Maurice Chandler - October 3, 1993
Mementos of Family II
How did you get this picture?
I kept that--I think I kept this hidden all those years.
This is of the other one.
Yeah.
No pictures of David?
That little boy was such a darling with long blonde curls. It just--and the things that I did--I sent them when I was uh, outside--I, I made up parcels of potatoes and I mailed them to the ghetto in Warsaw when they were still accepting parcels. And I made it into a Polish name, because they would not accept parcels to Jews. So what I did, with my uncle's name was Yankel, so I cut off the kl--el, and made it Young, and as my mother's maiden name, you know, who was, was my uncle's name, was Skalka, so that's Polish. So I addressed it to "Young Skalka" and they accepted it. And my mother used to write me up until--oh, the beginning of '42, I still got letters from the ghetto she would write me. She says my little brother stands at the window everyday looking out. When he sees the postman coming, how he dances from joy that we're sending him--that my brother's sending the potatoes and how, "Oh my God, it's..." she says, "whatever you doing," she says--this is already here in America. But, that's my whole thing--that's all I have. My whole family and down to the two pictures.
The one that may be of your father?
Maybe. I keep studying that picture and I study it, and I study it--I can't make up my mind that it resembles--it's close, it's close enough to the--and here's somebody else gave me a picture of a, of--I remember her. This girl she was raised in our home. She was an orphan. She was my mother's niece. Her name was Esther.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn