“Secrets of Washington Heights: Richard Kalfus Uncovers Hidden Stories of His Past”
So it is when I reach into my Holocaust past.,
marked forever by these events.
Nowhere is this more evident
than in Washington Heights,
Manhattan’s upper west side neighborhood
where the largest number of German Jewish Holocaust
survivors in America lived and tried to rebuild their lives.
But never forgetting the loved ones left behind as
a painful testament to the guilt that hovers over them
by their very act of survival
I have returned to Washington heights
to the Washington Height’s streets of 22 years ago.
I marvel again at the beauty of Fort Tryon Park
which majestically overlooks the splendid Hudson River.
I hear German accented English, even Yiddish and again,
as in my childhood, am struck by the humor of many New York Jews,
mixing Americanisms with German regionalism.
(The Manheim German is so very different from that of the Berliner)
I see 80 year-old Mrs. Dingfelder from a small Black Forest farm
village,
sitting, in in a lawn chair, in front of her 6th floor apartment
building, quite lost.
(memories of the trauma of the past or simply old age?)
I hear ghetto blasters in front of her, as if they were not attached
to the new
Spanish speaking resident passers-bye.
There goes Mr. Marks entering the kosher bakery.
I need not go inside to know what he is ordering:
the family’s braided Chale for the Sabbath.
I continue to be touched by Mr. Simon walking to Saturday services,
without money and with his apartment keys hanging from his belt.
