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had lived two miles from his West
Bloomfield home.
In the summer of 2000, my
brother and his family were visiting
our father's childhood neighbor-
hood in Pennsylvania, when my
niece Miriam decided she wanted
ice cream.
"I asked the guy behind the
counter if he had a phone book;
I wanted to see if there were still
any Mervis relatives in the area,"
said my brother Marty Liebman of
Farmington Hills. "He asked who
I was looking for and when I told
him, he said, `Mervis? There was a
Mervis here a minute ago:
"She had just left, but he said he
might still be able to catch her. He
came back into the store with her7
Turns out she is the granddaughter
of our grandmother's brother and
was happy to sit and share informa-
tion with her newfound family.

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Top to bottom:

Sharon Collins' mom, Ursula, with her siblings Margot,

Ilse, Eva and Otto during the time their governess

Exit 198 from 1-94
Exit 20 from 1-275

cared for them in Germany.

Tara and Randy Zdrojewski at Wat Po in Bangkok.

Marty, Miriam and Noah Liebman visit what was once

a synagogue in Kittanning, Pa.

Ralph Zicherman's grandfather, Jakob Zicherman, who

lived in Kopanya, Czechoslovakia, in a photo taken

in Khust, from A Vanished World by Roman Vishniac.

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2002930

12 November 26 2015

TRAVEL AMAZEMENTS
Traveling seems to attract coinci-
dental connections, like when my
son, Rick, shared a cab from a New
York City airport with a stranger,
who, like him, was in town to visit
his girlfriend. After being dropped
off at the same apartment build-
ing, they went inside and took the
elevator to the same floor. Hoping
his future wife was not also dating
this man, Rick walked alongside
him down the hallway. When he
stopped at the same door, he was
relieved to discover the two new
friends were dating roommates.
A last-minute road trip from
West Bloomfield to Florida this fall
allowed Ricki Rogow an unplanned
visit with her uncle.
"I had a lightbulb moment to call
my cousin in Boston; said Rogow.
"It usually takes about a dozen
phone calls to get him to call back,
but he responded within a min-
ute:' At that moment, as she drove
through Atlanta, her cousin told
her something that made her take a
sudden, short detour.
"He told me his dad, my Uncle
Martin Eichler, was in the hospital
in Atlanta; she said. "When I put
the hospital into my GPS, I was less
than a mile from where he was:'
She immediately detoured.
"I was so happy to see him;
Rogow said. "I would hope I was a
flash of light when he was feeling so
down and in such a dark place7
And then there was the time my
husband and I traveled on separate
dates to and from a visit to our
kids in New Jersey and ended up
discovering the woman he sat with

on his inbound trip was the same
one who sat next to me on my way
home. Months later, during Rosh
Hashanah services, I felt a tap on
my shoulder and turned to fmd
that she was also a member of our
synagogue!

BEEN THERE
New Yorker Jill Goldfein, originially
of Ann Arbor, had an unforget-
table deja vu experience during her
1997-98 school year in Israel.
"When I was at Hebrew
University, during my junior year at
University of Michigan, my room-
mate, Leiat, a student at University
of Oregon, and I went to visit her
friend, Ari7 Goldfein said. "From
there, we went to pick up Ari's
friend, Barak. I remember how nice
Baraks family was:'
Goldfein then went back to Ann
Arbor, where she met her husband,
Ami, and the two visited his cousin
in Tel Aviv. "When we got there, I
kept saying, "I've been in this house
before7 Then she saw a picture on
the refrigerator. "It was Barak and
Ari! It was the house where I had
gone with Leiat. Barak was Ami's
cousin!
Now Barak and his family are her
relatives — and so is Leiat because
she married Barak. The families are
close friends and live 10 minutes
apart.
Marcy Feldman of Huntington
Woods encountered a woman who
lived in a home she had visited in
Scarsdale, N.Y.
"I found a 1980 Pasteur alum on
Classmates.com years ago7 said the
co-founder and president of the
Pasteur Elementary School Alumni
Foundation. "When she gave me
her address, I said, 'Did you buy
the house from Saraletty Memoli?'
When she said yes, I told her I had
slept in the house!" We met the
Memolis on a vacation and became
good friends. We went there for
their son's bar mitzvah and stayed
with them!"

LINKS FROM AFAR
Sharon and Andy Collins attended
a West Bloomfield party where she
chatted with a man from Hoechst,
the same small town outside of
Frankfurt, Germany, as her mom.
"I told him my mom's grand-
parents owned a department store
before the war called Kaufhaus
Schiff; my mom's maiden name was
Schiff' she said. "He was shocked
and told me his elderly aunt was
in a nursing home and her room-
mate was the Schiff children's

