Freddi Tachman Carlip
February 4, 1942,
Laydy, Belarus
21 Shulrickters
My Bubbie’s family
Murdered at the hands
Of Hitler’s henchmen
The blood of my family
Spilled senselessly
Because they were Jews
21 names
Inscribed
At Yad Vashem
In Israel
The memorial to the Holocaust
The six million
Never forget!
Never forget…
The best journeys
Sometimes
Go backwards
The best journeys
Stir emotions
The best journeys
Wrap us in the past
And remind us
Of our beginnings
Of our roots
Our families
Forever gone
Forever in our hearts
A chocolate soda
At Simon’s
Watching the bottles at Franks
Being filled
With luscious soda
Orange, Vishniak, Ginger Ale
Breakfast at Allen’s
A South Philly Restaurette
Down the street from Mt Sinai
Where I was born
Allen’s is gone
The hospital still there
Looking smaller
Than I remember
When I was a candy striper
Having wheelchair races with Harriet and Faith
And Bobby Rydell’s cousin Anna
And Cross St
Bubbie Cohen
Her soothing voice
Singing Yiddish lullabyes
Joe the barber
Lemon water ice
The Moore St fire
The pushcarts
Shopping on 7th Street
The Shul where Zayde Tachman
Walked every day to daven
Women in the balcony
Children everywhere
Visions of swaying men
My Zayde
Chanting the prayers
Wrapped in their tallises
And the joy my Zayde felt
When I was with him
His ainicle
His shayne maidele
The chicken soup
The “water-melone”
The Parade on New Year’s Day
On Broad St
And on Second St
To go back after all these years
To relive
To recapture
What is gone
What lives only in memories
There’s
The little girl
Me…
Scampering after Cousin Saul
In the park on 4th St
There’s Daddy and Uncle Schpitz
Keeping an eye on us
Smoking and talking
There’s the 4th St trolley
Clanging its way on the tracks
My personal transportation
To Center City
Look…
There’s Zayde Tachman
Sitting on the bench
By the house he shares with Aunt Eva and Uncle Sam
Our apartment…two-doors down
Saul’s…around the corner
Bubbie Cohen’s
Two blocks away
Family…
Always close by
Caring for each other
Generation after generation
When did I become the Matriarch?
When did I become “Bubbie”?
The one with the stories
The photographs
The memories
The ache in my heart
Grows deeper
Each year
For my parents
My grandparents
My aunts and uncles
The Tachmans, the Tragers
The Kreevashevs, the Shulrickters
The ache grows deeper yet
For the 21 family members
Of blessed memory
The ones I never knew
I keep all their memories alive
For me
For my children
Michael and Marcy
For my grandchildren
Shaymus and Zoe
My shayne yingeles, shayne maideles
The tears flow
As I write
And remember…
4th Street
Cross Street
The 21
And the little girl
Who will live inside of me
Forever
Freddi Tachman Carlip is a native of Philadelphia and now lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
This brought tears, Freddi. Thank you for sharing.
Oh my! Tears! Beautiful and very emotional! You write so well…I feel like I can hear you skipping down the street and so much more. Thank you so much! As we get older, we all hang on to these priceless memories.