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Lost French connection is miraculously found
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By: ARLENE FINE Staff Reporter
"C'est un miracle," says Parisian-born Sophie Szejer.
And a miracle it is n in any language.
Szejer, 79, is referring to the family reunion she had in Cleveland last weekend. Believing she was the only one left in the entire Szejer family who survived the Holocaust, she was now surrounded by 60 blood relatives.
The key to unlocking this family treasure rested in the determined hands of her first cousin once removed, Betty Ruth Shear, daughter of South Euclid residents Helen and Leon Shear.
While visiting the Diaspora Museum in Israel in 1998, Betty Ruth, the family genealogist, typed the last name Szejer into the genealogy directory. Suddenly, the names Sophie, Hilel and Johevet Szejer of Marseilles, France, popped up on the screen.
"Szejer was how my father's family who came from Bedzin, Poland, spelled their last name," she says. "When my dad arrived in America, he changed it to Shear. I suspected anyone with the Szejer name had to have a connection to my father's family."
When Betty Ruth came back to Cleveland, she showed her father and his brother Sam the Diaspora Museum printout. They confirmed the family connection. Sophie's father Hilel Szejer and Leon's mother Blima were brother and sister. Betty Ruth immediately contacted the Diaspora Museum, which then told her how to contact Sophie Szejer in Marseilles.
"Sophie, who never gave up hope of finding family, had just entered her name in the Diaspora Museum directory a few months before my visit to Israel," says Betty Ruth. "Imagine if I had come to Israel earlier n we never would have made contact. The timing was perfect."
Since Sophie spoke French and Betty Ruth spoke English, both women found they could only speak to each other in "broken Yiddish."
"After all these years of desperately seeking some trace of family, Sophie was overjoyed to hear from me and to learn we had a large flourishing family in America," says Betty Ruth.
Within the year, Betty Ruth, who had planned a cruise that made a stop at Cannes, met her French cousin for the first time. The women spent several hours becoming acquainted and sharing photographs. Over the next five years, Betty Ruth visited Sophie, a highly- regarded Parisian fashion designer, twice more.
After each meeting she invited Sophie to come to Cleveland. But it was Betty Ruth's niece, Gabrielle Shear's bat mitzvah this year on March 19 at B'nai Jeshurun that convinced Sophie to travel to Cleveland with her friend and interpreter Pierrette Falcucci for a Szejer family reunion.
When Leon and Sophie saw each other at the airport, the meeting was emotionally charged, with plenty of tears and hugs all around, Leon reports. Their euphoria hardly dissipated during their 10-day visit together, which also included a trip to Washington, D.C.
Linking arms with his red-haired, elegantly-dressed first cousin as they sit together on his front room sofa, Leon happily says, "This is still so unbelievable to me. Until now I thought I had no relatives left on my mother's side." He smiles broadly and adds, "No words can describe what I am feeling."
Family has been so important to Leon that since 1945 he has made four trips to Poland with his brother, vainly searching for any members of his large Orthodox family who might have survived the war.
A member of Kol Israel, Leon's war experiences have been a pivotal part of his life. He often speaks to school groups and organizations about his internment in the Nazi death camps.
Leon was sent to Auschwitz when he was 14 and was liberated from a death march from Dachau in 1945. After liberation, Leon came to Cleveland as part of the children's transport and lived at Bellefaire. Here he met Holocaust educator Dr. Leatrice Rabinsky and her husband Asher. The Rabinskys befriended the vulnerable young man and offered him much-needed warmth, a sense of family, and home hospitality.
Eventually Leon traveled to Pittsburgh where he met his wife Helen, a microbiologist. A distant cousin of hers in Cleveland offered Leon a chance to go into the family business, and the young Shears made their permanent home here.
Sophie's survival is the result of a compassionate neighbor's quick thinking. When the then-16-year-old Sophie was at a ballet class in Paris, her mother was forcibly taken from their apartment; she subsequently perished at Auschwitz. Sophie's father had been taken away by the Nazis the month before.
When Sophie returned home from her lesson, a neighbor arranged for her to acquire the papers of a dead (gentile) Parisian girl. This identity swap saved her life. She did not assume her born name of Sophie Szejer until 1945.
As she reflects on the amazing week she has spent in Cleveland, Sophie says the only thing she wants to bring back are the "souvenirs in my heart" which the Shear family has "filled to overflowing with love." She is also carrying home a newly-created family album that contains 140 pictures of her Szejer/Shear relatives.
"If, after all my father lost, I could find a diamond in the snow, it would be the huge gem who is sitting on the couch right next to my dad," says a very contented Betty Ruth.
As the two woman embrace, the language they are speaking is universal.
It is called love.
And a miracle it is n in any language.
Szejer, 79, is referring to the family reunion she had in Cleveland last weekend. Believing she was the only one left in the entire Szejer family who survived the Holocaust, she was now surrounded by 60 blood relatives.
The key to unlocking this family treasure rested in the determined hands of her first cousin once removed, Betty Ruth Shear, daughter of South Euclid residents Helen and Leon Shear.
While visiting the Diaspora Museum in Israel in 1998, Betty Ruth, the family genealogist, typed the last name Szejer into the genealogy directory. Suddenly, the names Sophie, Hilel and Johevet Szejer of Marseilles, France, popped up on the screen.
"Szejer was how my father's family who came from Bedzin, Poland, spelled their last name," she says. "When my dad arrived in America, he changed it to Shear. I suspected anyone with the Szejer name had to have a connection to my father's family."
When Betty Ruth came back to Cleveland, she showed her father and his brother Sam the Diaspora Museum printout. They confirmed the family connection. Sophie's father Hilel Szejer and Leon's mother Blima were brother and sister. Betty Ruth immediately contacted the Diaspora Museum, which then told her how to contact Sophie Szejer in Marseilles.
"Sophie, who never gave up hope of finding family, had just entered her name in the Diaspora Museum directory a few months before my visit to Israel," says Betty Ruth. "Imagine if I had come to Israel earlier n we never would have made contact. The timing was perfect."
Since Sophie spoke French and Betty Ruth spoke English, both women found they could only speak to each other in "broken Yiddish."
"After all these years of desperately seeking some trace of family, Sophie was overjoyed to hear from me and to learn we had a large flourishing family in America," says Betty Ruth.
Within the year, Betty Ruth, who had planned a cruise that made a stop at Cannes, met her French cousin for the first time. The women spent several hours becoming acquainted and sharing photographs. Over the next five years, Betty Ruth visited Sophie, a highly- regarded Parisian fashion designer, twice more.
After each meeting she invited Sophie to come to Cleveland. But it was Betty Ruth's niece, Gabrielle Shear's bat mitzvah this year on March 19 at B'nai Jeshurun that convinced Sophie to travel to Cleveland with her friend and interpreter Pierrette Falcucci for a Szejer family reunion.
When Leon and Sophie saw each other at the airport, the meeting was emotionally charged, with plenty of tears and hugs all around, Leon reports. Their euphoria hardly dissipated during their 10-day visit together, which also included a trip to Washington, D.C.
Linking arms with his red-haired, elegantly-dressed first cousin as they sit together on his front room sofa, Leon happily says, "This is still so unbelievable to me. Until now I thought I had no relatives left on my mother's side." He smiles broadly and adds, "No words can describe what I am feeling."
Family has been so important to Leon that since 1945 he has made four trips to Poland with his brother, vainly searching for any members of his large Orthodox family who might have survived the war.
A member of Kol Israel, Leon's war experiences have been a pivotal part of his life. He often speaks to school groups and organizations about his internment in the Nazi death camps.
Leon was sent to Auschwitz when he was 14 and was liberated from a death march from Dachau in 1945. After liberation, Leon came to Cleveland as part of the children's transport and lived at Bellefaire. Here he met Holocaust educator Dr. Leatrice Rabinsky and her husband Asher. The Rabinskys befriended the vulnerable young man and offered him much-needed warmth, a sense of family, and home hospitality.
Eventually Leon traveled to Pittsburgh where he met his wife Helen, a microbiologist. A distant cousin of hers in Cleveland offered Leon a chance to go into the family business, and the young Shears made their permanent home here.
Sophie's survival is the result of a compassionate neighbor's quick thinking. When the then-16-year-old Sophie was at a ballet class in Paris, her mother was forcibly taken from their apartment; she subsequently perished at Auschwitz. Sophie's father had been taken away by the Nazis the month before.
When Sophie returned home from her lesson, a neighbor arranged for her to acquire the papers of a dead (gentile) Parisian girl. This identity swap saved her life. She did not assume her born name of Sophie Szejer until 1945.
As she reflects on the amazing week she has spent in Cleveland, Sophie says the only thing she wants to bring back are the "souvenirs in my heart" which the Shear family has "filled to overflowing with love." She is also carrying home a newly-created family album that contains 140 pictures of her Szejer/Shear relatives.
"If, after all my father lost, I could find a diamond in the snow, it would be the huge gem who is sitting on the couch right next to my dad," says a very contented Betty Ruth.
As the two woman embrace, the language they are speaking is universal.
It is called love.
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