Out of the Shoebox Read online

  Chortkow, 11 Oct 1932

  To: The Hebrew Technion, Haifa

  Enclosed is the sum of IL 15 + 500 Israeli mil, guarantee and expenses as requested. It is impossible to get liras here so I am forced to send dollars at today’s [exchange] rate of $3.46 . I shall gladly reimburse you for any unforeseen expenses upon my arrival.

  Kindly expedite the issuance of my visa, so that I don’t miss the 1.1.1933 deadline and don’t miss a year’s study.

  Kindly confirm receipt of the money.

  My name: Salmon Hersz Finkelman

  Born: 24 March 1908

  Parents’ names: Izak Finkelman, Ryfka Finkelman, Drucker

  Enclosed are a personal certificate and $54

  With greetings to Zion S.Z. Finkelman

  Father’s letter with the cash got delayed in the mail, and on Oct 10, 1932 the Technion wrote: “This is to inform you that your letter of acceptance as a student has already been mailed. Since to date we have not received the deposit, we could not submit your papers for a visa and you will therefore not be able to study in the academic year 1932/33. As for your intent to come to Israel as a tourist, we cannot advise you.” I can just imagine what went through my father’s mind at the receipt of this letter. The drama at his home must have continued for about a week until, 8 days later, another letter from the Technion arrived, confirming receipt of the money. Nonetheless, the Technion reiterates that time is short, and my father may not be able to start his studies as planned and may have to postpone his arrival by a year. That same day, Oct 28, 1932, the director of the Technion wrote to the British Mandate’s head of the Department of Immigration & Travel in Haifa, with an urgent request to issue a student visa for my father.

  A month later the longed-for visa confirmation reached the Technion, which in turn gave my father the good news by registered mail: “We hereby send you a certificate with which you can receive the visa to Palestine from the British Consul in Warsaw. Please inform us directly when you expect to leave, so that we may determine whether you’ll be able to begin your studies this year or only in 1933-34.

  My father arrived in Haifa on Dec 26th 1932, and the next morning presented himself at the Technion and signed all enrollment and declaration forms required by the British Mandate authorities. He completed his mission in time: immigrated legally in 1932, five days before the year's end.

  Ada gave me my father’s file, comprising all of two sheets of cardboard. One had my father’s personal details, and the list of subjects and grades for the four years of study.

  Clearly, nothing was ever entered on this page. Which – as Ada pointed out – indicated he never studied after being accepted. The other sheet showed the tuition and payments made, and is proof that my father made the first three payments, totaling 12 lira and 300 mil of the IL18 he was to pay for the first year. In other words, my father indeed did not study at the Technion, but used his enrollment as a legal way to make aliya.

  The declaration my father signed at the Technion on 27 December 1932:

  DECLARATION

  I, Shlomo Zvi Finkelman, upon receiving permission to enter the country as a student of the Hebrew Technion in Haifa, herewith deposit with the Hebrew Technion in Haifa the sum of fifteen lira as guarantee that should I wish to leave the country within four years of my arrival, I shall do so immediately at my own expense; otherwise the Hebrew Technion in Haifa shall be permitted to use the sum of 15 lira towards the expense of returning me to my country of origin. In such a case the Technion will not have to account for its expenses for my return, based on the permission hereby given to it.

  In addition, I agree to leave Israel as soon as I remain without funds or should I become a burden to the public during those four years, and in case I fail to do so I agree that the Hebrew Technion of Haifa shall make all arrangements it deems fit to return me forthwith to my country of origin.

  Signed: _______________ [S. Zvi Finkelman]

  Haifa, 27/12/32

  Witness _______________

  Address: The Technion Business or Position

  Witness: ______________

  Address: ___________ Business or Position

  There was one more envelope left. With two letters inside. An accompanying note and a declaration the Technion demanded. For some reason my father had forgotten to mail it together with the deposit. When he realized, thirteen days later, he hastened to mail the declaration with the following note:

  “I attach the declaration which I forgot to mail previously. Please be informed that all my papers are now in order. Kindly try to send me the visa as soon as possible so that I may come before 1.1.1933. I remain, respectfully, S.Z. Finkelman.”

  I carefully detached the declaration from the top page, looked at it, and must have gone pale. Ada asked me with concern: “What’s wrong? What did you see?” My expression must have given me away. It took a few moments before I got my breathing under control. “Mordechai Liebman and Shmuel Meiselman signed this page,” I mumbled. “I don’t understand,” she replied, “Who’s Mordechai Liebman? Who’s Shmuel Meiselman?” “Don’t you see? I was looking for my father’s address in Haifa, and found proof that Mordechai Liebman was his friend.” Ada looked at me, still confused. “I’ll explain. I know it sounds strange and maybe illogical, but I found what I was looking for. Weird thing is, I wasn’t even looking here for proof of a connection between Mordechai and my father. There was no logical reason to look here. You know, when I came to see the documents you found, I prayed that they’d contain info on my father’s places of residence. Only here did I find out that he never studied at the Technion, which is why there was no address on record. But I did find his parents’ address in Chortkow; and even more significant was the discovery of proof that Mordechai Liebman was a close friend, since he wouldn’t have signed that declaration otherwise.” This was probably the last testimony a man named Mordechai Liebman left, before being murdered in the Holocaust. There isn’t even a testimonial page for him at Yad Vashem; but here he exists. After calming down, I gave Ada a brief version of the story of the lot and the partnership between my father and Mordechai Liebman.

  Stranger yet was the fact that the Technion apparently had no need for that declaration and didn’t use it, which is why they didn’t bother informing my father that he hadn’t mailed it. Only when Father finally came to the Technion was he required to sign the original declaration. The enrollment forms must have mentioned that he would be required to sign such a statement, and in his eagerness my father construed that to mean that it must be done immediately.

  Thanks to that mistake I found proof of the connection between my father and Mordechai. The second witness, Shmuel Meiselman, brother of Asher Meiselman, was Father’s friend from Betar – which I knew about. The connection between the three – Mordechai, Shmuel, and Shlomo Zvi – explained Mordechai’s photo appearing on the Meiselman family memorial page on the Chortkow website. I felt that the pieces of the puzzle were beginning to fall into place.

  I came back from the Technion holding a treasure; I’d received the folder with my father’s original documents.

  It was an amazing feeling. As soon as I reached the office I showed my partners the letters, so proud of my dad’s beautiful Hebrew and penmanship. You couldn’t tell from his handwriting that Hebrew wasn’t his mother tongue; it looked well practiced, without any corrections or erasures. The writing, done with a fountain pen, was fluent, without those typical dots which occur when a fountain-pen user stops or hesitates.

  With immense pride I showed my partners the school transcripts, as if the grades on those Vienna documents were my own, and the stylized handwriting was mine.

  The declaration with the signature of witnesses Mordechai Liebman and Shmuel Meiselman

  DECLARATION

  I, S. Z. Finkelman, wish to gain permission to enter the country as a student of the Hebrew Technion in Haifa, herewith deposit with the Hebrew Technion in Haifa the sum of fifteen IL as guarantee that should I wish to
leave the country within four years of my arrival, I shall do so immediately at my own expense; otherwise the Hebrew Technion in Haifa shall be permitted to use the sum of 15 lira towards the expense of returning me to my country of origin. In such a case the Technion will not have to account for its expenses for my return, based on the permission hereby given to it.

  In addition, I agree to leave Israel as soon as I remain without funds or should I become a burden to the public during those four years, and in case I fail to do so I agree that the Hebrew Technion of Haifa shall make all arrangements it deems necessary to return me forthwith to my country of origin.

  Signed by me in the presence of:

  Witness signature: ( - ) [Mordechai Liebman]

  Witness signature: ( - ) [Shmuel Meiselman]

  ( - ) S.Z. Finkelman

  Chortkow, 24/X/32

  “You’ve got to write this story… this is an unusual development and this is only the beginning,” said Hanan, my partner. “There’s potential here for a fascinating story.”

  “I’m not sure it’s of interest to anyone but me, but I’ll think about it,” I answered out of politeness, but I actually smiled to myself; the idea appealed to me. All that’s needed is for events to continue to unfold, so as to add volume to the story, I thought to myself, as I continued to elaborate on the fantasy.

  That week I asked my sister to do a thorough search at her home to see if she could find any other letters or documents relating to our parents that could shed light on their early years in Palestine. She didn’t come up with anything new, but gave me the few documents she did have, including our mother's memoirs written over 15 years before I embarked on this quest.

  It happened one Saturday morning, around 5:30 a.m. I woke up with a start, soaked in sweat, both body and sheets. For a moment I thought I must’ve peed in my sleep, but within seconds it all came back to me with incredible clarity: my father appeared to me in my dream. I can’t help chuckling as I write, the last sentence sounds to me like something out of a folk tale. But I actually did dream about my father.

  I dreamed that I was lying in bed, and Father suddenly appeared. He stood by my bed, looking at me from above. He looked far younger than I remembered him – perhaps 35 or 40. A little like the photos in the family album I made many years ago, from the photos my mom had kept. I’d gotten used to the fact that Father kept looking younger over the years, particularly in the picture my mother had framed after his sudden death; a picture that hung on the wall over her bed all those years. As time went by and I got older, he became younger, like the picture of Dorian Gray. He stood there and looked at me, and at Raya sleeping next to me, for a few moments. Then suddenly, before I even uttered a word, he took out a gray cardboard folder that contained architectural drafts and drawings, and began telling me about the design of the building: “See, we wanted to build an industrial plant. The structure was very simple, no decorative features. The main thing in the design was the north-facing windows. They gave the building its unique character. Like a box with saw-teeth over it. The windows were on the roof, you know – to let northern light into the building. Light rather than sun. Here in Israel the sun is very strong, too blinding; not like the soft sun in Europe. The windows were like a series of triangles on the roof; the triangle’s slope facing south, its vertical side facing north, repeated thirty times. The vertical side is glass and the slope is metal. That was the way to catch the light but not the sun. Direct sun is from the east and west; from the north we only get light. But you already know that we never built it – it didn’t work out. The lot remained empty all these years, nothing was ever built on it.”

  The drawings and sketches were clear and sharp, the way I remembered them from childhood. There was no doubt that I’d seen them in the far past. They looked nothing like modern architectural drawings. There were no trees, people or cars. You could only figure out the scale based on the size of the windows in the roof and the height of the doors at the front. The proportions were pleasing and the structure looked aesthetic despite its simplicity.

  Father’s voice was faint but very clear, as if he was ensuring that I understood every detail. “Don’t be surprised, that was my name: Salmon Hirsh Finkelman. That’s the name on official papers. But on drawings and plans I was always Shlomo Zvi Finkelman. That was my Israeli name, my name as an architect, my new name. I wanted to leave the old name behind.”

  Suddenly Father’s voice changed, became much louder, sounding like a reprimand. And indeed, he was scolding me: “I don’t understand how come all these years you neglected the money in the bank. You’re irresponsible! It’s unacceptable for the money to lie in the account unused, losing its value, and you people don’t care. Find it and take care of it.” Father’s voice continued to intensify, turning into unpleasant yelling, scolding me… and that’s when I woke up with a start, drenched in sweat. I lay in bed, trying to get my breathing back to normal. My heart was beating fast and loud, an unpleasant buzzing sound in my ears. I was panicking. For fifty-four years I hadn’t dreamt of my father. Not one dream. Some years I prayed that he’d appear to me in a dream, but it never happened. As a child I believed that if I succeeded in holding my breath for a very long time, he’d appear. I have no idea where I got that notion, but obviously it didn’t work. The only thing I got from those attempts were severe headaches. In this dream-state encounter we did not share a conversation. It was Father’s monologue. A monologue starting with a pleasant explanation and ending in a scolding.

  After my breathing returned to normal, the pounding of my heart and the buzzing in my ears calmed down, I quickly showered, while Raya slept soundly on, unaware of my distressing experience. I barely dried myself. Half-wet, I just grabbed a pair of shorts and the first available T-shirt from the wardrobe and put them on, quietly left the bedroom and went downstairs to the kitchen. I filled a tall glass with water and ice and gulped it down in an unsuccessful attempt to fight the dryness of my mouth and quench my thirst. I downed one glass after the other until my thirst and agitation abated. I acted automatically, without thinking or planning. Took out my laptop from its case, plugged it in, and while it was booting I smiled, thinking to myself: “I’m a good boy; I’m going to do exactly what Salomon Hirsh Finkelman asked me to do: find the money.” For the first time in my life I typed into Google the words “Salomon Hirsh Finkelman” (I actually made the mistake of writing Salomon instead of Salmon.) Many times in the past I’d conducted web searches of my father, but never using his European name. This was the first time, just as Father commanded in my dream. The search results loaded promptly. I was flabbergasted. At the top of the page, the very first result was a link to a Bank Leumi web page with the names of unclaimed funds: “Unclaimed Accounts and Safes”. I gasped. Still in a daze, for one moment I doubted that I’d really seen my father’s name in the search results, but within a split-second I was sure. I clicked the link and a web page opened to an alphabetical list of surnames beginning with the Hebrew letter peh (as in Finkelman). And there it was, in the center of the page: Hirsh Salmon Finkelman and Mali 35.92 lira. Father’s name, and the first letters of Mother’s name, Malia. Details serving as proof that I found

  the money, all within less than half an hour of waking up from the dream. I thought it strange that my father was the only one on that list of people with lost assets whose first names appeared before the last name, as if he wanted to make a point: I was here. Or maybe it was a message from an alternate reality. I have no problem accepting complex or weird dreams; but dreams that become reality within minutes are a bit difficult to digest.

  Google Results page, in Hebrew. My father’s name is marked

  It’s hard to make sense of how, after fifty-four quiet years, a stream of events related to Father suddenly occurs, with each carrying a kind of gift: an unknown lot, a small sum of money in a forsaken bank account; and – possibly most significant to me – the rare chance to peek into faraway lives about which I knew so little.


  By now it was seven a.m. I went back to the bedroom, changed into gym clothes and drove to my usual gym in nearby Pardessiya. I simply had to be physically active to get myself back to the present, and to my present-day self. Raya slept on serenely, as if nothing had taken place right next to her.

  Time at the gym flew by. An hour’s hard training passed, but I couldn’t let go of recent events. Why now? Why does the story of Father’s lot suddenly pop up, after seventy years? Why do I suddenly dream of Father, after fifty years, then within minutes find a forgotten bank account? Is Father pulling the strings, from another dimension? Have I been summoning these events with my thoughts, inviting them into existence? I had no answers. Not for a moment did I believe that something in my actions could bring about the weird, fascinating events that I have been experiencing. My general emotion was happiness; I was taking part in an amazing string of events; though I was somewhat bothered by the feeling of not being in control of the plot. I felt like an actor in someone else's play.