What’s in a name?
My last name has always been a challenge of sorts. Hard to spell, difficult to pronounce and, given its meaning in German— roughly translated to “cheapskate” — a chuckle or two from people who know German.
What I didn’t know, until recently, is that the name saved my life (well, actually, my father’s life and, by extension, mine).
While going through my mother’s papers, I found an article from a German magazine in 1994 that interviewed my father and quoted him telling of an incident while he was in Plaszow (a concentration camp outside of Cracow):
“When I had to repair a car once and could not do it because I lacked material, the angry Nazi official wanted to shoot me on the spot. Before, he asked me what my name was. I said, “Geizhals”. And he laughed and laughed and forgot what he had originally planned to do.”
The article, in German, went on to comment that “The stereotype of the cut-throat stingy Jew had a positive effect on his life” and shared other incidents that contributed to my father’s survival.
What’s in a name?