The youngest girl in the family, Fania, who was born in 1907, married Timofei Shybaev, a Russian who was the director of a big plant in Moscow. He was arrested in 1938. My father went to Moscow to meet with Vyshynsky to have Shybaev's case reviewed. Shybaev was subsequently released and the authorities apologized for their mistake, but forbade him to live in big cities.
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Major events (political and historical)
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Displaying 10291 - 10320 of 50826 results
jemma grinberg
The next child in the family was Nehama, born around 1902. Nehama was called Ania at home. She completed her studies at a medical school and worked in the nursery room at the railway station in Kiev. Her husband, Boris Lensky (Lensky was his Party nickname), had been Yevsey's friend since the civil war. After the war he graduated from the Medical Institute and became a famous surgeon. Boris perished during WWII. Nehama and her daughter Regina were evacuated with us. After the war she returned to Kiev and lived with her daughter until her death in 1969. Regina died in 2001. Leonid, Nehama's older son, was also sent to the front during the war. The war changed his personality. He became withdrawn and lived alone.
Rosa, born in 1899, lived a very humble life. She didn't have any opportunity for education. She worked as a janitor in a hospital until she retired with a miserable pension. She was not happy in her personal life. According to what she told me, she was in love with a young man whose name was Adolf, but I don't know whether he was a Jew or a German. He disappeared in the middle of the 1920s. Rosa couldn't forget her love and didn't want to have a romantic relationship with anybody else. She lived with Stella, her daughter. Adolf found Rosa in the mid-1970s. It turned out that he had been sent abroad as an intelligence officer and had not been allowed to say “good-bye” to her. By then, he had a family and children, but he always remembered Rosa and tried to find her as soon as he had the opportunity. Adolf supported her and Stella until Rosa died in the mid-1980s.
After Yevsey's death, his sister Rosa took her niece Stella to live with her, but Rosa couldn't afford to give Stella a higher education, so Stella worked as a nurse at a kindergarten and then as a shop assistant at a bookstore. She studied English and later made good use of it when she emigrated to the USA after losing both her husband and her only son. Her husband died from a coronary infarction while at work. He was a musician and was on tour in France in the 1970s when he fell ill and died. Her son received his education at the Kiev Institute of Culture. He was also a musician, and a very talented one. He died at home from epilepsy in 1996, when he was 42.
Despite the violence and anarchy of his time, until his last moment Yevsey remained a devoted fighter for the cause of communism.
My mother worked as the director at the factory school in a small Tatar village of Amadysh not far from Kazan. After I finished the 8th grade I convinced my mother to move to Moscow. I was eager to continue my studies there. When we came to Moscow we didn't have a place to live – our house in Voronok had burned down, so for some time, we lived at the hostel with Regina. Later, Mama got a job assignment at the children's home in Repino, a village in the vicinity of Ivanovo. We didn't live there long. I went to my Aunt Fania in Gorky, and my mother went to Kiev. Mama got a position as director of the children's home in the village of Grebyonki near Kiev. I came to Kiev and went to school there in 1948. My mother and I didn't have a place to live. We rented a corner in a room and shared one bed. In 1949, twelve directors, all of them Jews, were fired, including my mother. Mama then found a job as a teacher at the kindergarten of the equipment plant.
My sister and I hardly studied at all during the war. I went to school in Kazan. My sister Regina, however, didn't waste her time. She studied at home. She always had her textbooks with her. In 1944 she went to Moscow and gained admission into the Department of Political Economy of Moscow State University.
Our relatives from Perm and Kazan sent us some money for the trip, and we left for Kazan. We had to change trains several times. My mother was told that we couldn't buy tickets in Namanghan, unless she could bribe the director of the station. We wrapped money around a pile of paper, putting a bigger banknote on top, and gave this as our bribe. In exchange we received three tickets. Perhaps discovering our ruse, the director of the station notified the conductors of this, because someone wearing the railroad uniform approached us several times demanding money until Mama began shouting so that everyone would hear, “Stop demanding money from us! We already have our tickets.” Then he left us alone. We had only 34 rubles left. Someone told us that we could make a profit by buying salt and then selling it, so in Kuibyshev, leaving our mother to watch the luggage – her legs were so swollen that she couldn't walk - we went to the bazaar to sell the salt. We made a little money from our sale and moved on. In Kazan my mother's sister Nelia met us and immediately sent my mother to the hospital. The doctor there said that there was nothing he could do to help mother, but Nelia started selling all the clothes she had to buy food, and managed to cure Mama.
Michal Friedman
I had a cousin who left for Palestine before the war. In Kovel he was a Betar 4 supporter and later played an important role in the revolt against the English [he was a member of the revisionist underground in Palestine of the 1920s.] He belonged to the group led by Begin 5 and Sztern 6, spent time in jail. He was from my father's side of the family.
I had another cousin too, the daughter of my father's sister Irena Rajnberg, nee Friedman. She married a lawyer who was well known before the war; Rajnberg was his name. He was assaulted by ONR 7 members on several occasions. She survived as an Aryan. She got caught in a roundup, put in jail and then someone denounced her as a Jewess. She was even checked by an anthropologist, if she conformed to Aryan standards, and it turned out that she was 100 percent Aryan. After the war she went to Israel. Irena died in Israel.
We lived in the center of Kovel in a rented apartment, in three rooms on Warszawska Street. Eppelbaum was the owner of a lot of apartment houses. And we rented from him a three-bedroom apartment in a wooden, one-story house. There was another family living in that house, and for a while, the municipal library was also located there.
We had a separate entrance to the raised first floor. Our apartment had a glassed-in verandah, which in summertime was very often used as a room where we had our meals and received guests. One room was used for my mother's workshop. There were beds in all the rooms. The bedroom was furnished in a traditional style: a double bed, a wardrobe, a glassed-in cupboard, and a bookshelf for my ever-growing book collection. All of us read a lot, my sisters included. My reading very often prevented others from sleeping, so my mom would stop me, because she was very fatigued.
There was this large hall, where a water barrel was kept, for only some, very few homes had running water at the time. And the toilet was in the courtyard. For the conditions of the time we were not that poor. Mother earned good money, and even when my father didn't work, we always had a maid in the house.
We had a separate entrance to the raised first floor. Our apartment had a glassed-in verandah, which in summertime was very often used as a room where we had our meals and received guests. One room was used for my mother's workshop. There were beds in all the rooms. The bedroom was furnished in a traditional style: a double bed, a wardrobe, a glassed-in cupboard, and a bookshelf for my ever-growing book collection. All of us read a lot, my sisters included. My reading very often prevented others from sleeping, so my mom would stop me, because she was very fatigued.
There was this large hall, where a water barrel was kept, for only some, very few homes had running water at the time. And the toilet was in the courtyard. For the conditions of the time we were not that poor. Mother earned good money, and even when my father didn't work, we always had a maid in the house.
In the kitchen there was a stove plate, with a stove, in which on Thursdays bread was baked for Saturdays, challah and pancakes made from wheat flour, sprinkled with poppy-seed and bits of onion, and called 'cebulaki'. 'Kuchen' was sometimes prepared for holidays, a sort of large yeast cake studded with raisins. On Saturdays we had tsimes made from carrots, which was made in this large saucepan. We had cholent very frequently; we would take the pot to the bakery on Friday and pick it up on Saturday. It was taken to the bakery because nobody cooked on Fridays; the bakery wasn't open either, but the stove at the bakery retained its warmth. In cholent there was beef, kishke, potatoes roasted brown, and often also large [butter] beans. I remember a joke: What's cholent? - You put it in on Friday and take it out on Saturday.
Holidays were very important in our little town. Everyone celebrated them. For Passover, the house was cleaned from top to bottom, every nook and cranny; all the dishes were koshered in hot water in the courtyard. People delivered flour to the bakery where matzot were made. Those were little round loaves, not the rectangles of today. The Jewish community allocated flour and matzah to poor families. There were charitable institutions that distributed matzah, raised money for dowries for dowry-less girls so that they wouldn't get left until their braids turned gray, as the Yiddish saying went. Raisin wine was prepared for holidays. Back then we considered that wine heavenly.
The table was covered with a white tablecloth. On the table there were three matzot covered with a napkin. A piece of matzah would be broken off and hidden so that the children could look for it. That is called afikoman. During the reading of the Haggadah four goblets had to be raised. Plus one special goblet, carved for the prophet Elijah. The door was opened at a specified time for Elijah to come in. When I was a small kid, I believed that Elijah would come, of course. We celebrate the Passover to remember that we were once slaves in a foreign land. That's why we open the door to let in Elijah or anyone else who is hungry and thirsty. The youngest children then ask four traditional questions; once upon a time it used to be said about a fool: he is a philosopher of the four questions.
So the Passover holiday was celebrated very solemnly; it was related to the beginning of spring. Parents were under obligation to give their children new clothes or something else new. When boys and girls came together in the courtyard they would all seem so new. Greeting each other, the ones wearing new clothes would say 'titchadesh', which means: May you renew yourself. One of the traditional customs was the walnut game. That game resembled the tipcat: some walnuts were first tossed on the ground, and then you had to hit them with another walnut. And whoever managed to hit the larger heap took them all. Just like during Chanukkah you play with the dreidel, the spinner, the top.
The table was covered with a white tablecloth. On the table there were three matzot covered with a napkin. A piece of matzah would be broken off and hidden so that the children could look for it. That is called afikoman. During the reading of the Haggadah four goblets had to be raised. Plus one special goblet, carved for the prophet Elijah. The door was opened at a specified time for Elijah to come in. When I was a small kid, I believed that Elijah would come, of course. We celebrate the Passover to remember that we were once slaves in a foreign land. That's why we open the door to let in Elijah or anyone else who is hungry and thirsty. The youngest children then ask four traditional questions; once upon a time it used to be said about a fool: he is a philosopher of the four questions.
So the Passover holiday was celebrated very solemnly; it was related to the beginning of spring. Parents were under obligation to give their children new clothes or something else new. When boys and girls came together in the courtyard they would all seem so new. Greeting each other, the ones wearing new clothes would say 'titchadesh', which means: May you renew yourself. One of the traditional customs was the walnut game. That game resembled the tipcat: some walnuts were first tossed on the ground, and then you had to hit them with another walnut. And whoever managed to hit the larger heap took them all. Just like during Chanukkah you play with the dreidel, the spinner, the top.
I had my own friends and we would go on walks or meet at a club that the Jewish intelligentsia used to go to. That club was an interesting place. We had various sections: for mandolin players, a sports section, a chess section; there was a ping-pong table, too. Danziger, the flourmill owner, financed the club. We talked mostly in Yiddish, while Polish had largely eradicated the Russian language.
I remember that for Sukkot the sukkot were made from broken doors, wooden railings, there was a sukkah next to each house. Shavuot was a very colorful holiday in our town. Not far from the town there was a lake where sweet flag grew. The path leading to the house would be sprinkled with white sand and the entire house decorated with sweet flag. Most houses looked as if they were growing in the jungle. That custom began to fade in the thirties. Young people, more and more secular, began to depart from the tradition. There were a lot of students in our town. The two gymnasia [general secondary schools] produced 45 graduates each year.
Chanukkah was a social holiday. My girlfriends and boyfriends - sometimes twenty, sometimes thirty people - would come to our house. Mom and my younger and elder sisters would make potato pancakes. And of course candles were lit and placed on the windowsills.
I remember that at Purim - at the time I was a first grader in the Tarbut 8 gymnasium we collected money for Keren Kayemet Leisrael 9. We would dress up as Achasuerus, Esther, etc., and in groups of five went from house to house. That could have been 1925. We acted out the entire story. There was Ahasuerus, Haman who comes with accusations against the Jews, then Mordecai who goes to the King and explains everything, and in the end Ahasuerus kills him with a saber. We put the money given to us into a collection-box for Palestine.
In our town tradition was kept up even by the few assimilated. On Yom Kippur there wasn't one case of anyone failing to come to the synagogue. On the other hand, in all the homes I knew, it was mostly the women that kept kosher. Because the communists, for instance, flaunted the fact that they didn't observe tradition. Kovel was a Jewish town whose outskirts, where the Ukrainians and Poles lived, formed a separate town. The river Turia flowed through the town. Kovel was divided into three quarters. On one side of the river there was the Old Town, called Zand [in Yiddish], or Sand, as it had been built on sandy ground. In the new part, on the other bank of the Turia, there was Kovel where the Poles lived, most of whom were employees of a railroad company, Depo; they repaired railroad cars and engines. That was a separate town. There were fewer Ukrainians than Poles there. Their farms began just behind the main street. Those three worlds lived side by side.
Kovel was the largest railway hub in the East and the direct rail connection Warsaw - Kovel was faster than today. The trip took less than five hours, and trains ran so precisely on time that you could set your watch by them. They were clean and there were three classes of cars, the first class being the most expensive. They even used to say: Why do Jews travel third class? Because there is no fourth class. Fares were not so expensive.
Kovel was the largest railway hub in the East and the direct rail connection Warsaw - Kovel was faster than today. The trip took less than five hours, and trains ran so precisely on time that you could set your watch by them. They were clean and there were three classes of cars, the first class being the most expensive. They even used to say: Why do Jews travel third class? Because there is no fourth class. Fares were not so expensive.
That small county town was something more than a shtetl. It was a bastion of the Jewish Hebrew-speaking intelligentsia. The older people still spoke Russian, but the new generation had already adopted the Polish language. The Jewish population in my town wasn't rich. There were a few rich men. One of them was called Armarnik. He had a flourmill. There was Danziger, and then there was Cuperfein, the owner of an oil mill. Sztern was a very stingy man. When a delegation from the community would come to him to ask for a contribution toward the dowry of a gifted but poor girl, he, that is Sztern, used to say: 'I like the idea; the girl ought to be helped.' Then he would turn to his wife: 'Genia, give me my coat, I'm going out with them to collect donations.'
There were two large synagogues in our town. In addition to the so-called shtiblech, or prayer houses, which belonged to specific trades. Porters, painters, and shoemakers - they all had their prayer houses on the streets where they lived. In Zand there was a large, beautiful synagogue, a bit in a fortified style. The best Jewish cantors used to perform there on holidays: Kusowicki, Rozenblatt etc. There was also a choir, which several of my classmates were members of. And there was one more synagogue in the town, a private synagogue, built by a local rich man, Eppelbaum. He lived in what is called a sinful union with a Ukrainian woman; I remember that the town always held it against him. The story was that he had built the synagogue in order to wipe out that sin in the next life. We used to go there to pray on the important holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, during the three pilgrim holidays and on the Days of Awe [Yamim Noraim]. That synagogue has remained in my memory as a tragic place. I will talk about that later.
One Kovel family was descendants of the Maggid of Turzysk 10 and the Turzysk Hasidim 11. Turzysk, near Kovel, is on the Turia River, five kilometers from my town. Thus, a descendant of that family had a Hasidic court on a small island in the Turia River in Kovel. Hasidim came to see him on the important holidays. I remember that we, the boys who, as they say, had already strayed a bit from religion, used to paddle up there in our canoes and play silly pranks on the Hasidim celebrating around the tables. For example, we would set a cat or a dog loose on them, and they screamed terribly because they were afraid of an unclean animal. I remember such silly pranks.
There was a Jewish hospital in Kovel, supported by the Jewish community. The director of that hospital was a Ukrainian who knew Yiddish and even read the Moment newspaper, but during the occupation [see German occupation of Poland] 12 he proved to be a nationalist and collaborated with the Germans.
In a town with twenty-something thousand residents, there were two coeducational gymnasia, a newspaper, Kovler Sztymer, and two Jewish clubs: the Sholem Aleichem 13 club and the Peretz club 14. The Zionist organizations had their own clubs and libraries, too. And on the Jewish street a struggle pitting Yiddish against Hebrew raged. The town was relatively secular. Among its important institutions was a Tarbut Hebrew gymnasium and a local Poalei Zion 15 organization, which, just like the Bund, stood for cultural autonomy for the Jews.
Both the Bund and the Poalei Zion carried out well-organized cultural work in their clubs. For example, they held mock trials of books. What were they like? To begin with, the audience gathered in the hall listened to a short story or a novella. Next, a panel of judges was selected, and the prosecutor prepared his speech; there was also a defense counsel. And the debate among the young people would frequently continue until dawn. I took part in such mock trials, including one about Bontshe Shvayg [character and title of a short story by Isaac Leib Peretz]. Did he do the right thing? Should he be rewarded with the ultimate prize for his life? Very many such debates took place, and we grew up on them. Both clubs ran libraries. Their book collections weren't particularly big; but we could find practically all the books being published in Yiddish, not only those written by Jewish authors, but also those translated into Yiddish. Books in Hebrew were available in the libraries of Zionist organizations.
Not far from our house on Warszawska Street was a Landowners Association House, to which landowners from all over Volhynia came. And we, Poles and Jews alike, went to tea dances that were held there. We went there to pick up girls. We would order half a cutlet each, a non-kosher cutlet, though made not from pork but from veal, and dance the Argentine tango, for example.
After 1918, a Jewish theater existed in our town, something that would have been impossible under the Tsars. It was an amateur theater; its actors were workers, teachers and students. The entire repertoire of Jewish classics was performed in that theater. It existed until 1st September 1939. Theaters from the capital visited us frequently too. Even [Alexander] Granach, the great actor, came to Kovel. And of course the Jozef Kaminski Theater. I didn't see The Dybbuk 16, but I did see Sholem Aleichem's 'The Grand Prize' and 'Two Hundred Thousand Silver Coins'; it was the same play produced under different titles. And 'The God of Vengeance', a play by Sholem Asch.
Kovel was visited not only by eminent actors but also by fiery reportage writers, who quite often described a world they hadn't seen themselves. My father always took me to those lectures. I remember how enchanted I was by those invented tales. It was then that I began to look for books in the library.
Two outstanding poets were natives of Kovel. One of them had been admitted into the pantheon of Jewish literature already before the war: Kalman Lis. Lis appeared in all CiSzO 17 school handbooks. And Eliasz Rajzman, who lived in Szczecin after the war and has been translated by some Polish poetess. Rajzman died more than a decade ago. He was an outstanding poet. Both were also actors in our Jewish theater. I got to know Rajzman thanks to his memoirs, featured in Folksztyme 18. One day - it was in the middle of the sixties - I noticed that they were publishing a novel about Kovel in installments. 'On the Roads of My Yesterday,' was the title, or 'Oyf di vegn fun mayn nechtn'. And then I remembered that there had been this actor Rajzman, who we once pelted with rotten tomatoes because his acting was poor. He was an excellent poet, though. Before the war Kalman Lis had been a counselor in the Jewish Children's Home in Otwock. And then he died - just like that - was killed by the Germans. There were also three brothers, poets from Turzysk: Lejb, Matys, and a third one whose name I don't recall. After the war Lejb was still in Poland, he left only in 1957. He did excellent translations of Pushkin 19 and Tuwim 20. Once he presented me with a book in which I found his inscription for my younger sister, Rywka, with whom he had been very much in love. Matys Olicki now lives in the U.S. and publishes in Forwerts 21.
Kovler Sztime was a newspaper for everyone; it was a general Jewish newspaper. It had one editor, one owner, and one proofreader - and it was the same man. His name was Jakub Burak. I met his brother in Holon many years after the war. Burak Jakub was killed. From time to time I published a sports column in Kovler Sztime, in Yiddish of course, and sometimes also reviews of theater shows.
When in 1918 we were suddenly transferred from the Russian Empire to the Polish rule, the Polish language was basically foreign to the entire Jewish intelligentsia. The year 1918 was filled with events [see Civil War] 22. Bulak Balachowicz's brigade or division from the Russian White Army was operating in Northern Volhynia. At the time they were cooperating with our Polish army against the Bolsheviks, but along their way they murdered local residents for practice. I remember that my mother's brother was in the so- called Citizens' Militia that was getting ready to defend us in case of an assault by Bulak Balachowicz. A majority of that militia were Jews; it also included some Ukrainians and Poles. My mother's brother even got a rifle from the provisional municipal authorities. They had sawn-offs, rifles with half of their barrels sawn off that were often used by poachers. Because the war had such an alternating pattern - once these forces were in town, then the other side would come back - arms were abundant as hell; soldiers would often abandon their arms and run away.
At first, our attitude towards Poland was primarily one of high hope since the tsarist regime hadn't registered particularly well in the history of the Jews, especially in these areas. I know that a lot of store was placed on Pilsudski 23, who besides was a legend. His luster faded somewhat after he teamed up with Petliura 24 and the Petliurites started to organize pogroms also in Volhynia.
There were no pogroms in Kovel. Even though in 1918 when Haller's troops 25 rushed into the town and pushed the Bolsheviks out, some public cutting off of Jewish beards by saber took place; those were spontaneous actions. I remember one scene, which later recurred in my dreams for decades. The year was 1920 and I was seven. We lived near the railroad station, and one night soldiers started to bang on our door. Father took an ax. The door was bolted with a bar; I was standing next to my father and holding on to his legs while he was ready to defend us to the end. Then one of the soldiers shouted something and they left - there were whorehouses in a side street - and everything went quiet again.
During the twenties, Jews and Poles coexisted well. In Kovel there was one monsignor Feliks Sznarbachowski, who built a beautiful church. He was a friend of the Jews and extinguished bad feelings from the height of his pulpit. When he died, nearly all the Jews accompanied him on his way to the cemetery. I attended that funeral, too. A nephew of the prelate had been a staunch hit-squad member before the war; after the war he worked for Radio Free Europe 26 and repented of his anti-Semitic sins. When Hitler came to power, there began to appear in Poland ONR supporters among university students, who spread the poison of hatred. The slogan 'Buy from your own, not from Jews' was heard frequently.
At the beginning of the 1930s, a rally was held inside one of the cinemas - it was either 'Odeon' or 'Ekspres', since there were two movie houses in Kovel - at which Jabotinsky 27 spoke. I was there. Jabotinsky was an excellent speaker. I remember that he was a man endowed with great oratorical talent. I aspired to become an orator and envied him. Jabotinsky encouraged his audience to go to Palestine; the rally took place probably after 1933, after Hitler's rise to power, and Jabotinsky talked about the danger that might befall the Jews. The Polish government was very accommodating to the Jabotinskites - which was not the case with the hahalutz 28 movement - and even allowed them to conduct paramilitary training of their people. That right-wing organization was forgotten after the war because it was unfairly identified with the Fascist movement. Before 1918 in Kovel there had been a Russian gymnasium, which was attended by few Jews. When Poland burst into existence in 1918 [see Polish Independence] 29, a Polish public gymnasium named after Slowacki was established on the site of that Russian gymnasium, where Jews were not admitted as a rule. If my memory doesn't fail me, I have counted seven Jewish students of both sexes who attended that gymnasium. In Kovel there were three gymnasiums and a school of commerce. All of the gymnasiums were coeducational. A private Polish-Jewish gymnasium, run by Klara Erlich, was established, with Polish as the language of instruction. Klara Erlich was a graduate of Kiev University and a very good mathematician. After the war I spoke with her again by telephone when I came to Moscow. Both of these gymnasiums were accredited to confer high-school diplomas.
There were two large synagogues in our town. In addition to the so-called shtiblech, or prayer houses, which belonged to specific trades. Porters, painters, and shoemakers - they all had their prayer houses on the streets where they lived. In Zand there was a large, beautiful synagogue, a bit in a fortified style. The best Jewish cantors used to perform there on holidays: Kusowicki, Rozenblatt etc. There was also a choir, which several of my classmates were members of. And there was one more synagogue in the town, a private synagogue, built by a local rich man, Eppelbaum. He lived in what is called a sinful union with a Ukrainian woman; I remember that the town always held it against him. The story was that he had built the synagogue in order to wipe out that sin in the next life. We used to go there to pray on the important holidays: Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, during the three pilgrim holidays and on the Days of Awe [Yamim Noraim]. That synagogue has remained in my memory as a tragic place. I will talk about that later.
One Kovel family was descendants of the Maggid of Turzysk 10 and the Turzysk Hasidim 11. Turzysk, near Kovel, is on the Turia River, five kilometers from my town. Thus, a descendant of that family had a Hasidic court on a small island in the Turia River in Kovel. Hasidim came to see him on the important holidays. I remember that we, the boys who, as they say, had already strayed a bit from religion, used to paddle up there in our canoes and play silly pranks on the Hasidim celebrating around the tables. For example, we would set a cat or a dog loose on them, and they screamed terribly because they were afraid of an unclean animal. I remember such silly pranks.
There was a Jewish hospital in Kovel, supported by the Jewish community. The director of that hospital was a Ukrainian who knew Yiddish and even read the Moment newspaper, but during the occupation [see German occupation of Poland] 12 he proved to be a nationalist and collaborated with the Germans.
In a town with twenty-something thousand residents, there were two coeducational gymnasia, a newspaper, Kovler Sztymer, and two Jewish clubs: the Sholem Aleichem 13 club and the Peretz club 14. The Zionist organizations had their own clubs and libraries, too. And on the Jewish street a struggle pitting Yiddish against Hebrew raged. The town was relatively secular. Among its important institutions was a Tarbut Hebrew gymnasium and a local Poalei Zion 15 organization, which, just like the Bund, stood for cultural autonomy for the Jews.
Both the Bund and the Poalei Zion carried out well-organized cultural work in their clubs. For example, they held mock trials of books. What were they like? To begin with, the audience gathered in the hall listened to a short story or a novella. Next, a panel of judges was selected, and the prosecutor prepared his speech; there was also a defense counsel. And the debate among the young people would frequently continue until dawn. I took part in such mock trials, including one about Bontshe Shvayg [character and title of a short story by Isaac Leib Peretz]. Did he do the right thing? Should he be rewarded with the ultimate prize for his life? Very many such debates took place, and we grew up on them. Both clubs ran libraries. Their book collections weren't particularly big; but we could find practically all the books being published in Yiddish, not only those written by Jewish authors, but also those translated into Yiddish. Books in Hebrew were available in the libraries of Zionist organizations.
Not far from our house on Warszawska Street was a Landowners Association House, to which landowners from all over Volhynia came. And we, Poles and Jews alike, went to tea dances that were held there. We went there to pick up girls. We would order half a cutlet each, a non-kosher cutlet, though made not from pork but from veal, and dance the Argentine tango, for example.
After 1918, a Jewish theater existed in our town, something that would have been impossible under the Tsars. It was an amateur theater; its actors were workers, teachers and students. The entire repertoire of Jewish classics was performed in that theater. It existed until 1st September 1939. Theaters from the capital visited us frequently too. Even [Alexander] Granach, the great actor, came to Kovel. And of course the Jozef Kaminski Theater. I didn't see The Dybbuk 16, but I did see Sholem Aleichem's 'The Grand Prize' and 'Two Hundred Thousand Silver Coins'; it was the same play produced under different titles. And 'The God of Vengeance', a play by Sholem Asch.
Kovel was visited not only by eminent actors but also by fiery reportage writers, who quite often described a world they hadn't seen themselves. My father always took me to those lectures. I remember how enchanted I was by those invented tales. It was then that I began to look for books in the library.
Two outstanding poets were natives of Kovel. One of them had been admitted into the pantheon of Jewish literature already before the war: Kalman Lis. Lis appeared in all CiSzO 17 school handbooks. And Eliasz Rajzman, who lived in Szczecin after the war and has been translated by some Polish poetess. Rajzman died more than a decade ago. He was an outstanding poet. Both were also actors in our Jewish theater. I got to know Rajzman thanks to his memoirs, featured in Folksztyme 18. One day - it was in the middle of the sixties - I noticed that they were publishing a novel about Kovel in installments. 'On the Roads of My Yesterday,' was the title, or 'Oyf di vegn fun mayn nechtn'. And then I remembered that there had been this actor Rajzman, who we once pelted with rotten tomatoes because his acting was poor. He was an excellent poet, though. Before the war Kalman Lis had been a counselor in the Jewish Children's Home in Otwock. And then he died - just like that - was killed by the Germans. There were also three brothers, poets from Turzysk: Lejb, Matys, and a third one whose name I don't recall. After the war Lejb was still in Poland, he left only in 1957. He did excellent translations of Pushkin 19 and Tuwim 20. Once he presented me with a book in which I found his inscription for my younger sister, Rywka, with whom he had been very much in love. Matys Olicki now lives in the U.S. and publishes in Forwerts 21.
Kovler Sztime was a newspaper for everyone; it was a general Jewish newspaper. It had one editor, one owner, and one proofreader - and it was the same man. His name was Jakub Burak. I met his brother in Holon many years after the war. Burak Jakub was killed. From time to time I published a sports column in Kovler Sztime, in Yiddish of course, and sometimes also reviews of theater shows.
When in 1918 we were suddenly transferred from the Russian Empire to the Polish rule, the Polish language was basically foreign to the entire Jewish intelligentsia. The year 1918 was filled with events [see Civil War] 22. Bulak Balachowicz's brigade or division from the Russian White Army was operating in Northern Volhynia. At the time they were cooperating with our Polish army against the Bolsheviks, but along their way they murdered local residents for practice. I remember that my mother's brother was in the so- called Citizens' Militia that was getting ready to defend us in case of an assault by Bulak Balachowicz. A majority of that militia were Jews; it also included some Ukrainians and Poles. My mother's brother even got a rifle from the provisional municipal authorities. They had sawn-offs, rifles with half of their barrels sawn off that were often used by poachers. Because the war had such an alternating pattern - once these forces were in town, then the other side would come back - arms were abundant as hell; soldiers would often abandon their arms and run away.
At first, our attitude towards Poland was primarily one of high hope since the tsarist regime hadn't registered particularly well in the history of the Jews, especially in these areas. I know that a lot of store was placed on Pilsudski 23, who besides was a legend. His luster faded somewhat after he teamed up with Petliura 24 and the Petliurites started to organize pogroms also in Volhynia.
There were no pogroms in Kovel. Even though in 1918 when Haller's troops 25 rushed into the town and pushed the Bolsheviks out, some public cutting off of Jewish beards by saber took place; those were spontaneous actions. I remember one scene, which later recurred in my dreams for decades. The year was 1920 and I was seven. We lived near the railroad station, and one night soldiers started to bang on our door. Father took an ax. The door was bolted with a bar; I was standing next to my father and holding on to his legs while he was ready to defend us to the end. Then one of the soldiers shouted something and they left - there were whorehouses in a side street - and everything went quiet again.
During the twenties, Jews and Poles coexisted well. In Kovel there was one monsignor Feliks Sznarbachowski, who built a beautiful church. He was a friend of the Jews and extinguished bad feelings from the height of his pulpit. When he died, nearly all the Jews accompanied him on his way to the cemetery. I attended that funeral, too. A nephew of the prelate had been a staunch hit-squad member before the war; after the war he worked for Radio Free Europe 26 and repented of his anti-Semitic sins. When Hitler came to power, there began to appear in Poland ONR supporters among university students, who spread the poison of hatred. The slogan 'Buy from your own, not from Jews' was heard frequently.
At the beginning of the 1930s, a rally was held inside one of the cinemas - it was either 'Odeon' or 'Ekspres', since there were two movie houses in Kovel - at which Jabotinsky 27 spoke. I was there. Jabotinsky was an excellent speaker. I remember that he was a man endowed with great oratorical talent. I aspired to become an orator and envied him. Jabotinsky encouraged his audience to go to Palestine; the rally took place probably after 1933, after Hitler's rise to power, and Jabotinsky talked about the danger that might befall the Jews. The Polish government was very accommodating to the Jabotinskites - which was not the case with the hahalutz 28 movement - and even allowed them to conduct paramilitary training of their people. That right-wing organization was forgotten after the war because it was unfairly identified with the Fascist movement. Before 1918 in Kovel there had been a Russian gymnasium, which was attended by few Jews. When Poland burst into existence in 1918 [see Polish Independence] 29, a Polish public gymnasium named after Slowacki was established on the site of that Russian gymnasium, where Jews were not admitted as a rule. If my memory doesn't fail me, I have counted seven Jewish students of both sexes who attended that gymnasium. In Kovel there were three gymnasiums and a school of commerce. All of the gymnasiums were coeducational. A private Polish-Jewish gymnasium, run by Klara Erlich, was established, with Polish as the language of instruction. Klara Erlich was a graduate of Kiev University and a very good mathematician. After the war I spoke with her again by telephone when I came to Moscow. Both of these gymnasiums were accredited to confer high-school diplomas.
Initially, I attended the cheder. I mean I studied in the cheder from the age of four to seven. There I learned the Bible almost by heart. I also remember that I translated the Bible into Polish. I went to the cheder for less than a year, and then the melamed started coming to our home. He had decided that I was head and shoulders above the others in terms of knowledge, but he was probably also after more money.
I prepared for the gymnasium at home because what I had been able to gain from that melamed of mine wasn't enough. I passed the entrance exam for the introductory second grade and began to learn all the subjects in Hebrew.
There were several eminent teachers in the faculty. For a time, Dr. Feldszu, a good Hebrew feature writer, taught Latin. He wasn't particularly nice as a person. Feldszu was a member of Betar and wanted to create a Betar organization in our school. I remember that I was a Betar member for about a week, and then I switched to Hashomer Hatzair 30, which had branched out from the scouting organization. I remember that they wore Baden Powell hats and carried sticks. And I badly wanted to join them. I might have been five or six then. They were Jewish scouts, Cofim. But I remained in Hashomer Hatzair for a short while only, since by then I had completely different interests, completely down-to-earth - quite literally: I became a soccer player in the Maccabi 31 club.
At home, in the family, we spoke by and large in Yiddish.
Hebrew was the everyday language for my friends and me. In Hebrew, I could write quite well, in a fine literary style. It was mostly girls who insisted that we spoke Hebrew.
My parents pondered over what field of study I should choose. I wanted to study French literature, but my father said: 'that's not a trade; you can't make a living out of that. You will go to a technical university!' But I was very poor in maths. Well, I didn't want to oppose my father too much. I thought of going to Palestine subsequently, to the university in Jerusalem. I had studied for three months with one Mrs. Chodorow, whose son was later to become a famous sea-dog in Israel. And I went to Grenoble; in Grenoble I didn't need a high-school diploma. That was in November 1930.
In Kovel I made my living again as a private tutor. I taught mostly Polish literature and Latin, sometimes also German. I was preparing Jewish gymnasium graduates for the high-school diploma exam at a school in Luck. I was swamped with classes. I also enrolled in a Jewish-Polish gymnasium, once again in the eighth grade, in order to obtain a Polish high-school diploma.
For my university studies, I came to Warsaw in 1933. I enrolled in the Polish Department.
The ZASS, or Jewish Academic Sports Association, had its headquarters in that dormitory. I used to play soccer and volleyball, and went to the swimming pool there. Now and then, there were 'five o'clock', or tea dances, in the dormitory.
At that time I was also attending the Institute of Judaic Studies 48. I went to Balaban's 49 class on the history of the Jews, to the Aramaic language class taught by Schorr 50. Students at the Institute of Judaic Studies mainly came from Jewish-Polish and Hebrew gymnasiums. Most subjects were taught in Hebrew. The course of studies took four years and led to a master's degree. Institute graduates could become teachers of the religion and history of the Jews in secondary schools. But they had to graduate from Warsaw University as well, for the institute didn't provide a state- recognized certificate.
All that time I supported myself by teaching, by giving private classes. I taught Polish, Latin, and sometimes also German. The more softheaded I taught almost all subjects, bar maths. I gave private classes to girls from the Jehudyja gymnasium on Dluga Street, to the son of Artur Gold 51, the well-known composer; he gave me all the volumes of Schiller 52 in German in gratitude for his son's good grades. The manufacturer of Polonia shaving razors, whose name was, by the way, Friedman, paid me 5 zloty an hour. At 7 Lwowska Street I charged 2.50 zloty.