Sam Axelrod
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As of this morning, the complete Pintele series — seven chapters — is available, as the old Yiddish saying goes, “wherever you get your podcasts.”
I had thought all seven episodes were finished before I released Part 1, but perhaps predictably, I’ve been continuing to work on each one right down to the wire. Partly for that reason, I haven’t had a chance to share many of the Pintele “bonus features” I’d been planning. So here’s one:
If you’ve listened to Part 1: Straight Outta Anatevka, you know how indebted I am to Sam Axelrod. Sam was the son of my great grandmother Jennie's brother Meir; Grandma Red and Aunt Sarah were his first cousins.
We spent time with Sam during the South Florida years, when I was a teenager. One day, he handed me a ten-page document that had been printed on a dot-matrix printer. It was part of an unpublished memoir written by his father, Meir. Those pages, along with Sam’s own memoir, The Wolf and the Lamb, would provide a substantial part of the story told in Pintele 1. Sam’s son, my cousin Michael Axelrod, also helped me by answering questions, identifying people in old family photos, and even translating some additional sections from Meir’s memoir.
If you’re living through history — as we all are, always — it’s really not a bad idea to write it down. Meir Axelrod died more than a decade before I was born, but because he took the time and effort to write his story, he contributed profoundly to my work, and to my understanding of my own background. And Meir wrote with no expectation that anyone would read it.
The above collage shows the first page of the excerpts Sam handed to me in the 1990s, with his introduction. The images, from left to right, are: 1) Sonia and Meir Axelrod, photographed in Tel Aviv in the 1940s; 2) The cover of Sam’s memoir, with a photo of Sam from his time with the Jewish Brigade; 3) Sam looking more as I remember him; and 4) Sam and Grandma Red in New York in 1948.
You can find more about Sam in Pintele 1: Straight Outta Anatevka and in the accompanying episode notes.
