The language of home: How Yiddish connected Holocaust survivors and their children

Francine (Fruma) Denerstein did not expect to make one of her closest friends through a virtual book club.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Temple Emanu-El's weekly discussions introduced her to Irving Weinreich. Although they had never met in person, they soon discovered they shared something increasingly rare: the ability to speak Yiddish.

What began as conversations after book club grew into regular phone calls lasting anywhere from 10 minutes to half an hour. They spoke about family and found comfort in a language that connected them to the people they loved most.

For nearly two years, those conversations became part of the rhythm of their lives.

After her father, Holocaust survivor Meyer Spitzman, passed away, she realized she missed more than speaking Yiddish. Talking with Irving reminded her of speaking with her father. His phone calls filled a space she had not realized was still empty after losing her parents. Yiddish had become more than a shared language. It had become what she later described as a safe landing place, where two children of Holocaust survivors could remember, laugh, grieve and keep their family stories alive together.

Francine's own story began in the Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, where she was born to Holocaust survivors rebuilding their lives after liberation.

Her father was born in June 1916 in Niwka, near Sosnowiec, Poland. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he served in the Polish Army before being captured as a prisoner of war. He escaped, was recaptured, forced into labor and eventually deported to Bergen-Belsen. After liberation, he met Rachel Turgel, another survivor. They married in 1947 and, like so many survivors, began rebuilding their lives together.

Sponsored by the Berry family, Meyer and Rachel immigrated to Rhode Island in December 1949. Meyer became a respected furniture maker and carpenter while Rachel worked at Brier's Jewelry Factory. Together they built a home where Yiddish was the language of everyday life. As a child, Francine sometimes wished her parents would speak English instead. Like many children of immigrants, she wanted to fit in. Only after both of her parents were gone did she fully understand what those conversations had given her.

She did not simply miss speaking Yiddish.

She missed hearing home. That longing made her friendship with Irving so meaningful. Born in Danzig to Victor and Hannah (Pollak) Weinreich, Irving also grew up in a family whose life had been shaped by the Holocaust. His family settled in Rhode Island, where his father founded Victor Appliance Distributor Co. Irving graduated from Hope High School and Bryant College, served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War and spent more than 65 years helping lead the family business. A devoted member of Temple Emanu-El, he attended daily minyan and helped organize the congregation's annual Yom HaShoah commemoration for many years.

For Irving, speaking Yiddish reopened a part of his life he rarely revisited after losing his parents. His mother spoke Yiddish with a German dialect while his father, who came from Poland, insisted on speaking English after immigrating to the United States. Like many survivors and refugees, his parents worked tirelessly to build a new life, attending night school to learn English.

Irving often spoke to Francine about his mother. Before the Holocaust, she worked as a social worker in Germany. To escape Nazi persecution, however, she was forced to make an unimaginable sacrifice: She terminated a pregnancy so the family could leave Germany. After arriving in the United States, she was never able to return to her profession. Like so many refugees, she rebuilt her life from the beginning while carrying the weight of everything she lost.

Those sacrifices left a lasting impression on Irving. He also spoke about his father, Victor, a skilled shirtmaker who was forced to sew shirts for the Nazis during the Holocaust. Irving believed that Victor's skill may even have helped save the family during one raid. He also shared the devastating losses both of his parents endured. Many relatives were murdered in the Holocaust, while some who survived carried the trauma with them for the rest of their lives. One family member, after surviving Auschwitz, sometimes hid under his bed, convinced the Nazis would return.

Francine immediately recognized those experiences. Her family's path through the Holocaust was different, but she understood what it meant to grow up surrounded by grief that never truly disappeared. Irving and Francine did not need to explain why certain memories lingered, why a Yiddish phrase could suddenly evoke a parent or grandparent or why preserving family stories mattered so deeply. They simply understood.

Francine joked that on FaceTime she could only see half of Irving's face, but that hardly mattered. Even as Irving's health declined, the friendship remained a constant.

He continued participating in Temple Emanu-El's virtual book club from his hospital bed, determined to remain connected to the community he loved. He also continued speaking with Francine.

From the next room, Irving's wife, Ruthie, often heard Yiddish drifting through the house. Although she and Francine never met, she came to know her through those conversations and understood how much the friendship meant to her husband.

After Irving died, it was Ruthie who called Francine.

Months later, Irving's daughter, Audrey, attended Temple Emanu-El's annual Yom HaShoah commemoration, continuing a tradition that had meant so much to her father. For years, Irving helped organize the congregation's observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, and now Audrey was carrying forward the responsibility to remember.

After the program ended, a woman approached her.

"I'm Fran."

Audrey immediately knew who she was.

Although they were meeting for the first time, Francine had long been part of her family's life. Audrey heard about the regular phone calls and the conversations in Yiddish that had become such an important part of her father's final years. What should have been an introduction instead felt like a reunion.

The two women embraced.

Their friendship has continued ever since.

A few years ago, Audrey attended an art festival in Newton where one of the vendors was selling notecards printed with Yiddish phrases. For a brief moment, she felt unexpectedly close to her father. The language immediately brought him back to her.

Fran and Audrey reflected on the painful irony that, had the Holocaust never happened, she and Francine likely would never have met. Yet out of that history grew an unexpected friendship that has forever connected two Rhode Island families. Both Audrey and Francine think that had they met years earlier, Meyer Spitzman and Irving Weinreich would have been friends.

Every Holocaust story is important because every family experienced it differently. Some survived camps, others survived in hiding or in exile and still others rebuilt their lives in new countries. Together, those individual stories form the larger history of the Holocaust. As the generation of Holocaust survivors grows smaller, remembrance increasingly rests with the next generations.

The friendship between Francine and Audrey is a reminder that even after unimaginable loss, family histories continue to create new connections, strengthen communities and inspire others to discover and preserve the stories of their own families. Sometimes all it takes is a conversation to discover that our stories are intertwined.

Perhaps that is why this story feels so profoundly Rhode Island.

LAURA AUKETAYEVA, Ph.D. is the director of education and programs at the Sandra Bornstein Holocaust Education Center.