REFUGEE
mother decided to leave. She put Kornsgold and her brother
briefly in an orphanage, destroyed her papers showing she was
Jewish and snuck over the border into Germany. She picked up
her children after a brief stint of sickness and then they were in
6 at the time. They attended Kirkbride Elementary School in
Freiman, a displaced persons camp in Germany, for three years.

South Philadelphia.

On May 19, 1949 they boarded a former army ship — the
Kornsgold, who will be 78 in May, doesn’t remember that
SS General Stewart — to America. It happened to also be her
picture being taken, but her granddaughter was more than
ninth birthday. The journey took 11 days and she spent one of
happy to call and tell her she was in the Exponent.

those sick from nausea. One thing she remembers is her moth-
She was born in Stanislav, Poland, but when she was 6
er telling her, “‘I don’t care if you don’t eat, but you’ve got to go
weeks old, she and her family were taken to Russia and then
get an orange,’ because that was a big thing,” she recalled with
sent back to Poland after the war. “Exactly where they sent us
a laugh. “I remember that.”
back after the war, I do not know,” she said, as she was 5 or 6
They stayed one night in a hotel before ultimately making
years old then.

their way to Philadelphia, where HIAS had registered for them
At that point, her mother had become a widow. Kornsgold’s
to go, and she’s been in the city ever since.

father was killed three weeks before the war ended.

“If you didn’t want to go where they sent you, if you wanted
“In Russia, they formed a second Polish front. They took
to go somewhere else, they were not responsible for you,” she
my father into — this was in 1943 — so they took him and a
explained of why they settled in Philadelphia. “And for my
friend of his also was taken into the army,” she said. “And my
mother, it didn’t make any difference. Her whole family was
father’s friend said to him, ‘You’re blond, blue-eyed, you speak
lost. My father’s family was lost. So to her what difference did it
a perfect Polish — go as a gentile.’ My father said, ‘I’m a Jew,
make where she went? She didn’t know the language, she didn’t
and I’m going as a Jew.’”
know any friends, so they said Philadelphia and she said fine.”
His friend told her mother there was an officer who did
They settled in South Philly in a house with three or four
not like him, and would send her father on missions where
other families at Seventh and Dickinson streets. Her mother
he thought her father would be killed, but he came back. One
started working at a factory while looking for an apartment.

night, he woke up in the middle of the night with severe head-
“I didn’t speak any English,” Kornsgold noted, “so whatever
aches and, at 38, he died.

little bit of English I learned I learned playing with the kids in
While the rest of her family perished during the war, her
the neighborhood.”
father’s death is the only one whose details she knows because
They eventually found an apartment at Fourth and Tasker
his friend who was with him wrote to her mother.

streets, and Kornsgold and her brother started school — which
After the war, there were few Jews left in Poland, so her
was detailed in the 1949 Exponent article.

At 9, she was supposed to be in fourth
grade but she was placed in third as she
didn’t yet know English. There was no
English as a second language for elemen-
tary school kids at that time, she noted.

She was only graded on math for the first
few report periods.

“I remember when we had to have our
eyes checked they said read the alpha-
bet — I couldn’t read the alphabet,” she
laughed. “So they did for the E you go
this way or that way, so that was the way
I had my eyes checked.”
She went on to middle school and then
graduated from South Philadelphia High
School before starting work as a legal sec-
retary, which she did for five years.

Along the way, she met her husband,
Morris Kornsgold, 82 — “Right? 82?”
“Whatever you say” — who sat patiently
at the dining room table of their North-
east Philadelphia home as she related
her story. He also came to America from
Poland and Germany in 1951.

They met on erev Yom Kippur when
she was 19 years old and was taking a
walk with her mother in their South
Philly neighborhood on a hot night.

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later we got married,” she said simply.

At that time, you had to be 21 to get
married, she noted, so since she was only
Continued from Page 27
share laughs
Live Well. Everyday.

28 MAY 10, 2018
THE GOOD LIFE
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



A community of family.

Making the decision to move your loved one into a
memory support community is simple when you choose
Artis Senior Living. You can rest easy knowing that we
treat them as you would — like family.

Put your mind at ease.

Contact Artis Senior Living today
to become a member of our family.

267.571.2699 267.571.2699
www.artisseniorliving.com 2085 Lieberman
Drive • Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006
www.artisseniorliving.com (located behind Huntingdon Valley’s Post Office)
2085 Lieberman Drive • Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006
(located behind Huntingdon Valley’s Post Office)
The photo in the September 1949 Jewish Exponent about Rosa and
Gerson’s first days in school in Philadelphia.

20, her mother had to go with her to City Hall as she needed a
parent’s permission.

They stayed in South Philly until 1966, after their son, Jay,
was born, and they moved to the Northeast. After they had two
more kids, Laura and Helene, she worked for the school board as
a secretary and eventually retired from Northeast High School.

Two of her children are rabbis, another is a pediatrician, and
she is the proud grandmother of six grandchildren.

“To me, family is very important. Growing up without any —
in fact, I always said I didn’t realize what I missed until I became
a grandmother and then I realized all the things I missed, so
that’s why to me family is very important,” she said.

Reflecting on her life, though, she has no complaints.

Judaism played a central role in her and her husband’s life
when building their family, as they had both lost theirs and with
them, their family traditions. They’ve belonged to several con-
gregations in Northeast Philly that have since closed or merged,
and are now members of Congregations of Shaare Shamayim.

The only milestone she’d like to accomplish is a Bat Mitzvah, as
her husband will have a second Bar Mitzvah at their synagogue soon.

But being with family and having her children and grandchil-
dren involved in Jewish life is enough for her in the meantime.

“It’s like we had to start from the beginning, and I figured this
way I feel like our relatives didn’t die for nothing,” she said. “For us,
it was very important so they’ll know where they came from and
what they have to adhere to. We had to make our own traditions,
our own everything. And we did pretty good. I can’t complain.” l
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215-283-7010 1120 Meetinghouse Rd
Gwynedd, PA 19436
mstern@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
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MAY 10, 2018
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