Lilacs for Aunt Rose

From the old country, one thing lives on.

By Debra Sue Poneman

Illustration by Susan Drucker

My Aunt Rose was born in 1898 in the Ukrainian town of Sasov. She was the first of six children born to Louis and Bessie Halperin. As the story goes, although the first four children were all born in the same house, because of the ever-changing borders prior to World War I, Aunt Rose and Aunt Betty were born in Austria and Aunt Ruth and Uncle Leo were born in Poland.

When my aunts, now all in their 80s or 90s or deceased, used to talk about Sasov, they didn’t usually talk about how hard it was for them to be Jews in a country where Jews could be killed by the Cossacks over a business deal or for glancing in the wrong direction. I learned from others about a boy next door who, heading off to America with his parents and three sisters, was sent back for a forgotten item—only to be killed by the Cossacks who were already ransacking his home. No, my aunts always talked about the beauty of their town: the sounds and smells of the busy marketplace, the lake that was covered with water lilies, and, most of all, the lilacs.

According to Aunt Rose, Sasov was full of lilacs. She said there were so many lilacs that, when they were blooming, you could smell them before you even reached the town. She said that people came from all over the region to see the lilacs in Sasov.

In 1902, when Aunt Rose was three, Grandma Bessie and Grandpa Lou moved with her family to New York. Grandma Bessie didn’t want to go and cried from the day she left. She didn’t want to leave her mother. She didn’t want to live surrounded by concrete. Most of all, she didn’t want to leave the beauty of Sasov—and the lilacs. Once in New York, she could not stop grieving for her home. So, despite the threat that faced them, the family returned to Sasov and stayed there for the next ten years.

My Aunt Rose always said that she remembered how, when they returned home, their house was filled with lilacs, and everyone was waiting for them, holding bouquets of lilacs. But the situation there grew every more dangerous, so in 1913, the family—now with four children—returned to America. This time they went to a place called Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which, they’d been told, looked a lot more like Sasov than New York. Aunt Rose said that Milwaukee was nothing like Sasov, but she didn’t have time to think about it. The family lived behind a butcher shop, and she worked long hours in an overall factory. Grandma took care of her six children—and a local blind man who had no relatives. Grandpa, a respected scholar in Sasov, peddled junk to support his family. When they finally were able to move into a small home in the Ukrainian area of Milwaukee, the first thing Grandma did was plant a lilac bush.

Aunt Rose is dead now. And although Sasov is probably still brimming with lilacs, there are no Jews left in the town. The 1,500 Jews still there in 1941 when the Germans occupied the little town were all deported to the Belzec death camp, where they perished. After the war, the Jewish community was never reestablished.

The six children of Louis and Bessie Halperin had ten children of their own, along with 15 grandchildren and many great-grandchildren. Last year for the first time, we had a family reunion. Many of us hadn’t seen each other since we were young or had never met. We only had one day together, but on that day it was fascinating to discover the man diverse paths we had taken. We were doctors, lawyers, educators, activists, businessmen and –women, and moms at home. We lived in every corner of the country. We had diverse passions and diverse political views.

But as our day drew to a close, we discovered, much to our amazement, that there was one similarity that every one of us shared. All of us, every last one, grew lilacs.

This story came from GreenPrints #61, Spring, 2005.

To see the rest of GreenPrints #61,

click here.