The Sibling Keeper
Phone Calls
Ida was the Merkin sister who most closely watched over her siblings. It was Ida who visited when she could and called as often as possible. She shared what she knew, first with her sisters and her brother and later, when they were adults, with her nieces and nephews.
In the 1920s, Ida's older brother Sam moved across the Harlem River, to the Bronx, with his wife and three sons. By the 1930s both my mother, Katia, and her sister Miriam, had married and moved to Los Angeles.
When I was small cross country phone calls were expensive. And Ida’s calls were rarely timely because she did not like to be the bearer of bad news. So, except when someone in the family died, she always delayed calling until the crisis, whatever it had been, was over.
A typical phone call between Ida and my mother usually started when my mother picked up the phone and, hearing Ida’s voice, assumed something must be wrong to warrant the expense of calling. So the first words my mother spoke were usually, “What happened?” The first minute of the call would then be taken up by Ida assuring her that everyone was well and my mother asking, at least twice, “Are you sure?”
After a minute long exchange about whether there was or was not something wrong, Ida would reveal the reason for her call. I remember one such call that occurred much later, after the war, when Ida finally got almost to the point and told my mother that one of my aunts was healing and well on her way to recovery. My mother then asked, once again, “What happened?” And Ida responded that my aunt’s broken leg was healing well after she had been injured by a truck while attempting to cross a Manhattan street several weeks earlier. Another minute went by while they discussed whether it was really true that the aunt was recovering well. Then, because calls were expensive, they quickly assure one another that everyone else was well and agree that the expensive three minute phone call had to come to an end.
Anita and Ida in Orsha before Ida and Katia Merkin left for America in 1912. Anita, the youngest Merkin sibling is seated, her older sister, Ida, stands behind her.
Anita
In addition to her older brother and her two West Coast based siblings, there were two more sisters Ida watched over — the oldest, Rebecca, and the youngest, Anita. But the task was far from easy.
Anita, the youngest of the six Merkin siblings, became a focus of Ida’s attention and concern during the 1930s. The problem was troublesome and lasted for years. And when it was at an impasse Ida often found it too distressing to discuss.
Anita had come to the United States in 1913 along with the next youngest sibling, my Aunt Miriam, and my grandmother Celia Merkin.
Anita and Miriam were too young to work — about eight and nine years old — and so they became the only Merkin siblings to attend school. Miriam finished high school and completed some college training. The extent of Anita’s education is not as clear, but it is likely that she was able to finish high school.
Then, one day in 1936, Anita disappeared.
Surprisingly, I remember a day in 1936, when I was not yet four years old, when someone rang the doorbell at our Los Angeles home. I went to the door and found a woman standing there with a suitcase at her side. My mother followed me and recognized her sister, Anita.
Anita stayed with us for a while, several weeks probably. Certainly long enough for my father to take this picture of the family in our front garden. Miriam and her family lived nearby and visited often.
Then, just as she had left New York, Anita left Los Angeles. But this time she announced her departure, telling her sisters Miriam and Katia that she never wanted to see them again.
When I grew old enough and curious enough to ask my mother what had happened, she reminded me that when Anita visited we were in the middle of an economic depression. My father had retained his job in the film industry — films were still a popular and low cost escape for many people affected by the Depression. My aunt and uncle got by as well, but earning a living was tougher for them — they owned and operated a hair salon and in those difficult days customers were not always readily available.
Anita, my mother told me, had decided that Miriam and Louis were somehow obliged to share their business with her, though the business was shaky and Anita was not trained in salon work. Inevitably, a family dispute erupted. My mother sided with Miriam and Louis. And Anita packed her bag and disappeared.
More than six decades later, in 2018, with more and more records being added to the Internet, I came across some documents that told me something my aunts and my mother may have known but did not see fit to share. It was quite a surprise.
I found, on the Internet, two New York marriage records for my Aunt Anita. The first was dated July 7, 1926, and listed the marriage of Anita Merkin, living at 32 St. Marks Place in Manhattan's East Village and Emanuel Switkes, a law student born in Rumania. Switkes’ address appears to be 107 2nd Avenue. It is not fully decipherable on the stamped certificate. But a voter registration just two years earlier lists him as living at the exact same address Anita had listed: 32 St Marks Place. Anita is listed as the daughter of Zeppa Merkin (My Grandmother Celia’s Yiddish name was ). The marriage was a civil ceremony and took place in Manhattan.
A second certificate, dated 17 months later, on December 2, 1927, lists Anita Merkin, daughter of Zeppa Merkin, living at 3360 Bronx Boulevard, to Emanuel Switkes, still a law student, living on East 14th Street on the lower east side of Manhattan.
There is no mistaking these documents. The second even includes the address of the ceremony, this time conducted by a rabbi, as 3360 Bronx Boulevard. This is exactly the address where Anita’s older brother, Sam, lived with his wife and, at that time, two sons and where, at that same time, Miriam was living, in another apartment, with her husband, Lous Bernstein and their daughter, Eunice.
Both families continue to be listed at the same address in the 1930 census. And, by the time the 1940 census was taken Miriam and Lous Bernstein were living in Los Angeles while Sam and his family continue to live at 3360 Bronx Avenue. In the 1940 census Sam is listed as owner of the building.
I can find no record of a divorce for Anita and Emanuel. Still, it seems clear that sometime in the late 1930s, Anita’s alienation from her husband was so profound that she left New York without telling anyone.
For Emanuel Switkes whatever happened seems equally disturbing. He can be found in a 1938 directory for the town of Reading, Pennsylvania, living in the town YMCA, but he is no longer a law student. He is working, instead, as a secretary. Two years later, in 1940, he can be found in the United States Census, 36 years old, living with his parents, and working as a grocery clerk. Clearly something happened that Ida, Miriam and my mother could not — or would not — explain. And clearly the fallout affected everybody — worst of all Anita and her husband.
For years after Anita left Los Angeles Ida paid a private detective to try to locate her. After a time, the detective discovered she was living in New Orleans. Ida tried to make contact, but she was rebuffed. She received a letter from a lawyer who told her only that Anita wanted nothing to do with anyone in the family and that she would sue if Ida or anyone else attempted to contact her.
For more than two decades Ida had persisted in searching for her missing younger sister. The disappointment in her voice was always present when she told this story. Anita's alienation from her family was profound.
A photo taken in 1921 when Anita and Miriam were in school. Anita stands behind my mother, Katia. Miriam stands behind Louis Bernstein, who became her husband a few years later. The photo was taken in Washington Square.
Rebecca
Rebecca, the oldest sister, was the only Merkin sibling who remained in Orsha. She was born in about 1885 and she had married and probably had children before the family immigration to the United States began.
We have only two photographs of Rebecca in Russia. Both were taken after all five of her siblings and her mother had immigrated to the United States. The photo above left is a portrait of Rebecca that probably dates from the 1920s. The photo above right probably dates from the 1930s. Rebecca is standing on the left. The other two people may be children, grandchildren or possibly a child or grandchild and a spouse of either Rebecca or one of her children.
Rebecca’s story is a Holocaust story.
World War Two disrupted all correspondence between Rebecca and her family in America. Then, after the war, the Merkin siblings — primarily Ida — began searching.
Finding displaced persons after the war and before the age of the Internet and internationally available record keeping was no simple task. but eventually Ida caught sight of Rebecca’s name in one of the DP lists maintained by Yiddish language papers. Rebecca had survived. Her family had not.
Once again, it was Ida who had been the most persistent. Ida and her husband, Abe Riskin, carefully went through the daily lists of DPs maintained in the Yiddish language papers in New York and eventually caught sight of Rebecca’s name. Rebecca had survived. Her family had not.
Then they worked through the tangle of immigration rules for several years and finally, in the early 1950s, Ida and Abe managed to sponsor Rebecca and bring her to the United States.
Their efforts did not end there. They helped Rebecca get settled in New York and, for years, did everything in their power to help her adjust to a new country, a new language, relatives she did not know or had not seen for over 40 years, and a new circle of friends.
All I know about Rebecca’s life in America came from Ida, and that is little enough. Here it is:
Rebecca was born in the mid 1880s. She married in Russia and continued to live there with her husband and children when her mother and siblings immigrated to America. She was the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust and after the war she began searching for her Merkin family.
Rebecca re-married after she came to the United States – an elderly man who was also a Holocaust survivor. She had a compulsive need to eat and to buy things and to sock away her purchases and when she died, Ida found dozens of garments in her apartment with the price tags still attached to them. Probably all of this was the result of her Holocaust experience, but Rebecca did not talk about that.
And it was Rebecca , Ida reminded me, who was the subject of that phone call with my mother when, shortly after her arrival in New York, she walked into a street without looking and was hit by a truck.
My mother and father visited once, after she had settled in New York — at least as much as she was able. And my father took pictures of her, and of the three sisters together.
Norm and I visited Rebecca a few times in New York. She was in her 70s then and relating to her was not easy. She seemed so remote, in fact, that I did not recognize her when Ida showed me those two old pictures of her, or even the newer one my father had taken. She never did recover from her Holocaust experience and from the loss of her family. And she never really adjusted well to life in America.
Katia, Ida and Rebecca Merkin, at Ida's apartment in New York City. Date unknown.
