In honor of May as Jewish American Heritage Month, last week’s post was devoted to my Uncle Joe Weinstock who saved his sister, my grandmother Pauline, from death in the Holocaust. Today’s post continues the celebration of my heritage, featuring Pauline’s husband, my grandfather Meyer Oberstein, who also miraculously escaped death from Hitler. Whereas the Weinstock story began in Polona, Ukraine, the Oberstein story began in Tiktin, Poland, originally part of Lithuania, and known as the “City of Scholars.”
As was the custom, Meyer’s parents had an arranged marriage. Meir Polchovitz was seeking the most scholarly student at the Yeshiva in Grodno to marry his daughter Chaya Sarah, promising to provide him lifelong support for a life of Torah study. The head of the Yeshiva selected Elchonon Oberstein as the groom, and the match was made. In 1905, Chaya Sarah and Elchonon gave birth to their fourth child Meyer. Soon thereafter, Chaya Sarah was cut by a rusty nail. They took her on a droshky, a horse-drawn sled, to Bialystock to amputate her limb. But it was too late, and she died of blood poisoning when Meyer was still a nursing infant. The family lapsed into poverty.
World War I broke out in 1914 when Meyer was a nine-year-old boy. With no food in the house, Meyer sneaked out after curfew to search for food and was caught by Russian soldiers. A firing squad assembled to kill Meyer when, miraculously, an old Russian commissar with a beard rode up on a donkey and told them to let the boy go, as he was only a kid and not a German spy. (Some mystics speculate that the old man was Elijah the Prophet in the guise of a Russian commissar, sent to save Meyer’s life. Who knows?)
In 1924, 19-year-old Meyer came to New York, the last of the four siblings to emigrate. His oldest sister Celia Bear came first, and gradually brought over the other three, saving them all from Hitler. Celia and her husband resettled in Florida and owned Pensacola Dairy, where Meyer and his brother Kiva delivered milk with a horse and wagon. Meyer went to visit his other sister Elka Katz, living with her husband in Montgomery, Alabama. At synagogue services, Meyer was spotted by Eliezer Weinstock, who brought him home for dinner (and to meet his daughter Pauline). It was love at first sight. They married, and Meyer was embraced by the loving Weinstock family. Meyer and Pauline had four children, including my mother, Elsie.
Meyer’s formal education ended when he was 10, but like his father Elchonon, he was a natural scholar. Largely self-taught, Meyer learned English and was an avid reader, explaining to me as he read the newspaper nightly, “You have to read between the lines.” He was a lifelong intellectual and deeply analytical, always searching for the inner meaning. His dream was to be a surgeon, but circumstances diverted that path and instead he was the owner of Meyer Oberstein Grocery in the impoverished Montgomery housing projects. He became the champion of his African American customers, helping them find jobs, and advocating for them vigorously when the law treated them unfairly. Even during the Montgomery Civil Rights riots and boycotts, Meyer Oberstein Grocery was never picketed or subjected to violence.
The sign above the grocery store just said “Meyer Oberstein” (not Meyer Oberstein Grocery), as it really was his alter ego. He operated it with lean overhead, with just him, wife Pauline as cashier, Jimmy the butcher, Baby Sister the clerk, and Charlie the bicycle delivery boy. My brother and I worked there every summer when we visited Montgomery for a month.
Meyer was also a devoted Jew and proud Zionist supporter of Israel. His mission was to sign up every Jew in Montgomery to join the Zionist Organization of America. His was the only Jewish grocery to hurry out customers on Friday evening in time to get to the synagogue for Sabbath services.
Today, nothing remains of Meyer Oberstein’s Jewish roots in Tiktin, Poland except an empty old wooden synagogue and a memorial by the pit where Jews were shot and buried in a mass grave. However, in another sense, Tiktin still lives. The number of descendants of Meyer and Pauline Oberstein alive today and actively Jewish is rapidly approaching 100.
As Meyer Oberstein’s proud grandson, I am deeply honored that the first member of Generation Five on the Oberstein Family Tree is my granddaughter, Stella Savetsky. Stella is the first of hundreds of future Oberstein descendants. Her birth signifies our victory over the Nazis. Moreover, the way Stella lives her life today personifies the continuation of our Jewish heritage and our everlasting survival against all who oppress us. As we commemorate Jewish American Heritage Month this May, Meyer Oberstein indeed left us quite a heritage to preserve.
Marvin Blum’s grandfather Meyer Oberstein escaped death by a firing squad as a child in Poland, miraculously later making it to America as a young man.
