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On gray, cold, snowy winter mornings, but also in summer, in bright sunshine, hundreds of Jewish boys went to the “source of work and education”: To the “Remeslenoye.”

Among them were the still hungry children of poor coachmen, carters, porters and whitewashers of Khanaykes, the children of the owners of grocery and iron stores, of the teachers, the ready-made clothing sellers and of the  shoe shop owners  on Suraza [Suraska] Street, around the synagogue courtyard and the market. But also the more privileged children of the dry-goods and haberdashery merchants, the owners of colonial goods, paper and glass stores on Lipowa, Gumienna, and Mikołajewska Street.

There were also boys from the provinces studying in the “Remeslenoye”, healthy, strong lads with tanned faces, lively, shining eyes, who were raised in the surrounding lush Jewish towns and villages, in the chunky houses covered with green moss, in village huts with orchardists and gardeners, surrounded by miles of green, wild forests and green fields tilled by the peasants.

There were boys from Sokolka and from the aristocratic “High School” Lomzha, from the Jewish orchard tenders of Chartsh and from the grocery stores of Staroseltse, from Vashlikov with its sawmills and from the weaving town of Horodok, from Supraśl, the town of Shmuel Citrin (the “Jewish Krull”), from the tanning center of Krynki, and last but not least, “dembene” boys [boys like oaks] from far-off Białowież.

From the famous Białowieża Forest with its ancient, hundred-year-old trees, with its light-footed deer and roe deer and with its heavy-bodied wild bison. This wild, ancient Białowieża Forest, where the mighty “Emperor of All Russia”, Tsar Nicholas Romanov the II, would appear with his suave, royal escort, enlivening the eternally silent, empty royal highways, paved with small stones and two-headed eagles, where only the buzzing of bees could be heard in the echo of bird concerts among the tall oak trees.

Ah yes, the “provincial”... the provincials and their nicknames... How could a town be called without its “nickname”? Somehow the nickname became almost involuntarily associated with the shtetl, or rather its inhabitants. And here is a small selection: The Krinkers were “the thieves”, the Zabłudówers were “the groat-cakes”, the Vashlikovers were “the goats”,

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the Sokolkers were “the lords of the world”, the people of Brisk were “the moons”, the people of Lomzha were “the little challahs”, the people of Grajewo were “the dartfishes”, and last but not least, the Białystokers were “the cake-eaters”.

And it was exactly this mixture of Jewish youth from Białystok and from the provinces who came to the “Remeslenoye”, which was still known hundreds of miles away from Białystok, to acquire knowledge and a trade, and who later sent their graduates out into the world, across the vast expanse of Russia, to Western European countries, and even far across the sea, to the land of Columbus and to South American Argentina.

After I passed the exams and was accepted as a student, I, still half a child, had to divide my sunny children's day between studying and working. Remeslenoye had three departments:

Textile, Mechanics and Carpentry.

In the textile department, at the end of school, you got a diploma as a master of steam chairs and “master of patterns,” because we learned to analyze the patterns of woven fabrics by drawing them up thread by thread to determine the pattern and the yarn material, whether it was wool, cotton, or worsted. Only then could we copy [a woven fabric].

The mechanical looms were called steam looms. They were started by electricity from dynamo machines [generators], which converted the power [mechanical energy] of steam boilers [into electrical energy]. We also learned dyeing, finishing, winding, “shern” [warping, the process of preparing warp yarn tapes for the subsequent weaving process] and “nupn” [an activity of correcting small processing defects in the finished woven fabric, for example, taking out the knots].

In the factory “Remeslenoye” there were about eight mechanical looms of different German companies, which were famous at that time: “Graseneyner”, “Shvabishe” and “Sheyner” looms. The “Zhakard” [Jacquard] looms, which became famous at that time, were also “Graseneyner” steam looms. They made flowered woolen “Montanyak” blankets, the name of which may have come from the French word “montagnard”, meaning “mountain dweller”.

These flowered blankets made it to the remotest corners of vast Russia, and hundreds of Białystok “peddlers” traveled all over the world to spread the Białystok products of Jewish diligence, sweat, and energy.

A number of Białystok manufacturers specialized in the production of blankets, including such famous companies as: Preysman, Triling, Gubinski, Citrin, Moreyn Brothers, Markus Brothers, Novik, Kanel, Komichau, and others.

The “Remeslenoye” also produced the famous Białystok suit fabrics,

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such as “karelekh” (from a cheap woollen fabric made from torn scraps), which in later years, during my travels to other countries, I found in clothing stores on the “Grenadierstraße” in Berlin, on the “Rue de Rivoli” in Paris, on the “Diepestraat” in Antwerp and on the “Whitechapel Road” in London.

Białystok also specialized in the production of “kastor”, a cheap suit fabric made of a mixture of cotton and wool. A large part of the Białystok factory owners made their living from “kastor”, and there was a famous joke about a cloth merchant with very limited knowledge of Russian who wrote an urgent telegram [in Russian]:

“Nye mogu viderzhat visilayte kastorku”. In Yiddish it means: “I can't hold out any longer, send kastorke”. Only - in Russian “kastorke” means castor oil!

Białystok also produced a lot of “drap”, a coarse, double-sided winter fabric for coats.  The inner side was colorfully patterned and it was possible to avoid sewing an inner lining into the winter coats.

We, the students of “Remeslenoye”, had the utmost difficulty in drawing up the patterns of the coarse, double, patterned “drap” fabric..

In the mechanical department they learned how to cut and file metals, repair machine parts, cast metals (with oxygen), draw plans of machine parts to cast them [later] in metal factories, draw and copy mechanical parts from the perspective of “facade”, “profile”, “distance”, “prism” to the millimeter. In addition, they learned the differences between metals and the colors used in the factories to identify the various metals on drawings and plans.

And at the annual exhibitions, the exhibits of the mechanical department, for example, the manufactured machines, always attracted great attention. There were:

machines for building, filing and sawing, but also tools such as hammers, drills, metal rulers, linch pins and other useful items.

The carpentry department enabled a student to become a first-class qualified master furniture maker with great expertise in making plan drawings, applying modern systems for bending wood, gluing of strips of wood and assembling furniture to the finest modern taste and with high resilience. They learned the theory of atmospheric effects on different types of wood, and how to cross certain types of wood in the wrong direction to prevent shrinkage of the wood material. Polishing with chemical paints and liquids was also taught to achieve a smooth and durable shine.

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I started in the textile department. My comrades were all “clumsy big fellows” between the ages of 14 and 18, and I looked like a little Lilliputian, like a dwarf in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale. The others taught me a harsh lesson, the lesson of the power of the strongest.

In general, my classmate Farush made my life difficult (he was from the family of “Farushes”, from the sausage shop). Farush was a tall, yellowish-blond boy with freckled, rosy skin and about four years older than me. When he was in a bad mood because he had only gotten a “two” [“B”] in Russian, he would wait for me in a corner of the hallway like a silent inquisitor with a sadistic smile. He would approach me with slow steps, like a spider to a fly, and grab me by the head. As I could only reach up to his arm, he pressed my head down with his hand, as if with iron pincers, and held my twisted body like this for a long time, always with the same calm, poisonous, sarcastic smile.

I used to have a rising revolting hatred for the “oppressor”. I kicked him with my feet, bit him with my teeth, scratched him with my fingernails, and offered all my weak, clumsy “tools” in my defense. But, of course, I came out of the unequal force as the injured one.

And according to Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory of the “early childhood effect”, the type of my schoolmate Farush is one of the reasons why I developed a hatred for oppression, dictators and despotic power.

This episode of brutality on the part of classmates, which is a frequent and tragic occurrence in educational institutions, served me as the subject of a story that I published in 1930 in the Warsaw “Weekly of Art and Literature” under the title “The Spider”.

I had little interest in the practical work, the lessons of “tepen” [drawing up]  and assembling patterns, disassembling and building steam chairs. I never kept pace with the practical classes. But I was one of the best in two subjects: Russian and painting.

The manager of the new “Talmetoyre”, Samson Yakovlevitsh Grosman, was at the same time our Russian teacher in the “Remeslenoye”. During the three years I was in this school, he went through almost all the classical Russian literature with us. This was nothing new for me, as I had already “absorbed”

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the works of the Russian classics when I was still in Fridman's school, and had also devoured the works of my beloved Russian writers late into the night during the long winter evenings in Białystok.

I will never forget how we learned “Taras Bulba”. That same day my mother had dressed me in new trousers, very wide and long, “to grow into” (my mother was always looking for charms because of my small stature), and I ran to school full of joy, but, as usual, late.

So the students were learning “Taras Bulba”, and when our teacher had just described the wide pants of the Ukrainian Kozak Taras Bulba with the words “they were as wide as the Black Sea”, the door of our classroom opened, and I, the little one, stopped on the threshold with my new, bombastic wide pants. As soon as the teacher and the students saw my new pants, they burst out laughing, rattling the boards of the “skameykes” (school desks) and pointing with their fingers at my wide pants, which fell in folds. And I stood there blushing as if I had been stewed. If I had gotten hold of my mother at that moment, who knows what I would have done to her. ....

From then on, for a while, they called me “Sharavari shirinoy tshornoye morye” (“Pants as wide as the Black Sea”).

I loved writing essays in Russian, and when our teacher read them aloud, in the tense silence of our classroom, I felt for the first time the palpitations of a writer's heart, the sweet trembling of attaching myself to the reader and seducing him into my dream worlds.

Every morning in the Białystok winter, my mother would wake me up at seven o'clock and drag me out of my warm bed, for better or worse. She would fill a brown paper bag with a bit of black bread and a piece of “darer kishke” or a Białystok pastry with a piece of smoked herring. She dressed me in a few woolen jackets and a pair of galoshes, tied a torn scrap of an old headscarf around my neck, wrapped me in a long fur coat that reached down to my feet, pulled a torn black “Barashkov” cap over my head, put some ear flaps over my ears and a hood over my head.

Walking from Khanaykes to Lipowa Street in the frosty morning, I looked like a little “steam mill”, because from far away you could see only a little dark ball of stuff

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with steam coming out of its mouth (because that was the only uncovered part of my body).

So that's how I, the little creature, went to learn and work to integrate into society and become a decent human being.

Childhood, sweet childhood,
Forever you remain awake in my memory...
(by Mordechay Gebirtig)

I describe the “Remeslenoye” for three reasons: To give a small idea of a vocational school of that time, to illustrate the threefold combination of work, education and Judaism, and to let [the reader] pass by a gallery of boys of that time from Białystok and the province - with their joys and sorrows.

It will be a satisfaction and a reward for me if as many former Białystokers from America and other parts of the world as possible recognize among my Białystok schoolmates their former friends, relatives or neighbors with whom they lived next door and breathed the Białystok air together. Furthermore, if my humble pen succeeds in illuminating the long, distant past of Białystok in the present tragic darkness, it will give shape to my love for Białystok and will bring the city out of oblivion after the black night of the Shoa.

It is for you that I am writing these sentences, for you Białystokers who have remained alive, like splinters of diamonds that have broken off from the sparkling brilliance of the Shabbats, holidays, Torah and education that were called: Białystok!

At that time new winds were blowing in Russia, and the famous slogan applied: “Utshenye svyes, nyeutshehye tma” (“Education leads to light, ignorance to darkness”).

The doors of the closed world of cheder and Bes-Medresh were opened wide, and the Jewish youth set out to nibble from the pot of Russian secular culture, which was still so unknown yet so enticing.

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And in close cooperation between the Russian government and the Jewish russified intelligentsia, russification ran in great, mighty strides through the Jewish streets, sowing there the Russian language and the love of Russian literature.

Our “Remeslenoye” was also swept away by the current of Russification. And during the long, snowy winter nights in Białystok, I used to devour dozens of books of the [main] pillars of Russian literature, and I was so assimilated to Russian that when I got angry, I automatically cursed in Russian.

And even in ordinary conversation, after two Yiddish words, I had to use four Russian ones; so poor was my Yiddish vocabulary.

My two strongest competitors on the “Remeslenoye” in the Russian language were comrades Smazanovitsh and Shatski. (Smazanovitsh died, Shatski is in New York today).

Maytshik Smazanovitsh was a boy of poor parents, from a poor, narrow alley next to “Shayes Street” in Khanaykes, which was close to the fence of the sadly famous “Granovsky Garden”. Maytshik's father came from somewhere in Russia, and Russian was spoken in their poor but intelligent household. In Khanaykes, the father was nicknamed “Klyenter”, a corruption of “klarnet” [clarinet]. He was probably a klezmer musician and played on that instrument.

Maytshik Smazanovitsh also had a nickname on Shayes Street. We called him “Tshizhik” [little bird], because when he met a friend on the street, he would sing to him, “Tshizhik, Tshizhik gdye ti bil...na veselye vodku fil...” [Roughly: Tshizhik, Tshizhik, where have you been...for fun a lot of vodka...] and ended his song with the question:

“Well, what are you doing now, Tshizhik?” “Tshizhik” Smazanovitsh spoke in a Russian with grammatical variety and a real Russian accent.

My second competitor, Shatski, was the brother of Doctor Shatski and the son of Manye, the Akusherke [midwife] of Gumienner Street. He was a slim, stiff, quiet boy with eyes like fiery coals and an eagle's nose, a type of Cirkassia [Caucasian region], and spoke a beautiful, eloquent Russian. However, he was a bit lazy about studying, his head was already occupied with the girls of the “Profesyonal-Shule” (Women's Professional School) in Yudl Kletski's yard on Lipowa Street. He and other comrades from the “Remeslenoye” were already in contact with the girls and arranged to meet in the Green Alley in the Białystok Forest, which they filled in the summery, starry, light-blue nights with tender, mournful tones of “Otshi Tshornye” [Black Eyes] and “Margaritkelekh”.

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A whole group of students from the “Remeslenoye” had already formed, flirting with the “profesyonalkes”.

There, before my eyes, I still see “Don Juan” Halpern, a medium-sized, dreamy, romantic fellow from Białowieża, who brought from the Białowieża forests Russian songs and something melancholic in his eyes. He wore  a dark blue pelerine in the style of the French “Agent de Police”, which was very fashionable at the time. His heart belonged to the “profesyonalke” Zlatke Kesler, a sentimental, graceful girl with romantic, always questioning eyes. (Zlatke is now in New York, married to Khayim Keshin, a young man from Białystok, who is the son of the famous Białystok tailor Knishinski).

The group also included the quiet Pokshive, also from Białowieża, a tall, blond lad with freckles, a brother of the then famous Białystok amateur wrestler, the heavyweight hero Pokshive, who was handsome and intelligent - a rarity in this profession.

Besides, Utkes belonged to the group of “ukhazhorn” [suitors], the best student in the subject “drawing” in the class, a slender, handsome, tall lad, with a bashful, feminine laugh. He was the son of a poor Białystok painter and glazier somewhere on Suraska Street. Utkes had a considerable talent for drawing and had great skill as a painter.

I always admired Utkes for three qualities:

His artistic talent, the beauty of his body (he looked like a Hollywood star), and his modesty.

But this flower, full of beauty and talent, grew up in great poverty.

The quiet Veynshteyn [Weinstein] also belonged to the group of “cavaliers.” He had considerable skills in poetry and painting - one of the innumerable [bright] talents that are extinguished in the darkness of poverty. But Weinstein also had another talent - eating....

He was a boy with a terrible hunger. Every day at noon we would go down to the cellar of the “Remeslenoye” to be served our lunch in the dining room, which consisted of black bread, lentils, pearl grits and a slice of meat, brought from the famous Białystok “Cheap Kitchen” of Popovshtshizne, which was expanded in 1905 with the help of Dr. Sh. Citron. Weinstein then devoured his plate of lentils in a minute

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(which was his favorite dish, and why we called him “Esau's competitor”) [the biblical Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a dish of lentils]. And since I, the little one, didn't need much physical nourishment for my small body, I became his “delivery boy” and bosom friend, bringing him joy with an [extra] plate of lentils or a slice of bread.

Among the types of “cavaliers” from the “Remeslenoye” were the Gelbart brothers, whom we also called “Poylishe”, because they had come to Białystok from a Polish shtetl and spoke a Polish-Yiddish dialect that sounded strange and odd to our Białystok Lithuanian ears. We imitated them with their “yakh”, “enk” and “ets”.

Our drawing teacher was Abukov. He was of medium height, had a contented, always smiling, rosy, shaved face and a small beard of an artist. He spoke slowly, dragging out each word, measuring pictures in perspective from a distance with his pencil, squinting one eye to look for proportions in the length and width of an object.

One of the best students in “drawing” was, as I mentioned, Utkes, whom we nicknamed “Vid iz mayeva okna” [Picture through my window]. Utkes had once painted a landscape through a window, crowned his picture with that very title, and our gang who “made life miserable for others” had already found a fitting nickname for him.

Together with Yacob Gelbart, the “poylishn”, I competed for second place. By the way, our teacher Abukov had given me the name “Dyevotshka” (Girl) because of my feminine face and quiet thoughtfulness.

We used to paint motifs from nature, copied or enlarged them, painted dead objects from imagination, but also living objects. We painted with a special Japanese ink (engravings), with watercolor paint, with special colored pencils and, finally, with oil paints for artists.

But we also painted types of people and landscapes. Winter landscapes and dreamy rivers in scattered forests. Once a year the “Remeslenoye” organized a public exhibition of the best drawings, and thousands of Jews used to come by and look at and admire our drawings. We were always very proud of our “Remeslenoye”.

Yes, this was our “Remeslenoye”! Anyone who wanted to could end up with a lot of knowledge. But if someone did not want to learn, he was forgiven, knowing that he came from poor parents.

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And the most important thing for him was to learn his trade so that he could support his poor parents, who were already waiting for their child's first earned rubles.

We had two masters of textile craftsmanship: Shifer and Grabovski. Shifer, a short, corpulent, round-bellied “Jewish Jekke,” acted as our master of fabric patterns. He was a first-class expert, but he was terribly in love with Germany.

Later he worked in Germany as a textile engineer, speaking only German. He lived in Potshtove Street and was the neighbor of my elegant, aristocratic cousin, Khaytshe Shustitski. About me he used to say in German:

“Your cousin is quite a capable fellow, but he has no trade expertise”.

And it was true, because craftsmanship was not for me at all.

The second master, Grabovski, was himself a former student of the “Remeslenoye”. He was one of the first to graduate, and then actually became the master of the steam chair in the “Remeslenoye”. In 1920, he became my partner in textile manufactured goods; together we bought old rags and tore, spun, wove and finished them at “Moysey” Preysman's, who died recently in New York. (This was five years before I left for Belgium and France).

Grabovski was a reserved, serious person, a bit rude like a certain Jewish type of craftsman, always in his work clothes, and felt lost among his colleagues, the Russified intelligentsia of teachers.

We, the students, also divided ourselves into “castes”. It was a kind of Roman patrician and plebeian system (nobles and “lowly”), or in the style of Indian “paryas” [outcasts]. The type of parental descent played a role in relations between comrades, both in the “Remeslenoye” and even in family life in Białystok.

I remember once visiting my rich cousin, Yehudit Rozental, the wife of Gershon Rozental, the owner of “Apretur” [refining of fabrics, etc.]. Her little twelve-year-old girl stuck out her little belly, focused on me, examined my clothes, and, holding her finger in her mouth, asked me in Russian: “Vi bogati?  (Are you rich?). (My cousin Rosental was the sister-in-law of the well-known social activist Zeydl Khabatski of the Białystok Branch 88).

I remember this in connection with the student Nyevyadomski,

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a poorly dressed boy with badly patched shoes, a crumpled suit of cheap cloth, and a guilty face. Few befriended him, and he was usually isolated and alone. And the students - boys who knew no pity - called him “Baytele,” because his father, a poor Jew in an old caftan and Hasidic hat, blind in one eye and wearing a black blindfold, used to stand next to the big shul, across from the old Bes-Medresh, with a bag full of lottery tickets. The children would draw a lot from him for a kopek to win an “irisl” [caramel], a sweet, or money. That was how he made a living.

We also had merry comrades, and one of them was Kornyanski with his dimples. (He is in New York today). He was always laughing and cheerful, swaying as he walked, and when he said something funny, his eyes would narrow and moisten, and the dimples on his face would become even sweeter.

One guy who often made us laugh was the quiet Kaplanski (now in New York). A wild, good, always smiling comrade, but also an artist in the sense that part of his face was permanently smeared. Either with ink, soot, or black gunk from the machines. When Kaplanski entered the classroom, the teacher would wink at us, turn around and look at him, laughing good-naturedly. And it never happened that Kaplanski's nose or cheek was not covered with black oil stains (from the machines of the “mechanical department”), so that he looked like a completely greasy locomotive engineer.

And when the teacher and his pupils turned to him and burst out laughing, the good Kaplanski smiled good-naturedly, as if he had not been meant at all.

A very opposite type to all the other comrades was Podrobinik, a quiet and pious Jewish boy (now living in New York). He came from the Podrobinik family, one of whose girls was killed by a German aerial bomb during World War I, in 1914. This was at the corner of Aleksandrovske Street).

Podrobinik's transfigured face with its slightly longer forelocks, bore something like the stamp of a yeshive [Talmud school]. In fact, he looked like a Talmud student who had accidentally fallen into a gang of merry pranksters.

A good career was made by our schoolmate Segal, with nickname “Kugelnickl”. He was quite small, and to look more like a “man”, he once came to our school with a round, rise, hard

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„Kapelyushl” [Fedora hat] on his head. Our “gang of jokers” immediately gave him the name “Kugelnikl”. Later he married the daughter of a rich factory owner, became an important fabric manufacturer and laughed at us.

But I would also like to remember two village “dembes” [boys like oak trees], and they were the two tall, blond, freckled Babitsh brothers. They had a grocery store on Starovoseyne Street, but they were also very talented in recitation and writing. One of them, Mordekhay (“Max”), later became a contributor to Pesach Kaplan's “Dos Naye life” and is now in New York. The two went to the higher classes and were close friends of my late brother.

One of the “Tzadikim Nistarim” [the so-called “Hidden Righteous”] of the “Remeslenoye” was the bookkeeper Goldstein, a warm, secular Jew. He was nearsighted, had a fatherly smile, and was as good as an angel. He lived in the courtyard of the “Remeslenoye”, and he used to quietly and secretly, in the spirit of  “ביודעים ובלא יודעים” [words spoken during the prayer of confession concerning sins committed knowingly, but also unknowingly], distribute free textbooks to the poorer students and was truly like a father to them.

At the entrance of “Remeslenoye” in Lipowa Street there was a rich, first-class canning and fruit company of H. Gutman. The shop window attracted everyone's attention. Here were the most beautiful fruits, which held me for a few minutes as if hypnotized. Only today, in rich, saturated America, I can understand the drama of poverty, when a boy from Białystok stopped for a long time just to look at the fruits, because he had such a craving for a fruit or a “tshaste” [cake] in the shop window.

Today I strongly doubt the hypothesis of psychology and jurisprudence that poverty and economic hardship are the mother of crime. According to this theory, 90% of my schoolmates would have become thieves or criminals.

The fact that this was not the case is probably due to the Jewish religious education and Jewish ethics of our Białystok homes, which were the counterbalance to the evil inclinations and instincts of the starved body. Over the years, I have become aware of the importance and depth of the Jewish religion, which may be an answer to the great epidemic of juvenile delinquency in the so-called Jewish homes of  New York today.

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The whole “Remeslenoye” used to prepare feverishly for the annual Chanukkah ball, and the hearts of the “profesyonalkes” (girls from the vocational school) were already beating impatiently that they would soon be at the big ball and in the big halls of the “Remeslenoye”. These were specially decorated for the occasion, so that the girls could “legally” flirt with the students of the “Remeslenoye”, or have, “under the fan”^[1], a witty-galant conversation; they would blush at the compliments and at the end dance a breathtaking valzer, polka, or pa-d'espan (in French: “Spanish steps”, Pas d'Espagne) in the arms of their chosen cavalier.

All the teachers were there with their wives, they were cheerful, funny and so exuberant! In general, our strict teacher Samson Yakovlevitsh Grosman was unrecognizable, with a beaming face, running his fingers through his thick, poetic mop of hair and going from one student to another to have a little chat.

But when the couples were dancing rhythmically with happy, dreamy eyes, I was left out because I was too young and too small to dance. He, the teacher, always took pity on me, put his hand on my head (I could only reach his knuckles) and said to me with an ironic smile, as if to comfort me:

“Well, “utshoni muzh” [learned man], we are left, two useless dancers, and we can talk about Russian literature”.

The Hanukkah Ball was also accompanied by a theatrical performance with a mixed program:

A comedy by Sholem-Aleykhem, plus declamations, recitations and “living pictures” illuminated by Bengal fires.

I still have the Hanukkah Ball of 1913 before my eyes. The great hall was brightly lit, with iridescent fires sparkling in the dazzling light that contrasted so sharply with the pitiful, dull illumination of the sooty kerosene lamps in our homes.

The theatrical performance begins. The director and main actor is, as always, the talented, black-haired, lively, and always bustling around Nokhem Glagovski (now in Australia). I knew Nokhem Glagovski well, because every Friday before the light blessing my brother sent me to his house to bring [a new booklet] of the then famous detective stories with Nat Pinkerton - not Carter and Sherlock Holmes.

One of Sholem-Aleykhem's comedies, the two-act “The Divorce,” is reenacted there.

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(Nokhem Glagovski also performed the one-act plays “Mazel Tov”, “Expropriation”, “A Doctor - A Merchant”, etc.) ....

There is a commotion in the middle of the performance. The performance must be interrupted. There are whispers that the Russian police will not allow the performance in Yiddish. Supposedly there are negotiations with the Russian police chief, and finally we learn that he has been slipped a “מכּה” [a ma‘ke, probably a small amount of money was paid as a bribe], and the performance continues.

We set up a “living picture” for “Oyfn Pripetshik” [On the Hearth], in which the Rebbe teaches small children, and it is lit with fantastic colors of Bengal fire. Berman stands behind the scenes with our choir and we sing “Oyfn Pripetshik”. The small, enthusiastic, constantly moving girl Augustovski sings with a male alto, and I, the boy, squeal with a thin treble voice.

Then “Khane mit Di Zibn Zin” [Hannah and Her Seven Sons] is shown. Our hearts throb with enthusiasm as Hannah does not allow her last and youngest, seventh son to bow down before the Syrian ruler, Antiochus Epiphanes, even under the pretext of picking up a ring, and is willing to die with her seven sons for the honor of the Jewish God.

A series of living pictures is shown, illustrating the love of work. On the stage there is a tailor, a shoemaker, a blacksmith... Jewish craftsmen^[2]. Each carries his typical tool, is illuminated by glittering colored Bengal fires, and sings his special song in Hebrew.

The tailor begins, “I am a tailor and seamstress”, the cobbler, “I am a shoemaker”,  and we enjoy the group, which embodies the beauty and value of work.

Then our master of the mechanical department, Belenki, appears with a declamation. He is young, tall and powerfully built, with an iron, muscular body and the “gentile” face of a factory worker. He declares in a splendid “goy” Russian. Apukhtin's poem about the Hungarian countess sounds wonderful in his mouth. The latter, on her last visit to her son, condemned to death in prison, says that she believes she can obtain his pardon. When she leads him to the gallows with a white scarf around her, it is a sign that he has been pardoned. At the last moment, when they put the noose around his neck, he would know of his pardon.

When the Hungarian count appears at the place of execution and sees his mother in the white shawl, he is sure that he will be pardoned and goes cheerfully and brazenly to the gallows.

[Page 50]

The Hungarian countess has achieved her goal. Her son will die a hero's death, and will not stain the noble count's tribe with fear and terror.

Hanukkah has already arrived at my father's house! The street swings in the bluish darkness of the night. Frozen icicles sparkle from the double windows, filled with white absorbent cotton and taped with paper. The streets are covered with white frosty snow like white feather beds, and hundreds of Hanukkah candles glimmer and wave on the window frames.

There is a festive tension in the house. My father lights the candles and pauses each time after lighting a flame, lost in thought. I know my father. Probably philosophical thoughts are running through his head as the lit candle sways with its flame, like a tiny living creature, as if the candle with its red, fiery little head wants to interact with him.

The house is filled with the aroma of fried potato pancakes, and my mother stands next to my father, cheeks glowing, looking at each candle he lights with reverent silence, as if it were a shrine.

I stand by the window, swaying to the beat of the fiery flames. For me, these are not simple flames, but the souls of the heroic figures of Yehuda HaMakabi [Judas Maccabeus] with his sons, in the heroic struggle for the Jewish land, for the people and for the “Beys-Hamigdesh”, [the Holy Temple of Jerusalem]. My father sings “Haneirot Halalu” [These Candles] and my mother holds my head against her chest, with wet streams of tears running down her cheeks. She whispers a silent prayer:

“God in Heaven, God of Abraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, protect my child from evil and wickedness. O Great God, may the flame of love for you and for your people Israel burn in his heart like the Eternal Light”…

And it is as if I feel something like a fear of the future storms of life and great dangers. So I bury my head in my mother's headscarf and cry silently, not really knowing why.

Translator's footnotes:

1. “unter di fekhers” : I think this is an ironic allusion to an old German saying, “behind/under the fan”, based on historical facts.  Behind the fan, for example, a fine lady in the Baroque period could not only coquettishly hide her face when she blushed, but she could also talk about certain things, unheard by the “chaperone”. Supposedly, there was even a “secret fan language” in the 18th century. However, with reference to the text, it certainly means that certain formulations and allusions were used in the conversation in order to remain “harmless” and that the conversations also took place in the protected area, quasi “under the supervision of the teachers present”. Return
2. literally “amkho... sher un ayzn” : I think that this refers not only to the tailor, but to the Jewish craftsman as such. Return

[Page 51]

Białystok, Shabbat at noon. Silence lies over the streets. The blinds are lowered over the stores. A few scattered peasants, slowly and lazily driving their horse[wagons] from „Shoseyne” to Lipowa Street, point out that today is “zhidovska subota” [Jewish Shabbat] and there is no need to hurry.

They used to joke, “Nyema zhidki, nyema ditki” [No Jews, no money...].

From time to time, Jewish girls pass by, running late. They wear colorful ribbons on their combed heads and carry cholent; both pots topped with potato peels and vessels covered with brown paper bags.

Some shops are open. There is the shop of the famous Macedonian on Lipowa, next to Osher Topolski's glass store and the Turkish bakery on the corner of Lipowa Street. Their customers are young people who don't give a damn about “being Jewish”. The Macedonian opens the “buza” beer bottles with a crack, which still smoke and foam in their necks before they pour angrily into the glasses, as if complaining that they are being forced to desecrate Shabbat.

The Jewish customers feel a little uncomfortable. They cast a glance through the window at the individual Jews passing by and pretend to be heroic, because they very well sense an inner uncertainty that something is not quite right.

With feigned bravado, they eat a few pieces of halvah and would have preferred to sneak back outside. Also at the “ Turk” there are quite a few customers for the then famous cookies and sweet and sour “Kislo-Slodkes” pastries made of brown flour and raisins.

Białystok Jews celebrate Shabbat in their homes, together with their families. The father performs the ceremonial Kiddush, while the members of the household stand silently in reverence. Then the “Białystok delicacies” are served:

- Radish with fat, “ frozen petshai “ (calf‘s feet) with garlic, a heavenly taste, the Lithuanian “stuffed fish”, a little peppered and with a red carrot on top.

- The sweet multi-layered browned “Lokshen Kugel” [noodle casserole] or the square baked “Ulnik” (grated potato cake).

- Meatballs, roasted with bay leaves and English spices and long, brown, braided challah bread, from which a sweet tooth had already secretly pilfered the tasty decoration.

- The cholent with fried potatoes in the reddish-brown stew, the stuffed [goose] neck, on which was still pulled the white cobbler's thread with which the neck was sewn.

[Page 52]

The dark yellow turnip stew fills the house with the aroma of turnips and remains for a while on Shabbat in the upper tube of the oven, next to the boiling tea in the copper “bunke,” [ copper jug with narrow neck] bubbling proudly, for it is all that is left after all the tasty delicacies.

It has been eaten. Time for the blessing, and it is promptly followed by Father's admonition directed to the boys, “Nu-o-o-nu...”, so that they would not miss the blessing.

Then the family disperses. The boys go to the yard to play with “tombakes” [uniform buttons] made of brass and “nyupikes” (a variety of buttons). The mother usually goes to the neighbor's house to return the cast-iron pot, and at the same time get something off her chest.

Dad pulls the fringed curtain closed, groans a little, and sighs, growling, about the youth of today who presume to “throw the czar from his throne”.

He is referring to his older son, who has been away from home for a few days. The clatter of father's pulled-down boot can be heard, the smell of sweaty socks is in the air and immediately, the parlor is filled with the sound of beeping and soft snoring. Father has fallen asleep!

Only the daughter remains in the room. She goes to the window, draws the curtain a little, and looks out at the sharp stones of the muddy street. She closes the curtain, goes to the closet, takes out her only Shabbat dress, red with plaids, or the white flowered linen dress. In the kitchen, she washes herself on a wooden stool next to the sink, in a white enamel bowl with fragrant soap from “Friedrich Puls”.

She waxes her high shoes with the buttons, silently, so that her father would not hear her, and puts on a wreath of red coral, which she bought at the “Yan”, the fair on Piaskes, and slips on a worn signet ring, which her brother had sent from America as a gift from New York. She looks at herself in a half-broken, wooden-framed mirror and is pleased with herself.

From the broken mirror shines out a combed, hot, fresh face, with rosy cheeks, like ripe morellos [cherries], and natural red lips that harmonize with the white, full neck. She, the poor Białystok girl, looks like a freshly bloomed flower. Well, who understands the secret of where the daughters of Białystok get their freshness, grace and fragrance - like ripe roses on the fence of a poor abandoned garden.

She is ready for a walk.

Shabbat afternoon. My mother sits with moist eyes over the “Tsenerene” [Jewish devotional book for women].

[Page 53]

But, after all, when has my mother not cried? She, a mother with moods, is like all Jewish, lamenting mothers. Either she laughed heartily and infectiously when she told a funny story (and when she told it, she was an artist). Then her face would breathe with life and youthful freshness. Or she cried silently.

My father would look at her ironically, tearing his eyes away from a novel by Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, and I, taking advantage of the opportunity, would sneak out for an afternoon walk on Shabbat.

Between afternoon and evening. Lipowa Street fills with youthful strollers, leisurely walking to Nikolayevske [Mikołajewska]. On Lipowa there is a new movie theater, the “Iluzion” in Kaletsin's house. There, for the first time in my life, I saw pictures of picturesque natural landscapes in remote corners of the world. Also the then famous comedians Durashkin and Glupishkin and the children’s idol, the first world-famous comedian Max Linder, who was accompanied by a storm of children's laughter when he crawled out of the chimney like a black chimney sweep or rolled down all the stairs.

Opposite is the second cinema, which is a bit more modern, and fact it is called “Modern”. It is for older, wealthier people, because a ticket costs several kopecks more.

And there is the Russian Church, where military parades are often held on Sundays, and where elegant Russian officers with splendid gloves drill soldiers. And Białystok High School students, especially Jewish ones, would silently “flirt” with them and accompany them with their charming smiles.

Such a Russian general in his red “Lampasn” trousers [tight fitting green military pants with a red stripe on the side] used to give orders with his bass voice thundering all over Lipowa:

“Smirno! Zdorova rebyata!” [Attention, greetings, guys!”] And a thunder of rural bass voices of the soldiers would echo:

“Zdrvya zhelayu vashe visoko prevoskhadityelstvo.” [Greetings to Your Majesty!]

And there's usually a smell of barracks and sauerkraut emanating from them, from their soldier‘s spoons, from their boot shafts.

I take my Shabbat walk alone. As always, I love solitude, and as always, my mind doesn't rest for a minute. It works, sees, perceives, picks up something, creates a photograph somewhere in a corner of the brain, stores it there in a drawer, only to retrieve everything from the memory archive 35 years later and refresh it while writing the memories.

[Page 54]

I continue my Shabbat walk. There is Osher Topolski's glass store. Osher Topolski! The Jew with the big beard and the even bigger heart. The Jew who sneaks out of his glass store to join his guests in prison. There he does his “business of good deeds”. Always busy and stressed, his wife's loving grumbling often accompanies him when he disappears.

But in the end, Osher Topolski carries the burden of the prison’s large crowd of “Jewish criminals” on his shoulders: there is a citizen who did not clean the gutter on time, or a summons because one secretly kept his store open on Sunday. And other crimes of this kind. But Osher Topolski knows that pious Jews, kholile [God forbid], would rather die of hunger than eat something “treyfes” [“impure”]. So, he brings them kosher food.

However, a romantic memory connects me with Osher Topolski, and that is with his daughter Eva, “Khave'le”.

I often used to visit my friend, Yisroelke Faynsod (he was the son of Leybl Faynsod, who had the mirror store). I became friends with his sister, Sonya, and she introduced me to Eva Topolski. On winter evenings, when darkness crept into the house, I used to sit on the soft divan. To one side of me sat Sonya, silently dreaming in the darkness, leaning her head against my shoulder, and to the other side Eva propped her head against my chest. And Eva's bulging and well-developed body and full cheeks made my heart beat faster. While she nestled against me, she asked melancholically:

„Yakov Dorogoy, razskazivay nam skazku.” (Yakob, my dear, tell us a story!).

I felt the warmth of the two girls' bodies and shyly pressed myself against the plump Khavele, and the warmth of her body made me feel so good!

I closed my eyes and dreamed myself into faraway worlds, and in my imagination of a magical world and fantastic stories, I began:

“In a faraway land beyond the wide seas, in a rich kingdom, there lived and dwelt a king and a queen. They had three princesses. The two older ones were proud, wicked and ugly as the black night, but the youngest was beautiful, sweet and good as an angel. The older, wicked princesses hated the younger and more beautiful one, and spun dark thoughts of hatred and revenge.”

[Page 55]

I would forget the two dear heads that cuddled up to me and fly with my thoughts into the wide world.

But life is not only beautiful stories, but also tragic, and one dark night in Białystok a fire broke out in Osher Topolski's house! The sky was colored red by the flames crackling and shooting sparks, and in the fire Osher Topolski's child perished, he [or she] died a cruel death and burned in the hellish flames.

Yes, life is not just a nice story.

But now back to my Shabbat walk. I approach the elegant “Aquarium” restaurant, where in the shop window an aquarium is displayed, in which golden-scaled little fish swim around. And I feel sorry for the little fishes who were so longing for freedom. In the famous gastronomic store of Muravyov, which has the most magnificent delicacies, the shelves bent under the most expensive canned goods, wines and fruits. If someone wanted to make fun of a small spice shop in a side street of Białystok, which had a few pounds of sugar, a few herring and a barrel of kerosene, the shop was mockingly called “Muravyov's department store”.

Above Muravyov's store there was the “Club Blogorodnovo sobranya”, where elegant Russian officers met to drink alcohol and play cards or billiards, and it often happened that a romantic Białystok High School student, under the impression of the delicate poetic verses of Pushkin, Lermontov and Nadson, became a victim of the tender Russian language, the sounding spurs and the elegant uniforms of the Russian officers. The latter hated the bearded “zhidovsken” [Jewish] father, but enjoyed amusing themselves with the Jewish daughter in love.

I often heard the story of the noble daughter Z., who became the mistress of the governor general Bogayevsky.

On the corner of Market Street and Lipowa there were two Jewish pharmacies of Ayznshtat and Vilbushevitsh, which were famous not only for their medicines, but also for their beautiful “dandy” pharmacists, known for their elegance and success with Białystok girls.

And here I am already in the dense mass of couples walking to Shabbat on Nikolayevske [Mikołajewska]. Careless acquaintances are made here.  

[Page 56]

The Russian language sounds a bit louder to prove that you belong to the higher class of intelligentsia by speaking Russian. After all, what distinguished person would speak “jargon”?

It is nothing to be proud of. And like a dense procession of demonstrators the company walks along Mikołajewska to the bridge to Nadretshne Street and the “Polkovoyen” Bes-Medresh. The Jewish crowd of young people dressed up for Shabbat spread a cheerful laughter and hum of voices, and the eyes of the men flash to the hot looks of the girls.

I pass by the “Apollo” theater and I am satisfied and proud of our elegant, lush Białystok cinema with palm trees in the entrance hall; not even in the largest city would it have to be ashamed! And I have no doubt at all that the son of the owner, “Vaynshteyn” [Weinstein], the son-in-law of the well-known editor Pesach Kaplan and later owner of the “Apollo”, committed suicide years later. He was so distressed by the cruelty of the Polish authorities, who had revoked his concession of the “Apollo” because he was a Jew.

And I would like to remember two other famous Białystok Jews, Dr. Pines and Dr. Rubinshteyn. Dr. Pines, the ophthalmologist, was world famous, and people from the larger towns and the smallest villages flocked to his clinic.

When I was already living in Antwerp, I once met at my uncle's house Kalman Dimentshteyn, a diamond broker, a great Talmudist, a Jewish scholar. He was very modest and it turned out that he was the brother of the legendary Dr. Pines. I met Dr. Rubinshteyn by a strange coincidence when I suddenly became his assistant.

A woman in my family had a difficult delivery and suddenly, in the last push contraction, the baby was about to be born feet first. And not having an assistant at the last minute, my family “delegated” me to help sterilize the instruments and deliver a Jewish daughter.

So I witnessed the remarkable talent of our famous obstetrician, who turned the little creature (who was a girl) several times so that she would come head down into our sinful world. Yes, as you can see, man goes out with his head down at birth.

However, I cannot leave unmentioned the well-known store of electrotechnical articles of the German “Sherschmid”, because of a completely different matter.

[Page 57]

The “fellow believers” of the “Shershmid” brothers (short shaved Germans with red necks), together with the “Volksdeutsche” and German Nazis, killed their fellow citizens and neighbors of Białystok in flaming fire and a terrible fire catastrophe; sixty thousand Jews! If you leaf through the “Pinkas Białystok”, you will be confronted with the German anti-Semitic [ugly] face. One hundred and fifty years ago, when they administered Białystok, they introduced the Prussian Jewish Regulations, which were in fact an Aryan Paragraph, or racial legislation.

Please forgive me, I accidentally jumped from the past to the present. But how many times will we have to face the bloody wind of the destruction of our city?

I continued my walk and now I am near the “Polkovoy” Bes-Medresh. How many times, after my father's death, I sneaked in there quietly and sadly to join a “minyen” [prayer quorum] and say “Kaddish”!

And the “Yisgadal v'Yiskadash” of the “Polkovoy” Bes-Medresh still rings in my ears, like a farewell Kaddish for all Białystok. And the echoes of the Kaddish come to me from thousands of miles away, in long, vibrating tones of silent prayer and stifled crying.

A writer is like a photographer, he photographs what his eye and brain perceive, whether it is the pious sounds of Jewish melodies from the old Bes-Medresh, or the night dreams of the lads sung with fresh blood. The writer may still “touch up” a little to give a clear picture, but it must be true, even if it is shocking to a pious, virtuous reader.

The Białystok City Garden! How much longing, youthful dreams and sweet, romantic hours are woven into this name:

Białystok City Garden!

[Page 58]

The first awakening of young men's feelings is accompanied by a desire to dress up and a thirsty search for the one who will become the future bride. It is characterized by the fact that the eyes begin to wander over the young, innocent, shamefully blushing faces, with rapture make out the female bodies developing to maturity.

Białystok girls in their first awakening of femininity and physical desire, still unconsciously and vaguely wrapped in night dreams, wake up and are aroused by the first kisses they receive in the quiet avenues of the sweet Białystok City Garden, planted with green, motherly trees.

The youth of Białystok matured to the sound of music in the “gulyanyes”, to the soft tones of the “Vengerkas” [Hungarian Folk Dances] and “Mazurkas” [Polish Folk Dances], and tenderly sang Russian and Yiddish love songs in the Białystok City Garden, enveloped in the quiet corners of the evening darkness.

Białystok City Garden is surrounded by four sides, four points and four contrasts.

In the background there is the important and busy industrial power plant, which supplies the whole of Białystok with electric light and power for thousands of motors that drive the Białystok textile factories and shower the world with Białystok “karelekh” [cheap woolen cloth], “kastorke” [cloth for suits]  and “drap” [chunky winter cloth].

On the second side, to the left of the City Garden, there is the famous “Yafe's School”, which strives for “Russification”, where every morning 240 Jewish boys immerse themselves in the sounds of the Russian language and Russian verses by [Alexander Sergeyevich] Pushkin, [Mikhail Yurievich] Lermontov and the then famous poet [Semyon Yakovlevich] Nadson, who died young.

Opposite the entrance to the City Garden is the modern, semicircular “Hotel Ritz” with beautifully wallpapered rooms and the latest, most modern equipment: bathrooms with hot water, luxurious and elegant, like a hotel in a great spa. At the front, at the entrance, a doorman with golden buttons, like a general, opens the door and bows aristocratically.

On the right you can see the “Institut Blagorodnikh Dyevits”, called “Insitut” for short. It is the Russian educational institution for the noble daughters of Russian military men, aristocrats and Russian “first guild” merchants. Every morning, as in a luxurious, elegant

[Page 59]

prison, they go for their morning walk in the Institute's green, flowery garden, which is surrounded by a high fence. They [the daughters] look dreamily at the streets of Białystok outside, at the cheerfully beckoning City Garden, from which so often seductive sounds of sentimental music emanate.

Białystok, Shabbat evening. The evening fights with the brightness of the day and is superior to it. Gray-blue streaks cover the sky and waving little stars jump out, like waving little fires in the restless night. The little stars are lighting themselves, more and more often and more brazenly. More and more of them are mysteriously dancing in the sky of Białystok on Shabbat evening.

Dark silhouettes of lamplighters move around with boxes filled with lamps. In Khanayker- and Suraska Street they put ladders to the gas lamps, climb up, clean the sooty lamp glasses, and already red flames are waving from the gas lamps in the bluish Shabbat twilight.

But the showy streets, Lipowa, Gumienna, Mikołajewska and “Daytshishe” [German or Niemiecka] Street are already equipped with electric street lamps, and they sway, looking down haughtily from their tall electric poles, shining dry and distant with their cold electric light.

In the summer of 1913, large posters were hung on the fences of Białystok, bearing the signatures of the city's fathers: the head of the Russian government, police chief “rotmister” [captain] Pulan and the rabbi of the city of Białystok, Dr. Yosef Mohilever, a grandson of the famous Zionist leader, Rabbi Shmuel Mohilever.

Colorful posters inform the citizens of Białystok that in the evening in the “Gorodskoy Sad” [City Garden] there will be a “gulyanye” for the benefit of poor, needy students of the Białystok “Commercial School”, with music by a first-class military orchestra, confetti and streamers, and a grand finale with fireworks. And the main thing: it's fun for the children - “dyeti bezplatno”, children are free.

Hundreds of young boys and girls meander along Lipowa and Nyemetski [Niemiecka, German] Street. They monkey about and peel fruit pits. Dressed up for Shabbat, they walk happily and contentedly to the Shabbat evening paradise, Białystok City Garden.

[Page 60]

At the entrance to the “Gorodskoy Sad” [City Garden] many people are standing close together, pushing impatiently, because they can already hear the sounds of music, a sign that “it has already begun”.

The ticket seller in his booth is irritated and yells, and the Russian policeman with the red nose of a drunkard and a sabre dragging behind him “makes order” by giving strong blows to the right and left and wiping his large, drooping moustache. The “barishnyes” [young ladies] stand tensely, proudly, holding their barrels, quietly showing that they are already grown up and well-behaved. The boys pay for the ladies' tickets, acting important and proud, in the manner of a gentleman.

It's “free for children,” and little girls, poorly dressed, wipe their dripping noses with their sleeves, step on others' feet, get caught on ladies' dresses, lift their little heads and beg, singing:

“Take me in...take me in...”

They cling to the dress of a young lady who can't bring herself to refuse, because six or seven years ago she did exactly the same thing.

So the young lady takes a girl by the hand and “innocently” walks past the ticket seller in the booth, who looks suspiciously at the beautifully dressed “mom” and the snotty “daughter”. He realizes the trick they are playing on him, but he plays dumb and lets them pass.

And as soon as the poor girl from Khanaykes or Piaski is “inside” with her one little foot, she tears herself away like a whirlwind, jumps happily on one leg and disappears into the wide avenues, forgetting even to thank her temporary “mother”.

The park is noisy. Two languages compete: proud, singing, romantic Russian and Yiddish - pleasantly maternal, hearty and charming, interspersed with local expressions, idioms and jokes.

In the middle of the avenues hang the white electric globular lamps, which look festive with their big, bright, milky light. The avenues are densely strewn with colorful confetti and long streamers. Loud conversations and peals of ringing, youthful laughter can be heard. Hundreds of boys and girls march slowly in wide, scattered rows. Most of them are schoolchildren. Eyes meet, shy and bold, waving and lowered, ardent and sober, young, curious and old, extinguished.

[Page 61]

The different colored eyes are partly young, carefree or thoughtful, partly calm and older. They are bold eyes, thirsty or hungry, cold and apathetic. The noblest of them belong to the “golden youth”, the studious youth.

There walk the students of the Women's „komerts” [Commercial] School. They wear dark dresses with green decorated belts that tighten their young maiden bodies and accentuate their figures. Next to them are the students of the Commercial School for men, dressed in smart suits with brass buttons, like Austrian Junkers. They come from the Commercial School on Aleksandrovske [Warsaw] Street, sponsored by the famous German textile manufacturer in Białystok, Moes.

The “komersantn” [male Commercial School‘s students] walk in blue uniforms with the “Kokarde” on their hats, an old insignia of “Mercury”, the Greek god of merchants and thieves. The students of the Real school walk stiffly and proudly, with yellow decorated hats and “Kokardes”, often together with their colleagues, Christian realists, because the number of Jews in the Real School is very small, given the “percentage rule”, which is strict.

There are the Jewish merchant's sons of the Aleksandrov Gymnasium, who speak a Russian interspersed with Jewish expressions. Very few are the students of the “Gorodskoye” [Municipal School] on Mazur Street, a school known in Białystok for its Christian character and Christian prayers before the beginning of classes.

There is a mixture of students from High Schools and Middle Schools, from “Shtsheglov”, “Meltreger”, “Druskin”, “Gurevitsh” and “Lakhankas”.  (The Lakhankas Gymnasium, located on the street “Behind the Prison”, was turned into a German military hospital for the wounded during the First World War).

The students of Yafe‘s School walk elegantly. They tell jokes about their teachers Klyatshko, Lusternik and Tsipkin, especially about Zhmudskin, who is known as a Jewish anti-Semite...

And then there are the somewhat more modest pupils of the Gvirts'es girls' school and the “amkho” [ordinary] Jewish children of the two-class elementary schools of Bibitski, Menakhovske, and Fridman.

A certain group of students differs greatly from the “pampered, white-handed” youth, and these are the students of the “Remeslenoye” [Artisans' School], who work in the textile, mechanical, and furniture workshops, and in whose language you will not find a single Russian word.

[Page 62]

They speak in their native Yiddish, interspersed with a Hebrew quotation, with lively Jewish gestures, and from time to time you hear an extended Jewish folk song, still from their childhood, when their mother sang it while rocking the cradle.

The sounds of the music echo far into the air. The musicians of the “Vladimirsk” and “Uglitsk” regiments are wearing dandy, shiny boots, trousers with white or red stripes, epaulettes and belts hanging from their shoulders. They look into the eyes of the conductor, who majestically waves his baton.

Aware of his importance, he greets them politely, bowing to the famous young ladies who pass by and with whom he often flirts during the intermissions.

The musicians' round, carved wooden pavilion is surrounded by a swarm of Jewish children who beat the music with their hands. At each break, they clamour, exclaiming their favorite musical pieces:

“Play 'Pa-despan' [Pas d’Espagne] or 'Padekoter‘ [Pas de Quatre]” and the handsome conductor with the thick, curly hair that our Jewish brothers often have responds good-naturedly:

“All right, children, it's all right, everything will be all right!”

From the fence of the City Garden, noise and shouts penetrate. A crowd has gathered, a policeman has grabbed a barefoot, ragged boy and is leading him by the ear. The boy had taken the “free admission”  at its word and crawled over the fence without a ticket. The Jewish youth, in a Shabbat mood, take pity on the unfortunate fence climber. They deliberately create a crowd around the policeman, pushing him from all sides, and in the general commotion the “criminal” breaks free and disappears, accompanied by the whistling of the irritated policeman and the general laughter of the “audience”.

The musicians indulge in the intoxicating, swaying tones of the “Padekoter”, “Vengerka”, “Espan”, “Pa-despan”, “Polka-koketka” and “Mazurka”. The main avenues that run from the entrance to the small fence gate opposite the power station are lined with rows of strolling young people. They march past the music pavilion, on which hangs a board with a printed program of the concert, mostly a classical repertoire of light dances and waltzes.

A light dust hangs in the air and settles on the already dusty gray shoes.

Groups walk around.

[Page 63]

There goes a group of quite a few schoolgirls, a mixture of female High School students, and behind them a group of male students from the Aleksandrov Gymnasium, dressed in dark blue, stiffly starched uniforms. The female students pretend to talk only to each other, but so loudly that the male students behind them can understand and interfere in their their conversation. They approach from behind on their high heels, interjecting to get to know each other better and perhaps, if the occasion arises, to arrange a date.

The girls behave dismissively. They respond with a bratty, so fashionable feigned anger:

“Nakhal! [Impudent man]!”

And, they laughingly top it off with feigned haughtiness:

“We don't accept street acquaintances!”

But the High School students walking in a group do not remain silent with admiration, but on the contrary react with chutzpah, and continue their “attack” until it is crowned with success. And after half an hour they are already walking together, diligently trying to outdo each other with Pushkin's declarations, flirting a little, full of wit, a little cynical and with ambiguous allusions to love.

The sky is already dark blue. Night is falling. In a side avenue, on the other side of the quiet, whispering river, opposite Yafe‘s School, couples sit on benches under trees with hanging branches, far from the hustle and bustle of the avenues. This side of the river is quiet. Young couples embrace each other passionately and silent kisses sigh out, swallowed by the distant echo of the music, which with its lyrical tones so romantically adorns the open young hearts when they are first excited by fantasy and hot young blood.

The “gulyanye” is in full swing. The ladies of the “charity society” fly around like night butterflies in bright summer dresses, selling lottery tickets promising “golden luck”: A Japanese tea set, a dinner service of “Severer” [Sevres?] French crystal (both items probably came from Osher Topolski's glass shop), silver trays and wine cups.

All this is displayed on a table decorated with colorful ribbons and lit by colorful Chinese paper lanterns, and hearts beat with sweet excitement: Maybe their ticket number will be drawn and they will win? (I remember a curious incident when a cow was once raffled off at a “gulyanye,” a real flesh-and-blood cow. And the story goes that the winner was the beautiful Naya Vilner, now the wife of our famous

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compatriot, Dr. Khayim Shoshkes. And the Białystok pranksters  joked that everyone saw how the beautiful, elegant Nadya proudly led the cow by the rope and half of Białystok followed her...

It is almost 11 o'clock. The end of the “gulyanye” is approaching, but first comes the last attraction: fireworks! Various firecrackers and Bengal fire in the shape of a cross are attached to sticks. A dense crowd surrounds the square and in the general silence and expectation the fireworks are lit one after the other.

Brightly colored windmills rotate, spraying colorful fire upward. Like mills in a hurry, everything spins faster and faster, suddenly exploding into the air with a bang like colorful rockets. They sink into the blue, star-filled sky, where they explode with a final bang and are extinguished, swallowed by darkness.

The “gulyanye” in the City Garden is over. Visitors leave the park in groups, sometimes noisily, sometimes thoughtfully, and the park empties out.

Gradually, the white electric lights go out. A few couples remain, hiding in the corners of the park. There they sit in the darkness, tenderly embracing each other, unable to tear themselves away from this beautiful, romantic evening, the “gulyanye” in Białystok's City Garden.

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