© Oliver B. Pollak
FRANKFURT, Germany — Flying in a jet for three hours or more, reading above the clouds, I encounter new and old ideas. I mark my books, take notes and write at 33,000 feet. Completely unmoored from landform and architecture, floating or hurtling at 560 to 615 miles per hour, is exhilarating.
Karen and I traveled with my younger sister Judy and my cousin and his wife on a roots trip from San Francisco to Frankfurt, Germany, and then to Austria. Twenty-one cousins will gather around Cologne, Eslohe, Meschede and Velmede. Our parents and grandparents left Germany in the 1930s or were murdered in the Holocaust.
We were picked up in a black SUV by Mohammed from Egypt. We three travelers were born in England and Canada.
Fellow travelers, well almost. My cousin’s wife was the last person to board the 777 at SFO. But where was my cousin? He created a six-decade career in tourism catering to the needs of visitors to San Francisco and booking people around the world. Believe it or not, especially to the consternation of his wife, a 21-year veteran of airline customer service, her husband of 50 years was not permitted to board the plane because his passport had too little time left on it. Hopefully he makes the evening flight to Frankfurt.
I asked Judy when we last traveled together. We went on a road trip with our parents in 1956 to Carmel, San Francisco, the Redwoods. She was 6 and I was 12. It was glorious. I made my first and last scrapbook, and published the experience 56 years later in 2012. We sat in the back seat of a white and black 1955 Chevrolet. We split up the back seat and griped volubly when we encroached on the other’s turf. Our parents took many vacations, but Judy questions whether adults sitting in the front seat listening to their offspring squabbling in the back chilled them on further oxymoron “family” vacations.
Dad, William Pollak, died in 1977. Mother, Ruth, moved in 1981 to Leisure World in Laguna Hills in Orange County. She had a sweet landscaped bungalow built in the 1960s in a retirement community for the well elderly. Her model, the Madrid Manor, had at most 800 sq. ft., a perfect fit, where she lived until 2006, the place she lived the longest in her journey that took her from Germany, to England, Ohio, and California., She went to assisted living, and her final year in a group home, dying just after her 95th birthday in 2016.
Mother was raised in a cosmopolitan German Jewish household. Her mother, an English Jew of German background, and her father a well-travelled German physician, set up home in Hannover and raised Reni and Ruth. Mother loved to travel, her itinerary included Mexico, Canada, England, Germany, Austria, repeat visits to her favorite Switzerland with mountains and lakes, France, Turkey, Spain, Italy, Luxemburg, Belgium, Holland, Greece, Czech Republic, Croatia, and to see her first grandchild in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, Zambia, South Africa, and Swaziland.
Mother purchased chatchkas, decorative plates and handicrafts and displayed them on the wall or on shelves. We and the grandchildren got postcards.
Mother was an environmental activist. She loved the out of doors, and for a time had a bungalow/cottage in Idyllwild in the San Jacinto Mountains. She loved to hike, to harch, her word for walking, climbing and clambering. Her most popular songs learned in childhood were “Oh Tannenbaum” and “I am a happy wanderer…” She belonged to the Sierra Club, Earth Justice and save the environment. She went on many bus tours in California to deserts, mountains, valleys, beaches and enjoyed the camaraderie. She picked her hiking boots carefully. L.L. Bean and Clarks filled the closet, She rallied in opposition to the expansion of John Wayne Airport, and the carving up of hillsides by suburban developers.
Mother liked three-generation vacations. She, Judy and her grandchildren, Justin and Chelsea went on an elder hostel to Switzerland. Mother, Karen, and her grandchildren Noah and Aaron went to Cozumel. Perhaps snorkeling and fascination with the underwater world led to Aaron’s interest in marine biology. Mother participated in Elder Hostel, later Road Scholar, programs. Mother, Karen and I spent a delightful time in Sterling, Scotland, which coincided with the release of Braveheart. Mother, Judy and her husband Bill accompanied her on a Viking Danube cruise.
She encouraged Judy and I to travel, and we obliged her. Karen and I have traveled to many countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. countries, nowhere close to two couples we know who have well over 100 notches on their belts. Judy and Bill took a Smithsonian Crossroads of Humanities four-continent, three-week tour.
This trip, two years after mother’s death is a tribute to her. It is the first time my sister and I have traveled together since 1956, 62 years. Bill, her husband, stayed home. We look forward to visiting the world of our parents, Hannover and Vienna, and walking the steps and byways they trod before it became inhospitable to Jews. Life is an adventure filled with family, geopolitics, faith, travel, remarkable experiences, and the unexpected.
Mother is buried at Mount Sinai in Burbank along with her husband, father and sister, a final resting place of the Bachmann and Pollak family who fled Hannover and Vienna.
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Pollak, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, is a freelance writer now based in Richmond, California. He may be contacted via oliver.pollak@sdjewishworld.com