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by Esther Gerstenfeld Radick
The Power of Name
My legal first name is Esther, but the actual name on my birth certificate was Estera. An anonymous immigration officer Anglicized my name when I arrived in the United States at the age of five months. I was born in Stuttgart, Germany on October 27, 1946, to Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors. My mother chose to name me in memory of her mother, who had perished at Treblinka.
For many years, I felt my name, with its overtones of the biblical Esther who “saved the Jews,” was a burden. I was the oldest child, born right after the war and, compounded with my name, I felt that I had to accomplish great things to make up for my family’s loss and be worthy of my namesake. Now that I am nearly fifty, I have a different perspective. I, like many other second-generation Holocaust survivors, have always keenly regretted the absence of grandparents in my life. But now I feel that my name gives me a special link with a grandmother whom I could never actually know.
Who Are We?
The articles in this special section:Making up our Shared Name
by Rabbi Zeise Wild Wolf
Jew by Choice, Name by Choice
by Kiera Aviya Koester
Sylvia Meister, Sylvia Roth, Sylvia Shopira and I, Sylvia Rosner
by Sylvia Rothchild
I Love My Name
by Troim Katz-Blacker Handler
A Bitter Blow
by Mara Benjamin
Wacky Macky
by Maxine Silverman
The Wisdom of Change
by Sophia Batsheva Rosenberg
The Pronunciation of My Name
by Rachel S. Havrelock
A Name in the Closet
by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
Feminist Son, Angry Mom
by Ann Klaff Lontein
The Power of Name
by Esther Gerstenfeld Radick
Out of the Flames
by Phyllis Pacheco
One Woman, 2 Marriages, 3 Cultures, 4 Names
by Karen Alkalay-Gut
A Dad’s Choice
by Seena Candy Sweet
Wave of Emotion
by Rabbi Leila Gal Berner
Each of Us Has a Name
poetry by Zelda