IIn 1929, with all his siblings having married and his self-imposed mission thus accomplished, our father Ludwig, aged 45, sought a bride and wed Klara Kaufmann, a lovely and lively 31-year-old Jewish lady, a hat-designer with her own millinery store in Gindorf, a town near Cologne in the Rhineland.

Klara fitted right into the village atmosphere of Becherbach and was warmly accepted by the lady of the house, grandmother Regina.

A year after their nuptials, Ludwig and Klara were blessed with the birth of their firstborn, Alfred, named after the fallen brother, and two years later, in 1932, with the arrival of my brother Ernst.

Mother: Klara Kaufmann Moritz
Klara Kaufmann Moritz

The boys were of course circumcised in accordance with the ancestral ways, and given the names of their grandfathers. Alfred, the first-born, was named after the paternal grandfather, Israel bar David Zwi—Israel son of David Zwi. The second one was named Elieser bar David Zwi, after the maternal grandfather Reb. Elieser bar Reb. Kalonymos.

On each occasion, our father ran into the street, holding the baby and yelling in the local dialect, "Mah honnen, mah honnen" (we've got 'im, we've got 'im").