Hyman and Rebecca Bolnick
I have spent a lot of the last several weeks digging through photos. I have been gifted an incredible pile of photos. Some of these I have had for a long time and scanned at different points. I pulled out a box of photos that Grammanette gave me likely more than ten years ago. I remember going through them and pulling out ones of people I recognized. It was in that box that I first found a young Hyman and Rebecca Bolnick some years ago. When Debbie and I moved to Minneapolis I started spending a fair amount of time at Sid and Annette’s apartment. After not living in Minneapolis for 13 years, my grandparents were on my way to and from work. Sitting in their apartment, I interviewed them on video a few times. One time when I was there, she pulled out a framed photo of her grandfather and gave it to me. I have it in my study at the synagogue. Hyman Bolnick. I remember that she told me that her grandfather had a glass eye, but I don’t remember ever seeing a photo of him until she gave me the framed photo. This was him at Sid and Annette’s wedding in Chicago on June 14, 1942.
Hyman Bolnick, June 1942
Having had that photo already for awhile when she gave me the box of photos, I was excited to find other photos of Hyman. Because of his eye, he is easy to recognize. Grandmanette told me he was a strict man. She used to always wag her finger when she talked about him, mimicking her memory of him. She told me that when she and Granny Sarah lived with them, after Granny’s first husband, and Annette’s father, Manning/Mendel Lesson died, grammatte’s job was to tear toilet paper on Friday afternoon to get ready for Shabbat.
She also told me that on the evening of the first Passover Seder in 1940, her grandmother, Hyman’s wife Ryfka/Rebecca (nee Frank) was lying on her deathbed in their bedroom as the family gathered at the seder table. Ryfka died during the seder, but Hyman wouldn’t let anyone get up until they had completed the seder.
Here is a young Hyman and Ryfka back in Mlawa, Poland.
I feel an urgency to get all of these photos, letters and videos organized in a way that preserves their memories. And I feel a bit of loss that there are photos of people I’ll never identify…of events that are long lost to the passage of time. It makes you realize how fast time goes by.
Back L-R, Alex, Sol, Manning, Sarah, Morris, Teddy. Front L-R Leslie (daughter of Alex and Dora), Dora, Hyman, Arnie (son of Rose and Teddy), Ryfka, Rose, Helen (daughter of Rose and Teddy)
