Many years ago, when I began this project called “breuers 2gether”, I would often refer to the trusted book by a local academic, Stephen Lowenstien’s “Frankfurt on the Hudson”. Many of the pictures in that book were taken from a book called “So War Es” by a Mr. Bruno Stern.
I eventually purchased that book, and because it was in German and Google Translate did not translate scanned books at the time, I paid someone to translate the chapters on the Washington Heights Shuls.
Later, it occurred to me to ask my WH contacts about the author, and only one person vaguely knew of his son. I contacted that son and asked if his father might have left pictures of the neighborhood that were never published. He answered that his father’s apartment is still in use by the family and promised to let me visit one day. The conversation was forgotten, and then a few months ago, I called him “out of the blue” after a small reference to his name was dropped in a conversation.
He told me that the day had come for things to be removed, and I told him I would come anytime, day or night.
What I found was astonishing. The apartment was exactly the way he left it in 1981, with his important files untouched. There were more than 10,000 pictures, slides, and audio reels. I took everything. I then spent every spare minute for two months digitizing this collection.
There were manuscripts for an English version of his book, as well as many other manuscripts. The majority of the slides and images were documenting his trips to Israel, Europe, and elsewhere. There were boxes of slides documenting Jewish life in NYC in the 1960s and others documenting it in the 1970s. He also documented the monuments and events of cultural life in NYC, and for all of these collections, he had well-researched, delightful, narrated audio reels produced.
He clearly wanted to disseminate the picture he created of the world he saw and I will present it to the best of my ability.
The life he describes in his small village tickles my imagination the way that Agnon and Bashevis Singer have done for me in their Shtetls. And the way Jacques Picard, Hugo Mandelbaum, and Hermann Schwab did with their hamlets.
But here we have his voice, and it is sweet, sometimes clumsy, and sometimes mischievous in his recounting of these places and the people, sometimes relatable, sometimes idolized, and sometimes liliputian, but always engaging. Perhaps Hashem gifted me this opportunity, or perhaps Hashem gifted Mr. Stern the opportunity to have his passion brought to life in a different world, at a different time, in a different venue, but by someone who cared for it as much as he did.
Here is the first video I have posted to the new Channel: Bruno Stern’s History on YouTube.
Have a Koshern Pesach.
