Note: Because Chana Isaacs was a baby and then a very small child when the events in Germany, Holland, England, and arrival in the U.S. took place, the record of her childhood was mostly told to her by her parents with few memories of her own. (See also entry for Rabbi Selig S. Auerbach and Hilde Fromm Auerbach).

Chana Isaacs was born Hana Helene Auerbach on March 28, 1937, in Recklinghausen, Germany, to Rabbi Selig Sigmund Auerbach and Hilde (Fromm) Auerbach. Selig was the rabbi of the town and the district rabbi for the surrounding area. Chana' s parents met when her father came to Recklinghausen as an assistant rabbi to Rabbi Breuer. One of his duties was to advise the synagogue's youth group. Hilde Fromm was its president and she was not at all impressed with the new young rabbi and his ideas. However, with a little help from Hilde's mother over Shabbat lunches and dinners, the two eventually became engaged and then married.

Life for Jews in the 1930's had become very difficult. Socializing took place mainly in people's homes or at the synagogue's social hall. Young people would amuse themselves by giving recitals or performing little plays. Travel was restricted for Jews, who were not permitted to go on vacations or to spas. Most Jews considered themselves loyal Germans and felt that these little inconveniences "would pass" as they had before. Kashrut was difficult to maintain because kosher butchering was no longer allowed. Rabbi Auerbach had to import kosher meats and chickens from sources in Holland. Since Recklinghausen was close to the Dutch border, Rabbi Auerbach and another gentleman from the shul would drive to Holland and pick up the meat orders for the Jewish community every month. Traveling frequently across the border, he established good relations with the border guards.

 Chana and her parents lived above the synagogue's social hall that was across the street from the shul. When the Nazis came to power, her father realized that the police had tapped the telephone wires into their apartment and that they were under surveillance even inside their home, so he had the family speak Hebrew while at home. The crossing of wires, moreover, worked both ways, allowing Rabbi Auerbach to eavesdrop on the police station. Consequentially, he overheard them speak about the Nazi plan to send all German Jews of Polish descent back to Poland. He warned his congregants of this plan and encouraged those affected to put on several layers of clothing when they were taken away to be expelled.

Chana's memory of Kristallnacht was fragmented. She remembers a flash of light that drew her to the window. The synagogue across the street was burning. Nazi Brownshirts came into their house, marching up the stairs in their boots slashing everything they could find - featherbeds, pillows, comforters. From all the feathers floating in the air, Chana remembered it as "snowing inside.” Their house was then set on fire and her mother and she were almost burned alive, but at the last moment one of the Brownshirts allowed Mrs. Auerbach, who was pregnant, to jump from the house’s second floor holding Chana. The jump caused her mother to lose her unborn child and she herself could not get medical attention for her injuries until they reached Holland.

Rabbi Auerbach was not home during Kristallnacht; having heard rumors that the Nazis would close his synagogue, he was away interviewing for another position. As he waited for the train to return home in his rabbinical garb, he was taken by the police and transferred to an internment camp. Mrs. Auerbach and Chana were brought to the Recklinghausen police station (along with Mrs. Katz, whose husband was the synagogue’s president). However, as opposed to Rabbi Auerbach’s handling by the Gestapo, the police in Recklinghausen treated the women decently. One of the police even offered Chana an apple, but she refused saying, "I am a Jew and can’t eat non-Jewish food."

Meanwhile, Rabbi Auerbach's father Josef, a pharmacologist, was interned in the Westerbork transit camp, where he subsequently died from his ill treatment. His daughter, Leah, had taken over the business when he was taken away, although Rabbi Auerbach was listed as its owner with full responsibility. While in custody, Hilde had to sign over her family’s wine business to the Nazis.

Later, the Chief of Police in Recklinghausen called Hilde to warn her that her husband was being held at the train station for deportation. Hilde ran to the station with Chana with a fresh shirt for her husband. Meeting him there, she begged him to escape to Holland with their child, threatening to jump under the train when he was reluctant to leave her. Rabbi Auerbach took Chana and, with no papers, took the train heading for Holland. A Gestapo man was sitting behind them. Rabbi Auerbach slowly made his way to the front of the train where the engineer was driving and using a wrench as a weapon, threatened to kill him if he did not run through the border between Germany and Holland. The engineer complied and the train stopped just inside the Dutch border as if accidentally missing the mark by a few feet. Carrying Chana, Rabbi Auerbach stepped directly into Holland with which Germany was at peace at the time and was therefore safe from the Gestapo, and he secured a 24-hour permit at the border. He went to his brother Hermann’s residence in Amsterdam and by phone informed Hilde that he and Chana were safe. He then went to the Dutch consulate and was granted a residency permit.

Meanwhile, Hilde traveled to her parents’ home in Wurtzburg in an attempt to get a permit to travel to her husband in Holland. She tried to convince the authorities that her mother needed to be treated in Amsterdam for a rheumatic heart, but the Nazis denied the travel permit. Hilde knew that the head Nazi at the local Gestapo office was an old schoolmate of hers, so she went in person to appeal to him to have her exit papers stamped with the Nazi seal to permit her to travel. He let her know that he found her attractive, and closed the door and pursued her around the room with intentions of sexually molesting her. A phone call interrupted his intentions, and while he answered the call she reached over his desk and took his official stamp, stamped her own papers, and ran out of the office knowing he would not follow her since the Nazis forbade sexual contact between non-Jews and Jews. Hilde then was able to travel to Amsterdam and join her husband and daughter.

Hilde's mother, unfortunately, wound up in the Westerbork detention camp where she also died from the maltreatment she received.

 Once inside Holland, Rabbi Auerbach and Hilde still did not feel safe; Nazi Germany was too close and they were afraid that Holland would be invaded and conquered. Rabbi Auerbach knew Rabbi Dayan Swift of London, England, who had previously corresponded with him due to his interest in Rabbi Auerbach’s doctoral dissertation on The Jews in Europe in the Middle Ages. He contacted Rabbi Swift about obtaining a position at his synagogue since England would not permit entry to refugees unless the applicant could prove he held a job. Rabbi Swift could not offer him a position in the synagogue but was able to offer a position as a manager of a small home for German-Jewish refugee children in England. He accepted and traveled to England to teach and raise the children with Hilde doing the shopping, cooking, and cleaning for the home. It was fortunate that they left when they did since the Nazis invaded and quickly conquered Holland a short time afterwards; almost all Jews there were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where most were put to death.

While in England, Chana experienced the Blitz; Nazi Germany’s attempt to crush Britain by extensive bombing of London and surrounding area. She remembers trying on a gas mask, and going to the underground subway tubes during air raids, although she never was injured during these raids. However, she did develop a case of scarlet fever, and was sent to Wales away from the Blitz to recover. All the movement and uncertainty made her a difficult child; she was miserable and screamed and cried quite a bit, and the person in charge of the children’s facility where she was staying wrote that Chana was “incorrigible” and would not be permitted to stay so she was brought back to her parents at the home in London.

Later that year it looked as if Germany would invade England. Rabbi Swift arranged for a group of German-Jewish children to be given refuge in the United States and asked Rabbi Auerbach to escort them on the boat; he was given permission to take Hilde and Chana with him. After they reached New York in the spring of 1941, and the children had been safely claimed by their relatives, Rabbi Swift sent Rabbi Auerbach a wire advising him to remain in the United States as there was no safety for Jews in England with the threat of imminent Nazi invasion. Rabbi Auerbach accepted his advice, and searched for a position in the U.S. as an Orthodox Rabbi but none was available; Orthodox Jews were a very small group at that time.

Needing to have some position immediately to earn money for food and lodging, he found a temporary position as a Conservative Rabbi for the High Holidays in a small shul in Rome, Georgia. Chana remembers that a few days after arriving there, the people seeing that they had no possessions or clothing other than what they were wearing held a big gathering at which everyone gave something to the refugees: clothing, food, furniture, and so on.

Chana soon overcame her acting out and was the synagogue pet: cute, with red curls and blue eyes, smart and very vocal. It was there that the Auerbachs gave birth to their second child, Ruth Wilma Auerbach, and they enjoyed the people and the town. However, there were several things that urged Rabbi Auerbach to seek a new position; they disliked seeing the abuse of blacks in the South under segregation, the salary was very small, and the congregation was shrinking as were most Jewish congregations in the South.

After leaving Georgia, the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where Rabbi Auerbach became the assistant director of the Bureau of Jewish Education. He, however, wished to get back to being a synagogue rabbi and so sought for and obtained a position as a rabbi in Port Huron, Michigan. While functioning as rabbi, he volunteered for the US Army and served during World War II as a chaplain at White Sands, NM; during this period their third child, Nancy Joy Auerbach, was born on April 11, 1945. He subsequently took a position in St Louis, Missouri, and then moved on to North Dakota and South Dakota. Although these small town synagogues were adequate, as their children got older, the Auerbachs wished for their girls to have more opportunity to meet Jewish men than the midwest afforded them so he looked for congregations in the northeastern area of the country. He became rabbi in Alexandria, Virginia for several years, and then went on to Torrington, Connecticut, finally becoming the Rabbi in Lake Placid, New York, where they settled down and stayed for more than 25 years, until he retired. After retirement, they moved to Rochester, New York, near where Chana and Ruth lived with their husbands and children.

  At the age of 21 Chana was a student at George Washington University in Washington, D.C, living with her parents in Alexandria, Virginia. In late September 1957, Chana reluctantly accompanied two of her girl friends on a triple date that had been set up on a whim by a soldier, Morton Isaacs, who one of the girls knew. Although he was supposed to be the companion of that girl, his attraction to Chana was instantaneous, and he spent the entire evening with Chana. Within ten days, and after only three other dates, they agreed to be married; the formal engagement party took place on November 10, 1957.

When he was drafted, Morton had a BA degree (1952) from the University of Chicago, followed by a B.S. (1954) and an M.A. degree in psychology (1955) from Columbia University. After graduating he joined his father’s catering business until January 1957 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He was doing his active duty service when he met Chana. His parents, Irving and Bertha Isaacs, owned two catering halls in the Bronx, New York, where they conducted weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and other social occasions. The wedding of Chana and Morton took place in the larger of the halls, The Abalon, on February 18, 1958, with Rabbi Selig S. Auerbach officiating; the wedding feast was of course catered by his father.

The newly married couple honeymooned with a trip by car through the South to his new Army assignment in Fort Bliss, Texas, where they began their married life and lived for the next year while he served out his active Army service, and where he was discharged honorably as a Second Lieutenant.

They returned to New York City where Morton took a position as manager at the Abalon, although he was not trained for (nor did he like) business, while Chana taught as a Hebrew School teacher in a synagogue nearby. Their first child, Daniel Jay Isaacs, was born on May 26, 1959. Daniel’s birth was a problem as he emerged with a very low birth weight (3lbs, 11oz) and had to be kept in the neonatal ward for four weeks until he reached five pounds and was considered safe to be discharged. Because of this, both his brit and his pidyon haben took place at the Abalon on the same day, one following the other. Again, the religious ceremonies were conducted by Rabbi Auerbach, and the catering by Irving Isaacs.
A second son, David Lee Isaacs, was born on July 22, 1962, and four years later a third child, a daughter, Ilana Rae Isaacs, on June 24, 1966. Chana wanted the children to have a Jewish Day School education and after some back-and-forth with Morton, they decided to enroll Daniel in Akiba Day School in the Bronx, an Orthodox but very academically oriented institution.

Having Daniel attend an Orthodox school pulled their personal observances from Conservative toward Orthodox, and they became more aware of and attentive to the details of Judaism in their daily lives.
In 1963, Chana’s sister Ruth came to visit them for the summer, and a date was arranged for her to go on with the son of a family friend. The young man, Edward Lebowitz, was studying medicine at Downstate Medical College, and he and Ruth were soon dating steadily. They were married by Rabbi Auerbach, established an orthodox Jewish home, and eventually had six children: Mark, Jonathan, Michael, Jeremy, Naomi, and Alyssa. After their marriage and a short time living in Brooklyn, Edward received his M.D. and the couple moved to Lake Placid where he acquired a medical practice, and they lived there for almost twenty years. When the children started reaching dating age, however, they realized that the opportunity for the children to find Jewish partners in Lake Placid was minuscule, so they moved to Rochester, NY, where Chana and Mort lived and where there was an active Orthodox Jewish community. All their children did subsequently marry Jews. Ruth and Ed lived in Rochester until Ruth unexpectedly passed away on April 19, 2010 from an unexpected disease of the heart muscle.

Catering was a very time-consuming business for Morton and especially after his father Irving passed away in 1965, the couple found it difficult to have time together, so Chana gave up her teaching to become a floral consultant at the Abalon, counseling brides on flowers for their bridal parties and mothers of bar mitzvah boys on floral table displays. This enabled them to have time to talk and interact with each other which became even more important as catering in the Bronx declined; Jews moved out of NYC to the suburbs, increasing the stress under which Morton functioned. In an effort to keep the business afloat, Morton decided to add outside catering in synagogues and homes to the inside catering he was conducting and arranged to become the exclusive caterer at the Conservative Synagogue of Tuckahoe, NY, which required him to drive to people’s homes to talk about prospective parties. The outside catering aspect was very time-consuming and not very successful, and his dislike for the entire catering business grew.

In 1967 Nancy was attending the college in Burlington, Vt, not far from Lake Placid, when she met a biochemical student named Shelden Rosenblum and fell in love. They were married by Rabbi Auerbach in the Lake Placid Synagogue on August 25, 1968. They have five children: Benyamin, Shimon, Shoshana, Yehuda, and Raphael. All of the boys are married to Jewish girls and all have children. Shoshana, however, never met a person she wished to marry and is devoted to her career as Director of a Hebrew School for the Learning Impaired in Queens, NY.

In 1967 Chana noted how discontent Morton was with his business life and suggested that he try to get a part-time college job teaching psychology to see if he liked it. He doubted he was hirable since he had no experience and was twelve years away from his schooling, but Chana urged again and again until finally, more to silence her than with expectation of success, he went to Columbia College and asked if they had any posting of positions for teachers of psychology. They did, and gave him a five-page list of requests from colleges, but all offers demanded Ph.D. degrees except the last one, Pratt Institute, which said M.A. acceptable. He called, went for an interview and was accepted to teach two courses during the 1967 spring semester.. He found that he loved teaching and felt it was what he would like to do with his life. At the end of the semester, however, he was called in and told that although the students had liked him very much and the administration was pleased with him, they wanted all Ph.D.s for their staff, as they were upgrading the school and he therefore would not be rehired. That appeared to be the end of his teaching career.

On one of the outside catering interviews a month or so later, Chana and Morton, in talking to the father of the Bar Mitzvah, found out that Morton really did not like catering but had an M.A. in psychology. The man suggested that Morton call the NYS Employment Service for a teaching job. Morton was extremely skeptical about the idea, but over the next week Chana continually kept after him to do it. He finally called, and coincidentally, the person who answered the phone had had a call that same day from Norwalk Community College looking for a teacher of psychology. Morton followed up and was offered and accepted the position, finding out at the last moment that the position was for full time teaching (four courses) rather than just one course as he had thought. That year he did full time college teaching as well as full time catering in the Abalon, and some outside catering jobs. It certainly kept him busy, with Chana an invaluable assistant in all this.

As that year was coming to a close, Morton realized that if he truly wanted to pursue college teaching, he would need to acquire a Ph.D. degree; only a few community colleges still accepted a Master’s Degree as a teaching credential. With Chana’s blessing he gave up the position at Norwalk Community College and enrolled in the Psychology Doctoral program at Yeshiva University’s Ferkauf Graduate School. So as to be able to complete the course work in two years rather than the customary three, Morton took an overload of graduate credits both years while still doing full time catering work and graduated cum laude in 1970.
After he completed the course work for his Ph.D., Morton accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Rochester Institute of Technology and closed the catering business. A new chapter began for Chana and Morton with the move to Rochester, NY.

Chana was not reluctant to move to Rochester; she had been raised in small towns and had no deep feeling for New York City. She only insisted that any place she move to have a mikveh for her and a Jewish Day School for the children, and Rochester had both. In September 1970 Morton and Chana moved to Rochester. They quickly put down roots in the city where they joined Beth Sholom Synagogue, and Chana became a kindergarten teacher at the Hillel Jewish Day School in Rochester where the children were enrolled. Morton taught at Rochester Institute of Technology for the next 43 years, becoming a full professor over that time. Chana taught at Hillel for several years and, although very happy and good at it, after a while wished to change from teaching kindergarten. She enrolled at RIT in the Social Work degree program, receiving her BA degree in Social Work in June 1975. She subsequently worked at the Jewish Family Service as a social worker with the elderly for several years. In addition to her formal work, she was active in synagogue activities at Congregation Beth Sholom; she was on the Sisterhood Committee, was the first person they turned to when visitors needed a place to stay over the shabbat, and, in general, assisted in many other synagogue functions.
During our time in New York and while in Rochester, we drove to Lake Placid for almost all Pesachim and often for Sukkoth, too. The children have very wonderful memories of the time they spent in that area visiting their grandparents.

The Isaacs’s older son Daniel began college at SUNY Buffalo and completed it with a BA degree at Eisenhower College, following which he went to Israel to study further. He then made aliyah and lived in a Yishuv near Efrat. While teaching a class there, he met the girl who would become his wife, Rivkah Schechter; for their wedding they travelled to the US where they were married at Congregation Beth Sholom in Rochester on Oct 23, 1983. After his return to Israel, Daniel kept studying at the yeshiva until his Rabbi announced he would be the first at the yeshiva to receive smichah (become a Rabbi). His grandparents Rabbi and Hilde Auerbach flew to Israel to be present at the smichah ceremony. Daniel and Rivkah have ten children: Yisroel, Yohanatan, Naftali, Kayla, Shifra, Shmuel, Sarah, Shlomo, Devorah, and Aviezri.

The second child, David, began college at RIT but was always more religiously- than academically-oriented and left college to make aliyah to Israel where he stayed for ten years and studied at a yeshiva. While he had lived in Rochester, he had attended a Jewish Youth Convention held jointly with a Canadian youth group and met a Canadian-Jewish young woman, Pam Merdler, and the two corresponded while he was in Israel. He asked her to marry him and she was willing to do so, but she insisted that they live either in Canada or the US, but not in Israel, as she wished to stay close to her parents in Montreal. After several years of discussion, he agreed, and flew from Israel to Montreal to finalize arrangements. They were married in Montreal on June 17, 1990, and set up their home first in Queens, NY, and then in Spring Valley, NY while David attended Rabbi Brovender’s yeshiva and received smicha, becoming a Rabbi in 1992. They then moved to Rochester, NY where his parents live and David took a job in Rochester at the Jewish Community Center while Pam became a Child-Care Specialist in the JCC’s Children’s Department. They have no children.

The third child, Ilana, attended Touro College in New York, acquiring a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters Degree in Education. While driving in a car to attend a wedding, she met a young man, Gary Schild, and a year later they were married at Congregation Beth Sholom in Rochester on July 8, 1990. At first they lived in Queens, NY where he had a job, but within a year they moved to Passaic NJ for a better position and they still live there where they are active in the orthodox community. Ilana teaches in the Passaic Public Schools while Gary is the General Manager of a large import concern, as well as conducting services and managing many details in the Passaic Torah Institute. They have four children: Joshua, Elisheva, Aviva, and Yael.

Chana had many physical problems over the years that several doctors attributed to poor nutrition during her formative years in Nazi Germany. The Nazis limited the supply of milk available to pregnant Jewish women and Jewish babies, so Chana had to be fed on gruel for many months as an infant instead of milk. Her teeth suffered from this and deteriorated. Eventually all had to be removed. Both of her hips deteriorated, and one was replaced successfully; the operation was unsuccessful for the other one as an infection prevented her from having the replacement completed.  Consequently, she was wheelchair-bound the last eight years of her life. Her colon had to be partially removed. She also suffered from trigeminal neuralgia, an agonizing stabbing feeling in her head. During the last years she almost constantly had to resort to opiate medicines to lessen the pain.

Despite all these medical conditions, Chana did not let her physical problems limit her. She and Morton every year made at least one trip to Israel to visit Daniel and his family. These trips were a great pleasure to Chana and Morton and to the grandchildren, and solidified a bond between them that is strong to this day. They also took cruises to the Bahamas and to Jamaica, travelled to Florida and to Hawaii, and went by car to Passaic on many Jewish holidays to spend Passover and the High Holy Days with their children there.

Chana was brought to the hospital with a bad colon infection on June 17; although an operation was performed and she appeared to be recovering, sepsis spread throughout her body and late in the evening of June 24, 2014, Chana passed away. She was mourned by the entire community, and many people can tell stories about how she had helped them and how her household served as a guiding light for their own lives.

Biography written by her husband Morton Isaacs