medved 71746 970820 Story of Life In Goroshina Russia (Large file) +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Leizer Medvedovsky's Story Of Life In His Russian village of Goroshina +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ A JewishGen InfoFile RoseAnna TENDLER WORTH shares a story written by her maternal grandfather, Leizer Medvedovsky/Louis Medow, about life in his Russian village just before the end of the 19th century. The story has been translated into Ukrainian and will be given to the little village library in Goroshina. This 900 year old village will then have the ONLY history of what life was like in their past. Written by a cabinet maker who could not attend the local school for more than a few sessions because he was a Jew. --- Zeida's Story By RoseAnna Tendler Worth Part 1. This partial autobiography of my grandfather, Louis Medow (born Leizer Medvedovsky) was written in 1943. The original was handwritten in a child's notebook in Yiddish and was eventually sent to the YIVO archives in NYC. His daughter, Mollie Medow Tendler, translated it into English and that translation forms the first part of this book. His son-in-law, Lou Tendler, wrote the second part of the story. Since there is very little of the information from the direct translation in the second part, I have to assume that the second half was written either from a translation which has since been lost, or that it was written from oral conversations. My father, Lou Tendler, had a heart-attack in 1943, and while he recovered and lived another 13 years, and Louis Medow also lived until 1953, they never finished the stories. As one of the grandchildren mentioned in the forward, mother to three great-grandchildren and one great great grandchild only imagined by my grandfather in 1943, I've put this story together so that my grandfather's intent can be carried out. Forward Let me say, at the beginning, that I am not a writing man. All my life I have worked with my hands, with chisel and saw, rather than pen and ink. But I have achieved that age when the hand and eye begin to lose their ability to work well together. I am not an old man, but people glance at my hair that is growing gray and at the roundness and fullness of my paunch and they think to themselves, "He is growing old." They do not say it, but I know what they are thinking. Probably because that's what I am thinking myself. Well, what is there for a man to do when he is growing old? The future is uncertain and sometimes a bit frightening. There is some comfort in the thought that his children have grown and have families of their own. There is a measure of quiet happiness in the thought that the wife with whom he has grown old is still at his side. But these are thoughts of the present, a counting of blessings that makes the future a little less discouraging to contemplate. No, a man grown old has little to think about in the future. So he turns to the past. That is what I've been doing a lot of late. Quite a good deal of it. I find myself remembering trifling things that have not crossed my memory for years. Snatches of a song I used to sing in my boyhood. The face of a girl framed in a window, laughing in the warm light of the afternoon sun. A term of endearment my mother used when she was particularly pleased with some little thing I had done. And as these fragments of dead days dart to the surface of my memory, they excite other memories that come faster and faster until I see whole periods of my early life pass before me, as one sees the sweep of a broad and pleasant valley when he reaches a hilltop. It was during one of these moments of remembering that the thought came to me about the story of my life. Men write the stories of their lives for a variety of reasons. Some write to teach, others to inspire. Some because their lives have been filled with strange adventure in faraway lands. My reasons are like none of these. I have a reason all my own. It came to me one day when I was watching my grandchildren at play. Watching them, I thought of my own childhood, how different it was, how very much different. And then I wondered idly how they would remember me when I was gone. They would hear their parents talk of me, saying that their grandfather was such and such a man. But how would they, my grandchildren, remember me? What sort of picture of me would they carry in their own minds? They would probably remember me as the old man with the funny, broken English, whose beard was always rough when he kissed their cheeks - - - the "Zeida" who used to bring them pennies and candy when he came visiting them. Oh, they will remember me pleasantly. I am sure of that. Men and women always remember pleasantly the indulgent, doting grandparents of their childhood. But what a pity, I thought, as I watched them playing, if that were the only memory I left them. In a number of ways my life was far from ordinary. There were things that happened in my childhood and youth in that faraway land of mine which used to leave my own children open-mouthed with astonishment when I told them. I might even say that they used to regard me with a new respect and admiration when I had finished telling some of these old world tales. Very well, then. Why not leave these grandchildren of mine the story of my life. It would be their legacy from one who loved them dearly. The more I thought of the idea, the more I liked it. This then, my dear grandchildren, is the story of my life. And it is an extraordinary story in at least this one respect; it was lived in a land and among a people that no longer exists. A land and a people whose life and death fill some of the goriest and most glorious pages of history. For I lived until manhood in the Russian Ukraine in the time of Czar Nicholas, he who was destroyed by the Bolsheviks, because they believed that, with him, they were destroying a dark and oppressive way of life. The older men and women I knew in my youth are gone now. But their sons and daughters, some of them the playmates of my boyhood, learned a new and more modern way of life in the years before the great war of today. It was a life of collectivized farms, tractors, radio, great factories - of many strange things that were not even dreamed of when I was a boy in the Ukraine. And today - - - I shudder to think of my homeland today. There are marching armies and great guns that dig huge craters in the fertile soil and people who hang from trees by their necks and others who stand blindfolded in front of a wall while guns are pointed at their hearts - - - - - - -but these are things that are not part of the story of my life. My story is one of peace, of a life that was simple and good. Here is my story, my dear grandchildren, my legacy to you whom I love so dearly. Part 2. In the year 1886, exactly on the day of Tish a Buv, August 10, I was born in a little village with the name of Goroshina, in the region of Khoral, state of Poltava. (Spelled Horoshin in the original. The Ukrainian 'G' is the same as the Yiddish 'H' ). The village had a population of 3,500, which included 18 Jewish families. The village of Goroshina was encircled on three sides by water and on the fourth by dry land. It also contained two churches, two priests, two deacons, a mayor and a school where they studied up to the third grade and that meant only reading and writing. The school was supported by the county. It had one teacher and his daughter, who was his assistant. The school had between 500 and 600 children, not only from Goroshina but from the surrounding country up to about ten miles. Jews were not allowed in the school because they were forbidden to live in the villages and to own property like a house or land,. Everything a Jew held had to be on a rental basis. There were also exceptions, for example, like when a Jew was a first or second class merchant he had better living quarters. He also had a right to rent land from the lord of the estate for as long as 99 years in order to build a home or a business. There was only one such Jew in Goroshina. His name was Shloime Bregman, his wife was named Fredl and he had two sons, Moishe and Laib. They had a general business - weed, narrow plows, hardware, groceries and yard goods. They had one large store and four or five acres of land. On their land was erected a synagogue and a bath house with a mikva. And this was the congregation of Goroshina. The bath was rarely used, except on unusual occasions, such as Erev Yom Kippur or severe cold spells, when it was impossible to leave Goroshina, when it was necessary to heat up the bath and the mikva. It took 24 hours to heat, and it was announced in the synagogue on Sabbath that this week there would be a bath. The women then knew that this week they would have a warm bath and a mikva. This was, for them, a miracle. The women of Goroshina were forced to undergo great hardship when they had to go to the mikva at other times. It was arranged with a goy, living on the banks of the Sula River, that he should warm up enough water to make one bath on a certain day. The bathtub was made from a half-barrel. The woman was helped by two other Jewish women, who wrapped her in a hide and led her to a hole cut in the ice of the river. There she was dunked three times and taken back to the house. Often such mikvas brought serious illness. Those Jews who were a little better off used to ride to Khoral, the county seat, which was 10 miles away. That was an undertaking of two or three days duration. The Jews of Goroshina were not artisans, except Shloime the blacksmith. All were occupied with buying and selling. There was a large distillery, which was owned by the lord of the estate. One Jew. Slutzky, was appointed winocur and the majority of our Jews delivered grain to the distillery. All week they would ride around to the neighboring farms and bring in loads to the limit of the poor horse's ability to drag. My father, alavasholem, was the town butcher. The town also had a shoichet, who had eight jobs: shoichet, cantor, teacher, mohel, elder and several other community tasks. On the side, he handled a bit of wheat and books for learning, or haggadahs, prayer books and so forth. He was a family man with four children. My father and mother had eight children, each separated from the other by two or three years, five sons and three daughters. In my childhood years, I remember Sarah as a breadwinner. Also, my brother Moishe who was 15 years old, used to help out the family. My father's entire business depended on the puritz and how many guests he had. A rider on horseback would come to my father and tell him that they needed a side or two of meat for the estate on the next day. So it got busy in our house. Papa used to arise at 2 o'clock in the morning and take Moishe with him. They would ride around to the surrounding villages to seek something to buy for tomorrow's slaughter. As I remember, he never failed to bring something back, either a calf or a cow. When he returned there would be a holiday. Everybody in the house came out to examine the big bargain and see how much it weighed. We would touch the animal by the breast and under the arms until someone would guess how much Papa had paid for the animal. My chore was to call the shoichet. When we got back, the biggest job was to drag the animal to the slaughterhouse. We lived near the river and I remember everything was washed clean and immaculate. But despite this, there was always an odor of blood about the slaughterhouse. When the animal smelled this it was almost impossible to get near. Papa, the shoichet and all the children entered into the struggle. And when the animal was bound and waiting for the shoichet, we all stationed ourselves around about, all anxious. God grant that the animal be kosher! In a trice we would see father blowing into the raw lung, with the shoichet looking to see that there were no flaws. Then the shoichet would call out "kosher" or "traife". When he pronounced it kosher there would be happiness in every nook and cranny of the house. Mother would immediately start preparing for a big supper. The shoichet would help father remove the hide and to cut the meat properly. I would go to Simon to ask that he harness the horse and wagon so that it should be ready to take the meat to the puritz. But first of all father would cut off a piece of meat and carry this into the house and say to mother, "Channa, thank God, everything is well. Prepare supper." Then he would put the rest of the meat on the wagon, give the shoichet his share, the miltz and the liver and other odds and ends, and off we drove. Naturally, the puritz was the first. Then came the two priests. Then the teacher, the apprentice physician, the wealthy Jew and also all the Jews of Goroshina. The prices were from four to six kopecks a pound. When it was a good day and all the meat was sold, there was great joy in the house. After supper father would begin to figure how much he had made, not including the hide. But it if was a bad day, there was great woe. First, the leftover meat had to be taken to the icehouse, which was owned by the lord of the manor, or to Solomon, the wealthy Jew. The icehouse, or ludnick, was a great trench about eight feel deep and 150 or 200 feet long. In wintertime it was filled with ice, covered with straw and enclosed with a tent of straw. It had only one entrance. Everyone in Goroshina had his own place. There was no fee, except that when the ludnick was filled with ice, everyone lent a hand. When everything was in order we went home and waited for the market day, which was every Friday. The market used to be up at the edge of the village on a good sized tract of land. The peasants living around Goroshina used to bring their surplus produce to sell - - wheat, flour, chickens, fresh fish, eggs, wood for burning and many other things. The Jews of Goroshina were the buyers. Even a calf or a colt could be purchased at the market. But the chief purchases were of wheat or corn. Also, the Jews used to bring out their wares - -shoes, hides and various other products for the peasant. The market day was very gay. By 3 or 4 o'clock it was all over and everybody went home with his purchases and started preparing for the Sabbath. My father always brought fresh fish and other things that were necessary for the house. There was an air of gaiety. The meat had been sold and father would figure out how much he had earned for the week. On Friday after the market we would prepare for the Sabbath. Everyone would start primping to be ready for the synagogue. When we returned from the synagogue the table would be covered and the candles in their sticks would be ready. The gefilte fish would be waiting. And mother would also be waiting for us. All the children and father would greet mother with a gay "gud shabbos" and mother's face would glow with pride. After dinner we young boys would scatter to various orchards to pick fruit off the trees. We weren't supposed to tear the fruit from the tree (it being Shabbos) so we used to bite the fruits off the trees. We also were not allowed to carry the fruit so we would pay the farmer two or three kopecks to eat as much fruit as we could - - and we felt ourselves so fortunate with the Sabbath. Sabbath evening all the Jews of Goroshina used to foregather at the synagogue for a meeting. The wealthy Jew, Solomon, would bring a Yiddish newspaper, since he was the only one who had one, he having the best opportunity to get one because there was no post office in Goroshina. The county used to send one postwagon to Korol to get all the mail and that was 12 miles from Goroshina. Then every dorf in the county used to send a rider, once a week, to get the mail. And Solomon, who lived near the volost, used to get the mail first. Later other residents would come to the post office and inquire whether there was any mail. At the meeting in the synagogue they would discuss world events and personal problems, for example, children and what subjects they should study, also matchmaking, and even if there was a complaint against somebody it was ironed out. Also, if someone accused someone of swindling him, all this had to be straightened out. Fredl, Solomon's wife, had prepared a good borscht and tidbits and everyone enjoyed the evening. The Jewish children of Goroshina had a religious school which was rented from a gentile in the center of the village. At certain hours of the evening the shoichet (he who slaughtered the animals in kosher style) would teach us. Solomon, the rich man, would bring his own teacher from Kremenchug and the other Jews of Goroshina could hire this teacher for themselves to learn Russian and arithmetic. The rates were: 6 or 8 rubles a month, room and board at Solomon's house. There was also in Goroshina one drug store with one felscher. A felscher had as much education as a druggist in America. The druggist was hired by the county court. Every town had a county court with one chief officer. Its function was to settle disputes between peasants and lords and to consider every citizen's rights. For example, when a peasant had a complaint against a lord of an estate, he could not sue him in Goroshina but had to go to the county court. The court had the right to call a jury of 12 peasants, to hear the complaint, and to acquit or convict the defendant. Lawyers used to come to the court to handle the cases. Also, the county court had the right to levy taxes, to administer hospitals and to deal with teachers - -and even concerned itself with Jewish affairs. All cases had to be settled with a unanimous verdict of the jurors. Jurors who could not agree with a majority had to explain publicly why they didn't agree. Often these dissenting jurors would present very good arguments to the judge and to the lawyers. If the losing side had good reasons it could appeal for a new trial. In this fashion we had a felscher hired from the county. His function was to give first aid. He had as house of his which belonged to the state, and also a drugstore with all sorts of medicines. The felscher would have little to keep him busy unless there was an accident. He rarely examined sick people. He would not even be called to attend a pregnant woman because in Goroshina there were midwives who did that work. If someone became ill, the priest was considered the main doctor. To him they came to confess their sins and to learn the reason why God had seen fit to afflict them with their illness. There was never a thought of calling a real doctor - - whatever the priest said was holy. They believed in 'old wives remedies'. In case of death, the priest was required to name the cause of death. If there was any question about the cause of death, the body was kept in a grave in the cemetery until the arrival of an investigator and doctor from the county seat. Then they would determine the cause of death. Then the priest, other officers of the church, and the family would come to the cemetery and bury the body. After the burial the priest would come to the family and give his consent to their having a bit of 'L'chayim'. In the meantime the church bells stopped ringing. The felscher never participated in all these proceedings. He was very friendly with the Jews of Goroshina and they towards him. When medicine was needed it was obtained without money. If it came to a serious illness, it was the felscher who was the first to advise what it would be best to do - either ride to Kiev, or to the nearest hospital, which was 12 verst from Goroshina (a verst is 2/3 of a mile). The felscher would quite often become involved in Jewish problems. He would spend all his time in the company of Jewish young people. He got a newspaper, so very often he would read the news of the land. Goroshina Jews greatly respected his opinion. Goroshina contained a city hall of four rooms. One of the rooms which was used by the mayor and his cabinet, had a large hardwood chest with metal decorations. Its huge lock made a ringing sound. It took two or three husky goyim to lift the top of the chest, which contained important documents and money from various taxes. The mayor was chosen from among the citizens of Goroshina - - except the Jews. Once a week he would arrive at the Volost (city hall), check certain duties and, if necessary, call a meeting of the citizens to decide on what should be done. This meeting would be held in the yard of the Volost. There were five or six barrels on two wheels in this yard, which were used in case of fire. Also a hand-powered pumping machine and a couple of dozen pails. It was the law that if the church bells rang out with a special peal, all citizens were to run to the Volost and grab a pail. Or collect as many peasants as you could, the barrels on wheels and young and old would run to the fire to rescue whatever possible. The greatest difficulty was getting sufficient water. If the river was not far from the fire we were in luck, but if it was far from the fire it was a misfortune. Several pails were used to draw up water from the wells, so they would run wherever they knew there was a well to get that water. All of Goroshina was engaged in this activity. When the church bell stopped its ringing, it was a signal that the fire was over. The gathering in the yard of the Volost was on the barrels and pails. The speaker would stand on the barrel and announce the reason for the meeting. Often their problem would be that the puritz (lord of the manor) of Goroshina charged too high a pasture fee for a cow or calf, or that he didn't pay enough for removing the crops from the field. Sometimes they would consider an order received from the zemstvi (county court), and more and more other problems. Discussion would follow and agreement was reached. On one occasion their problem was whether to strike. But they couldn't see how they could strike when there were so many living things to be fed, such as the oxen, horses, and this requires labor. So they withdrew their consideration of a strike because they felt it would be a sin in the eyes of God for the innocent to suffer if they struck. Thus they would pass the time of day. Oftentimes a problem would be brought before the priest. Then, in church on Sunday, he would scold them, and promise that he would pray to God to forgive their sins. After the meeting, the mayor and his helpers would gather in my father's house for a L'Chaim, being so exhausted. It was known that they could get a snack at Avrum's house. They further discussed the problems of the day, and it was then that my father could speak up, especially on Yiddish concerns. The Jews in Goroshina already knew what was being considered and wanted advice on the easing of the Jewish problem. The second room of the city hall was a court room. This was a good-sized room with a few wooden benches, a large table, a chair for the Judge, and a portrait of Kaiser Nikolai. The Judge was looked up to by the people. These kinds of injustices might be brought before this court: A man sues a neighbor because his cow ate grass not belonging to him, or something was stolen, or a girl was mistreated by boys, might even be pregnant. All these had to be straightened out according to their ways. As long as the Judge wore his civil clothes it was permissible to talk. When he donned his large cape with a metal piece in the center, it was a signal that court was in session, and it became quiet. At this time both sides were given a hearing. For the most part, the verdict remained as the Judge had decided. After the verdict day, the Judge and all the officers were guests in our house. We Jews knew which goy was honest and who was not. This was a real help in their business. The third room was for the police inspector, a city official. Orders would be sent from the city - murder charges, great burglaries, political criminals, even lesser crimes under the jurisdiction of the city. It was his duty to make the arrest and to deliver that which was required of him. He also had the authority to arrest anyone for disturbing the peace, whether he was sober or drunk. He checked in the market to see that everyone should have his "stand" and how much place he should have. His chief duty, though, was the supervision of a convoy sent from one city to another. These consisted of "criminals" who did not have passports, or who had committed petty offenses. They would be held in the city of their arrest until they had collected enough to make up a convoy. It was for these persons that the fourth room was used. When a convoy arrived, everybody in Goroshina, Jew and Christian, came out to see them and to help them in any way possible. There would be between ten and fourteen persons in a convoy. A horse and buggy would carry their luggage, while they followed on foot behind. The driver was armed, and everybody had to follow his orders. It took many months until they arrived at their destination. It tore one's heart out to see these "criminals" - tattered, barefooted, bearded, both men and women. If there were Jews in the convoy, they lacked for nothing in Goroshina. On the word of honor of the Goroshiner Jews, they were released to them. We would do the rest. We would give them food, lodging, as many clothes as possible, and a great deal of friendliness during the few days they spent in Goroshina. The police inspector was paid - in two ways. He was given money by the state for the food for the criminals. When we Jews took over a guest, that money for him remained with the inspector. In the second place, the Goroshina Jews would slip him something, which made it worthwhile for him. Thus it was, when he expected a convoy to arrive the inspector would convey the "good news" to my father, and be "in" with us. Part 3. Chapter One The Village I was born in a little village called Goroshina (Horoshin in Yiddish), which was nestled in a deep bend of the Sula, a fast-flowing stream that empties into the great Dnieper. If you will look at a map of Russia, you will find the Dnieper, twisting southeastward towards the Black Sea. Run your finger up the Dnieper until it comes to the city of Kremenchug and you will find that the city is located at the confluence of the Dnieper and an un-named river. That is the Sula. And about half-way up the Sula, in the province of Poltava, stood the village of Goroshina. (note from 1996) After World War II the Dnieper was dammed at Kremenchug, creating the Kremenchug Reservoir. Part of the Sula was flooded, but Goroshina is still on the Sula. My birthdate was the tenth of August in the year 1886. It was on that day known to the Jewish people as Tish-a'bov, the day on which Jews the world over mourn the destruction of Solomon's Temple, and with it, the loss of their homeland. My father was the keeper of the only kosher meat market in the village. I say meat market, but you must not think that it was anything like the shops with the huge iceboxes and gleaming white showcases that you know today. There were only 18 Jewish families in Goroshina's population of 3,500. For such a small number one cannot maintain anything as dignified as a "shop." We had a small house near the Sula with a yard behind it and a shed in which my father slaughtered the cattle he bought from the Russian peasants. The great problem was to keep the meat from spoiling. And for this purpose he had access to the village "refrigerator" which, in Russian, was known as the "ludnick", meaning literally "ice place". I want to tell you about this "ludnick" because it illustrates how ingeniously simple were the devices contrived by the villagers to meet such elementary needs as refrigeration. In a plot of ground near our home there was dug a long, narrow pit about 10 feet deep, 15 feet wide and 200 feet long. The pit was covered by an inverted V-shaped roof which was simply a 200 foot long ridge pole, supported at intervals and at each end by crossed logs, and covered with a roofing of thickly matted straw. The straw roofing was so closely interwoven and tied together with fiber that it excluded snow, rain and sun as completely as one of your modern shingle roofs. In the winter the villagers cut great blocks of ice from the frozen Sula, which were packed closely into the pit until it was filled almost to the level of the ground. The top of the ice was covered with a thick layer of clean straw to keep the ice from melting too rapidly. And on this straw matting the villagers stored their meats, cheese, butter and any other foods that needed refrigeration. There was no need to mark their foods to indicate ownership, for only rarely did a villager need to complain that someone had taken his food from the communal icebox. Entrance to the "ludnick" was through a crude wooden door at one end. As the level of the ice dropped slowly during the summer, through melting, steps were cut into the ground, just inside the door until, towards the end of summer, they led down to the last layer of ice at the bottom of the pit. From generations of experience, the amount of ice packed into the pit each winter was nicely calculated to last until the Sula had frozen over again and the pit was ready for repacking. The ":ludnick" had one other function. In the event of an illness that required water to be cooled or an ice pack to be applied to an aching head or inflammation, the villagers were permitted to chip away bits of ice from the great store beneath the straw matting. I remember the first time my mother found it necessary to visit the "ludnick" to get some chopped ice for some childhood ailment of mine. I remember the first pleasant shock of that cloth- wrapped ice being laid against my inflamed cheek. And, as I lay back on my pillow and felt the heat ebbing from my body, I decided solemnly that the "ludnick" was indeed the most wondrous invention ever conceived by mankind. Perhaps the most important factor in the life of the people of Goroshina was The Estate. The relationship between village and Estate was like that of an undernourished little plant struggling for life in the heavy shade of a massive tree. There was an estate overshadowing every peasant village in Russia in those times. In fact, in an early day the villages themselves were part of the Estate and the people in those villages were the serfs of the prince or count who owned the Estate. In our village The Estate stood on the bank of the Sula and the town spread around it in rather aimless fashion. We had no village limits as you know them in this country. We knew only that the village was bounded roughly by "the two blacksmith shops" on the road to Lubny, by "the cemetery" on the road to Cherkassy, and by "the windmills" on the road to Kremenchug. We never knew much about the "puritz." He visited the great castle with its medieval turrets only in the summer months and then only for short periods. He was probably a prince or a count who owned several estates, living in Moscow or St. Petersburg most of the year and visiting his properties occasionally to see that his affairs were being handled properly by the "pan." There was a town hall in which the tax collector and a small number of other government officials had their offices. On the front wall of the town hall hung a sign reading: "Town of Goroshina." I remember my father telling me about the village strong box which was kept in the town hall. It was a huge metal box about the size and shape of a coffin. It stood on a table and in it were kept the tax money and the official books, records and papers of the town. Only one government official had a key to the strong box and rarely did any villager see it open. It was one of the many things in the village which the peasant regarded with a certain awe because it was a symbol of the Czar's government, a strange and fearsome hand that touched his everyday life rarely but inexorably. In the town hall there was one room set aside as the village jail. I was never inside that room, of course, but I was told that it was a plain, bare room, with no windows and a stout door. Its use was confined almost exclusively to the occasional village drunk, too unruly to be allowed to go home to his family. Rather than a jail, it was more like a place where the peasant could spend the night sleeping off his drunk. Behind the town hall was the school. The schoolmaster and his daughter (he was a widower) received a meager wage from the government to give the village children a meager acquaintance with the rudiments of the Russian language and history. The children were taught the ABC's of written and printed Russian, hardly more than enough to enable them to write their names and to spell out, laboriously, only the simplest of printed words. I attended only a few sessions of the school when it came my turn, as a Jewish child, to go. The government fixed a quota for Jewish children in proportion to their number in the village. The Jewish community of Goroshina, however, maintained its own arrangements for the education of its children. It hired a "melamed", a religious teacher, who alternated in living at one home or another during his stay in the village. We children spent from morning until after dark learning the Talmud, Jewish history, writing and reading, both Hebrew and Russian. Our classroom was in whatever home the teacher happened to be living. I remember the time I had learning to overcome my fear of the dark when I walked homeward after classes in the evening. We boys improvised a lantern from a candle and a heavy paper shield that served as a dim and flickering beacon to guide us through Goroshina's unlighted streets. As I look back upon those eerie walks through the heavy and silent darkness, I wonder whether the comfort we derived from those flimsy lanterns was sufficient to overcome the fantastic and grotesque shadows that accompanied us along the walls of the buildings we passed. My parents home stood with a few others in a triangle of land between the riverbank, the road to Cherkassy and the cattle yard of the estate. In spring the river would overflow its banks, the water reaching sometimes to our doorstep. Those were times of great annoyance to my parents, of great fun for the children. The synagogue and Simon Bregman's home and shop (he was the wealthiest Jewish merchant in town and, therefore, the Jewish community's natural leader) stood along a bend of the Cherkassy road, some distance from our home. I mention these locations to show that the Jewish families of Goroshina, unlike those of many of the Russian cities and villages of the time, were not concentrated, ghetto-like, on one small area, but were scattered through the village. This fact was indicative of the friendly relationship between Jew and Gentile in our village, but that is something I want to reserve for a later chapter. Part 4. Chapter Two The Goy There is little I can tell you of the Russian peasant that would help you to understand him any better than he has been portrayed in the writings of Tolstoy, Gorki and other great Russian writers. We called him "goy", as Jews the world over call all Gentiles "goy", or "goyim", as the plural goes. The word "goy" has a curious complex of meanings in our language. In its simplest use it is merely the designation of someone who is not a Jew. We also use it as a term of mild reproach for a Jew who has strayed or is straying from his religion. And we use it, in a somewhat superior sense, to speak disparagingly of someone whose mental agility is not quite what it should be, as for example: "Well, what can you expect from a goy?" of "He has a goyishe kup (the mind of a goy)." The word, in this last sense, undoubtedly derives from the Jew's experience with the Russian peasant. To the Jews in the village of Goroshina, the peasant was the simplest of fellows. He was a man with the most elemental of needs and desires. He was universally illiterate, fanatically religious, and enormously superstitious. If he woke in the early dawn to find his cow's udders dry, then assuredly it was one of his many evil spirits that had come down in the night to drain her of her milk. For every minor mishap and for every tragic catastrophe, the "goy" had a distinct evil spirit to which he could conveniently attach the blame. Life, for him, was thus neatly ordered. With his rich and colorful catalogue of good and evil spirits, nothing in life need go unexplained. In his religion he asked no enlightenment and needed none. Whatever the priest said was so. And to question the word of the priest was blasphemy of the most awful kind. I remember the one and only time I had the youthful temerity to question the truth of a simple religious fact stated to me by a young "goy" of my acquaintance. His rage was so instantaneous, his fingers so tight around my throat, his screams of profanity so violent that I gurgled a frightened apology and blubbered a fervent vow through my tears that never again would I question the word of a priest. But violence of this sort was rare to the "goy". Cruelty was foreign to his nature. In his treatment of animals and humans he was gentle and considerate. In a vague sort of way, he knew that we Jews were somehow different from his own kind. He knew that we worshipped our God in a way that was unlike his own but he never stopped to wonder whether his or our way was the better. Above all, he respected our religious tenets and expected us to respect his own. The three most important matters in the life of the "goy", in the order in which he always spoke of them, were God, the Czar and Mother Russia. And mention of the three was accompanied always by the sign of the cross, bunched fingers to forehead and chest, shoulder to shoulder, in one fluid, sweeping motion. "God, the Czar and Mother Russia!" To the "goy" they were the beginning and the end of all things. He called upon them to witness the truth of his words. He beseeched them to help him out of his troubles. He called to them for solace in his hours of greatest tragedy. They were among the first words he learned as a child, the last he breathed on his death- bed. It was not an accident of race that the "goy" of my youth was illiterate. Church and economic circumstances combined to keep him so. Education was not compulsory. Those children who did attend the little village school were given only a meager introduction to learning. They were taught a little reading, writing and arithmetic, hardly more than a third or fourth-grade education by the standards of this country. A family could, if it wished, send a son to high school in the nearest city or even to the gymnasium (university) in one of the great Russian cities. But these excursions into higher learning entailed vast sums of money that were beyond the wildest dreams of the peasant. What little money he earned came from the one-tenth share of the crop he received from the "puritz" for harvesting the fields of the estate, or from the credit he received on the books of the estate's commissary for working in the fields between harvests. Against this credit, the peasant was allowed to pasture his horse or cow on the broad acres of the estate, so that rarely was there any money exchanged for these services. The thought of sending a girl-child to school would never occur to the peasant. What need did a girl have to learn how to read or write or do sums? A girl's place was at home beside her mother, learning how to keep house, to cook and sew, to prepare herself for the day when she would marry and keep a house of her own. Moreover, the peasant just didn't believe in education. He was given to understand in his churches that education was something not meant for him and his kind. He could hear the priest say almost any Sunday that the proper place for a growing boy was beside his father in the fields, and not in the classroom, nose buried in a book. To the listening peasant, weary from his week-long labor in the fields, these were comforting words. They somehow dignified his labor, gave it a measure of importance in the eyes of the church. What did he want with reading and writing when there were fields of grain to be tended, cattle to be watered, firewood to be cut? Was it not right for a son to show his gratitude for food, shelter and clothing by helping his father in the fields? Yes, these were proper and truthful words. And were they not spoken by one who talked with the authority of God? How was the peasant to know that these words came, not from God, but as the product of a corrupt alliance between church and aristocracy? How was he to know that the great princes and noblemen for whom he worked in a virtual serfhood wanted him kept benighted, ignorant and contented. He was to learn of that unholy alliance later, and the terrible aftermath of his awakening broke upon the world as the Russian Revolution. The priests who presided over the two churches in our village were, of course, personages with whom we Jews had little to do. As a boy, the sight of them filled me with a strange wonder, as though they were beings out of another world. Over the "goy", we Jewish boys could enjoy an inner sense of superiority, a comfortable feeling that our own religion was so much more meaningful than his. But the priests, with their imposing beards and their flowing, richly embroidered vestments, inspired in us a fascination that was frequently transformed into whispered speculation over the strange things that must transpire behind those massive walls of their churches. The churches and the priests' living quarters stood upon land which belonged originally to the "puritz". In the days before the emancipation of the serfs by Alexander, every great estate had its own church which was built and maintained by the "puritz". In my boyhood, however, while the priests continued to receive some maintenance from the "puritz", their food and many other essentials came almost entirely from the villagers. Each Sunday there was the collection box into which clinked the kopecks (pennies) dropped by the parishioners. And once or twice a year the priests went forth with their "collection wagons", great, cumbersome affairs designed expressly for the use to which they were put. The wagons were broad-bottomed and so massive that two-horse teams were required to pull them. The big wooden wheels creaked on oaken shafts and reached high above the low sideboards. The bed of the wagon was divided into many different- sized compartments, each designed to receive a different kind of foodstuff. The priests went forth with their wagons, usually after the mid-summer and fall harvest periods. A peasant sat up on the wagon seat, holding the reins proudly, as befitting one selected by the church for such a holy mission. The priest walked alongside the horses, from whose harness projected upwards a horse-shoe shaped wooden yoke that enclosed a religious picture, usually a scene from the Nativity or Crucifixion. The home of every peasant in the village enjoyed a visit from the priests on these excursions. The ritual that took place before each house never varied. The wagon stopped. The priest advanced to the doorway, where the peasant wanted with his family, hats in hand, heads bowed. The priest's fingers flew through the sign of the cross as he murmured a blessing upon the family and house. And the priest then returned to his wagon. At once, smiles wreathing their faces, the peasant and his family began bringing forth the things they had been saving for just such a visit. Into the proper compartments in the wagon, as pointed out by the peasant on the wagon seat, went corn, wheat, bread, butter, meat, beans, cakes, pieces of felt, bolts of cloth - a hodge- podge of votive offerings that flowed into the wagon from meager stores. All all the while the priest stood beside the horse's heads, smiling benignly. The loading process ended, there came another brief blessing from the priest and the wagon creaked on to the next house, while the peasant and his family stood in the roadway waving gay farewells. Thus it went throughout the "offering day" until, as the sun began to paint the Sula in vivid reds and soft purples, the horses leaned heavily against their traces to pull the creaking wagons through the churchyard gates. Inside there was always a joyous group of peasants waiting to help unload so that the ministers of God would have enough to eat until the next harvest period. It was a simple devotional ceremony that insured a snug fit for priestly clothes on priestly paunches. And the peasants loved it. Part 5. Chapter Three The Customs It is true of any people who live close to the soil that they learn to depend upon the subtle teachings of nature for much of their knowledge. The Russian peasant of my youth was no exception. His powers of observation, his ability to read meaning into signs that were nonexistent for me, were a constant source of wonder and admiration. I remember once riding with a peasant from my village to another town for supplies. The road leading from Goroshina to nearby villages were hardly more than wagon tracks across open fields. As the wagon bounced slowly along behind its team of horses, I noticed that the tracks slithered off in a dozen directions, with hardly more than an occasional windmill or hut to serve as landmarks. And yet this "goy" directed his horses unerringly to the left of this fork and to the right of that, pausing only long enough at each fork to lift his head momentarily, as if he were listening for some sound. Intrigued by these maneuvers, I ventured to ask him how he could know which way to turn. "It depends upon the wind," he replied, with an indulgent smile. "If it blows against my left cheek, I must turn that way. And if it blows against the back of my neck, I know I am on the right path." And, what was strangest of all, he was always right. * * * * * * * * * * * * The peasant had no clocks in his home. Clocks were luxuries reserved for the great and wealthy. But the roosters of the village were as dependable a timepiece as he needed. They crowed at midnight, in the middle of the night and at dawn. The first two calls served no useful purpose, but the third was the peasant's signal that it was time to leave his bed and make ready for the day's work. And not even a rooster was needed to tell him when it was time to go to bed. He did that when darkness descended on the village. * * * * * * * * * * * * I must tell you about one custom of the peasant because of the manner in which it was recalled to me recently. There are many things that happened in our village in those early years which I have forgotten because, I suppose, they were not important enough to remember. And yet some of those forgotten things become interesting through comparison with the customs of the people in this present land of ours. I'll tell you what I mean. I was talking one day recently with a friend of mine about a conversation I had had with a group of boys in my native village. I happened to mention that we were seated on a pile of logs outside one of the peasant homes and was about to go on and relate the conversation, when my friend stopped me. "Did you say logs?" he asked. "Yes, a pile of logs." "What were the logs for?" "Why, the logs for the son's house." "The son's house? What do you mean?" So I told him this story. Through generations of tradition, the Russian peasant felt a solemn duty to his first-born son to build the house in which the son would live after marriage. He would begin planning that house when the son was barely out of his cradle. He would go one day to the "pan" and, hat in hand, beg for the privilege of cutting a few logs from the forest. The "pan" would give him some work to do around the estate, the peasant taking his pay in logs. The logs were trimmed of bark and branches, dragged back to the peasant's home with a team of horses, and deposited in the yard near the house. Through the years, as the son grew towards manhood, the pile of logs would grow and grow until, when the boy was ready for marriage, there were enough to build the house for him and his bride. The day set aside for building the house would take on the nature of a festival. Relatives and friends came, dressed in their gayest clothes, laughing, jesting, singing. There were men, women and children, each with his own special task to perform, each following a routine fixed by ages of custom. The men dug holes, the women gathered straw and manure, the children brought drinking water and ran minor errands. And for each operation there was a special Ukrainian folk song. There was never any urgency about the building process. If, in the midst of a particular operation, the mood to dance came upon one of the workers, he simply dropped whatever he was doing and swung into his dance while the others gathered about him, clapping their hands in rhythm, singing and shouting encouragement as he whirled through the movements of his dance. The Russian peasant's home of my youth was a simple two-room affair that varied rarely in constructional detail. The larger of the two rooms was the living, eating, cooking and sleeping room. It was big enough to house a family of five or six, not with the comfort and freedom we know in this country, but large enough for the needs of the peasant. The second room served as an entrance way, storeroom and shed. It was rarely inhabited and then only on special occasions which I will describe later. To you who have seen carpenters, masons, electricians, plumbers and plasterers swarming over a home in the process of construction in this country, the building of a Russian peasant's home, if you could have watched it, would have seemed like a delightful, colorful scene in a Russian opera or ballet. It had the simple charm of children at play. First, the men dug holes in the ground, about two feet apart, the holes laid out in the shape of a long rectangle. And, as they dug, the women gathered in groups, singing their folk songs or gossiping about their friends and neighbors, while the menfolk egged each other on with ribald song and jest. The holes excavated, there followed the job of upending the logs into them, the heaviest logs going into the four corner holes. Then came the process of filling in the holes and tamping down the earth so that they stood firm and upright. This done, the men repaired to a nearby swampy tract, where grew a long and slender reed, some as tall as 12 feet, tapering from a two-inch base to a needle-pointed tip, strong and supple as a whip. While the women stood about singing an old folk song about the "cutting of the reeds" the men wielded knives, axes and sickles, shearing the reeds at the base and piling them up on dry ground. These reeds were carried back to the home site and then started a process of weaving them between the upright logs until the unfinished house had the appearance of a great wicker basket, with openings left for windows and door. And while the men were so engaged, the women removed their shoes and began what to you would have seemed a strange and disagreeable process. Throughout the day, as the men worked at their tasks, the womenfolk had been gathering straw, earth and manure, which they had been piling in little mounds nearby. Then, as the weaving process neared completion, the women began mixing the straw, earth and manure with water. The procedure was exactly like that used today in mixing cement. First, the earth, straw and manure were mixed together, without water, until each had become thoroughly intermingled with the other. Then the water was added slowly, while the mixture was turned and turned until it took on the consistency of a soft, sticky mass. Then some of the barefooted women climbed on the pile, tramping it down with their feet, singing and laughing, screaming hysterically as one or another stumbled or fell into the odorous mixture. By this time the sun was beginning to sink into the purple earth beyond the Sula and the throng was ready for the final step in the day's work. Men, women and children reached into the manure mixture and scooped up great handsful, which they threw with great force against the basketwork exterior of the unfinished house. And as each handful struck, it spread out and stuck fast until the whole surface of the house was covered unevenly to a depth of several inches. So ended the first day's work, but not the first day's fun. The entire company trooped through the streets, arms entwined and songs ringing high, to the home of the peasant for whose son the house was being built. There they ate heartily, outdoors, of simple food which the peasant's wife and daughters had spent the entire day preparing. Food was followed by vodka and tea. Then came dancing and more singing and new heights of hilarity that lasted far into the night. For several days afterwards, the sun and wind were allowed to dry and deodorize the sticky mass that clung to the basket work of the new house. From time to time the peasant visited the site to inspect the curing process with his fingers and nose until, with a satisfied shake of his head, he felt that the house was ready for completion. Now what, you are asking yourself, could possibly be the object of covering the surface of an unfinished house with such an unpleasant substance as manure? But its function was quite simple. It served the same purpose as the packing of rock wool or the insulating material that goes between the inner and outer walls of your own homes in this country. The Russian peasant needed no heating engineer, with his elaborate gauges and heat loss charts, to tell him that the inner packing of earth, straw and manure would make the walls of the house impervious to winter cold and summer heat. That was a simple fact that had been handed down from father to son through countless generations of peasants. The day finally came when the house was ready to be finished. This time only the men came and the finishing process lacked much of the festival character of the first day's work. The walls were finished with a white clay dug from the banks of the Sula. The clay was hauled to the site in huge irregular chunks and there chopped and pulverized and mixed with water until it took on the consistency of heavy plaster. This plaster was spread evenly over the exterior and interior surfaces of the house with wooden paddles and trowels, layer after layer, until the walls were 12 to 14 inches thick. The final coat was thinned down with water so that the finished surface was as smooth as a wooden trowel could make it. And each spring, after the son and his bride moved into their new home, the surface was renewed with a new clay coating to keep it fresh and clean, inside and out. The roof was a simple, thatched affair, fashioned of such closely woven straw, piled on to a depth of a foot or more, that rain or snow could not penetrate. A door and windows, installed usually by the village carpenter, completed the exterior of the house. Inside, the most important article was the stove. This was nothing like anything you have ever seen in this country, for it was a combination heating plant, cook stove and bed. It covered almost a quarter of the floor space and was shaped, as nearly as I can describe it, like a square baker's oven It was made largely of the same clay that went into the walls, but with the addition of certain materials found in the neighboring countryside that gave it the strength and durability of concrete. The firewood was loaded into the stove through a low, semicircular door in its front wall. The roof of the stove was several feet thick, so that heat penetrated it slowly. The top surface was covered with a straw matting on which the family slept through the bitter cold of winter nights, as comfortably as any of you in your steam-heated modern homes. The floor of the house was simply the earth over which it had been built. But don't get the idea that the peasant's home was not clean. That earth floor was brushed and swept so many times a day, and with such painstaking care that, to the peasant, it had the appearance of a rich brown rug. Attached to the wall alongside the stove was a low wooden bench that served as a bed, in summer, and as a sitting place in winter. There was a small table in one corner of the room from which the peasant's wife served tea and cakes to special guests. A low, broad circular table, like an oversized three-legged stool, was the board from which the family ate its meals. Hang a few religious pictures on the walls, stand an icon in one corner, and you complete the interior of a Russian peasant's home in the Ukraine in the days of my youth. Part 6. Chapter Four The Wedding Perhaps no phase of the peasant's life better illustrated his fondness for symbolism and pageantry than his marriage customs. From the moment a peasant youth laid eyes upon the maiden he wanted for his bride until the moment the young married couple moved into their own home, every step in the process of uniting them followed a formalistic ritual born of countless generations of customs. It begins one Sunday in church, let us say, when young Ivan finds it difficult to concentrate on the words of the sermon because his eyes keep straying over to the right, where Natasha sits with her parents. He has known Natasha since childhood, but has never thought of her as other than "that yellow-haired girl with the freckles on her nose who lives near the Charkass road." But today, as his eyes take stock of the pious inclination of her head, the freshly scrubbed pinkness of her cheeks, the golden plaits of her hair, he feels strange stirrings in his heart. He recalls the gentleness of her manner, the richness of her laughter, a hundred other little qualities that come flooding out of his memory, qualities he never thought much about in the past. His mind soars into a thousand dreams of the future and in each of them Natasha walks happily at his side. The service over, Ivan hurries out ahead of his parents and takes up a position outside where he can watch the crowd leaving. In a few moments Natasha and her parents emerge. Ivan saunters over, greeting first the parents and then their children. He falls in beside Natasha, walking slowly in the morning sunshine, chatting amiably about small things. He may venture shyly to touch her finger with his, and, if there is no rebuff, take her hand. Natasha looks upon Ivan and, for the first time, finds him tall, strong and handsome. Her heart begins to pound ever so slightly. Perhaps she sighs and the pressure on Ivan's fingers tightens imperceptibly. Then each finds the other's eyes and between them passes the understanding that needs no words. The die is cast. So much has happened without the intervention of tradition, but from that point forward no step is taken that does not have the solid stamp of custom. That evening Ivan resolutely but respectfully informs his father that he has looked upon Natasha, the daughter of Sergei, and has found her desirable. The father nods his head sagely and murmurs, "We shall see, my son, we shall see." Within the next few days the father has sought out an intermediary, a mutual friend of his and the parents of Natasha. To this intermediary is entrusted the delicate task of maneuvering the two families into agreement. In a casual way, the intermediary will inform Natasha's father than Ivan, son of Fyodor, is interested in Natasha. The girl's father will nod and recall, with satisfaction, that Ivan's father has a horse, a cow and two acres of land. Yes, he will say to the intermediary, perhaps next Thursday would be a good day. There will follow some small talk about the weather, the approaching visit of the "puritz", and then the intermediary will proceed on his way. The day and hour of the first meeting having been passed on, in the course of a casual conversation, to Ivan's father, the family makes ready to visit Natasha's home. The entire family has bathed, scrubbed and put on its finest garments. The wagon is scraped clean, the horse curried, the harness polished. Over the horse's head goes a horseshoe-shaped yoke, called the "dugha", and hung from its highest point is a little bell whose tinkling will signify to the rest of the village that Fyodor and his family are on their way to discuss marriage. On arrival at the home of Natasha, every gesture, every word, takes on a special meaning. Horses being so essential to the well-being and livelihood of farm people, the opening gesture of hospitality on the part of Natasha's family is to see that Fyodor's horse is stabled properly. If the stabling of the horse is handled hurriedly or in any manner improperly, that is something which Fyodor will remember later and present to his son as an argument against marrying into a family which could be so boorish as to be ignorant of the proper method of stabling a visitor's horse. The attitude of Natasha towards Ivan's parents and the young man's demeanor towards the girl's parents convey a world of significance as to the suitability of each as prospective son-in-law or daughter-in-law. In the case of Natasha and Ivan, their own hearts having settled the matter in advance, they are on their finest behavior. Each does his utmost to show a proper respect for the parents of the other. Not only does their behavior indicate that they have been properly reared, but it serves as notice to each set of parents that the two young persons love each other and desire to marry. Let us say, however, that Ivan's attentions are not welcome to Natasha. She has only to neglect some of the essential courtesies to make her feelings known. Let her give voice to a few flippant remarks, let her set the cake and tea upon the table with a shade less warmth than is proper in a well-bred young woman, let her laughter be a bit too loud. Through these subtle discourtesies will she inform the visitors that Ivan and his family are just wasting their time. And, upon their return home, Ivan's mother will say that no son of hers will marry such an ill-bred girl, both she and Ivan being fully aware that Natasha's breeding had nothing to do with the matter. In the same manner, Natasha's parents may make known their displeasure at the prospect of a union between the two families. The tea that Natasha's mother sets upon the table may be a trifle cooler than is customary, she may forget to set out the sugar, she may overlook any one of a number of small concerns that must enter into a picture of perfect hospitality. If any of these unpleasantries occurs, the matter is dropped for all time. Even if the two young persons are deeply in love, there can be no marriage unless the parents meet on a common ground of respect and affection. And once the parent's decision is made, there is nothing their children can do to change it. In the peasant's family law, the word of the father is supreme. No son or daughter would ever dare to question it. Fortunately, however, the parents of Natasha and Ivan find much in each other to like. The afternoon's visit goes off to perfection. Everything that is said or done is nicely calculated to show that all parties agree that a marriage between Natasha and Ivan would be a most desirable arrangement. Before the afternoon is over, Ivan's mother has invited Natasha and her parents to visit their home. And this, on a happy note, ends the first step in the marriage process. The visit of Natasha's family to Ivan's home is a pleasant affair. Ivan and Natasha go off together for a stroll to talk of their future. The two mothers sit sipping tea and trading small bits of gossip. And the two fathers repair to the barnyard to discuss the all- important question of dowry. This talk has all the features of a horse-trading. Natasha's father will give the couple one horse, one cow, ten sacks of grain and 50 rubles. Ivan's father nods his head in satisfaction. He will give them an acre of land on which, two weeks from today, let us say. we will start building their home with these logs he has been collecting since Ivan was a child. The two men shake hands, slap each other's back, and return to the house to seal the bargain with another drink of vodka. The wedding date is set and the banns are pronounced in church. Natasha's mother is hard at work, day and night, on her daughter's wedding dress. She is going through her stock of linens and towels, setting aside this one or that to give to Natasha. She goes about notifying friends and relatives who are to come to the wedding. The house in which the young couple will like has just been finished and must be put in order. The floor is swept, the benches and tables scrubbed to immaculate cleanliness, religious pictures and icons must be set in place. Everything is ready now for the eight-day wedding festival. The ceremony begins on a Sunday morning, most often in January which, because it contains a profusion of religious holidays, is as popular a wedding month as June is this country of ours. Early in the morning two wedding processions wind through the village to the church, one from Natasha's, the other from Ivan's home. At the head of each procession marches one of the male children, carrying aloft an icon, usually a religious picture set under glass in an elaborately gold-leafed frame. At the church, the ceremony begins with the blessing of the icons by the priest. This is an elaborate procedure since the icons are to hang on the walls of the young couples home as a symbol of God's part in having joined them together in holy wedlock. The blessing of the icons over, the priest then performs the wedding ceremony, a prolonged and tedious ceremonial * * * * * * * * * * * * Epilogue If it is considered the mark of a good author to leave the reader asking, "And THEN what happened?" then this story certainly qualifies. Leaving our wedding pair in the middle of a sentence and leaving so much more about village life unwritten leaves me with a permanently unsatisfied sense of curiosity. I had a hard time trying to figure out just what could have happened to cause my father to leave his typing in the middle of a sentence and never get back to it. For want of any hard facts, I have concocted this scenario: Lou, typing..... Voice from the kitchen, "Lou, dinner is ready....." End of Scene I know that his first heart attack left him recovering for six months, and for whatever reason, he never got back to the manuscript. In the summer of 1953, six months before he died, my grandfather spent an afternoon with me, while I was recovering from the flu, at the cottage. During that time he shared with me the following story, which makes a fitting end to the written words from him and my father. As a boy of twelve, the proper age at that time for these things to happen, he was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in a town 150 miles distant from Goroshina. In order to get to this distant, un- named city, he boarded a train, the first he had ever seen. He told me that he thought he was going to the ends of the earth and would never see his family again. He spent four long years leaning his craft and then returned to Goroshina, met and married Tzirel Kalmanskaia of nearby Lysynka and then was conscripted into the tzar's army, a common occurrence for Jews and others. The period of conscription was the usual 25 years. He stressed, in telling me this story, that he had experienced little or no overt anti-Semitism in Goroshina. He stressed that there were only 18 Jewish families in a total village population of 3500, and these were scattered all over town, rather than gathered together in a shtetl. This lack of overt anti-Semitism certainly seems to fly in the face of history. The first morning in the Army, all the new recruits were lined up and the Jews were told to take one step forward. Zeida and three others stepped forward. All the recruits were told, "If you want your latrines cleaned out, your boots polished, etc., etc., these are the men who will do it!" Zeida was shocked and went the Russian equivalent of AWOL that very night. He went back to Goroshina, got his new bride and left the country. The end. -------------- [20Aug97RTW]BK Copyright 1997, RoseAnna Tendler Worth Stored for download with the author's permission. All rights reserved. Inquiries to +----------------------------------------------------------------------+