Author Archives: jmarmorstein

In the Spring of 2020, during the first months of Covid times, Yom HaShoah, the Jewish Holocaust memorial day, began at sundown on April 20th.  April 20th, 2020 was also the 75th anniversary of the Allied bombing of the German town of Memmingen.  For most, this coincidence was nothing but random trivia, but for me,Continue reading “20 April 2020 Yom HaShoah”

About a third of Pompeii has yet to be excavated; the consensus among scholars is that this remainder should be left for future archeologists, and their presumably more sophisticated technologies.   –Rebecca Mead, “Pompeii Still Has Buried Secrets” 11/22/21 New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/29/pompeii-still-has-buried-secrets Picking through the Wreckage When I used to think about the treasures hidden awayContinue reading “Archeology of the Future”

Like many children of boomers, my sister and I faced the formidable challenge of cleaning and selling our parents’ suburban house.  My parents hoarding had been unchecked for decades and had taken over most of the rooms in their four bedroom colonial.  Given the complexities of my mother’s medical situation, one entire bedroom functioned asContinue reading “The Origins in the Attic”

My father’s hospital gown gaped over his broken back.  He sat on the paper rolled out over the vinyl examining table, bent over and twisted at once, as if he was carrying an enormous burden on his shoulders and simultaneously turning away from a gale force wind.  The gown’s fabric stretched and pulled underneath him;Continue reading “Exactly How Life Works”

Max Marmorstein’s story was truly larger than life.  Max never cut a heroic figure, but he also seemed to make an impression: one society columnist called him “a hail fellow-well-met,” and another described him as “truly distinctive” and a “squatty fellow.”  He could kindly be called round, with high-waisted pants, a stiff smile, and aContinue reading ““Known Gangsters”: Max’s Story”

I’ll never get to tell my father that I found that village where his father grew up.  His father—Jack Marmorstein, my grandfather, my namesake—left there in 1920 and never looked back.   Jack and his brothers and sisters never spoke of the place, leading their children to doubt its very existence.  “It was a tinyContinue reading “Középlak”

More than three years passed from the time when I heard about Középlak in Tsfat in 2016 to when I set foot there in the end of 2019.  Now that I had heard about “Of Marmorstein,” I was determined to return as soon as possible.  It was land that my family had owned in myContinue reading “Marmorstein’s in Hungary”

From 1940, my grandfather in New Jersey didn’t hear from his family in Germany until more than ten months after the war ended.  The letter he eventually received must have exceeded his worst fears. Even before reading it, he must have sensed the desperate times.  It’s a single page, on paper so thin that itContinue reading “Memmingen: 20 April 1945”

Left with only Martin’s words and my father’s email recollections, I wondered if there was more to learn about Karl.  When I visited Martin again in 2016, I asked more questions and he repeated his belief that Karl had been in the SS.  He also spoke vaguely about Karl’s retrograde misogyny and nationalism, mentioning avuncularContinue reading “Karl’s File”