huber and he gave me his number for you to call.”
Wow, I almost plotzed. I’d been searching for my extended family for the past 10 years. I knew I was related to Hubers and I loved making new discoveries.
I called Len right away.
Turns out he was inspired to reach out while at the coffee machine in the waiting room of the pain clinic at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. There was a man trying to make a cup of coffee and Len walked up and offered to help him. They struck up a conversation. It turned out the man’s name was Ronnie Mink.
Len knew of me and that I was his cousin. He asked Ronnie, “Do you know David Mink?” Ronnie, who was from Johannesburg, South Africa, said, “Yes, but we’re not related. We checked out each other’s family while researching on JewishGen.org. My family is from Latvia and his is from the Ukraine”
Talk about meant to be! Len decided that if this guy from Johannesburg knew his cousin, the least he could do was reach out.
Len went to the Oyster House and gave Sam his number.
And that’s how I started to discover more of Bubby’s family.
I invited Len and Rhea, his wife, for dinner at our place. It was an opportunity to get to know each other. I pulled out this box of photos and postcards that went from Bubby’s to Sylvia’s, and now to me. I asked Len to see if he could identify any of the people. He picked up this picture and declared, “This is a picture of me and my parents from our Displaced Persons Camp!” And then there was another picture of Len and Herman ( his brother who was born in the DP Camp) taken 2 years later.
L to R: Peshe, Moshe, and Len Huber
L to R: Herman and Len Huber
The Yiddish in this picture and the one above was translated into English by my Yiddish teacher, Rita Ratson.
Side note, according to Herman, remarkably, they are still close friends with the children of the family that lived with them in the camp.
Len was born in Mezritch, Poland in 1938, to Moshe and Pesha Huber. As Len tells it, “When the bombs started dropping in September of 1939, my father grabbed the family and headed east across the Bug River into Russia.” There they stayed below the radar and survived the war. A more detailed account can be found in the book, “Lost and Found”, by Ann Huber. Ann is Herman Huber’s wife. (Both Ann and Herman were born in Europe after WWII and met in the US.)
After the war, the Jewish refugees were people without a country. They were never considered full citizens in Europe and were not wanted back in the towns from where they fled. The United Nations established the International Refugee Organization which created temporary living facilities in Germany, Italy, and Austria. There were 250,000 Jews in Displaced Persons Camps, the Hubers included, waiting to start new lives in a foreign country. The Joint Distribution Committee and HIAS created the infrastructure to resettle these refugees. Some 80,000 came to the US, 136,000 to Israel, and 20,000 to Canada and South Africa.
It turns out that Bubby, ( Bubby and Moshe’s father were first cousins) through the Joint Distribution Committee and HIAS, committed to sponsoring Moshe and Pesha’s family to settle in Philadelphia.
An excerpt from our family tree to explain the connection
June 7, 1949, Moshe, Pesha, Len and Herman left Germany on the US Ship Mercy and arrived in New York. Len remembers getting picked up in this big black Buick, which must have been Jakes. From the piers of New York, they drove to 5342 Locust St, the home of Jake and Dora, to start their lives in America. According to Len, after 2 weeks living together, Jake suggested they find their own place to live and they moved to Market St, between 52nd and 53rd Sts some three blocks away.
Interesting to note here that the family’s desired destination was Palestine.
These are the papers from the AJDC
I got some more details about the family’s life in Philadelphia from Herman.
This country has been wonderful to us, and my parents always thought so too. They were typical immigrants, first working in a shmata store, then a factory in Philadelphia, until they owned their own grocery store. We used to hear some stories from them about their trials and tribulations during the War, but neither my brother nor I had the good sense to find out all we could about their lives pre-America. When I finally decided to do an extended video taping of my mother about all of this, she had already developed mild dementia, and was a bit confused. I regretted deeply not having pursued this much earlier. As a young boy, I found some of the stories very sad and frightening and so kept my distance. By the time I matured enough, it was a bit too late to get all I wanted to know. My parents adapted well to this country, their fractured English was the source of many amusing stories, and Len and I both saw that they were the best parents one could imagine. Given the trauma, they went through (most of their families murdered), they were remarkably stable and capable. Ann and I traveled to Mordy in 2010 and walked the very streets where my parents walked decades earlier. We visited the old Jewish Cemetery there, now in disarray and overgrown, and I'm sure some of our extended family must be buried there.
It’s amazing to me that although the Hubers lived no more than 15 miles from us, I didn’t know of their existence. We didn’t celebrate any holidays together. They weren’t present at my Bar Mitzvah.
Len, however, had a relationship with Uncle Herman, my mother’s brother. My Uncle Herman encouraged Len’s parents to send the boys to Akiba, the private Jewish Day School. From there they both went on to higher education and successful careers in their chosen fields.
Len graduated from Drexel University with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. He was Director of Marketing at architectural/engineering firms and served as President of his synagogue, Tiferet Bet Israel in Blue Bell, PA.
Herman graduated from Temple University, earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Rutgers University in New Brunswick. He then went on to a career as a practicing psychologist, taught at the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, NJ, and was a full professor and chair of the psychology department.
He is also a children’s book author.
L to R: Herman, Len, Eddie (another cousin), and me
I believe their story is a story of Jewish resilience, not dwelling on the past, and moving forward for the next generation.
I also find it amazing that their Jewish identity is important to this day. I think it's a symbol of the manifestation of the strength of the Jewish people. And, exemplifies the importance of Jewish values in education.
I have a couple of theories as to why I didn’t know them growing up. I do believe that new immigrants who were refugees from the war, surrounded themselves with other immigrants, who shared the same experience. The trauma and wounds of the war were too raw and too deep to discuss.
The guilt felt by the American family members who spent the war in safety and weren’t able to save and or do more for family members in Europe, was too great. And thus explains the distance.
It’s only now that time has passed, and through our connecting, that we can heal old wounds, graciously celebrate each other and write the stories for our families and future generations.
Len took the initiative and reach out to me, and for that I am grateful.
