Arthur Gewirtz writing about Sam Lipsky:
I knew Sam for only a few years. We made friends quickly. I always enjoyed his company and I always trusted him. We met at a weeklong poker game on a very slow cargo boat sailing from Manhattan to Marseilles*(1). Twenty or so of us had, clandestinely volunteered to join the Haganah in early 1948. Each of us had been recruited separately and met for the first time at dinner after the ship set sail.
Sam Lipsky (center) on Ma’apilim ship Marie Annik 1948
More than a few of us could not take the rolling of the ship and were happy to join the 24-hour poker game that was quickly organized, and went on non-stop for six or seven days, with players dropping in and out. Sam and I played in the game for more hours than the others. Same, about 7 r more years older, played a far better game than I, but I was lucky and we both came out ahead. He smoked a lot, concentrated on the cards, and played the hands well. We took some toilet and eating breaks together and talked about downtown NYC. We knew the same neighborhoods and streets, but our lives had been developed in different environments, different worlds, different universes.
I was born in 1925 and had a little experience with the great depression. My lifetime was spent in an orthodox, close extended family environment with very structured and protected immediate surroundings. I always had the impression that Sam developed to be the man he was all by himself, in a bustling downtown NYC environment, learning the skills of surviving, making it, and staying one step ahead of whatever was strange or unfriendly. I, initially, was impressed that he appeared to be one of the calmest, self-confident persons in the group, someone who had superb skills that were needed by the Haganah, and had the right kind of stuff and experience that could/would be immediately put to use. I had some of the above and was glad to have a friend whose skills would make a real contribution to what we had signed up for. He seemed pleased with my company and I always thought it was less because of who and what I was, but because I knew the young lady he was very much taken with and seemingly deeply cared for. Most ship talk amongst fellows off on adventures is trash and boasting. Sam was always serious and caring when he talked about his new friend R.K. who I knew a little about. We talked in a more serious manner about relationships with girls, women, jobs, Jewishness, and what got us on this adventure to the faraway place called Palestine, newly called Israel. I do not think Sam was a Zionist, or concerned about Jewishness, or wanted a year off to do service in a strange country. I always thought that he was on the trip to take the long roundabout way to indicate his worthiness to be the husband of R.K.
The nautical skills that Sam developed in the U.S. Merchant Marines were heavy utilized in the second part of our journey to Israel. One group spent a week in a small suburb of Paris and left on a very small cargo ship of Italian registry. There were 150-200 refugees abroad, and 3 members of the Haganah. The Italian crew got drunk the first day out and Sam was asked to pilot the ship to somewhere off the coast of Tel Aviv. We had to elude the British blockade who were sending all would-be immigrants, invaders, or volunteers to Cyprus and Lebanon, where one of our mutual friends*(2) was stranded from a previous ship’s crossing attempt. Sam taught me how to keep the wheel on course and that raised my status (one inch) in the group. We beached the ship somewhere near Netanya and walked a few steps in the water to a bunch of buses that took us to different places. We parted company immediately after that. Sam was sent, or went, to Haifa to assist the new navy unit, and I went first to a kibbutz and then to the army. We stayed in touch and met several times. We received small stipends from an American group but never had enough money for minimal expenses.
One day Sam walked 4 or 5 miles to meet me. He asked for a loan of a very small amount to buy stamps for a letter he had written to his R.K. and I did not have it to give him. I decided then never to be in such a situation and I haven’t since then.
Same had a non-commissioner’s position with the fledging Israeli Navy. This gave him status and I was very proud of him, an Eastsider one of us, making a significant contribution. Most of the six months I was in Israel was one minor adventure after another, and after Chanukah I went home with my sister. This had been my parent’s sole mission for me, and they sent the fare for this purpose.
I did not look up R.K. when I got to the States. Within 6 months I was married and soon learned that Sam had married his dream girl R.K. whose name became Rachel Lipsky. I feel certain that had we been in touch, we would have gone to each other’s weddings. (We did go to his but I didn’t have a wedding to speak of, and we had to scratch around to get a minyan).
Sam and I talked several times by phone and he and Rachel visited our apartment in Greenwich Village one afternoon for Sunday lunch. It was a warm, friendly, afternoon, full of talk. My wife was the stranger to the lives and events of the other three. My respect and admiration for Sam increased. He had won and married the woman he deeply cared for, and had so often talked about. He was making a good living as a skilled cutter in the garment business, a trade that required real skills. (I was relatively poor, still trying to find myself). He was still a good poker player and I had not played for a long period because I had been with little funds ever since I returned to the States.
I moved to Boro Park and Sam moved to Israel again. He and Rachel were ahead of the curve and I respected him even more. We were good friends for a short period of time and I always wished we had more time together. He was serious, had a good sense of humor, and was quite handsome when he smiled. This was often, if he wasn’t smoking.
I have only had a few such friends in my lifetime, and I miss him.
Source: Arthur Gewitz, June 2001
*(1)
“The name of the ship we travelled on was the Marie Annik and it was an Italian fishing trawler. There were 160 people on board of whom 25 were in the group of American and Canadian volunteers which included both Sam and myself. \We originally sailed from New York on the Marine Marlin and landed at Le Havre, proceeding from there to Marseilles by train. Outside Marseilles there was a transit camp named St. Jerome where we spent a few days before boarding the Marie Annik”.
Yehuda Lev, USA, 20th March 2003.
*(2) Sid Rabinowits was on the ship that sailed from New York just before we did. His ship was stopped by the British. He and others spent weeks/months in Lebanon before he was allowed to go back to the States, after which he tried a second time.
Arthur Gewirtz, 1st September 2001
Rachel Lipsky’s letter to Arthur Gewirtz dated 24th December 2001:
Dear Artie,
I’m sorry to be so long in acknowledging your written remembrances of Sam. I really appreciate your taking the time and digging into your “retrieval system” to fill in some of the blanks that still exist in my family’s collective memory despite the passage of time.
Allow me however to correct a mistaken impression refleted in your sentences: “I do not think Sam was a Zionist, or concerned about Jewishness, or wanted a year off to do service in a strange country. I always thought that he was on the trip to take the long roundabout way to indicate his worthiness to be the husband of R.K.”.
Sam was a Zionist and concerned about his fellow Jews. He also had a very strong sent of justice; he wanted to fight in Spain in the 1930s but he was too young and needed his mother’s permission which she refused to give.
I met Sam at Malka Rabinowitz’s birthday party in October 1947. As was the custom in those days, a party should have more fellows than girls, so Malka’s brother Sid was asked to round up some of his friends in case not enough fellows showed up. Sam Lipsky, ever concerned about his fellow human beings, showed up even though he was more than ten years older than I was and he did not say to Sid “forget it, kid. That’s not for me”. At that point both he and Sid had made plans to volunteer for the war which everyone knew would inevitably follow. So he was a Zionist before he met me.
He had met Sid during World War II, when Sid was in the Army in North Africa and Sam was in the Navy ferrying troops and material from North Africa to Italy. I presume that the fact they were both Eastsiders was a bond between them. I don’t know how they met but they functioned as a team to bring help to the Jews of Casablanca. Sid would tell Sam what the community needed and Sam would carry it off to the ship – blankets, pillows, linen, whatever – and Sid would get it to wherever it was needed. Their contact continued after they were both discharged and that’s how he got to the party.
His Jewishness was important to him otherwise the condition of the Jews of Casablanca would not have touched him. He would have become a more religious person earlier in our marriage except that he was rebuffed by my father. On his own initiative he went to daven at the RSK Yeshiava since we lived on the East Side after we were married, but unfortunately the fellows thee were busy talking baseball or other topics during the actual davening, so he quit.
I was convinced of his worthiness to be my husband after our second date, in February 1948. That is why I waited for him to return from Israel. It never even dawned on me that he would come back in a different condition than he went, or that he would not come back at all. I am grateful that he came back whole, well, and with the same intention as mine, to get married. I have never had a moment’s regret.
Rachel Lipsky 24th December, 2001
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MACHAL/samuellipsky30317