My name is Abigail Schoenberg, and Rabbi Leah Abrams gave me your email. I’m looking for information about my late grandmother, who came to the US in 1939. Her name was Ruth Goldman, and she was born in Germany in 1934. While we know her parents died at Auschwitz (here’s their record in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database), their birthplaces/residences aren’t listed.
Rabbi Abrams suggested my grandmother might have been part of American Kindertransport, and thought you might have some ideas on research I could do to find out more about her history (I’m particularly interested in finding out what town she was from and if she had other relatives). If you have time to give me any pointers, I would really appreciate it!
Thanks so much,
Abigail Schoenberg
The next day, Jane and I and half a dozen others wound up touring the Hadwen House, a Greek Revival built by a whaling merchant in 1846.
We were doing this because Jane had showed an extreme amountof interest when Pranav started talking about the house, and now we were stuck here, me and Jane and Stella and Lexi and the rest (Sydney, Pranav’sactualgirlfriend, had passed). We drifted about the rooms, looking at paintings and ceramics and miniature ships. Occasionally I would get sucked in (Ilovedminiature ships! And learning about an all-Black whaling crew during Nantucket’s whaling heyday was pretty cool).
Unfortunately, I kept thinking about other things.
Like O’ma.
And the necklace.
And what the hell I was going to do about this horrible, terrible, no-good crush on Noah Barbanel.
I knew the difference between casually liking someone versus diving into love. I had no interest in the latter. When I’d fallen for Matt, it’d been slow and easy: he’d asked me out and eventually we’d kissed and I’d thought,Oh. I like this boy.I’d never been madly passionate about him, never obsessed. Even so, breaking up had almost ruined me.
How much worse would it be to break up with someone you were crazy about? If your feelings for them eclipsed the whole world? Letting other people affect your feelings wasdangerous. They could spin you around and around, and sometimes when you started spinning, you ended up places you shouldn’t have gone.
Noah was going to college next year, not to mention our grandparents’ complicated history. He didn’t just have strings attached; he was wrapped up tighter than a kitten’s ball of yarn. I wasn’t a fool. I wasn’t going to fall for him, because it wouldn’t work, and I’d end up smashed to smithereens on the rocky bottom of a bad metaphor.
“This has to end,” Jane said, staring longingly at Pranav’s butt.
“Agreed,” I said fiercely. “What about Mason? Text him back. Go on a date.”
She made a face. “Our texting’s so bland.”
“Maybe he’s better in person.”
“Then why didn’t he talk to me at the concert?”
“He might be shy! Give him a second chance. Suggest ice cream. Then at least if all else fails, you get to eat ice cream.” Much easier to take risks on someone else’s behalf.
Pranav drifted over. “What are you guys whispering about?”
“Abby’s love life,” Jane lied smoothly.
Traitor.“We are not!”
“Oh?” Pranav said. “What about it?’
“She’s going on a date with Tyler Nelson on Monday.”
I scowled at my roommate as the rest of the group wandered over just in time to hear Jane’s remark. Evan cocked his head. “I thought you were into Barbanel.”
“Do we have to talk about this?” I said plaintively.
“It’s easier to go after guys you’re not as into,” Jane said. “Rejection doesn’t hurt as much.”
Maybe she had a point. Going out with Tyler seemed easy, while the idea of owning up to how much I liked Noah made me want to throw up. Only I wished Jane wouldn’t usemystory to illustrate her emotions, thank you very much. “Can wepleasetalk about something else?”
“Did you know,” Lexi said, leaning into Stella, “a whale’s limbic systems—the part of the brain used to process emotions—is more advanced than a human’s? So whales can feel more deeply than humans. Imagine if your best friends were being murdered and you wereeven sadderthan humanly comprehendible. That’s how whales probably felt when Nantucket whalers were hunting then.”
We all stared at her.
