It is not unusual for grandparents to kvell when their grandchildren reach rites of passage-birthdays, b'nai mitzvot, and weddings, for instance. But how often do grandparents have an opportunity to kvell while getting to experience a rite of passage alongside their grandchildren?
This past May, longtime Skokie resident Faye Levinson and two of her grandchildren, Josh and Adam Goldfeder-two-thirds of a set of triplets-enjoyed commencement together at Yeshiva University (YU). While Grandma Faye received her master's degree from the school's Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the young men earned their bachelor's degrees from its Syms School of Business.
"Josh and Adam told me that they weren't even planning to attend their graduation, but when I told them I'd be there, they decided that they'd participate," said Levinson, who observed that, while this happy confluence of events was not planned, it was a long time in coming.
Levinson has worked in Holocaust education for many years. The daughter of Holocaust survivors, she has been involved in Second Generation activities, working tirelessly with peers to educate younger generations about the horrors of the Shoah. This work includes being a veteran docent at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center.
She was born in 1947 in the Zeilsheim Displaced Persons Camp, near Frankfurt, Germany. Her parents, Perla Bless Grunbart and George Grunbart, both came from Hasidic families in Lodz, Poland. They survived the Lodz Ghetto, as well as multiple concentration and death camps, including Dachau and Auschwitz. They were among the few in their families to survive; Perla had several uncles and an aunt who survived, but George was the sole survivor in his family. They had not known each other before the war-Lodz was a large city, with one of the biggest Jewish populations in Europe before World War II-but were introduced to each other in the DP camp by mutual friends.
In 1951, Perla was pregnant with the family's middle daughter when the family moved to Forest Hills, Queens, in New York City. The area had a tightknit enclave of Holocaust survivors, particularly those from the Zeilsheim DP camp. George worked in real estate, and Perla kept a traditional Jewish household, which, by the early 1960s, included a third daughter.
Levinson said that she did not recall her time at Zeilsheim, and that her parents took a "middle ground" in sharing their wartime experiences with their children-not too tight-lipped, not too open. Curious about her family, she said she learned the most when her parents "got together with their survivor friends…I would be sitting at the table. I wouldn't speak. We were there just to listen."
Levinson earned her bachelor's degree at New York's Hunter College in 1969. After working in a variety of professions, including teaching, and raising a family, she moved to the Chicago area in the mid-1980s. During this time, her interest in Holocaust history continued unabated. When her husband noticed, a few years back, that YU had recently started a master's program in Holocaust studies, "he said to me, 'This is just up your alley,'" Levinson recounted.
Dr. Shay Plinik, the director of YU's Fish Center, noted that Levinson was "passionate" about her studies. She is a "role model," he said, and "a trailblazer for future Holocaust museum docents."
"Our family is extremely proud of her," Josh said, adding that her accomplishment is "extremely meaningful to us. A lot of our family was murdered, [and she] is keeping them alive" through her work.
Levinson said it was a powerful experience for two generations of her immediate family to participate in the same graduation. "Our family's story is rooted in Jewish resilience, education, and continuity," she said.
Robert Nagler Miller is a journalist and editor who writes frequently about arts- and Jewish-related topics from his home in New York.
