Local grad student honors hero with quilt project

My friend, Izzy Geller / Lived through the Holocaust. / In the concentration camps / People died or came close to dying. / People starved to death. / People were gassed, / Or whipped or beaten. / Some froze.

Marissa Levenson was in grade school at the Luce when she penned those words, but the message still resonates nearly two decades later.

Marissa Levenson is pictured at her bat mitzvah with her hero, Izzy Geller, and Izzy’s wife, Marilyn.

Assigned to write a poem about her personal hero, Levenson had chosen Geller, a “grandfather figure” to her and many others in the Temple Beth Abraham community and a man who had inspired her with his tale of bravery and survival in the face of unspeakable horrors.

“He taught me so much about what it means to be a good person,” Levenson told the crowd at a memorial service in honor of Geller, who passed away in 2013 at the age of 89. “He had a truly beautiful spirit. Izzy was one of the most selfless, kind, caring, and loving people I have ever known. These were qualities that I always admired and strived to emulate. Izzy’s ability to smile and love others unconditionally despite all the adversity he faced is one of the most important lessons I learned from him.”

Levenson said she saw Geller frequently at the temple until the last few years of his life, when he developed Alzheimer’s disease and moved into a nursing home. But she never forgot her special friend and pledged to “continue to live [her] life in a way that would make Izzy proud.”

This spring, Levenson will graduate with a master’s degree in social work from Bridgewater State University, and it was Geller, she said, who also partly inspired her career aspiration of working with people who have Alzheimer’s and their caregivers.

So when her supervisor at Hope Health, where she is currently completing an internship, told her recently about “fidget quilts,” she saw it as the perfect opportunity to give back to her community while also honoring the legacy of her longtime hero.

Fidget quilts, as Levenson explains it, have “buttons, zippers, different textures, etc. for people with the disease to fidget with because they’re often restless and the tactile stimulation is good for them.”

“I think it has to do with the anxiety,” she said. “A lot of Alzheimer’s patients, especially in the later stages, have trouble initiating a lot of activities on their own.”

Levenson has partnered with the Canton Senior Center on the project, which she has named “Izzy’s Quilts,” and she has enlisted the help of local volunteers to sew and decorate some of the quilt squares.

On March 29, she will meet with the volunteers at the Senior Center, where she will give a brief talk on the quilts and their meaning and distribute the quilt squares and fabric scraps.

Levenson said the quilts are 20-inch-by-20-inch “lap quilts,” and the volunteers can sew as few or as many squares as they would like. She said the quilts can be expensive to produce but she was fortunate to receive many donations, including lots of material and scraps for the front squares from the Fabric Place Basement in Natick. She also wanted to thank Draper Knitting in Canton, which generously donated all of the fabric for the backs and has been a big supporter of the project.

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Izzy had strength in his heart. / Izzy has a number on his arm. / He was called by the number on his arm, / Not by his name. / His strength got him through.

As a prisoner of the Nazis, Geller spent the majority of his formative years performing forced labor in ghettos and concentration camps, including the infamous death camp at Auschwitz, where he was branded with a serial number and stripped of all humanity.

Fidget quilt made in honor of Izzy Geller

As he told the Citizen in a 2011 interview, “Coming out of the shower in Auschwitz, my name was not Israel Geller. My name was 159320.”

It was therefore fitting that the first quilt that Levenson and her mother made featured a large patch that proudly displayed Geller’s name, with the simple yet heartfelt inscription: “In memory of my hero Izzy.”

Levenson said she has not yet decided how many of the quilts will include this patch; however, she is planning to make at least a few in honor of Geller and will donate them to the nursing home that he lived in, Blue Hills Health and Rehabilitation in Stoughton.

Izzy’s wife, Marilyn, has also gotten involved in the project, and she is thrilled to be a part of something that will honor her husband’s memory. Just last week, in fact, Levenson and her mother brought the first two quilts they made to Marilyn’s house and also brought over a spare sewing machine so she could help make some of the squares.

Levenson said that Marilyn has also been an inspiration to her, and she helped to put in perspective how Izzy could have endured such a horrific experience but “still have so much faith in God and humanity.”

“She told me that there was a lot of water under the bridge, but Izzy wasn’t going to sink,” Levenson explained in her speech at the memorial service. “He accepted the fact that there are some questions you will never know the answer to, but his faith was instilled in him. It was something he could never lose. Despite the extreme hunger he faced during the Holocaust, he still fasted every year on Yom Kippur. Marilyn told me that Izzy believed there was something that gave him courage to move forward, and he never gave up on God.”

Levenson said she cannot wait until next month’s event at the senior center and is grateful to all of those who have volunteered to assist with the project. She still is not sure how many quilts they will be able to produce, but she said it would be “amazing” if they could finish at least 10. She would also like to make some “fidget aprons” and is currently looking for donations in hopes of having some plain aprons available in time for March 29.

But no matter how many quilts or aprons she produces, Levenson said she is just proud to be following in the footsteps of her friend and hero — a man with an “enormous heart” and a “true passion for helping others.”

Izzy believed in himself. / He taught me that when you believe in yourself / You can get through anything. / I will always admire his self-respect. / Izzy is like a grandfather to me. / In my eyes he is a hero.

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Posted by Jay Turner on Feb 18 2016. Filed under News. Both comments and pings are currently closed.