Poland in NYC

Though I barely remember our vacation to New York City in 2007, other than the dazzle of my first broadway show, the pictures help me recount our search for the graves of my Grandpa Fred's parents, Oscar and Anna Kanfer.

The graves seemed a compelling thing to go looking for and visit, but considering even my Dad barely  knew the people they belonged to, it was more of a "while we're here" activity for a cold afternoon that day we arrived in the city. We took a cab, or took a nap in the cab ride, I should say, over 20 minutes to the graveyard.

It was, regardless of my age and maturity, a touching experience. My great-grandparents were buried in New York, where they had immigrated to, but with a group of their friends, neighbors, and community members from their original home in Poland who had also made it to the freedom of America. The sense of closeness within this group of families who had been fighting for their lives each step of the way to New York, was so real to all of us, that the couple hours we spent wandering around went by in an instant. It didn't even feel weird to us, hanging out at a cemetery for the majority of the afternoon.

Five years before our trip to New York to visit his parents, on today's date, October 18, 2002, Grandpa Fred died at Provena Hospital in Champaign. He was buried in town, at the spot we had specific instruction to reserve for him under the big oak tree at an intersection of side roads in the cemetery. He chose this spot a couple months before he died, so it would be easy, comfortable, yet private enough for Grandma Ruby to visit him after his passing.