feature story
Philadelphia Family Connects
with Long-Lost Cousins
Who Survived the Holocaust
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
A s a kid growing up in Philadelphia, Rick DeSouza
had more than 25 fi rst cousins. So naturally, he
always wondered why he never met any of his
mother Ida’s cousins.

When DeSouza asked her, she told him they had
“perished at the hands of the Nazis during World
War II,” he recalled. Ida died in 2005 believing this
to her grave.

Yet it turned out she was wrong.

In February of 2021, Paula Diamond, the widow of
Ida’s brother, Harry Diamond, received a letter from
a Frenchman named Jacques Wawer. He said he was
trying to fi nd his “long-lost Diamond cousins from
Philadelphia.” Wawer, his brother Louis and his sister Helene
were Ida and Harry’s fi rst cousins — the children of a
brother of Ida and Harry’s mother Bertha Diamond,
he explained. Th ey had survived the Holocaust.

Aft er their father, Abraham Wawer, was taken to
Auschwitz, the siblings pretended to be Christian
and hid out in the home of a Christian family
near Paris.

Upon receiving Jacques Wawer’s letter, Paula
Diamond spread the word to her extended family
members and started a correspondence. Th en, one
winter aft ernoon in 2021, Rick, Paula and several
extended family members got on a Zoom call with
Jacques, Louis and Helene, and they listened to
their story of survival. On July 21, the French cous-
ins will arrive in the Philadelphia suburbs to meet
their “long-lost Diamond cousins” in person for the
fi rst time.

DeSouza, a Jewish Realtor who lives in a 55 and
over community in Warwick, wrote about the saga in
his community’s monthly newsletter.

“When we all got together one late aft ernoon last
winter, it was quite a moment,” he wrote.

“We learned that their dad was caught in the
roundup in Paris and sent to Auschwitz, never to be
seen again,” he continued.

18 JULY 21, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
“Needless to say, all of the cousins on this side of
the pond, are counting the days until they arrive,”
he concluded.

DeSouza, his aunt Paula Diamond and his cousins
Debbie Wogalter, Lisa Kirkpatrick, Nancy Wagner
and Lisa Watkins were all on the Zoom call. Th ey
had never known that these cousins existed before
that 2021 letter. Yet they all felt like they needed to
be there.

“I just think that it’s so important for us to connect
to these cousins we never knew about, and to hear
their story,” DeSouza said. “I think it’s my obligation,
for my parents.”
DeSouza’s mother Ida grew up in an Orthodox home,
then raised her children “basically Conservative,” as
the son described it. But she always instilled in them
an understanding of the past and an appreciation for
their relative safety in the United States.

Ida’s motto, which she repeated to her son over and
over, was, “Never, ever forget.” Today, the son doesn’t.

Th e 69-year-old does not attend synagogue, but he
does light Shabbat candles every Friday night.

Wogalter, the daughter of Henry Diamond, who
is a sibling of Ida and Harry and a son of Bertha’s,
also grew up in a household that moved away from
Orthodox Judaism. But she did attend six years of
The Diamond siblings led a happy life in the United States.

Courtesy of Rick DeSouza



Jacques and Helene Wawer in the 1960s
Courtesy of Lisa Kirkpatrick
Hebrew school, have a bat mitzvah and go to syna-
gogue on the High Holidays. She continued going to
synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur into
adulthood but stopped about eight years ago.

Her Jewish identity, though, never left her. So,
like her cousin Rick, she feels that it’s important
to remember.

“It keeps the Holocaust alive,” Wogalter said.

“Every American and everybody in the world should
know about the Holocaust.”
Jacques, Louis and Helene must have felt the same
thing. Th ey found their American family members
because Jacques hired a genealogist out of Poland.

Wogalter believes he hired the genealogist because he
knew “something about Philly.”
Th at something might have been Bertha Diamond’s
backstory. In 1913, at age 18 and with her name still
Bertha Wawer, she left her brother Abraham and
their family behind in Poland to come to the U.S. She
wanted to fi nd a husband and a better life than the
oppression Jews faced in her native land, according
to DeSouza.

Bertha found that husband, Rubin Diamond,
and that better life, having 11 children including
Ida, Harry and Henry. Th ey raised their children
Orthodox and, when news of the Holocaust reached
them, “we always had deep-rooted feelings about it,”
said DeSouza, who saw those feelings later on in his
mother who grew up in that house.

“Th at it was just impossible that people would kill
you over your religion,” he recalled.

Th rough Bertha’s journey across the Atlantic Ocean
and her realization of her American dream, her fam-
ily never realized that its story was also continuing
across the ocean. Th ey just knew that, sometime aft er
Jacques found that genealogist, a letter reached Paula
Diamond in the U.S.

“And the next thing you know, it just all unrolled,”
Wogalter said.

Henry Diamond is 90 and the last surviving child of
Bertha and Rubin Diamond. Last August aft er the let-
ter, Debbie took him to France to meet Jacques, Louis
and Helene, his fi rst cousins, for the fi rst time.

Th ey visited the Louvre, Versailles and other
French landmarks. At one point, Henry and Helene
walked across the street holding hands and Debbie
snapped a picture.

“It really hit home,” she said.

One story from the Zoom meeting also stood
out. As DeSouza explained in his ref lection in his
Rubin and Bertha Diamond
Courtesy of Rick DeSouza
community newsletter, one day during the war,
Jacques got into a fight with a child of his host
family. The father yelled at the Jewish boy and was
ready to report the siblings to the police and turn
them over. So he did, but when the officer arrived,
he asked the French patriarch if his taxes were up
to date.

Th e cop informed the man that if they weren’t, he
would have to arrest him, too. Th e Wawer children
got to stay.

“Hearing that, all of the American cousins let out a
big sigh of relief!” Rick wrote.

When the Wawers are in the Philadelphia area,
the family plans to visit Mount Sharon Cemetery
in Springfi eld. Bertha and Abraham’s mother Eva
Rebecca, who moved to the United States to help her
daughter raise 11 kids, is buried there.

Th e family is also going to visit some Philadelphia
sites, including the area that Ida, Harry, Henry and
their siblings grew up in. Perhaps more importantly
than anything else, though, they are all just going to
keep talking.

DeSouza wants to hear more stories about their
father, their mother and his other relatives whom he
never knew about. He also wants to learn more about
how they made it through.

“I can’t imagine how that was. We’re so lucky to
be here in the United States,” he said. “It really does
bring everything home. Especially because we’re
all Jews.” JE
jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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