And the only thing, it was so tragic for Mother, was that she couldn’t make Sabbath, because for Sabbath you had to have a few zloty to buy a fish, to buy a little bit of meat. Later, in the 1930s, my eldest sister Golda lived in Czerniakow and was doing well. Streetcar no. 2 went from there to us, so she would come to do her shopping on Mila Street. She would come, take Mother, and bought for Mother too. So that Sabbath was Sabbath, and I would take the chulent to the baker [Jews often took chulent to the baker’s on Friday evening to put it in the baker’s oven, to have a warm meal for the Sabbath, when they weren’t allowed to cook]. You understand how that whole life went on?
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Displaying 32761 - 32790 of 50826 results
Szulim Rozenberg
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We were very poor. On the one hand because my father got involved in causes like making a kitchen for the poor and taking them food. Our apartment wasn’t too big to start with, and then they set up this kitchen in it as well, to cook. On Thursdays he would go round shops and here they’d give him something, there they’d give him something else. And they’d do the cooking, and on Friday evening they’d take it to this big hall at 32 Muranowska Street. It was this hall that was hired for weddings, dances, and there they distributed the food. Father had a lot of energy and he was a very good man, and people like that have a very hard life.
Mother went to the synagogue at every festival. She knew that she wasn’t allowed to mix dairy and meat, that this wasn’t kosher and that wasn’t kosher, so she didn’t do it, but whether she was religious? What does ‘religiousness’ mean? The whole religiousness thing among poor people like that was a bit of a comfort thing, that they would go there [to heaven after death], and it would be easier there. Mother always went to the mikveh after her period. And Father went too, only Father went every week. I went once, I think, or maybe twice, I don’t know, but it was a terrible place, the mikveh! The water was dirty!
Mother lit the candles. When I was a small child we played with a dreidl [Yiddish: a four-sided spinning top traditionally played with at Chanukkah], but later on it didn’t interest me any more: I ate at home and then went to SKIF 5, we would sit there and sing all the time. We had this small projector that they showed Chaplin films on [Charlie Chaplin, 1889-1977, the biggest Hollywood silent movie star]. At Sukkot we made a sukkah and ate there. It was almost at home – we lived on the first floor, and Mother passed us food out through the window. We ate with the neighbors, so they were careful to give us better food. When I was small I went to the synagogue, but I never took a book to read the prayers in the synagogue.
Father went to the prayer house at 21 Mila Street every Saturday. The prayer house at Mila was 2 or 3 rooms on the second floor, 2 at least because the women couldn’t be together. There was a mikveh in the same house too. I know there was a board at the prayer house, and my father was on the board. I went to that prayer house until 1932. Going to the prayer house was a kind of getting away from the hard lot. The last years, all the children in our house were Bundists. One son, Ksil, didn’t live at home any more, but I and one brother, Menasze, we still did, and Father once asked us: ‘I know you don’t want to go to the prayer house, but just take me, so that other people don’t see me going alone.’ How much humbleness did he have to have to tell his children: ‘Take me’? We took him. We walked with Father and he went into the prayer house and we went off to the side and did what we wanted.
The eldest brother Ksil and Menasze went to cheder a bit but somehow it was no joy to them. And when I was a few years old, I don’t know, maybe 5, maybe 6, Father took me to cheder and I started to go. There was this cheder not far from Mila. There was some kind of cheder in every house. There were 2 teachers, and they went round: ‘Read this, say that.’ On every week you had to pay on Sunday. After 2 weeks I come and I haven’t anything to pay with. So they sent me home: ‘When you have money, come.’ So a week later Father had something, gave me a few groszy and sent me off again. But when I come back after that week the other children had already learned something I didn’t know and I was unhappy. After that happened a few times, at 8½ years old I didn’t want to go back there again. It didn’t do anything for me.
All 3 sisters got married before the war and I remember the weddings. They were religious. What is the wedding? They take the future husband and with the future wife they are stood under a canopy and the rabbi says some prayer. They get a glass and take care that it’s a fine one, and at a certain moment the man breaks the glass to recall the destruction of Jerusalem. They all had it.
My sisters kept kosher homes. I’ll tell you this: when you left a home like ours, what you cooked you cooked kosher. She couldn’t pour milk into meat, for instance. I don’t know if they had special pots, for meat and for milk. But they kept Jewish homes, though for Ryfka it wasn’t important.
My sisters kept kosher homes. I’ll tell you this: when you left a home like ours, what you cooked you cooked kosher. She couldn’t pour milk into meat, for instance. I don’t know if they had special pots, for meat and for milk. But they kept Jewish homes, though for Ryfka it wasn’t important.
What I remember most is Jewish Warsaw. It took in more or less from Stawki, where the Umschlagplatz 8 was later, to the philharmonic on Jasna. In every week I would go for Sunday mornings at 12, those were classical music concerts. I went on my own, or with this one friend who also liked music, Naftule Leruch. At first we were the only ones and they laughed a bit, but later other friends from Zukunft 9 wanted to go themselves, and a whole gang of us went. And sometimes I even got in on the sly, I mean I gave the janitor 20 or 30 groszy and he let me in. And from time to time there was an inspection and they went round looking for people without tickets, but I just sat in the corner on the left, on the second floor, and when they came they just looked at me and went on. I don’t know why, but they probably saw that it would be a shame to take away the happiness that this child got from the concert.
From time to time, very rarely, we used to go for a walk to Marszalkowska. And apart from that we went to the Saski Gardens and there we had fights with the Fascists 10, who didn’t want Jews to get into the garden. There was a summer theater in that garden, and I used to go there from time to time, there was this wonderful actress, a Jewish one, Ejchlerowna [Irena Eichlerowna, 1908-1990], who used to play a doctor. I still remember her acting. And I used to go to the opera for claps, to clap [as a hired applauder]. If they didn’t have anyone you could get in for free, but if there were a few who wanted to, then he wanted 50 groszy. From time to time, if I had 50 groszy and there was a good thing that I wanted to see, I gave him the 50 groszy and you had to shout ‘Encore!’ and throw flowers on the stage. When it was vacation time I sometimes went 4-5 times a week.
From time to time, very rarely, we used to go for a walk to Marszalkowska. And apart from that we went to the Saski Gardens and there we had fights with the Fascists 10, who didn’t want Jews to get into the garden. There was a summer theater in that garden, and I used to go there from time to time, there was this wonderful actress, a Jewish one, Ejchlerowna [Irena Eichlerowna, 1908-1990], who used to play a doctor. I still remember her acting. And I used to go to the opera for claps, to clap [as a hired applauder]. If they didn’t have anyone you could get in for free, but if there were a few who wanted to, then he wanted 50 groszy. From time to time, if I had 50 groszy and there was a good thing that I wanted to see, I gave him the 50 groszy and you had to shout ‘Encore!’ and throw flowers on the stage. When it was vacation time I sometimes went 4-5 times a week.
In the summer we went down to the Vistula [Poland’s biggest river, which flows through Warsaw], to the other side of the Kierbedz Bridge, and there there was a non-regulation beach. We went there in the morning, everyone took a hunk of bread, a cucumber, sometimes something else, and you were there all day. That was the old Warsaw. I knew her, loved her, and never in my life would I have thought that I would leave Warsaw …
In the Simons precinct, on the first floor, was the Grosser Library [the Grosser Memorial Library in Warsaw was founded in 1915 on the initiative of a group of workers and officials. It operated until 1939]. It was the library of the Bund and the Kultur-Liga [Kultur-Liga, cultural and educational organization dominated, especially at first, by Bundist political influences. Founded in 1916 in Kiev and active in Poland from 1922]. To that library, I went every day. I had a marvelous librarian. He knew what I already read and he took my reading further. When I met someone, they had a book that I liked, I say: ‘You know what? Give it to me until tomorrow morning.’ So I went home and there in my dark room I put the light on and by tomorrow morning I finished that book and took it back. Of German literature, I remember Georg Fink wrote a book called Mir hingert – ‘We are hungry.’ It’s him talking, in Berlin, about how he’s always hungry. I read a lot and in those books I always found something in common with my life.
That’s where the SKIF people gathered, I saw them coming. Leruch’s sister asked if I wanted to be in SKIF too. So I went to 29 Karmelicka Street, where the school was [a 7-grade Bund school run by the Central Yiddish School Organization, CISzO], and became a member of SKIF. I was about 10.
At the committee they told us that the one who collected the most money could go on the camp free. The director of the Medem Sanatorium 13, Leo Brumberg, took a month’s vacation to run the camp. It was he who said to me, at the SKIF headquarters: ‘Listen, tomorrow evening is a committee meeting, and we’ll know who’s going.’ He said: ‘You come, and when you’re there we’ll see.’ I get there, I’m sitting there, it’s 10.30, and they’re going out, and he comes up to me and says: ‘Come here, Szulim. You know what? You collected the most money, and we have decided that for 10 zloty you can go for 2 weeks.’ So I burst into tears. I was 13. ‘Why are you crying? You should be happy!’ So I say: ‘But where’s my mother going to get 10 zloty?’ ‘Listen, I’ll see that no-one will ever know about this.’ And he took out 10 zloty.
At the camp everything was planned. We got up in the morning and did gymnastics. On the first day we had to dig a hole, which we put a plank over and that was the toilet. Then we had to make tables and we had to make a kitchen. So we had to get a few bricks and lay the bricks so that the pot could stand. And then we had to put a pole up so that the red pennant could be hoisted. That was a great honor, to hoist the pennant, a different child every day. So there were things to do all day. We had to peel potatoes, we had to go to town to buy something – we did everything ourselves. There wasn’t anyone hired. There was one teacher and then there was one deputy for that teacher, that was Emanuel Pat. At night we stood on guard for 2 hours. We drove to Gabin by ship, and in other years we drove to Brok [85 km north-east of Warsaw] and to Kazimierz [150 km south-west of Warsaw] by ship too.
After that every year I went on camp.
At the camp everything was planned. We got up in the morning and did gymnastics. On the first day we had to dig a hole, which we put a plank over and that was the toilet. Then we had to make tables and we had to make a kitchen. So we had to get a few bricks and lay the bricks so that the pot could stand. And then we had to put a pole up so that the red pennant could be hoisted. That was a great honor, to hoist the pennant, a different child every day. So there were things to do all day. We had to peel potatoes, we had to go to town to buy something – we did everything ourselves. There wasn’t anyone hired. There was one teacher and then there was one deputy for that teacher, that was Emanuel Pat. At night we stood on guard for 2 hours. We drove to Gabin by ship, and in other years we drove to Brok [85 km north-east of Warsaw] and to Kazimierz [150 km south-west of Warsaw] by ship too.
After that every year I went on camp.
The same teachers taught as in the day. They had a lot more work, and they were happy, because teaching was quite badly paid, so they had a few more hours. Some had families, some didn’t have families because they didn’t earn enough to have a family. Everything was in Yiddish: we had mathematics, history, Polish history, history of the Jews, and languages. Polish was taught in our school, but in little teaspoons. I did 5 or 6 years at Karmelicka. I worked, at first as an errand boy, later in a tailor’s shop, and went to that school. Later, when I was working in the shop for Znamirowski, I found I didn’t have enough Polish, so I enrolled in a Polish night school; that was in 1937.
Well, they needed an errand-boy, to fetch and carry. And I was that errand-boy. I worked there for maybe a year, or perhaps more. But later – I knew that wasn’t a trade – I decided I would look for work with a dressmaker. And I went to work for this dressmaker, it was a small manufactory, an atelier, well, let’s say 6-8 people worked there. What was my work? I had to go down into the cellar, bring coal, because the house needed heating. Then, before lunch I had to go and buy something for each of those workers. So he gave me this whole task: to buy a quarter loaf of bread for 10 groszy, sugar for 5 groszy, and the middle slice of herring for 5 groszy. Later I had to take a finished piece of work to a patron and bring another piece ready cut. I didn’t have the chance to learn anything there. And there was this terrible thing there, too, that haunted me my whole life, called the dead season. There was no work: ‘There’s no work, so go home.’ And then they didn’t pay.
And the war started, and I was walking to work in that shop at 34 Franciszkanska; that was the best job in my life. I worked there about 3½ years.
From there we walked on foot to Maniewicz [today Ukraine: 30 km from Sarny], that was a beautiful little town. In Maniewicz was one of the richest Jews in Poland, who was a factory owner in Lodz – I don’t remember his name. The Russians there had started arresting anyone wearing Polish army clothes. So Josel Mlotek and I went to that factory owner and told him that there were Jewish soldiers who needed civilian clothing.
They went one way, and I and my brother Menasze found ourselves in a camp in Komi ASRR, near Vorkuta [160 km south of the Arctic Circle, the region with the biggest forced labor camps in the European part of the USSR], and we didn’t get contact with the rest of our family. In 1944, when I met Ida Kaminska 28 in Moscow, she gave me contact with Ksil, and then he gave me the address to Ryfka and to Rajzla.
In the camp we worked, we hacked wood. But when I came to the camp, I had dysentery, from the journey on the barge. I gone to the doctor, well, I didn’t know Russian yet. So I ask him if he knows any other language, and he says he knows Jewish. He was from Bukovina. He asked if I didn’t want to work with him, as an assistant – clean, wash the floor. So I was pleased, and I worked in the hospital. One day a commission came round to see what was going on in the hospital. I was reading Pushkin for my patients. And they ask what I’m doing here, and the doctor says I have tuberculosis. But they sent me to work, made me a brigadier [gang foreman]. I worked for 20, and I told them I didn’t want to be a brigadier, that I’m no good at holding a truncheon to beat people over the head. So they sent me to the horse base to water and wash the horses. And I never went back to the heavy work any more, I come out of the camp in good shape.
In the camp we worked, we hacked wood. But when I came to the camp, I had dysentery, from the journey on the barge. I gone to the doctor, well, I didn’t know Russian yet. So I ask him if he knows any other language, and he says he knows Jewish. He was from Bukovina. He asked if I didn’t want to work with him, as an assistant – clean, wash the floor. So I was pleased, and I worked in the hospital. One day a commission came round to see what was going on in the hospital. I was reading Pushkin for my patients. And they ask what I’m doing here, and the doctor says I have tuberculosis. But they sent me to work, made me a brigadier [gang foreman]. I worked for 20, and I told them I didn’t want to be a brigadier, that I’m no good at holding a truncheon to beat people over the head. So they sent me to the horse base to water and wash the horses. And I never went back to the heavy work any more, I come out of the camp in good shape.
At the end of 1942 we finished our work in Komi ASRR and went to Gorki oblast [the Gorki district]. Menasze stayed, because he had a good job. At the end of 1943 I went to Moscow for the first time on business. When I was coming back I brought various things – needles, pins. So the wives of the engineers working there took them from me, round the villages and brought back a pile of money. So I left my job, because I knew that if anything happened with my brother I would be left all alone. So I decided that I will go to my brother in Krasnodar. I had a girl, a Russian girl, her name was Lena. And we went to Ukraine together, where she lived, and she stayed there. I said: ‘When I get myself fixed up you will come.’ I didn’t go back to her. And I went to my brother. When I got there, on the street I met a guy I knew from Komi ASRR. And he knew that I worked in transport there, as head of snabzhenie, so he says: ‘I got a good job for you.’ And he took me to the NKVD construction authority 30. In that district was one of the 10 most devastated cities, so there was building going on. I was head of purchasing. It was a good salary. Every morning when I come to work, the boss asks me: ‘You have money?’ So I say ‘Yes.’ ‘Dania! Bring the car!’ That was to the driver. And we went to the market, where they sold vodka in 100g shots, and he would have a drink: ‘Sashenka [Szulim] will pay.’ That was how my working day started. And I had to travel – for instance for glass almost to Chechnya. Once I brought lamps, for kerosene lamps for myself, and I sold them and earned a pile of money, and there was money to live on.
Rubin came, Ryfka’s husband, and he saw that there’s some girl here in bed. Well, they introduced themselves, and everybody liked her a lot. And my eldest sister asks me: ‘What kind of wedding do you want?’ So I say: ‘We’ll go to the town hall and register.’ But she says: ‘But if our parents were alive, wouldn’t you have a chuppah?’ Well, I despaired, and I said: ‘Do what you want.’ And they ordered some rabbi, and we went, it was raining, a Saturday evening, and they did the chuppah thing, and we laughed, and the rabbi told us not to laugh.
We met on 17 September 1947. At the end of November, on her birthday , I took her to my place. We got married before the rabbi on 27 December 1947. Our son, Samuel, was born on 24 November 1948.
We met on 17 September 1947. At the end of November, on her birthday , I took her to my place. We got married before the rabbi on 27 December 1947. Our son, Samuel, was born on 24 November 1948.
Being in Russia we didn’t know a lot about what was going on in Poland: Mother and Father, and Golda and the 3 children were in the ghetto 32. The Germans killed her husband with a bomb. When I was in Dzierzoniow I went to Lodz via Wroclaw [330 km south-west of Warsaw]. While I was in Wroclaw, I thought to myself that I’d go visit an acquaintance from the camp, Berenfeld. I ring the bell, and the door was opened by my neighbor from before the war, we grew up in the same house from the first day of my life! Kronenberg, she was called. It was she told me that my father and her mother died in the ghetto around the same time. Her father and my mother, and my sister and her children were taken to Treblinka 33 on the same day.
When there was the decision to leave Poland, there was a group of 6 of us, and we went to Katowice [290 km south-west of Warsaw]. In Katowice was the boss who was running the emigration 35. I don’t know who he was. We were to go in the night, over the border, and in the morning we were in Prague. I went with my wife, my brother Ksil, my friend who I lived with after the war, Leon Krolicki, and there was also one of the editors of the Folkszeitung with us, a writer and historian, Mordechaj Bernsztajn. From Prague we had to go to Germany. And we went by train to the border, and from the border by bus to Feldafing [Germany]. We arrived in Feldafing in the night; they saw there was a pregnant woman with us, so they took us straight away to a private family. We stayed with those private people those few weeks that we were in Feldafing. For a visa to America you had to wait a year, a year and a half, and I didn’t want the child to be born in Germany. And we went to Ulm and from Ulm there was a group that was going to Paris. And we arrived in Paris on 22 August 1948.
nd a few days later I went to the Bund club and there I met a friend from Warsaw, called Rochman, and he ran a manufactory there, they made windcheaters, these coats with fur on the inside. And he took me on at his place. But that only lasted until the end of December, because the season finished. I went to work for a tailor who made women’s suits, as an assistant machinist, and I worked there 2 weeks but then he said he didn’t need me any more. So I gone to an elderly lady, she worked alone, and what it took her a whole week to make, I did in a day. So that wasn’t normal either, so she sent me to her sister, who also had a studio where they made coats and other things.
If the first week I bought material for 12 jackets, on the Monday for 40. That was 1959. And by chance I gone in this street, and I saw that there was a shop to let, so I went in to that woman and I gone out a few hours later with the key in my hand. And that was at the end of the week, and on the Monday we went to the notary to sign and I fixed it up. 1 January 1960 I opened the shop, and till 8 February no-one even came in, and I got sick. And Lena went to the shop. She comes in in the evening from the shop and says: ‘One man came, and he saw those models of yours, and says he’ll come tomorrow. Well, I was better – I could have killed the world boxing champion! The next day I went, and it started. It was such a season, something fantastic. I bought an apartment straight away. I had the shop till 1985.
Ksil came to Paris with me. In 1951 Ryfka and her husband and 2 children left Poland and emigrated to Israel, and as well a year later Menasze to Israel, with his wife and daughter. And my other sister Rajzla went in 1956 also to Israel. And the 2 sisters stayed in Israel and died there. Menasze came with his wife and daughter to Paris.
At home we used to speak Yiddish, and only later we started to speak in French a little, because the children didn’t like it. My son spoke Yiddish like me. When he took the phone, they would say to him: ‘Szulem?’ He said: ‘Ich bin nicht Szulem, ich bin Shmil [Yid.: I’m not Szulem, I’m Shmil].’ He went to a Jewish school, where he learned to read and recite Hebrew very nicely.
My son did his school-leaving examinations, then he did a fee-paying IT school. In 1968 he got his diploma and got a job straight away. And he worked in one firm 32 years. Now he’s going on a pension from that company. His wife is an official at the university. My elder daughter studied in Paris at medical school and is a virologist; she teaches at the university, in the Pasteur Institute; my son-in-law is a physician too, a geneticist. He is a professor. Dorote graduated from a school for translators in Paris too and is an English-French translator, and he is a lawyer, a partner in a big law firm.
My daughters have a bond with their Jewishness, well, my son does too. We celebrated all of the Jewish holidays here, and my son’s wife always came. 30 people would sit at a table like this. Especially on Passover. One time the mayor of a large Israeli city was here, and our friend from Los Angeles brought them here for lunch. That was at Yom Kippur. We sat here from about 1.30 till about 4.30. 4.30, my son came in from school. So the mayor of that Israeli city says to him: ‘Go wash your hands and come and eat.’ But he says: ‘I’m not eating today, I’m fasting.’ It was a lovely house.
The Medem library was set up in 1929. As soon as I came to Paris I became a member of the library. I had to have books. My wife and I used to go to various lectures there. My wife was the main reciter. She graduated in the humanities and German from the university in Moscow.
I took an interest in what was going on in Poland, because I was interested in politics. Le Monde talked about it all. Neither I nor my wife went to Poland after we left. I finished with Poland. I was wounded by Poland, because of how they received us when we came back [from Russia]. I stopped having a link with Poland.
My life flows along with these memories of our life together, these memories of the children, of my grandchildren; that’s the compensation that I have from life today. I miss having somebody close to lean on, lay my head on. And I don’t have that, and that’s a big thing. I had such a full life with my wife, we understood each other so well, we had so many shared desires in literature, in art, in music. It goes on, I come in from the library, make myself something to eat, look at the television a while, and listen to music. I like classical music very much, and I know it well, and that’s how I fill my days and nights. And that’s all.