In writing this preface, we are actually treading familiar paths, and cannot help being less than objective. While assisting Chaya Rochel Andres in the translation and publication of her last book "FOR WHOM DO I SING MY SONGS", we were drawn into the intimate orbit of her dreams and aspirations.
Through the medium of her poems, through subsequent correspondence and long distance telephone calls, the family of this housewife, mother and grandmother became our family.. . her numerous friends -our friends. The housewife-turned-poet, now reluctantly and modestly, upon the urging of her beloved family, reveals her life story. This is done with the same sensitivity that permeates all her writing. The sensitivity and response toward humanity which only a genuine, fine-grained poetical nature is capable of. . . which first attracted my wife, Jeanette, and myself to her through an accidental correspondence.
In reading her life story, the only criticism we have to make is, that there is a feeling engendered that much more is left unsaid... that there is far more for the telling to make it complete. However, it is most assuredly worth relating.
Particularly in these days of expanding ethnicity, such a story- and the many like it - are a valuable contribution. In the efforts of the youth to look for and find their roots . . . and in our case, particularly the Jewish youth, who wish to seek their own identity, this book is a remarkable bridge between the generations. . . not only for her beloved children and grandchildren, for which it is intended . . . but generally, for all who are vitally concerned with the continuity and survival of the Jewish people.
This autobiography is singular in another aspect. We are accustomed to biographies and tales of the Jewish immigrant that exude the odor of the sweatshop or other toil, grueling and strangulating in the transplanted ghettoes from the "shtetlekh" (small towns) of Europe to the slums of our own large cities.
In this life story we become acquainted with the immigrant Jew who escaped the tribulations of the slums of the new world, who settled down in more sparsely peopled communities and grew and thrived with them. From the familiar humble beginnings of "mama-papa shops", peddling and the like . . . with their own brand of punishing toil, though without the hunger and uncertainty of the "job" - they worked themselves up to a somewhat better life.
It is the tale of a young girl, thrown from the life of the "shtetl" into a large American city. In this book Chaya Rochel Andres tells the tale of Jews who band together through their love of Yiddish . .50 as not to be completely submerged by the process of integration and assimilation in their newly adopted land, with its strange speech and customs, and who, like the author, retained dreams in their eyes.
This is a tale of family life and love . . . of Chaya Rochel, who strives so mightily not to forsake her beloved Yiddish, where only other languages are spoken . . . and where she maintains her love and knowledge of the beloved Yiddish classicists, her idols.
Two factors dominate the book . . . her eternal devotion to her late husband, Hershl and her beloved family in America - and the underlying poignancy. . . punishing and pervasive. . . that she alone remains alive, of all the KIejman family, who were so brutally annihilated at the hands of the Hitler hordes. She alone remained alive by the sheer accident of running away from her home and her shtetl to avoid an unwanted marriage. Chaya Rochel, the sole survivor, is haunted by memories . and pours it all out in poetry and prose. The Holocaust, with its horror, stands out in its stark reality to her sensitive and kindly soul.
Nevertheless, she follows with pride, the maturing of her own family in America, against the back-drop of her beloved late husband, Hershl. She plunges into the communal life of her adopted country with zeal. We will not attempt to quote passages. We will leave it to the reader to savour of her manifold talents. To her children and grandchildren we can say that this wonderful grandmother is bequeathing, in life, a precious legacy, to be treasured forever . . . a precious dream of continuity of the Jewish people through you, her beloved children and grandchildren.
-Yudel Cohen