Happy New Year 2020! On this blog I have often posted excerpts from my dad's story "In His Own Words."
Sometime in the late 1990's, my dad completed writing his memoir, more than 150 pages handwritten in pencil. When he first handed me his manuscript, he watched as I inspected it. One of the entries in his Table of Contents was "experience". I turned to the page and began reading. I was not expecting that "experience" referred to his first sexual experience, his visit to a brothel!
I knew I needed to preserve his story, electronically on my computer. So I began the process of transcribing and entering his words into Word Perfect. I did some wordsmithing and editing to tweak his English. In one chapter he describes the increasingly threatening conditions in Paris 1942 as "titanium". It took me a while to realize he was referring to the state of chaos, or "pandemonium."
To this day I refer back to details in his story to help me track our family tree. My dad diligently detailed names of cousins, their occupations, locations in Poland, street addresses in Paris. The street addresses were a key clue in connecting a name in a database as a cousin.
My dad wrote that cousins Albert and Maurice Binstock moved into his parents' apartment on Rue Fessart. For many years I tried to track down these two cousins in documents online. During my 2011 visit to the USHMM research floor I copied all ITS records for Binstock of Bedzin or Paris. Finally I discovered a Mordka Binstock with the same address listed for Rue Fessart & immediately I knew I had found my "Maurice." It wasn't till 2014 that I connected with his living descendant, Remy, through Twitter.
I could write an entire miniseries just from the stories that were
passed down. The survivor witnesses, each with their own unique story of
survival: my mom, my aunts, my uncle, my cousins.
My next step is to get my dad's story published in a book, to share with the world. My dad would want his name as the writer. I can put my name as editor. Not sure how to begin the process.
