By Rosalea Hostetler
HARPER, Kansas — As a little girl growing up on a small Kansas farm, I loved books at an early age because my Mom or Dad read them to me. The first one I remember was about Baby Moses in the bull rushes. I can still see the drawing of a baby in a basket floating on water with greenery around it. It looked like the cattails my Mom raised in our lily pond that Dad built out of concrete.
Every morning before we could eat breakfast, Dad gathered us six children together (I was second from the youngest) for worship. He came from an Amish/Old Order Mennonite background. He was given publications by the Mennonite Church. They always had suggested worship readings, but he often went off on a tangent and read from the Old Testament. It was no secret that he loved it more than the New Testament.
I was taught very early that we were “a peculiar people.” We were not to mingle with “worldly” people. We women always wore dresses. Once baptized into the church we were required to wear white net caps for services that had prayers.
We worked hard six days a week. Every Sunday was the Lord’s day to rest. Mom and Dad sometimes took a drive on Sunday afternoon to Driftwood, Oklahoma, to visit Mom’s relatives, the Gerbers.
World War II was going strong. We were pacifists so my oldest brother, Lester, had to serve four years in Alternative Service in Colorado Springs. How my Dad cried when they took him away as he was supposed to get a farm deferment. There was a lot of hatred towards us Mennonites because we would not go to war. So, the man on the draft board got even with my pacifist family that way.
Sometimes there would be announced “black outs” when we children would be sent upstairs early to bed with a warning to never turn on a light so the enemy would not see us. I’d hear the war planes overhead and pull the covers tight over my head. Little did we know there was a military base across the state line in Oklahoma, as well as a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp.
I will never forget the day when Mom came running out of the house yelling for joy, “The war is over! The war is over!”
Slowly I inched my way through my rural youthful life. I yearned for cultural enrichment. So, I worked hard to eventually put myself through the University of Kansas with a BFA in Design.
I headed to New York City, of course, as my fabric design professor told us that was the place to go for textile designing.
Well, New York City to this 29-year-old naive Kansas girl was a real jolt! I was eager to learn anything and everything.
I saw my first tattoos on the worn arms of the Holocaust Survivors at the Farmer’s Market. I was mortified.
I loved the food I could buy at the deli down the street. Little did I know that years later it would lead me on one more step of my Journey to Discovery when I was back living in Kansas. I read an article in the Wichita Eagle about Congregation Emanu-el’s annual New York Deli Day.
After my return to my hometown in Kansas I learned of the Seven Lost Jewish Colonies in counties west of Harper. (1) Being curious, I made a point to visit everyone I could. I eventually made it to all but one. I documented paper trail style all of my visits (no computers yet). I am not certain yet as there is still so much to go through but they may have all been destroyed when the 1883 Patterson House/1968 Rosalea’s Hotel was cruelly demolished by City Hall Hierarchy in 2015 with most all contents left inside. (2)
At the Lost Colonies I wondered why there was always a section of black wrought iron around certain graves. Eventually some locals explained it was for the Jews who had settled and died there. (3)
I had a yearning to find Jewish people and learn more. I even gave a talk once to a Jewish congregation about the Seven Lost Colonies. I still have a black office chair I bought at a League of Jewish Women thrift store in Kansas City just so I could sit and “feel” it.
The older I became, the more the “nudge” that I might be Jewish possessed me. But I did not know how to find answers.
Then I read of a children’s movie producer looking for a small Kansas town to produce After the Wizard. (4) I knew that Kingman 30 miles north would be a perfect fit so I contacted him as well as the City of Kingman. It was a match!
I was invited to the welcome reception. Because I had made the connection, I was seated next to the Director/Producer, Hugh Gross. I knew in an instant he was Jewish. At a private moment I whispered to him, “Are you Jewish?” He jerked a bit and whispered back, “How did you know?” I whispered back, “Because I lived in New York City and have “Jewdar”. We both laughed. And bonded.
Eventually I confided in Hugh that I thought I might be Jewish. He gave me some suggestions to help find out. Then by chance I met Jerry Klinger (5) on the internet and he too directed me to “Jewish.gen.”
Learning so much about my mother’s side was shocking. Why didn’t they tell us children? Why was it hidden, etc.?
About that time, I met Scott Redler who had purchased “Freddy’s” in Wichita. He served me my meal at the New York Deli Day. He was easy to talk to, so I confided in him about my Journey. He also gave me some good encouragement.
I took a leisurely drive one afternoon to Driftwood, Oklahoma, to see the cemetery where my Gerber relatives were buried. What a shock! There was the black wrought iron fence I’d seen at the Seven Lost Colonies. Then I knew without a doubt that my mother’s side was Jewish. I wept for joy.
Now I understand why my parents never told me. They knew too much about the atrocities of Hitler and the Holocaust. They were protecting us children.
And now I understand that when my parents talked to each other about something they didn’t want us children to know, they said they were speaking “Pennsylvania Dutch.” Today I know it was Yiddish.
Yes, there are Jews everywhere. And I’m one, too!
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Notes, supplied by editor:
(1) For further information on the seven failed Jewish farming colonies in Kansas, see: https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/jewish-farming-communities/12101
(2) Author Hostetler’s battle with Harper city authorities has been documented in this 1984 article by the Wall Street Journal, https://quickgrits.wordpress.com/2011/02/01/rosaleas-hotel/; this 2014 article in the Hutchinson (Kansas) News, https://www.hutchnews.com/article/20140617/News/306179950 , and in this federal court decision in 2017, https://ecf.ksd.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/show_public_doc?2017cv1046-35
(3) Jews in small towns without consecrated Jewish cemeteries often would be buried in non-denominational cemeteries. Among many families, it was the custom to erect a fence around their burial plots to keep them symbolically separate.
(4) For more information about After the Wizard, see https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1988544/
(5) Klinger is president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, which has erected historical markers across the United States detailing Jewish civic achievement. Articles by Klinger have appeared frequently in San Diego Jewish World.
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Hostetler is a freelance journalist based in Harper, Kansas.