My Mameleh: A Memoir

By Mariette Goldberg

It was late, dark and cold. The little band of travelers were huddled together on the bench of an old train hoping to escape the tightening Nazi noose. Suddenly, they heard the conductor’s loud voice, “Vos papiers, s'il vous plaît!” (Papers, please!). My mother’s identity card had been stamped not once, but twice with the word, “Juif.” She knew that her life and that of her friends now rested in the palms of a stranger, a government official whose job it was to hand them over to the Germans. 

This is one of the many miraculous escapes found throughout this book. It is a story of survival, not just from the Holocaust, but from old world poverty, broken love and a tenuous peace in order to finally achieve the “American Dream.” 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886937749

Mariette Goldberg

Mariette Goldberg was born in a refugee camp in Lausanne, Switzerland. She grew up in Paris and emigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of 13. Later, she studied comparative literature and taught college French and linguistics, while raising three lovely boys. She and her husband Edward (Eddie) are the proud grandparents of four perfect grandchildren, three best-behaved grand-puppies and one most personable turtle. This book represents the culmination of a lifelong passion: to tell Mariette’s mother’s incredible story. A consummate listener, the author was raised by an equally consummate storyteller whose story had to reach a wider audience. Mariette is currently working on a second book – a novel based on one of the characters in ‘Mameleh’.

Book preview

About the Author

Mariette Goldberg was born in a refugee camp in Lausanne, Switzerland. She grew up in Paris and emigrated to the United States with her parents at the age of 13. Later, she studied comparative literature and taught college French and linguistics, while raising three lovely boys. She and her husband Edward (Eddie) are the proud grandparents of four perfect grandchildren, three best-behaved grand-puppies and one most personable turtle.

This book represents the culmination of a lifelong passion: to tell Mariette’s mother’s incredible story. A consummate listener, the author was raised by an equally consummate storyteller whose story had to reach a wider audience. Mariette is currently working on a second book – a novel based on one of the characters in ‘Mameleh’.

Dedication

Etka Mishkovska loved to tell stories and her daughter, Mariette, loved to hear them. At a moment in history when anti-Semitism is rising, historical memory is fading, and the last of the Holocaust survivors are dying, we depend more than ever on the power of stories to strengthen our own Jewish identities and forge our children’s. In her moving memoir, My Mameleh, Mariette Goldberg recounts the poignant journey of her mother’s life. Born into poverty in Poland, Etka set out on her own to Palestine, under the British Mandate, there beginning a circle that would bring her to France, Switzerland, America and finally back ‘home’ to Israel.

My Mameleh is a deeply personal tale of love, loss and joy, but also the story of a generation whose courage birthed the Jewish state as a necessary refuge for our people, and whose tenacity has defined the Jewish people in every age.

Rabbi Joshua Davidson, Senior rabbi of Congregation Emmanu-El of New York City.

Endorsed by Dr. Emanuel Berman of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society.

Copyright Information ©

Mariette Goldberg 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Goldberg, Mariette

My Mameleh: A Memoir

ISBN 9798886936407 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798886937732 (Hardback)

ISBN 9798886937749 (ePub e-book)

ISBN 9798886936414 (Audiobook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023908157

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

I am deeply grateful to my family for their unwavering support and enthusiasm for this project.

I am also humbled by the encouragement of my many friends whose loud cries of joy I can still hear upon completing my book.

Many thanks also to my editor, James Windell, for his infallible guidance.

Preface

We live in a world of lowest common denominators: 3-minute Tiktoks, 15-second Instagram reels, 280 characters. Implicitly or explicitly, we too often encapsulate the rich and complex into utterly simplistic messages. He’s strange. It’s a love story. She’s funny. Amidst all this, it is incredibly heartening and refreshing to find situations that force us out of such narrow categorizations. Our grandmother Etka’s story is the perfect example.

Our grandmother’s life cannot be reduced to the lowest common denominator. Hers is not simply ‘a Holocaust story’ or ‘an immigrant story.’ Rather, her life reflects the complexity, trauma, and humanity of the twentieth century itself. Born into Old World poverty and amidst persecution at home, she escaped as a teenager, alone, to a faraway land. She found happiness and then love. Alas, this love faded and was replaced by another, only to lead to more wandering and then war. But her shrewdness allowed for survival, and then rescue, and then family, and then more wanderings.

Some early memories of our grandmother: her getting down on one knee to give us a big hug; calling her ‘Mimi’ when ‘grandma’ or ‘Etka’ was too difficult; sleepovers at her house; matzo ball soup, kreplach, gefilte fish, and lamb hamburgers for dinner; scrambled eggs with sugar for breakfast; watching ‘Taxi’ reruns on her tiny bedroom TV while we ate tea biscuits; playing board games where she’d let us win.

As we grew, so did the complexity of the lens through which we knew our grandmother. We learned of her childhood, her family, her loves, her wartime survival, her tenacity, her humor, her cleverness, and her incredible intransigence. The richness of her character and her emotional scars became more visible. Our closeness to her taught us a valuable lesson in the contradictions all of us carry. We learned that her traits – deeply religious but a realist; exceedingly charitable but unforgiving; spiritual but a huge believer in taking charge – were not so much contradictory but rather the pieces of a complex mosaic.

The stories relayed in this book capture a key enduring trait of our grandmother: her selflessness. We read how she frequently warned others of the ever-increasing threat of destruction and encouraged them to flee. In one dramatic scene, her neighbors offer to murder a Nazi collaborator intent on arresting our grandfather, but her response was to say no. Despite the potential to save herself and her husband, she knew of the terrible retaliation that would have followed, and so she refused the offer. Even in the darkest of hours, in a time of utter brutality, our grandmother remained steadfast but selfless, and in such a way, she is a model for us all. Even after the war, she spent most of her decades-long working career caring for convalescent patients. And as we can affirm from our personal experience, if you were under her care, you were nurtured.

Our mother succeeds in weaving these narratives and traits into a rich tapestry. She captures the moments of joy, tragedy, fear, and courage that defined our grandmother’s life. The reader experiences both the outside world and our grandmother’s internal qualities; indeed, her voice can be heard through the lines. Much like the myriad small memorial stones we place on her grave in the hills overlooking Jerusalem, our mother’s combination of stories, anecdotes, and memories of our grandmother combine to form a moving, poignant, and powerful book. We thank her deeply for writing it.

Jonathan Goldberg

October 9, 2021

Introduction

I was always my mother’s confidante. As far back as my memory will take me, I remember her wonderful, captivating stories. She wove her narrative with a lyrical combination of poetry and prose, interspersed with priceless Yiddish sayings. Her stories made me laugh, made me cry, and quite often, horrified me.

I knew the names of all the people who had populated her world. In my mind’s eye, I could visualize the faces of the family members I would never know: her father, with his long, flowing beard and piercing blue eyes; her mother, who was small and dark-haired with dainty hands and feet; her oldest sister, whose picture survived and in whose face I try to find my own; her favorite brother, who shared his girlfriend’s chocolates with our mother; the myriad of friends and neighbors, who were doomed to disappear into the fires of the Holocaust.

Those are the early memories. Later, there would be stories of her life in Palestine under the British Mandate. Israel was the only place where my mother had been truly happy – at least, that’s what she told me. That is probably why she wanted to be buried there. And so she is, on the hilltop of a Jerusalem cemetery overlooking the land she loved so much.

Chiseled onto the white stone memorial is a tribute to another part of her life:

Etka Mishkovska, daughter of Shmuel Leib

Loving wife and mother

Survived the Holocaust and saved several lives

October 31, 1919 – March 24, 2007

Her circuitous route in life took her from Poland to Palestine; from Palestine to France; and from France to America. Fittingly, her last journey was her return to Israel. I like to imagine her happy, and finally at peace.

She always had so much to say to me. But I always wanted more. "Raconte-moi, raconte-moi, was my favorite entreaty to her. Tell me more, tell me more." But these stories are not mine; they are hers. And before my voice is stilled, I need to relate her stories to my children and grandchildren.

I used to call her ‘Mameleh.’

Chapter One

Poland

My Mameleh was born in Poland, around 1919, in the city of Lomza, which is approximately 200 miles from Warsaw. Her father, Shmuel Leib, whom she revered, was born ten years after his parents’ marriage, marking his arrival as almost that of the Messiah. His ecstatic parents decided that since he was a miracle, he should dedicate his life to the study of Torah. He was sent to study at some of the best yeshivas of the day, including the renowned one in Leipzig. He even studied with a descendant of the great eighteenth-century rabbi and Jewish scholar, Rabbi Eliyahu of Vilna, often referred to as the Vilna Gaon.

Shmuel Leib was ordained as a rabbi, but his plans changed after meeting my grandmother, Leah, through a ‘shatren’ – a matchmaker. Leah decided that she would marry him, but only if he found another profession. She was adamant about refusing