the red hook
STAR REVUE
POLITICS: Why I am writing-in Miriam Tyrk for City Council
481 Van Brunt Street, 11AR Brooklyn, NY 11231 (917) 652-9128 www.star-revue.com george@redhookstar.com
Editor & Publisher George Fiala News
Nathan Weiser Brian Abate Katherine Rivard
Features
Kelsey Sobel
Culture
Roderick Thomas
Overseas man
Dario Muccilli
Insights
Joe Enright
Music
Kurt Gottschalk
Jazz
George Grella
Film
Dante A. Ciampaglia
Books
Michael Quinn
Cartoons
Marc Jackson Sophie Furman
WebMaster
Tariq Manon
Kids Editor
Marie Hueston
Design
George Fiala
Ad Sales
Liz Galvin
Merry Band of Contributors Matt Graber Howard Graubard Nino Pantano Samantha Goldfarb
“Best Community Publication”
FOR EDITORIAL, ADVERTISING OR EMPLOYMENT INQUIRIES, email gbrook@pipeline.com
The Red Hook Star-Revue is published every month. Founded June 2010 by George Fiala and Frank Galeano
by Howard Graubard
Part One: The Person I Most Admire.
B
ack when The Great Trumpkin first descended the escalator, we were visiting Grandma Miriama at her house in the Slope, at first, she softly growled in gradually ascending volume and then she spat out, “I know his type well; I remember when they marched into Poland.”
Miriam recalled “The Prime Minister announced we were ready to fight the Germans. Two days later they marched into town without firing a shot.” Once time, just before my son was leaving for his summer of Reform Jewish recreation in the Berkshires, he asked “Bubbe, did you ever go to camp?” and she said, “no we had an attic.” Later she told me ‘they called it an attic; the Franks had a attic; we had a little space.” Mostly she occupied herself by keeping her only companion, a younger cousin, from crying. Most of her family was killed (“my sister was 11, she never saw 12”). As a bar mitzvah project, my son did visits with Holocaust survivors; a gentleman we visited in Sheepshead Bay proved more responsive in Polish and Yiddish than English and my wife decided to bring Miriam on the next visit. “Where were you?” the gentleman, a former resident of Auschwitz asked. “I was in hiding,” said Miriam. “Hiding?” said the man, “you had it good” “Good,” said Miriam, “at least in the camp you got to see people; you had a social life.” After liberation, some Jews left Poland as soon as they could; like many other Jews, her cousin eventually left for Israel; others returned to their towns, where the Poles who had taken over
their property often greeted them with pogroms. Many more got the message and left. Miriam’s husband never got the message, even after 1968, when Jews were expelled from the party, and their government jobs. “How can I leave?” said her husband,
But mostly she watched CNN. She stopped going to survivor events when she found them too full of Trump followers. “They want to complain about blacks; I told them a black man didn’t kill my mother.” Hershel “I have the keys to the cemetery; who will let the Bobov in when they come to mourn at the Rebbe’s grave?” Communism left opportunities for those so inclined; Hershel, the town’s only capitalist, opened a shoe store (known as “The Jew Store”) but mostly, between bouts of prison, he ran the local black market. Once, they interviewed Miriam on television to counter the notion that Poles were anti-Semites. They asked her if it was true that Poles had saved her life. She said “it Is true that Poles saved my life; it is also true that they informed upon my mother.”
One daughter visited New York in 79, and overstayed her visa, applying for political asylum. After her husband died, Miriam left in 83, with her other two daughters, and sought asylum while staying in a shelter for refugees in Vienna. Their house was sold at a discount to an American priest, who promised to bring them back them their money later (and mostly did). They snuck out through Slovenia. The train was delayed and they had to sell their umbrella for some food money. Six months later, they finally arrived in New York. Her son and a grandchild arrived years later. After a bout with breast cancer, Miriam sat at home and leaned English watching soap operas and becoming a voracious reader. She eventually got a job in a Chasidic owned Williamsburg drug store, where most of her conversations took place in Yiddish. She worked there until she was 89. Her family is like something preserved only in amber, a fantasy version of what postwar Eastern European Jewish intelligentsia would be like, if only it had been allowed to exist. I call them “The Rootless Cosmopolitans.” Almost exactly two months after 9/11, on her first date with a ne’er do well political operative, Miriam’s youngest daughter was told, “I have no money and I live over a funeral home.” She thought he was joking and she laughed. She responded “My life’s ambition is to sit home all day and read Proust.” He thought she was joking, and he married her. That he would be me. Anyway, to Miriam’s distress, Trump won. “Mr. Graubard, what are we going to do now?” (continued on page 13)
with thanks to my folks
Page 2 Red Hook Star-Revue
www.star-revue.com
November 2023
