18 | NOVEMBER 21 • 2019 

Discovery 
of a 
Family 
Dynasty

Woman uncovers her 
ancestry during March of 
the Living trip.

JUDY GREENWALD CONTRIBUTING WRITER

A

s the self-proclaimed historian 
of her family, former Detroiter 
Rita Morse has always been 
interested in her family’
s roots. As the 
child of Holocaust survivors, however, 
Morse (nee Jerusalem) always believed 
those roots weren’
t very deep.
But during a recent trip to Poland as 
a participant in the 2019 International 
March of the Living, not only was she 
able to locate her grandmother’
s and 
great-grandparents’
 graves in the Lodz 
cemetery, she was also overwhelmed 
with the discovery of ancestral ties to a 
renowned 18th-century Chasidic rabbi, 
the Strykower Rebbe, Ephraim Fishel, 
known as the “Pillar of Fire.”
Morse, who with husband, Marc, 
now lives in Hollywood, Fla., knew her 
father Bernard was from an Orthodox 
family in Lodz and was imprisoned in 
the Lodz Ghetto, where he lost his wife 
and 6-year-old son. Morse’
s mother, 
Adina, was born in Czechoslovakia 
and, during WWII, she worked in a 
forced-labor camp in Riga, Latvia, and 
managed to escape the Nazis during a 
death march. 
After the war, they both ended 
up in a displaced persons camp in 
Austria, where they met and married. 
Then, with assistance from family 
in America who were elated that 
relatives had survived the Holocaust, 
Morse’
s parents also managed to get 
out of Europe and, as passengers on a 
military ship, arrived in New York in 
late November.

“My parents’
 first meal in America 
was Thanksgiving dinner,” she 
noted with emotion. “That’
s why 
Thanksgiving is a very important 
holiday in my family.”

UNCOVERING A SURPRISE
Other family facts helped Morse delve 
deeper into her history.
“I knew in order to avoid the Polish 
draft, my father’
s older brother Leo 
emigrated to the U.S. after World War 
I and eventually settled in Detroit,” she 
said. “In communicating with family 
still in Poland, Leo found out his 
mother (my grandmother Sara) died 
in May 1939 and was buried in the 
Lodz cemetery. He received a copy of 
her death notice, written in Polish and 
Yiddish.”
It was when her cousins sent her 
this notice her interest in finding her 
grandmother’
s grave was piqued. This 
search would coincide with another 
activity she had already signed up for: 
the March of the Living, which took 
place April 30-May 12. The event is an 
annual educational program bringing 
people from around the world to 
Poland and Israel to study the history 
of the Holocaust and march down the 
same path leading from Auschwitz to 
Birkenau on Holocaust Remembrance 
Day — Yom HaShoah — as a tribute to 
all victims of the Holocaust.
“I joined the march because, being 
a child of survivors, I wanted to feel 
empowered by the number of Jews 

continued on page 20

Morse’
s great-grandfather’
s headstone

COURTESY OF RITA MORSE

Morse’
s grandmother’
s death notice

Rita Morse (right front) carries the Israeli flag during the 2019 March of the Living in Poland.

Jews in the D