The Trip begins to take shape

It seems I do small steps to accomplish this goal as the concept at times seems overwhelming. I am communicating with a genealogist in Krakow, who seems not to understand me or to distain my shallow level of interest. I don't know, but I don't get a clear vision of traveling with him. So I contacted another but I think he is in Ukraine, Lviv, not Krakow. We will see.

Austin is enthused. I showed him the letters and post cards yesterday. He was remarking on the postage stamps with Hitler's face and we discovered that Uncle Wolf was executed in Auschwitz. I had planned to spare him that visit, but now we will go. I chickened out of Birkenau last time. This year I will go and to the archives to see what we can discover. I thought he was murdered in Bergen Belsen.

So far, we will fly to Frankfurt on United, as I have enough miles for one ticket. I wrote to Renate who will be in town when we are there, the third week in July. We will see the apartment and the Stolperstein and visit the Jewish Museum which was being renovated when I was there last time and the the wall Mauer, where Grandpa Salomon's name is engraved alongside 11,000 other people from Frankfurt who were murdered by the Nazis.

Next, we'll fly to Krakow, visit Auschwitz, try to find the house where Uncle Marcus Spira lived when Grandma Rosa came to him in 1938 after she was deported to Zabozyn. We might take the train to Premsyl, then have the guide meet us there and take us south through the small towns. Maybe I'll find a rental car and do it ourselves. The problem is the alphabet. If we cant read the signs, we're better off with a guide.

From Krakow, we leave for Zagreb directly by plane or half way to Vienna and then rent a car to drive to Zagreb. Most of the cars have manual transmission and no air conditioning, so I'll probably splurge and rent a Mercedes, so I can participate in the driving. I can now see why my grandfather went to Zagreb. It is south of Vienna and the Nazis were not there yet. Unfortunately, a band of Ustazis formed the government of Croatia, breaking off from Yugoslavia just then and they were virulent Jew haters. It was they, not the Nazis who shot my grandfather.

Then we fly to Frankfurt, stay overnight in the airport hotel and fly home to New York where we will take a day to rest before Austin goes back to Phoenix.

Progress January 19, 2019

Life moves on, sometimes in unexpecteed ways. Right, a cliche. But still. How often is it that I get bronchitis, go to urgent care, receive a prescription and the next day receive a call from the pulmonologist reminding me I have a yearly  scheduled appointment the next week.?
And how often does a woman I met at the Slo Walkers group share with me the name of another friend of hers who is also a child of Holocaust survivors?
Faye just phoned me. After discussing her heritage, she described a trip she took in 2006 with her adult children to Ukraine to research her parents' history. She provided the name of the researcher who assisted her. Alex Dunai, but when I went to his website, Google warned me off with many pages of warnings not to connect any further.
I wrote to Faye, asking if she has his email address and I friend requested him  on Facebook. We shall see what develops.
I attended a book group at the Cutler Plotkin Jewish Heritage Center last night because Nancy Siefer was leading the discussion and I respect and admire her from book group discussions at Temple Emanuel many years ago. The book is Rose Tremain's The Gustav Sonata..I haven't read it, but to me, after listening to twenty folks reporting on it, I felt it describes anti-Semitism before the war, subtle but omnipresent, an active second movement awareness of this time Swiss anti-Semitism during the war when they are asked to admit refugees escaping from parts held by the Nazis, and the final movement, called return, suggesting life returns to the more subtle non-inclusion of Jews as it was before. I could be all wrong, but my idea fits with what I know about Switzerland and how they related to my family.
Larry Bell runs the AZJHC and Nancy suggested we speak about my book and the possibility of presenting it there. I will drive down now to deliver him two copies and a membership application to join the Center.