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Saul and Miri Rosen - Relationship

Saul and Miri Rosen were childhood sweethearts who met in a New York School for the Deaf classroom at fourteen, married at twenty-one, and remained married for seventy-nine years -- until Saul died in his sleep on a Tuesday morning in October 2044 and Miri, unwilling to stay without him, followed him thirty-six hours later. Their marriage was, by every available measure, the foundational relationship of the Whitaker-Rosen family and one of the most quietly sustained partnerships in the series. They walked, in their private family shorthand, to the dining hall -- the phrase they used for the simple daily accompaniment that began when Saul first offered to walk Miri to the Fanwood cafeteria in 1958 and that continued, in some form, for the next eighty-six years.

Overview

Saul and Miri were a marriage built on the specific grace of two Deaf Polish Jewish Holocaust-child-survivors who had found each other early enough to never have to look again. They were opposites in temperament and matches in trust: Saul's broad mischief and performance balanced by Miri's quiet steadiness and warmth, his theatrical signing by her compact precision, his printer's hands by her seamstress's hands, his refusal to be tragic by her refusal to be anything but present. Their marriage produced one daughter (Annie), three grandchildren (Lindsay, Leslie, and RJ), a neighborhood-wide reputation in Mt. Washington, Baltimore, and a shared refusal to ever be in separate rooms for longer than the minimum each day required.

They are the archetype in the Faultlines universe of the partnership in which both people were saved by the same thing and chose, deliberately, across decades, to be that thing for each other. Their death -- his first, hers following -- is echoed in the later partnership of Charlie and Logan, who died three days apart in 2081. The rhyme is not coincidental. The Rosens set the family pattern for how deeply-entwined couples finish.

Origins

They met at the New York School for the Deaf (Fanwood) in the 1958-1959 academic year, when both were fourteen. Saul had been at Fanwood since he was five, having been enrolled there by his adoptive family in New York City after two years of functional language isolation in their home. He had arrived at Fanwood with no signs and acquired native American Sign Language in his first years there; by fourteen he was a known class clown, signed-joke prodigy, and all-around behavioral handful. Miri was new -- she had arrived from Boston that fall, transferred from the Horace Mann School for the Deaf because her adoptive parents wanted her immersed in the broader American Deaf culture that Fanwood represented. She was, unlike Saul, a native ASL signer from infancy, having been raised in Deaf culture by her Deaf adoptive parents.

Their meeting was, by both their accounts (which diverged in detail according to who was telling the story), unremarkable and seismic. Saul saw her across the classroom on her first day and decided, before he had any basis for the decision, that she was going to be his wife. He passed her a note in mixed written English and ASL glosses during their third class together, asking whether he could walk her to the dining hall. Miri -- who was more cautious than Saul by temperament and who had learned from her adoptive parents to read people carefully before deciding about them -- considered the note for a full minute. Saul later claimed to have been dying of anticipation during that minute. Miri later claimed she had been finishing a math problem.

She said yes. He walked her to the dining hall. He made the dining-hall matron laugh so hard that the matron forgot to reprimand him for lateness. Miri watched him do it and decided, in a way she would not articulate to herself for another year, that she had probably just agreed to the rest of her life. She was not wrong.

Courtship and Early Relationship

From that first dining-hall walk in fall 1958 through their graduation in June 1962, Saul and Miri were inseparable at Fanwood. They walked to the dining hall together for four years. They studied together in the library. They signed to each other under the desks during class. They were known, by teachers and classmates alike, as a unit -- Saul-and-Miri said as a single compound word. They were not dramatic. They did not break up and reconcile. They did not have public fights. They simply were, from fourteen onward, each other's chosen default.

Saul made a clumsy formal declaration of intent at sixteen. He signed to Miri in the library, with uncharacteristic seriousness: I want to marry you after we graduate. I'm telling you now so you can say no and I can recover before I actually ask you. Miri signed back, with equally uncharacteristic decisiveness for her: No need. Don't ask until you can afford a ring. Then yes. Saul claimed for decades afterward that this was the most efficient marriage negotiation in American history.

They graduated from Fanwood in 1962 at seventeen and eighteen respectively. Miri remained in New York City for her early seamstress training; Saul entered his union printing apprenticeship there as well. They saw each other daily. Miri's adoptive parents came down from Boston to meet Saul formally in 1963; Saul's adoptive parents met Miri more casually at the family's Brooklyn home. Both families approved -- cautiously, in Saul's family's case; warmly and immediately, in Miri's.

Saul proposed formally in June 1965 at a park bench in Washington Square. He had saved his printer's wages for three years for a modest gold ring. His proposal was, against his original intention, characteristically funny -- he had planned a solemn speech and collapsed into laughter halfway through. Miri had cried and laughed simultaneously. He had signed to her, in small and careful signs close to her face: Marry me. I will not be funny about this. He had then, immediately and involuntarily, been funny about it. She had said yes.

They married in October 1965 in a small Jewish Deaf ceremony in Brooklyn. His adoptive mother wept through the whole thing. Her adoptive father walked her down the aisle. The rabbi, who had learned basic ASL for the service, signed the blessings alongside speaking them. Approximately sixty people attended. The reception was held in the community room of a Deaf social club in Brooklyn; there was dancing; there was challah (made by Miri's adoptive mother); there was a three-story cake Saul had paid for with his last paycheck before the wedding.

Dynamics and Communication

Their daily communication was entirely in American Sign Language. Neither spoke aloud. They had developed over decades a specific private ASL dialect that layered Fanwood-era New York ASL onto Baltimore regional signs onto Goldfarb-Rosen family inventions onto compact shorthand they had evolved for each other. Outside observers who signed ASL would have understood most of what they signed to each other; occasional phrases, signs, and references were comprehensible only to the two of them.

Their communication styles were mismatched in a way that worked. Saul signed broadly, fast, with his entire upper body engaged, often in the middle of something else (walking, cooking, holding a grandchild). Miri signed compactly, slowly, with economy and precision, usually while fully present and stationary. When they signed to each other they each adjusted slightly -- Saul slowed; Miri broadened. They met in the middle.

Their conflicts, such as they were, were low-key and resolved by the next morning without ritual. Saul's tendency was to joke past a disagreement; Miri's was to go quiet and let the joke land wrong until Saul came back around. Miri almost always won the real arguments because she was both more patient and less attached to her own rhetoric. Saul was aware of this and had stopped trying to outmaneuver her in marital disputes by their second year of marriage. He would tell Annie in later life: Your mother always wins. I knew this at nineteen. It is the single most important fact of our marriage.

They divided emotional labor in ways that were characteristic of their era but modulated by their personalities. Miri ran the domestic systems (kitchen, calendar, household finances, child-rearing logistics). Saul ran the external-facing systems (community volunteering, extended-family diplomacy, the grandchildren's bedtime stories, the running jokes). Both participated equally in parenting Annie, in grandparenting, and in each other's emotional maintenance.

They had a specific ritual of signing to each other in the dark for twenty minutes before sleep every night of their marriage. Never longer. Rarely shorter. The signs were compact in the low light, sometimes just palm-to-palm or fingertip-to-wrist; they were talking but they were also co-regulating. Miri had said, in her seventies, to her daughter: Those twenty minutes are the marriage. Everything else is the wrapping.

Intimacy and Physical Relationship

Their physical intimacy was private and sustained. Both were reserved about sex in a generational and cultural way -- neither had grown up in a family that discussed it, and neither discussed it with others as adults -- but their physical relationship was, by every available indication, warm and active through most of their marriage. They held hands in public, routinely, from their engagement through their nineties. They slept in the same bed every night of seventy-nine years of marriage (including hospital stays, when Saul would arrange his cot to touch Miri's bed, and Miri would reach across in the dark to find his hand). They hugged in the kitchen. They kissed before meals.

Saul was physically affectionate in a bigger register -- grand gestures, public hand-holding, arms-around-the-waist when she was cooking. Miri was affectionate in a smaller register -- a hand briefly on his forearm, her shoulder against his in a crowd, her foot resting against his under a dinner table. Their physical vocabulary between them was specific and well-established. Each knew the other's preferences intimately.

Their physical relationship accommodated, over decades, the progressive Retinitis Pigmentosa that narrowed both their visual fields. By their seventies, they had developed a tactile accommodation of the loss -- more hand-to-hand contact, more touch as the primary mode of communication rather than visual signing at a distance. This continued their physical closeness rather than interrupting it. They had always been tactile; the Usher progression simply made tactility more central.

Saul's heart attack in 1998 briefly interrupted their physical relationship; Miri was, for the first and only documented time, fearful to touch him for several weeks. Saul had signed to her, firmly, from the hospital bed: I am your husband. I am not glass. Come here. She had, slowly, come back. Their physical intimacy resumed within a month of his recovery and was not interrupted again until his death.

Domestic Life

They lived in their single Mt. Washington, Baltimore rowhouse from 1966 to 2042, seventy-six consecutive years in one home. The house was small (three bedrooms, one bathroom), modest, and steadily adapted over decades to accommodate their progressive Usher Syndrome progression -- their son-in-law Robbie (an architect with accessibility specialty) renovated the space in rolling phases between 2005 and 2035 to add tactile wayfinding, adapted lighting, visual alert systems, and eventually Pro-Tactile-friendly furniture arrangements. In 2042, as both were in their late nineties and their vision and mobility had both declined further, they moved into a custom-built first-floor suite at the Whitaker-Rosen Family Home in Mt. Washington, two blocks from their longtime rowhouse. They spent the last two years of their lives there.

Their domestic division of labor was clear and never renegotiated. Miri ran the kitchen absolutely. Saul did not cook, had never cooked, and had, on the one occasion in 1972 when he had tried to make Miri breakfast in bed for her birthday, burned the eggs, scorched the toast, and set off an alarm that Miri had to come downstairs to address. She had, with characteristic quiet amusement, made her own eggs afterward while Saul sat at the table looking humbled. He never tried again. For the next seventy-two years of marriage he compensated by doing literally every other household task Miri asked of him without complaint: he vacuumed, did laundry, fixed every broken thing, took out the trash, and washed the dishes after every meal Miri cooked. This division was understood to be non-negotiable and mutually satisfying.

Their home smelled, consistently, of Miri's baking (vanilla and yeast on Fridays; cinnamon and sugar on weekends when she made cookies) and Saul's Old Spice aftershave. Their kitchen table was oak, scarred from forty years of use, and hosted their weekly shabbat dinner as well as the weekly visits from Annie and her family.

Private Language and Shared World

The Rosens had decades of accumulated private shorthand. The central phrase -- we walked to the dining hall -- served as their encoded statement of commitment and covered everything from we are still us to I love you to we made it through another day to the inscription on their shared memorial plaque at the Baltimore Jewish Deaf Association community room. They used the phrase compulsively. Their grandchildren grew up hearing it and understanding it without ever being explicitly told its origin.

Their signed nicknames for each other were entirely private. Saul called Miri Miri in public and in front of family; he had a second private sign-name for her he used only when they were alone, which he had invented shortly after their wedding and which combined the sign for MIRIAM (the prophetess, Moses's sister) with a specific diminutive handshape meaning my own. Miri had an equivalent private sign for Saul, combining his public sign-name with the ASL sign for HOME. Neither told Annie what their private signs meant. Their grandchildren speculated. The privacy was honored by all.

They had running in-jokes that lasted for decades. The trained goose (Saul's claim to Lindsay at six that he had been smuggled out of Warsaw in a trained goose) became family shorthand for any wild factual claim Saul made. Miri's specific version of dill in her chicken soup (which she had once described, in ASL, as exactly enough dill to make a Hungarian jealous) became a household metric of precision. Saul's annual Yom Kippur attempt to fast (which he consistently abandoned by 2 PM in favor of challah) became a family joke Miri signed about every year with mock severity.

Their private world was built of accumulated small signs, shared references, repeated phrases, and the specific long-term texture of two people who had been paying attention to each other for eighty-six years.

Cultural Architecture

The Rosens were a cultural match in every major dimension: both Ashkenazi Jewish (Polish lineage); both Holocaust child survivors; both profoundly Deaf from infancy; both American Sign Language fluent; both Reform in observance; both raised in American Jewish Deaf community. Their marriage was therefore free of the inter-cultural negotiations that many couples in the Faultlines universe navigate. They did not have to decide whose holidays to observe, whose language to speak at home, whose food to make for celebrations. The answer was always both, because both was also the same.

Where they differed culturally was in the texture of their upbringings. Miri had been raised in Deaf culture from birth by Deaf parents; Saul had come to Deaf culture at five via Fanwood. Miri's native ASL was Boston-inflected; Saul's was New York-inflected. Miri's family had been part of the long-established Boston Jewish Deaf community; Saul's adoptive family had been culturally hearing with Deaf exceptions. These differences were small enough to be absorbed without friction and large enough to give their marriage a specific internal texture -- Miri was the one who knew certain cultural reference points Saul didn't; Saul was the one who brought in certain sensibilities Miri lacked. They taught each other across these differences continuously.

Their parenting of Annie in ASL -- making her a hearing CODA daughter -- was a deliberate cultural transmission. They did not consider for a moment raising Annie in spoken English alone. They signed to her from before her birth. Her first word, in ASL, was MAMA (to Miri) at approximately eight months; her second word was a signed invented nickname for Saul that the family would not disclose in public records out of general Rosen-family discretion.

Caregiving and Interdependence

The Rosens' caregiving of each other was constant and evolved across their decades together. In their younger marriage (twenties through forties), caregiving was relatively symmetrical and light -- they supported each other through professional ups and downs, through Annie's birth and challenging early years, through the death of Miri's adoptive father in 1987 and adoptive mother in 1994, through Saul's father's death in 1989. Neither was primarily a caretaker in this period; both were.

The asymmetry began in their fifties, as both their Retinitis Pigmentosa progressed but at different rates. Saul's vision narrowed faster through his sixties; Miri's caught up later. They compensated for each other in overlapping ways -- Miri drove during the decades Saul could not; Saul read aloud (via signed reading-out-loud) from books Miri could not see in low light before her Braille display adoption. Their accommodations were collaborative rather than hierarchical.

Saul's 1998 heart attack was the first significant caregiving crisis. Miri managed his recovery with a methodical attentiveness that surprised even Saul -- she had been watching him for forty years and knew, by instinct, what he needed when. His 2018 broken hip was a second caregiving period; Miri, then in her seventies with her own advanced Retinitis Pigmentosa, coordinated care alongside Annie and managed Saul's rehab with the same calm thoroughness.

Their late-life caregiving was mutual. By their nineties, they were simultaneously Pro-Tactile learners, supporting each other's adaptation to the most advanced phase of their Usher progression; each signed PT-ASL to the other in a way that was both communication and reassurance. Their daughter had expected, with the clinical knowledge of a trauma therapist, that one of them would become functionally the other's caretaker in their final years. What actually happened was that neither did; they continued to care for each other jointly, in a kind of interwoven co-regulation, until the moment of Saul's death.

Parenting

They parented Annie as a united and highly present parental unit. She was their only child, born 1978 after a difficult pregnancy that precluded further children; she was therefore also their singular focus in ways that could have become smothering and did not. Their parenting division of labor was characteristic of their era but softened by their specific temperaments: Miri was the primary daily caregiver through Annie's early childhood; Saul was the primary play parent and nightly reader (via signed storytelling). Both handled discipline, which was rare -- Annie was a well-regulated child who responded to their consistent structure.

They raised Annie bilingual in American Sign Language and English from infancy. She signed before she spoke. Her early childhood was spent as the family's hearing interpreter in a way that felt natural to her; she would not come to understand, until her adolescence, that this role had also been training her for her eventual vocation.

They were proud of Annie with the specific sustained pride of parents who had wanted her profoundly and gotten her against odds they did not fully understand until later. Saul had been, from the moment of Annie's birth, Annie's loudest advocate; he had signed to the hospital nurse, within an hour of Annie's delivery: This is the best baby in Baltimore. Any disagreement is wrong. Thank you. Miri had cried and laughed simultaneously, much as she had at his proposal thirteen years earlier.

They did not attempt to have additional children despite Saul's wish. Miri's difficult pregnancy and their physicians' advice made the decision for them, but both had grieved it privately. Saul channeled the would-have-been energy into aggressive overparenting of Annie; Miri channeled it into expansive grandmothering when the twins arrived three decades later.

Public vs. Private Life

In public, they were a beloved fixture of the Mt. Washington, Baltimore neighborhood and the Baltimore Jewish Deaf Association. Saul was the one strangers noticed first -- his broad physical presence, his rapid signing, his easy performance of mischief in public settings. Miri was the one strangers liked more on reflection -- her quieter warmth, her specific attention to each person she met, her remarkable ability to make everyone feel uniquely seen. They were frequently described by acquaintances as Saul and Miri, said as one word, in the same breath.

In private, they were something different and deeper. Miri rarely performed anything. Saul, with her, dropped the performance he kept up everywhere else. Their home was not funnier than other homes; it was, specifically, quieter and more tender than their public faces suggested. Saul's filthy jokes were for the world. His tenderness was for Miri.

They had almost no meaningful exposure to media or broader public attention. Their one brush was a 1992 Baltimore Sun profile about Holocaust child survivors who had made return trips to Poland, which included Saul's trip to meet his Żegota rescuers' surviving daughter. Miri had declined to be interviewed for the piece (she had not made the trip; she had no interest in discussing her own rescue publicly). Saul had been interviewed briefly and had, characteristically, told two contradictory versions of the smuggling story in a single interview. The profile was kind. The family kept a copy. It was not discussed often.

Shared History and Milestones

1958: Meeting at Fanwood

Saul saw Miri across the classroom on her first day at the New York School for the Deaf in fall 1958. He passed her a note by their third class together. She said yes to walking to the dining hall. They were fourteen.

1962: Graduation from Fanwood

Both graduated and committed to remaining in New York City together while Saul completed his printing apprenticeship and Miri her seamstress training.

1965: Marriage

Married in Brooklyn in October 1965, both at twenty-one. Small Jewish Deaf ceremony, approximately sixty guests.

1966: Move to Baltimore

Relocated to Baltimore together for Saul's transferred union position. Bought their Mt. Washington, Baltimore rowhouse within their first year. Miri began work at a Baltimore Jewish tailor shop.

1974: Co-founding the Baltimore Jewish Deaf Association

Saul and Miri, along with four other Baltimore Jewish Deaf couples, founded the Baltimore Jewish Deaf Association. Miri became unofficial social coordinator; Saul became co-leader. Both roles persisted for forty-plus years.

1978: Birth of Annie

Annie born to them after a difficult pregnancy. Named Annette for no specific reason either parent remembered later and Miriam for her mother, at Saul's insistence.

1987 and 1994: Deaths of Miri's Adoptive Parents

Miri's adoptive father (Ira [TBD]) died in 1987; her adoptive mother (Hannah [TBD]) died in 1994. Both losses were significant to Miri; Saul supported her through both with characteristic steady presence.

1989: Death of Saul's Adoptive Father

Saul's adoptive father died in 1989. Saul's grief was quiet and private; Miri helped him navigate it.

1992: Saul's Trip to Poland

Saul made his one trip back to Poland to meet the surviving daughter of his Żegota rescuers. Miri did not accompany him; she had no desire to return. They communicated via video relay through the trip. Saul returned changed; Miri held him for a long time when he got home and neither signed anything for the first hour.

1998: Saul's Heart Attack

Saul suffered a mild heart attack at age 54. Hospitalized briefly; recovered with stent placement. The first significant mortality scare of their marriage. Miri's handling of it -- calm, thorough, never leaving his hospital room -- impressed him in a way he signed to her about for decades afterward.

2010s: Joint Usher Syndrome Diagnosis

Their grandson RJ's infant diagnosis with USH1F (Usher Syndrome Type I, Ashkenazi Jewish founder mutation) led to their own confirmatory testing and formal Usher diagnoses in their late sixties. The diagnosis was a reframing rather than a revelation; they had been living with the condition their whole lives and now it had a name. They processed the news together over a single shabbat dinner and did not discuss it much afterward.

2018: Saul's Broken Hip

Saul fell in their bathroom in 2018 at age 74 and broke his hip. Recovered with rehab. Miri managed his care alongside Annie.

2042: Move to the Whitaker-Rosen Family Home

At ages 98 and 98, they moved into the custom-built first-floor suite at Annie and Robbie's home in Mt. Washington, Baltimore. The move was managed by their son-in-law Robbie with characteristic care; both Saul and Miri had been resistant to the move for years and had only agreed when Annie made the case that the move would let the grandchildren see them more often. Annie's argument was the one that won.

October 2044: Simultaneous Deaths

Saul died in his sleep on a Tuesday morning in October 2044 at age 100, hours after signing a filthy joke to Miri that made her cackle. Miri followed him thirty-six hours later on Wednesday evening. Her cause of death was formally listed as Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy. Their family called it love. Their memorial was held jointly at the Baltimore Jewish Deaf Association; three hundred people attended; the eulogies ran three hours.

Crises and Transformations

The major crises of the marriage were shared medical events (Saul's heart attack, his broken hip, their parallel Usher progression) and the deaths of their adoptive parents. None of these ruptured the relationship. Each was navigated jointly and absorbed into the marriage's fabric without fundamental change to its structure.

The closest thing to a marital crisis occurred in 1979, their first year with infant Annie. Miri was exhausted and struggling with the isolation of new motherhood; Saul, well-meaning but clueless, was failing to understand the depth of her exhaustion and was continuing his pre-baby routines of evening Baltimore Jewish Deaf Association meetings while Miri stayed home alone with the infant. After two months of escalating quiet distance, Miri had finally signed to him at the kitchen table one evening, in small and precise signs: I need you here at night. I don't need you to do anything. I just need you here. Saul had, to his credit, heard her immediately. He had missed the next Association meeting, and the one after, and the one after. He had stayed home every evening with Miri and the baby for the next two months until she told him she could handle his absences again. They had never had the same kind of communication failure again. Miri credited the incident with teaching her that Saul, for all his joking avoidance of difficult emotions, could be trusted with direct requests. Saul credited the incident with teaching him that he had married a woman who would tell him exactly what she needed if he was paying attention.

Emotional Landscape

Their marriage's emotional landscape across eighty-six years ran the typical arc of a long partnership: intense early intensity in their late teens and twenties, settled middle-years domestic rhythm, late-life deepening tenderness with an undercurrent of anticipatory grief as their bodies declined. What was unusual about them was the consistency of their core emotional stance across all phases: they had always been each other's primary trusted adult. They had neither outgrown the teenage intensity into something colder, nor settled into comfortable coexistence without depth; they had simply continued, in shifting registers, the same core pattern of attentive paired attention that had started in a Fanwood classroom in 1958.

Saul's love language was performance-as-tribute (making Miri laugh every day; insisting her challah was the best in Mt. Washington every Friday; telling the family, loudly, at every holiday, that he had married above his station). Miri's love language was sustained presence (signing with him in the dark before sleep; sitting through his shabbat blessings even when she had heard them ten thousand times; making sure he was never alone for longer than either of them could tolerate). They had taught each other, across decades, to recognize and receive each other's forms of love.

The emotional texture of their final years was anticipatory. Both had lived longer than they had expected. Both knew the other could go first. Neither discussed this openly; both signed small private signs that acknowledged it.

Saul died first. Miri went with him, in the way she had always known she would, because she had been paying attention her whole life and she knew the shape of what had to happen. She did not resist it. She was not afraid of it. She had loved him for eighty-six years and was, as she had told Annie, simply finished.

Legacy and Lasting Impact

The Rosens' partnership set the pattern for the Whitaker-Rosen family's understanding of marriage. Annie and Robbie's own long and stable marriage was modeled consciously and unconsciously on her parents'. The grandchildren -- Lindsay, Leslie, and RJ -- grew up with a daily observable example of what a sustained married partnership looked like and carried forward that template into their own adult relationships in specific ways.

Beyond the family, the Rosens' marriage was remembered in the Baltimore Jewish Deaf Association as the kind of partnership that defined the community's sensibility. Their joint photograph hung in the Association's community room after their deaths with a brass plaque beneath bearing the phrase they had used privately to each other for seventy-nine years: We walked to the dining hall.

The phrase became, in the family and in the Association, shorthand for sustained commitment. Grandchildren used it to each other in adult relationships. Annie used it in her clinical work, occasionally, with couples she was counseling. The phrase outlived them by many decades.

Their simultaneous death became the family's reference point for what a good death looked like. Neither had died alone. Neither had lingered in isolation. Saul had cackled hours before going. Miri had followed him in her sleep with his watch in her hand. The cleanness of it -- the symmetry -- would become part of the family's myth-making about them for generations. Charlie and Logan, who died within days of each other in 2081, would be described by the surviving family members as having "pulled a Saul and Miri." The phrase was a compliment of the highest order.

Relationships Romantic Relationships Married Couples Saul Rosen Miriam Rosen Deaf Relationships Jewish Relationships Holocaust Survivor Relationships