He Was My Father

 

Long before he was my father he was

one among a host of Jewish orphans.

Children living on the streets of Warsaw.

His parents dead, he sought his older

brother in Warsaw but failed to find him.

A philanthropic group of Jews found him

and other homeless orphans to gather them

and send them by ship at the turn of the 20th

century, to Canada as indentured farm hands 

to work on farms near Toronto to pay off

their passage before becoming free to be

citizens of the country. When I was a child he

sat me down and schooled me on the order 

of my being; first a little girl and then a Jew

and above all, a Canadian. Spared, he and I 

from the gas chambers. He and the other orphans

formed a society, Mezritchers, from the town

where they were born and they became his

family. Yet until he died he sought endlessly 

for clues through contact with survivors of

extended family but no trace of his brother.