Goodbye, Grandma Rose
My grandmother was a truly remarkable woman.
Since this was printed in the Chicago Sun-Times, I will share the details with you, in reporter Gary Wisby's words:
Rose Kaplan was an Italian Jew who survived the World War II Nazi occupation to become an American war bride and, in the 1960s, a guide for Italians touring Chicago historic sites.
When German soldiers started rounding up Jews in Trieste, Italy, in 1943, 13-year-old[19-year-old] Rose and her family fled to the nearby village of Opicina. They took only a little money and the clothes they wore.
The family lived with a Catholic man who was sweet on Rose's older sister Mitzi, posing as his relatives. In January 1945, with their money and food exhausted, the girls' father, Leon Wandel, risked a trip back to Trieste and was never seen again.
On April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler's birthday, Allied bombers destroyed the building where the Wandels were living while the family -- alerted by air raid sirens -- huddled in a railway tunnel.
When the village was freed the following month, Rose's joy was tinged with disappointment.
"She wanted to be liberated by Americans or British soldiers," said her son, Daniel Kaplan. "Instead it was partisans from Yugoslavia. They hung the young Germans from lampposts, so she saw that part of the war, too."
Mrs. Kaplan, 81, died Saturday after suffering an aneurysm at the Lieberman Geriatric Health Centre in Skokie, where she had been living since March.
She met her husband, Nathan Kaplan, four months after the war ended. An American GI stationed in Italy, he had come to see the Jewish synagogue in Trieste. The Nazis had spared it, planning to convert it into a theater, and Rose Wandel was working there. "Nate came into the temple and saw her there, and it was love at first sight," said her sister, Paula Hefter.
After returning to his home in Chicago, Kaplan sent for her. They were married in 1947.
Kaplan was a salesman and a writer of Chicago history who belonged to the Merry Gangsters Literary Society, founded by Richard Lindberg. He also scripted bus tours for Italian tourists, with Mrs. Kaplan riding along as translator.
"I was on some of those, and when we would go by the hotel on South Michigan that was Al Capone's headquarters, [the tourists] would get up and start making machine gun noises," Daniel Kaplan said.
Troubled by severe arthritis and fibromyalgia in the last 20 years of her life, Mrs. Kaplan was active in the National Chronic Pain Outreach Association.
[Formal newspaper obituaries for my grandmother are available from the Chicago Sun Times and Chicago Tribune.]
My grandfather's cancer and subsequent death, over a decade ago, was one of the factors that brought Ian and I together. I regret Ian never had the chance to meet my grandfather, because the two of them are very similar men. [To get a glimpse of my grandfather, Marian Marzynski's documentary Shtetl (official site/PBS Frontline) was inspired by Grandpa's investigations into his family history; he's in the first third of the film.]
Until he could bring her to America, my grandfather wrote Grandma Rose daily love letters.
She arrived in America speaking not a word of English; of her wedding day, she recounts thinking to herself "I do - I do" so she'd know what to say when her turn came. My grandfather then taught her the language, and eventually helped bring her mother and sister to this country.
My grandparents were among the most gentle and loving and patient people I knew. During his eulogy, my uncle shared tributes he found by her fellow chronic pain sufferers regarding how helpful her words had been to them.
Grandma Rose was buried in a plot between my grandfather and her mother. I can't think of a more perfect place.
Grandma Rose, 1924 — 2006
Tell me about your childhood...
Repeating an old announcement, partly for benefit of the Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans.
Farah Mendlesohn is conducting a research questionaire on SF reading habits and early influences to provide material for a book.
She's closing down the survey at the end of this month, so if you haven't filled it out yet, I encourage you to do so.
She requests people:
- Go to http://sfquestions.blogspot.com/.
- Copy the questions to a file.
- Fill in.
- And then send her your results in the body of the email to sfquestions @ gmail.com. No attachments please.
Should be interesting...
"This is for posterity's sake, so be honest."
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