Anyone who had the fortune of knowing the woman with the red lipstick and sunglasses behind the cash register at M&T Deli knows how true those words are. Thelma Sarnov’s beloved son Mark said them at a modest graveside ceremony.
The ceremony took place Sunday morning at United Israel Cemetery on Fitch Street, a funeral and burial for Thelma (Tula) Sarnov. Sarnov died on May 17 in Rochester.
Sarnov, a Lithuanian native, lived most of her life in New Haven—and was a warm, loving fixture of the community.
She and her late husband Meyer, both Holocuast survivors, for years ran the popular M&T Deli. It was first located in the Hill, in the then-thriving Jewish neighborhood around Legion Ave. As Jews moved westward, so did M&T—to the corner of Dayton and Whalley, in 1969.
Meyer suffered a stroke in the move. For the next ten years, Sarnov took care of him, raised Mark, and ran the deli seven days a week. After Meyer passed, Sarnov kept running M&T into the mid-‘90s.
To the end, she was a survivor.
M&T was a bustling, colorful place. Sarnov anchored it with her knowing wit and compassionate gaze. A commanding presence, she sat by the front door at the register, wearing sunglasses, red lipstick, pearls, and a smile, no matter what chaos was taking place around her. She knew everyone’s secrets and dreams, and proved a trusted confidante—friend, counselor, oracle, surrogate mom.
She took special pride in her son Mark who, after working in the deli during high school, went on to college and medical school. She spent her final years in Rochester, where Mark works as a doctor and lives with his wife and two grandchildren.
At the half-hour ceremony by his mother’s graveside Sunday, presided over by Rabbi Sheya Hecht, Mark spoke of how his mom saw M&T not just as a deli, but a part of the community. When she saw kids causing trouble outside, she didn’t shoo them away, he recalled. She invited them, fed them, then gave them window-washing or other work to do.
In a 1986 interview with the print edition of the New Haven Independent, Sarnov spoke about survival.
“I survived—in a way, it’s a miracle,” she said. “But my mother, she predicted I am going to survive. She said, ‘Nobody’s going to be alive from us, but you.’ As a matter of fact, she gave me her spoon. It was written down with very tiny words: the address I should call my cousin in Israel. My mother was a very visionary woman.”
And her prediction proved true. The Nazis killed Thelma’s parents and her siblings, but not her. She held onto the spoon. She eventually escaped from the Nazis, passed as a German in Nazi-occupied Poland, then convinced Russian soldiers that she was indeed Jewish and not German. She made it to Palestine and found the cousin. The cousin led her to relatives in New Haven.
“If you live in a concentration camp, you think that’s how it’s supposed to be, and you accept it. That’s life. What can you do?” Thelma said. “I accepted anything that happened to me. That’s why I survive all the time. I come out.”
So many of us who loved her are glad she did.
I was sad to read that Thelma Sarnov passed away. When my daughter was young the old M&T was our favorite place to eat if we were in or near Westville (I grew up in Brooklyn and the lure of good cornbeef or tongue is powerful.) If things were slow Thelma would come and sit with us and talk about her and her husband's experiences coming to this country after the Holocaust. She was warm and a wonderful conversationalist. I was always happy to listen to her, and I was grateful that my daughter's first knowledge of this twentieth century tragedy came from this warm, courageous woman who was lucky enough to survive it and live on to embrace and enjoy life.