Family Life Before The War
And the rest of your family. Your father, he was a Hassidic Jew…
“Yes. In other words, if one was an Orthodox Jew in Poland, he was automatically a Hassidic Jew. Of course, there were different adherents of different rabbis. There was a Gerer Rebbe and an Alexander Rebbe, who is rabbi, was, still is in Israel. And there was some rivalry between those two.”
And your four brothers?
“They were young, but they were all Hassids. They were going to a private, a Hassidic school, a Heder. It was like an all-day, what you call day school here. In fact, they were in school almost all day. Our school days were broken up. We were coming home for lunch, which was the main meal, and going back. We were in school until three o’clock, and they would sometimes come home at five or six because they had so many subjects.”
The school that you went to, was it a Jewish school?
“Yes, it was also a Jewish religious school.
High school – also a Jewish school?
“Yes, the one that I was going to. Then there was the Polish gymnasium where you get your baccalaureate after 8th class. First was elementary school, there were no junior high schools. Then after elementary school where you went was to the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th class. After the 8th class, you got your, what we call in Polish, Matura, but you had to take a very stringent exam: what you call in French, baccalaureate, for it. The school which I was going to, it also had some business courses. It had only six classes and you got a so-called small Matura. But then four or five of us, we prepared ourselves privately – friends from my school with some of the teachers from our school – and we got what is called an externa Matura. We took an exam and got our baccalaureate.”
Before the war, what were your plans?
“I don’t really know. I was, again, I’m sure I wouldn’t have become a writer or a journalist. I had some dreams about it, you know, but I probably would have been engaged through a shadchan, a matchmaker, to a nice Jewish boy and got married, most likely. But one talked about it. I was a good student, quote-unquote.”
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
“I had my oldest sister who was married. She was married before the war. She had a little girl. Then I had two brothers older than I. Then was me, my younger sister, then I had two younger brothers, and then I had a little sister. We were eight, four girls and four boys. I was the closest with my younger sister because there was so little difference between us especially. We were really very close. We went to school together. We were only one grade apart and we were very close. That’s the one with whom I was traveling during the war, Sarka…
“My older sister was almost 12 years older than I am. So she was really much older, and she was married. And, of course, my two older brothers, they were Hassidim. Incidentally, they were both engaged before the war broke out. One with a girl from Lodz, a nice girl, and the other one, with a girl from Bedzin. I don’t think I even met this girl. It was through a matchmaker. Bedzin was far away from Lodz. And there were those families considered better families than others because of those blood relationships with some of the rabbis. There was something – my father’s family, my father was somehow connected with this Gerer Rebbe. So there might have been this man in Bedzin, a well-to-do Jew who has a daughter who he wanted to marry off to somebody of a better family. So she was engaged to my younger brother, older than me, but my second brother, Moshe was his name.”
“You know, before the war it was a family living. Everybody would get up in the morning and the maid was making your hot chocolate and brought on the fresh rolls. You are going on to school, and then you came back, and you did your homework. And then you had those Shabbat dinners…”
What happened to your youngest sister?
“She perished. She must have perished in Miedzyrzec. When I think of it now –… I really didn’t know this child very well. She must have been taken away from Miedzyrzec. I don’t even know if it was the one deportation that I was hiding with Esthe when they didn’t get me. She was taken away.
“There was something about Hilda. She was a child that was born late in my mother’s life. I don’t know, my mother must have been close to forty, and it probably was in a way unexpected. I forgot how it was. My mother couldn’t breast feed her and she had to get a special wet nurse. Most of our children at home was the very best student. She was very pretty the little one, long blond curly hair. I think she had difficulty in school. When I think about it now, it’s really unfair that one didn’t take so much interest. You know if you were 15 years old and she was…
“She had a little difficulty at home and my mother was always thinking that the milk from… Sometimes you would hear such remarks, you know, she would come home from a conference from school, and she didn’t do as well as Sarka or I did. I think my mother had some guilt feelings about her. And then she was the youngest.”
Tell me about your mother.
“My mother was a very patient woman, and she knew how to talk to people. You have no idea what one went through with your help in Poland. You didn’t have to be rich to have a cleaning girl in the house, a live-in. You always had live-in help because there were so many of those peasant girls who would come and… We would have sometimes two in the house. One who was the cook and the other who did the cleaning. And sometimes they would fight with each other, and then on top of it – this was another institution – wash days.
“Washdays were a disaster. It took a whole week. And a washerwoman would come in specially and the whole house was in total disarray. There were those big basins, those round big wooden basins. One was where you soaked the thing, and one was where you boiled it, and one was where you bleached it. And the stove! You were boiling every piece of laundry. And after this was all done, and in the wintertime, you would hang it out in the attic, and it would take two weeks until it dried. First it froze and then it finally dried and then you took it to the mangle. It was really something.
“Keeping house was not easy, so no wonder the people needed help. But so often those two wouldn’t get together, and I’d always admired the way my mother would, we would say, she would bring shalom – bring peace between them. I always thought my mother was a very kindly woman.
“My mother would take, let’s say, on a winter vacation she would take tickets for me, for the girls and go to a ballet with us. And I suspect that maybe she didn’t even tell my father that she is doing it. Or occasionally she would go to the movies and take us along. And, of course, the boys and my father never went to the movies, they were just not doing it.”
Why wouldn’t she tell your father?
“Because maybe he thought this would have an assimilating influence. In fact, my older sister, she wasn’t such a religious woman anymore and my father, I suppose, was always afraid that she may influence us. You know the religious Orthodox Jews, Hassidim in Poland. I was not a rebel. My older sister, I think she was and there was always that fear.
“My oldest sister always used to say. to go shopping, ‘Ask Daddy to go with you because he is much easier. You think you like that material or…” Of course, one would always buy the material and then you’d have to go to the dressmaker or to the tailor. My mother may say, ‘Oh, this is two zlotys more expensive.’ Daddy never said anything. Whatever you like, ‘take it.’
“But he was really not down much. He had his room, which we called the library, and it had walls and walls of all the Hebrew study books. And he would spend an awful lot of time at home sitting there in this room and learning. So when I think of it, I’m sure he was much closer to the boys because they had what to talk about, and then he always examined them – how much they learned in school and what they know and…”
“My grandmother, she was a wonderful woman, and we were all very fond of her. She had heart trouble and then she had a stroke. She was bedridden for almost eight years, but we were always… The first thing we would come home and go into her room and talk to her.
“When I look back now in those Hassidic families that what they call in Yiddish, ‘kale veren,’ the literal translation would be, ‘they would spoil.’ But not spoil as we say, ‘a spoiled child.’ Not in that sense, but that they will leave the tradition. I’m really telling you the way I felt about this period from my own remembrances. But there may be some Jewish sociologist who will feel it was all different. At that time people didn’t psychologize so much as they do now. Maybe we just knew that we are… From my childhood you trusted your parents implicitly. You didn’t ask too many questions.”
“You know, when I think of it, I don’t think those family lives exist anymore in this way. There was a definite family life and a definite closeness, even with those brothers that you always fought. You know, round and round… The dining room was a very important part of your household, especially if you had a large family. You had ten people at the table and there was always somebody, you know this was also so proverbial. One of my brothers, my mother would say, he always starts the fight. He provoked a fight and then he goes into his corner and sits quietly and everybody else is fighting. And it was always going around this table, you know, running.
“And, of course, Shabbat. Shabbat dinner was a day when – in a strange way I think the family was very much together. Every meal, there was no such thing as, I mean your main meal during the day, which was around one or one-thirty, everybody was at the table. Then one didn’t have the mobility one has today. One didn’t stay out all hours of the night for the big city living. So I don’t know if you have a picture of it. I can see it.
(To be continued)
