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
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM 19