Grandparents by-Garrett Neuschatz

My own personal family plays a very important role in my life and I think their all great. But this month I'm going to discuss two people that I find incredibly impressive and interesting: My Grandparents (On my fathers side). My grandpa is Joseph Neuschatz other wise known as Fafa. His story begins in Romania, where he was born and lived his early life. His time in Romania came to an unfortunate end with the start of WW2. He was Jewish but luckily his family lived in a wealthier Catholic area which gave them enough time to escape. They boarded a train to Israel, leaving everything behind, in order to start a new life without the risk of persecution. Sadly all of their extended family perished. At sixteen Joseph enlisted in the Israeli Army and had several years of military service before pursuing a career as a doctor. He left his family in Israel and traveled oversees to France in order to obtain his medical license in anesthesiology. This is where he met my Grandmother, Genia Neuschatz, known to us as Gen Gen. Genia's life began in Denmark, where at a young age she too had to flee from the Nazis. Her family moved to England where they began their next chapter. Genia at around age seventeen took a school trip to France. This is where she met Joseph, they fell in love, got married and decided to live in France together. They resided there for several years and had their first child. However to Genia's dismay they moved to the U.S. because of a work opportunity. They settled in Rhode Island where they would finally stop moving (Still being a semi-French man, Joseph would still eat a whole slab of brie cheese every morning for breakfast and still does). They had two more children, their youngest being my father. Joseph had a successful career as a doctor and Genia opened a flourishing art studio. Now both retired they are still happily living out a healthy and independent life. Genia still makes art as a past time and we have several of her wonderful pieces throughout our house. Joseph has taken up a knack for writing and has authored serval books about his experience in the medical field (And one short story about going bald). Over the course of their lifetime both became fluent in several languages during their travels. Joseph can speak five languages, English, Romanian, Yiddish, Hebrew and French. While Genia can speak three English, Dutch and French (Often times they can be heard squabbling back and forth in French which is they're preferred language). This is completely remarkable considering its impressive just to speak two languages alone. Overall I find my grandparents very inspiring because of their perseverance, ability to adapt and just the fact that their great people. Their the core of our family and at the end of the day I simply wouldn't be alive without them.

Here are a few of her paintings-