MEMOIRS
OF SHERESHEV
By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ
Such was the lot of the average farmer. Yes, there were some prosperous ones. They were closer to the city where they could sell their produce and get a better price. Others had more land and were mechanized where everything was on a larger scale. They had tractors, multi-disc plows and even combines. There was no time wasted on feeding and watering horses or on harnessing and unharnessing them, cleaning stables and other chores around horses. The average farmer in those days worked hard and did no more than eke out an ordinary living. If he succeeded in saving up a few dollars, it was due to his frugality and not to his earning ability. In general farming in those parts was entirely different than what I used to see in the part of the world where I grew up. There the farmer was self sufficient almost in every respect. Not only did he grow and raise all his food, he used to grow flax to make linen from which he made shirts, pants and under wear for the family. His sheep used to supply him enough wool to make felt for his winter outerwear even heavy felt boots. The warmest footwear available and the sheep skin made excellent warm and durable coats. It was only the surplus that the farmer sold in order to buy the most elementary needs. Here we were confronted with a different kind of farming, a completely specialized kind of farming. The farmer did not even keep a few hens to satisfy his need for eggs or fowl.
The small Jewish community that existed then in Brockville consisted of a dozen or so families. The word spread swiftly that a couple of Holocaust survivors are living on a farm some miles away near a place called Greenbush. The place Greenbush consisted of four houses situated on a cross road of two farm roads. The owner of one of those houses had a country store, where one could buy groceries and necessities. One can understand that the place Greenbush itself was not easy to find. From there about a mile down the road was our farm. On a Sunday afternoon beginning of October, a car pulled up into the farm and from it four passengers got out. Those were Mr. and Mrs. PLEET with their two children, their daughter, Ruth, a girl of eighteen and a son, Lenny, a boy of eight. They were the first Jewish family from Brockville that came to visit us. Little did I know that this eighteen year old girl would be, in less than two years, my wife and the mother to our future three children. I recall another Jewish family from Brockville that came to visit us shortly after by the name of FELTCHER. A few miles from us was another Jewish family farming by the name of ZARKOVER. They were fortunate to have left Poland two months before the war began in 1939. In a sense they could be considered rich, having two or three parcels of land, two or three hundred acres and over thirty milking cows, but I know for a fact that they did not have one hundred dollars cash in the bank. The farms had a tendency to swallow up every penny the farmer invested in it, if he was willing to invest. The ZARKOVER’s had a jeep, which they used for driving as well as plowing the field. On a scattered Sunday they used to drive over to us for a couple of hours to share pre war experiences in Poland and present day farm problems and practices.
In the same October on a dark night, there was a knock on the door and a man in his forties walked in. He introduced himself as Harry KAVANET, a Jew from Lithuania who came to Canada twenty odd years ago as a teenager. We found out that he has a wife and a son living in Brockville. He is a chicken dealer. He covers the surrounding territory buying chickens from the chicken farmers and ships them to Montreal. As a teenager he came to this neighbourhood buying individual chickens from the farmers. As in those days that is between the two world wars farmers kept some chickens for their own use. In those days he used to be a boarder with one of the farmer's around. Having come without knowing a word of English, he found it difficult to adjust, but slowly began to pick up English words, so to say "from the street," from the farmers around. As he was telling us his story, he suddenly stopped and with a worried expression on his face, he asked: Do you speak some English? We answered, "Some." He went on to say; "Remember, if you do not understand or do not know how to answer, don't." I will tell you my experience, he said. Did you meet your neighbour to your right? Here he pointed to the little house that stood on the next parcel of land some four-five hundred meters away, which in the dark could only be seen as a small window with a light in it. We have met the neighbour, Mr. HORTON, who came to introduce himself. He lived alone in that little house looking after a few sheep. His land was worked by his son, some houses down the road. He was a tall erect man, despite his ninety six years, with eye sight that needed no binoculars. We nodded. "Well,” continued Harry KAVANET, "I knew that if I want to live here, I have to learn English and fast. I managed to pick up enough words to buy a chicken, but I wanted more. One of the most frequent words I used to hear was "G-d damn it." Once finding myself among a group of farmers, I heard it again and asked them what it means. They were unable to explain the word "Damn it" could only point to the sky saying "G-d damn it," as the word "G-d" sounds very much like the word "Got" in Yiddish. Harry understood the word "G-d Damn it" to mean G-d. Mr. HORTON, our neighbour was then a man of around seventy, who was very nice to Harry KAVANET and whenever he met him used to say "hello" and even tried to make conversation with him.
One summery Sunday morning as KAVANET was walking on the road between the farms, he met Mr. HORTON who was going in the opposite direction, in the direction of the church. Mr. HORTON as customary with a broad smile says to KAVANET: Good morning Harry. Are you going to church? KAVANET, in his pitiable English wanted to tell him that he prays in his fashion and Mr. HORTON in his. What he said was; "You pray to your G-d Damn it and I to my G-d Damn it." Mr. HORTON turned away and stopped looking in KAVANET's direction. Poor KAVANET could not understand the reason Mr. HORTON stopped speaking to him. Many months later, when KAVANET's English had improved enough to realize what he said to Mr. HORTON, he profusely apologized to him. Mr. HORTON felt embarrassed, saying that: I should have understood that what you said is not what you meant. It is ironic that a short time later I fell victim to such an incident. True, not to this embarrassing extent. Never the less, I felt uncomfortable. Across the road from our farm there was a farm belonging to an old established Canadian family by the name of TWA. Their house was located right across ours, even closer to the road than ours. We got acquainted soon and were soon helping out one another. The only few minutes we used to stop work was to listen to the radio for some news about the fighting that was going on in Israel, when the fate of its very existence was hanging in the balance and the few months old Jewish state had to fight off not only six Arab regular armies but direct and indirect intervention from other countries that sympathized with the Arabs, especially Britain. Not content with having left their light and heavy weapons to the trans Jordanian legion while leaving Palestine, they were continually observing the movement of the Jewish forces from planes and passing it on to the Jordanian and Egyptian forces.
After many complaints and warning from the newly formed Israeli government, the fledgling Jewish air force shot down five British planes in a day. Of course the whole British world was in an uproar. It was of course, all over the whole Canadian press even the small Brockville paper, "The Brockville Recorder and Times," gave it full pages, accusing the Jews of having the audacity to shoot down five British planes. There was no question that and I were happy with the result of that confrontation and I showed the paper with the headlines to our neighbour expressing my satisfaction. He turned to me saying, "I see you hate the British." Not knowing what the word "hate" meant, I asked him. He thought for a moment. Apparently to find a substitute for the word and came up wit the word "do not like". I innocently agreed. A day or two later we were helping him with something in his back yard. His wife came out to see what we were doing. He turns to her and says: "You know he hates the British." She gave me a curious look but said nothing. I made nothing of it, feeling justified in not liking the British. As KAVANET, I too found out later the difference between the meaning of "not liking and hate", and tried to be non committal to statements or sayings I did not understand. It was also there in that rural Ontario that I came face to face with the dislike, or to be precise, hatred that existed between Protestants and Catholics and how deep rooted it was. Yet they were neighbours, who used to come together in harvest time to help one another with harvesting the corn and filling up the silos where there was a need of ten-twelve men, or cutting up wood for winter.
How polite and superficial they were to one another at that time. Yet when alone with us, they used to entrust their innermost feeling towards one group or another. The two of us could not understand how those two Christian groups could hate each other so much and were wondering how much more the two of them must hate us Jews. As Jews and with the memories of the Holocaust fresh in our minds, we made sure not to infringe in any way on our neighbours. In fact we made sure that they owed us. For example; when we were asked to help one with bringing in the corn and filling up the silo, both of us used to come, while from the other farms only one was expected and one used to come. Not only did we both come, but we never asked anyone of them to come to help us in return. The same was applicable with preparing the fire wood for the winter. While we helped the neighbours cut up the wood with a circular saw, a matter of a day’s work, we spent a month pulling a saw back and forth to cut up our own wood.
The days became noticeably shorter. The weather deteriorated. We were getting up and milking the cows while it was still dark. Our summer work clothes were both worn out and cold for that time of year. Fortunately we received a notice that there was a parcel weighing eighty five pounds waiting for us in the custom house in Brockville. My uncle Shloime (Solomon) had written to me earlier that he was sending me the boys’ military clothes that they had come home with from the war. It could not have come at a better time, consisting of all kinds of pants, shirts, jackets and coats made to last, even water proof attire. We had become the envy of our neighbours, for the military work clothes were perfect for our work on the farm. During that fall, Mr. and Mrs. ZBAR and Mr. BERLIN came to visit us a couple of times, but with the weather and the road deteriorating, the distance that exceeded the distance to our former employer’s farm by twice as much, proved too much for them and they stopped coming. Not being able to see them, we never the less stayed in touch with them by mail. Nor did I neglect to be in constant touch with my uncle Shloime (Solomon) and his family. Both of us were also in touch with our friend and third man in our room in Italy, Leibel BLISKOWSKY, who remained in Italy waiting for a visa to the United States. In the late fall, getting tired of waiting, he wrote asking if we could get some farmer to sponsor him to come to Canada. We got one of our neighbour's to sponsor him. We also got in touch with a couple of BLISKOWSKY's town’s people who lived in Montreal to guarantee his passage expenses. After having it all arranged he, BLISKOWSKY, backed out and left Italy for Israel. During the short days of the late fall, we used to spend the daylight hours repairing the fences around the farm. We had five kilometres of fence and all in bad shape. They were put up a hundred years or so before we came. Once they started deteriorating, they could keep a man busy all year round. The cows apparently believe in the saying; "The grass is greener on the other side of the fence." They tried to get to the other side oblivious of the fact that it belonged to another owner.
We too were aware of the saying; "Good fences makes for good neighbours" tried to make sure our cows stayed on our land. Still no matter how hard we tried, it did happen that our cows broke out or somebody else's broke in our pasture, but all in all, it did not happen more than a couple of times. When the snow came there was no use in keeping the livestock outdoors. To make up for the green grass, we had to spend hours chopping up corn stalks into small pieces as well as sugar beets feeding them to the cows morning and night while they were being milked. With this mixture, they used to get a bowl full of ground up oats. With the winter, they were constantly kept indoors except for an hour morning and night after milking in order to be watered and for us to clean the stable and change the straw under them. Encouraged by the ZBARs and Mr. BERLIN we made plans. The barn was old and so was the stable. We made plans to build new ones, or, if not new ones, at least to rebuild them. For that we needed material. We had thirty five acres of woods with many trees up to three quarter of a meter across. The big ones were elm. We knew nothing of the characteristics of elm trees. All we could see was their huge trunks that promised all kinds and sizes of plank. So we decided to use those trees. I have never seen a tree being cut down, maybe a small one that a man could push it or direct it to fall. I had no idea what it meant to cut down a tree seventy or eighty centimetres thick. I will never forget our first day in the woods and the cutting down of our first tree. It was a cold wintry day. After milking the cows and finishing up all the other daily chores, we had a heavy breakfast. We hitched up our two one ton horses to the sleigh and tied on another sleigh to this one. We set out across the snow covered field to the other end of the farm to the woods. The drive across the open field was not an easy one. The snow was much deeper than we thought. At times, the horses used to fall into drifts up to their belly and the wind was very high. However, as soon as we entered the forest, it was like coming into a building. Even the few leaves left on some bushes from the past summer did not move. All one could hear was the rustle of the tree tops or the flapping of wings from scattered flying birds. We left our two horses hitched up between some large trees. Picking out one of the largest trees, we began to cut it down using an ordinary saw. We soon found out that it is no easy task to saw a three quarter of a meter thick elm tree. Finally the tree began to fall breaking off branches of surrounding trees as well as its own in the process. To late do we realize our mistake of not tying down the horses to a tree. The sound of breaking branches and thud of the fallen tree was enough to scare a first time bystander, let alone a horse. So, sure enough, the horses took off with the two sleighs, one behind the other through the branches and trees as fast as they could. Fortunately the straps of the bridle (reins) got snagged on some branches and the horses stopped a couple of hundred meters away. Never the less, during this short run they succeeded to break both sleighs and it took us a few days to repair them. We had learned to leave the horses a fair distance from a falling tree and tie them to a tree properly.
After a tree was cut down, the trunk had to be cut up in twelve feet long pieces. This in itself was not easy either. A green elm trunk is not friendly to a saw and tries to jam it at any occasion. We had to resort to using wedges. Even getting a twelve foot long and two and a half foot thick log on the sleigh was not easy either. We eventually learned to use the horses to do the job. Those logs had to be brought out from the woods to near the buildings, a distance of a kilometre and a half. Half way between the woods and the house ran a creek coming from one neighbour to the right, crossing our farm and going to the neighbour to the left. It was on average three meters wide but it was never more than ten centimetres deep. The problem was that it had steep banks over half a meter high. A little wooden bridge spanned over it that must have been built by the very first owner. We were afraid that the bridge would not support the weight of the horses and logs, so we used to go across the frozen creek which was covered with snow, not only up to the high bank but leveled to the depth of the snow all around. Sometimes, we used to cross it without a hitch, but at times the snow under the weight of the log used to collapse and the leading sled used to get stuck under the high bank leaving the log and both sleighs between the two banks of the creek. It used to take us half a day to get out of such a situation.
We began planning to build a new bridge across the creek, but it could not be done in the middle of the winter. So we decided to postpone it until the spring. One day after another accident with a log over the creek, my partner got so mad that in frustration he began to tear apart the old bridge. I spoke to him calmly: Wait until we have built the new one before you destroy the old one. But it was of no use. He went a head in his fit of madness. Of course, we never got around to building a new one. Not only the logs but also the branches were taken out. We spent many days cutting it up for fire wood. The heavy branches cut to a foot in length made excellent fire wood for the furnace that was in the basement and used to heat the house. The thinner branches after sawing it into short pieces were used in the kitchen stove for cooking and heating water. Some of the branches were so thick that we had to split them. It was then that we realized how difficult it was to deal with elm. Having made sure that we had enough logs from which to make enough planks for a new barn and stable, we started taking them by horse and sled to a saw mill some fifteen kilometres away. There, after having cut the logs into planks by about night fall, we used to return home with the planks, where the chores of milking the cows and cleaning out the stable awaited us.
Already in the late fall, we became aware of the sharp drop in milk produced by the cows, and as the winter progressed, so continued the drop in the quantity of the milk produced. We realized that the cows are drying up. The smallest cheque we received for a month’s production of milk was in February in the amount of seven dollars, while the largest was in the amount of three hundred dollars for the month of September and close to it in October. It improved in March when the cows began calving and resumed their milk production. The whole process of calving was to me a phenomenon and a new experience. Early March was still cold outside and not much warmer in the stable and I was concerned about the new born calves. I should not have been. Nature is also a protector. The calves never had a chance to taste their mother’s milk. They were immediately trained to drink from a pail and were kept away from their mothers. We partitioned off a part of the stable where we kept the calves feeding them milk three times a day. As they began to drink by themselves, we started to mix some ground oats into the milk. Every few days a cow used to calve. The good part was that the cows began to give more milk so we could look forward to a bigger cheque. On the other end, the calves needed attention, which took up time, and they also used to consume a fair amount of their mother’s milk. Already a couple weeks before Pessach, Mr. and Mrs. PLEET extended an invitation to me to come to them for the two nights “Sedorim” of Pessach, which I happily accepted. They also extended the invitation to my partner . As the two of us could not leave the farm at once, the decision was made that I should go, as understood that they wanted me, because of their daughter, Ruth was coming home for the holidays from Montreal where she worked. But agreed to let me go providing that I would let him go to Montreal. I agreed and he left a couple of days later. The work of milking the cows, feeding the calves, (at that time we had three already), and cleaning the stables fell on me. To my dismay, when I came in the next morning to milk the cows, I found another new born calf on the floor. As if in spite, during my partner’s absence of six days, three new calves were born. When he came back, his entire way of thinking had changed. I found out that his purpose for going to Montreal was to see his chances of finding a wife. It turned out that he met a woman who would consider marriage, but would not go on a farm. She suggested he should sell the farm, move to Montreal and then talk about marriage.
When Pessach arrived a few days later, I hitch hiked a ride to Brockville arriving just before sundown. Everything in their house was nice and clean for Pessach. The house was filled with the aroma of good food for the Seder. When suddenly Mr. PLEET walked in carrying a huge carp, and proudly displaying it to Mrs. PLEET saying: Look what I just got!! Mrs. PLEET looked at him in disbelieve saying: What did you bring me this for? In an hour or so it will be Pessach. Mr. PLEET answered: An acquaintance of mine just gave it to me for free. How could I say no to such a fish? He answered lifting up proudly the ten kilogram carp even higher. Mrs. PLEET looked at the two of them disapprovingly. Something compelled me to intervene and I said: I will clean it! That put an end to further discussions for which everyone was grateful. I asked for a knife and carried the fish to the shed in the back yard. I guess the skill I acquired to clean fish on ABRAMSKY’s farm came in handy, for in no time the fish was ready to be cooked. I believe we tasted it the very same evening at the Seder, which was conducted in a very traditional way by Mr. PLEET. It was reminiscent of the Seders we used to conduct an eternity ago in Shershev. For me it was the first Seder in eight years of which I was very aware. I did not let myself sink in gloom and acted as festive as I could. I went with Mr. PLEET to the synagogue, heard some new melodies at the Seder and sang some of my own that I remembered. I spent the afternoon walking around Brockville with Ruth. The second Seder was just as festive as the first but I felt more at ease. The next morning I went back to the farm. I hated to take off my only suit that I brought from Italy and get into my farm work clothes.
My partner, unlike how he was prior to his trip to Montreal, stopped making plans for the farm. He did not say much aloud but I noticed that at times he was preoccupied with his own thoughts. From time to time he used to bring up the subject of that woman in Montreal or muse aloud about his future on the farm. To my lack of sympathy or at times indifference, he used to say: Sure you are smart. You are twenty five years old and flirting with a nineteen year old girl. What have I got to look forward to on this farm? The snow melted. Green grass began to sprout and the soil began to dry. The spring had arrived. It was time to get to work. We had a three disc plow, which needed extensive repairs that we could not afford. So we bought an ordinary plow and began to plow our fifty five acres of land. Our neighbours looked at us in disbelieve. For no farmer who had to plow as much land would attempt to do it with a single bladed plow. Our day started at five in the morning. One would look after all chores like milking the cows, cleaning the stables, feeding the calves, watering and driving the cows to the pasture. This in itself used to take anywhere from four to five hours for one man, while the other one used to start plowing the field during day light. I never held a plow in my hands but I soon got the knack of it and became as good as any farmer, plowing the furrow as straight as any of them. Farm work, especially not mechanized, is hard work and to follow a team of horses twelve hours a day holding on to the handles of a plow tightly, and with agility is no easy task, for the top soil was fairly shallow and beneath it in many places was a stony bottom. If that stony bottom got hooked, it would come up in shell or shift like pieces of ten centimetres thick and a meter or more in diameter, lifting with it all the top soil, tearing the plow out of the hands and if not stopped in time, would tip over falling on the hind legs of the horses causing injury or at least stampede the horses.
My partner , being older and above all being a heavy man, could not keep on plowing for hours, so it became my task to plow from dawn to dusk, while he did the other chores. Neighbours used to come by to admire my resilience and how I can keep plowing over two acres a day, day after day. Before plowing the mountain of manure that accumulated behind the stable over the winter had to be spread all over the fields and we did it by hand not having a manure spreader. However, we did have a grain planter, which came in handy. We also planted some corn, sugar beets and potatoes. Besides all this, we also planted some vegetables in the space allotted for a garden. My partner insisted on digging deep narrow ditches between the beds despite the advice of the neighbours and my protest, claiming that this is how he used to do it “at home.” It did not help arguing with him or explaining that the ground in our parts of Poland was low and swampy and that we used to have a lot of rain fall. He went ahead and dug those ditches. As a result we had a poor crop despite the fact that we used to water the garden when time permitted. Surprisingly enough we, or shall I say I, did manage to plow the fifty five acres of land in time for sowing. Having finished the spring chores we began to get ready for hay making.
In between, my two cousins, my uncle Shloime’s (Solomon) two daughters, Helen and Rose came to visit us from New York. It was the second time I saw my cousin Helen. The first time was when she came with her brother, Harold, the previous year to visit me on ABRAMSKY’s farm. They stayed with us some ten days. I took off time after milking the cows to talk with them and reminisce about Shershev that they remembered better than I and of course about our families that we had there but are no more. Above all, about my immediate family, my mother that was their aunt and their father’s sister whom they remembered clearly. There was no end to the stories. We used to sit up till late at night, for me almost to getting up time. They stayed for ten days. It was lonely when they left. Shortly afterwards we had visitors from Toronto. My two friends Zygmund SUCHTER and Max MONETA came for a visit with their wives Zena and Irka. They too were my friends, all from the refugee camps in Italy. With them I shared mutual experiences from those three years in Italy, when we were all single. After a few days they too left, just in time for hay making. First the hay had to be cut by a hay cutter pulled by a team of horses. The hay remained on the ground to dry for several days while it was being turned over a couple of times to make sure it was dry all over. Then it was raked in long rows with the help of a large rake, again drawn by a horse. Finally it was loaded on a wide large wagon with the help of a hay loader which is attached to the wagon. As the horses pulled the wagon, it, in turn, pulled the hay loader (whose wheels they propelled). The loader had a mechanism which picks up the hay lifting it high above the wagon where it dropped down into the wagon. For loading the hay there was a need for two men, one to drive the horses or tractor and the second was on the wagon, spreading the coming down hay from the loader, over the entire wagon. The easy job was to lead the horses but the spreading of the constantly piling up hay, was another matter. One had to be constantly on the move trying to pile in as much hay as possible in every corner of the wagon whose platform was five meters long and two meters wide. Staying waist deep in hay, being constantly assaulted by a heavy stream of hay, was hard work. The hay maker season takes about two weeks.
We barely finished bringing in the hay into the barn when the oat harvesting time was upon us. We had a binder, drawn by the horses. The binder cuts the grain and binds it into sheaves. It took us some three weeks to take in the grain. The next would be the corn, which was not ripe yet. As the barn badly needed repairs and we had prepared plenty of lumber over the winter, we got ready to utilize the time fixing the barn. To our surprise we discovered that the elm planks which were so straight when we piled them up to dry, had twisted like cork screws wherever they were not weighed down. More or less half of them had to be discarded, for even if an end of a foot long board was not weighed down, it had twisted and unfit for our purpose. Never the less there was lots of straight timber left and we began to hammer it over the weakened side of the barn. To our dismay, the nails would not penetrate the wood. Half a dozen nails were bent before we could successfully hammer a nail into that wood. Some of our neighbours suggested dipping the tip of the nail in grease before hamming it in. It helped a bit. In stead of bending six or eight nails, we used to bend three or four, but to make up for this accomplishment, the board used to split as soon as the nail was half way through it. If we used, by chance, to succeed in hammering in one nail into the board, the next nail used to do it, splitting the board, thus, having to remove it. After many different tries and disappointments, we came to the conclusion that elm wood is not good as building material. Of course, if we had drills to drill holes in the wood, it would have been another story. But neither we nor our neighbours had any.
With August came the time to take in the oats. Like in winter when a dozen or so neighbours used to come together to help each other with cutting up the wood, so in summer we helped each other with threshing the oats and cutting up and filling up the silo. But her again the two of us helped them, but we did not ask them to help in return. Instead, we worked for almost a month with the binder, which cut and tied the grain into sheaves and then took it into the barn. It is a lot of work to clear fifty five acres of oats from the field into a barn. Only a farmer from fifty years ago would appreciate it. For us there was no let up, for after the taking the oats in, the corn then had to be taken in. Here as in the previous fall we had to chop up the corn stalk. Not like all the neighbours who had silos in which the chopped up corn used to be blown in by machine. Already in early summer I noticed that the enthusiasm with which my partner came to the farm was diminishing and it became even more apparent with time, even though he tried to hide it in the presence of others. More and more he began to talk about getting rid of the farm, that the farm holds no future for him, that no woman, certainly a Jewish woman would leave the city for a farm. With time, his whining had increased to a degree that he began speaking openly about leaving the farm.
At that time I could see only one obvious reason, namely; the fact that he came to the conclusion that one cannot save any money on a farm. The best one can hope for was to eke out a living. Seeing that he had no investment in the farm, as his uncle never sent the two thousand dollars he promised, he, had nothing to lose by abandoning it. At the age of twenty six, I could not and did not understand a man twenty years my senior, who had lost a wife and two children almost ten years earlier, his loneliness and despair as he watched his middle age years slipping away. The fact that Ruth, Mr. and Mrs. PLEET’s nineteen year old daughter and my present wife of all those years, had given up her job in Montreal to come home, deliberately or not, so she can come out to the farm to see me at least once a week or more, only emphasized and called to attention his loneliness. During the week, Ruth used to call me on the telephone a couple of times. I used to reciprocate but not for each call. I simply could not afford it. Speaking about the phone, we used to have a party line. This meant that there were more than one customer on a line and anyone on the line could listen in on the other person’s conversation. My conversation with Ruth used to be conducted in English. the reason being that I wanted to improve my English. The only person around was with whom I conversed in Yiddish. As with all young people, we flirted a bit on the phone until I heard once somebody trying to stifle a giggle. It dawned on me that at least one person on the line was listening to our conversation. How long it had been going on and how many had been listening in, I will never know, for there were twenty telephones on our line. From that time on, Ruth and I conversed in Yiddish. Some of our neighbours were deprived of a bit of entertainment.
All that time I kept up a correspondence with my close friend BLISKOWSKY whom I left in Italy, and with my relatives in Israel. But of course the closest contract was with my uncle Shloime (Solomon) in New York and his children. In early fall after long deliberation with my uncle and his children, especially his oldest son Jack, who worked at that time for the U.S. Dept of Justice, I decided to give in to their desire to come to New York on a visit. I was not yet a Canadian citizen but I had heard of some new Canadians who after proving to the U.S. authorities at the border that they had some investment in Canada, had been let in on a visit. My cousin Jack sent me his phone number at the office, which was the Dept. of Justice and told me to ask the U.S. border inspector to call him and he would guarantee my return to Canada. One of the first Jews I met in Brockville, Mr. FELSHER, had a second hand furniture store in Brockville at the corner of King and Perth Streets, offered to go with me across the border to the other side of the St. Lawrence River to the town of Morristown. The border crossing meant to get to the shore of the St. Lawrence River in Brockville where a small ferry was docked that could take on a couple of cars and a couple dozen passengers. Near the ferry stood a small building with a Canadian flag on a tall post in front of it. That small building housed the Canadian emigration office with one officer at the desk. We got into the ferry which took us across the mighty St. Lawrence and docked on the opposite shore two-three kilometres away, already the American side. Here too, stood the same size building with a flag post and on it the American flag. I got off the ferry with the handful of other passengers and Mr. FELSHER beside me. I stood on the American soil. The land of which every Eastern and Central European Jew dreamt of. The land of freedom and plenty and the land of which everyone I knew yearned for. The welcoming committee consisted of one immigration inspector who asked every passenger where he was born. After hearing the answer, he waved them on. I knowing that I will have to answer many questions, waited to be the last. As soon as I told him that I was born in Poland and had no visa, he ordered me into the office. I tried to tell him that I had two uncles in the United States and some dozen cousins. I showed him the papers that I owned a farm near Brockville. I also gave him my Cousin Jack’s telephone number and asked him to call and confirm my story and identity. I remember him saying: You can be president Truman’s cousin. I will still not let you in without a visa. As I and Mr. FELSHER turned to get on the ferry for Brockville, he said: Wait. I will give you a letter to the Canadian inspector so he will let you back into Canada. Saying this, he wrote out a letter and gave it to me. Getting off at the Canadian side, I handed it to the Canadian inspector who after reading it tore it up saying: You do not need it. You have a Canadian entry visa. Any Canadian inspector must let you in. I was very disappointed that I could not get to the states. For some reason I was sure that I would be permitted to enter. More than my disappointment was that of my family’s in New York.
The weather began to change. There were days when there was no let up due to the downpour and it was impossible to do any work outdoors. It was my biggest enjoyment to put on the rubber boots and the waterproof two-piece suit that my uncle Shloime sent me from New York and walk across the length of the farm to the very end including the woods, the entire two kilometres and back. No matter how hard the rain used to fall, not a drop of water penetrated nor did it fall on my face that was protected by the side rimmed hood. It used to take me back in time to my youth. When I was a boy sitting in my friend’s, Moishe GELMAN’s living room on a rainy day at an open window and watching the rain coming down on their flower garden which was without a doubt, the nicest in Shershev. What beautiful memories the walk used to bring back and trigger yearnings for those days and longing for those people; family and friends so dear to me whose lives had been cut so cruelly and mercilessly taken away from this world and from me forever. I cannot explain why, but in that empty expanse of the fields around me, for who would walk in that weather with rain coming down in sheets, in the storm alone by myself, I felt an unusual nearness to them. It brought on a feeling of sadness and warmth as if they were near or with me at that moment and with whom in my mind I could communicate with.
That summer the ZBARs and Mr. BERLIN came out to us on the farm several times. I am sure that they would have come more often, were it not for the fact that my partner began yet in the middle of summer, to allude to the fact that no Jewish girl would come to live on the farm with him. I am sure that they understood, although indulgently and without comment, that he was not happy there. Mine and Ruth’s feelings towards each other changed during the year from acquaintance to friendship, sensitivity, emotion and sentiment, it was inevitable that the subject of marriage would come up. I recall a remark that Ruth made half seriously during one of our more earnest conversations. She said: “A farmer will never get rich unless he strides oil on his land. You will never strike oil on this farm.” Somehow, without much discussion or arguments, we, that is, my partner and I came to the decision to sell the farm. I was not happy for I realized that we stand to loose money as we overpaid to begin with and the loser would be me. We could not let Mr. BERLIN lose some of the money he lent us. As for the other money in the farm, it was from my uncle Shloime (Solomon), it was only proper that I should take the loss. That is, the money from my uncle. The second reason was of a different sort. I had never forgotten the time when we, the males that were driven from Shershev to Antopol, after the two days march during which some hundred of us were killed by the Germans. We were reunited with the rest of our families in Antopol and immediately were expelled and driven eastward, an entire community of two thousand souls, men, women and children. As we were driven eastwards devoid of everything, destitute, deprived of any possession, not even a crust of bread, we could see in the distance the individual farms. Seeing the farmers how they went about their chores in peace and tranquility while we were being driven to places or fates unknown, how we were envious of those farmers who were leading such a peaceful life. That memory and particularly that quest for tranquility materialized for me in a sense on the farm which I loathed to leave once there. There was no thought of me remaining alone on the farm. Firstly, I would not be able to do it by myself. Secondly, I was not excited about the idea of a farm to begin with. It was only on my partner’s expertise and authority that the farm was bought in the first place by the ZBARs and Mr. BERLIN. It was by the same authority that the decision to sell was made.
It the middle of October 1949, Mr. and Mrs. PLEET made a dinner in their home for the few Jewish families in Brockville at which time Ruth and I announced our engagement. By the end of October having taken in all the harvest, the decision was made to have a sale of the farm and everything on it on the 9th of November. An announcement was put in the local newspaper “The Brockville Recorder and Times” about the auction sale. The total sum that the sale brought in including the farm was fifty five hundred dollars, just enough to cover Mr. Berlin’s loan. The experience with the farm had cost us two thousand dollars exactly the amount my uncle Shloime (Solomon) sent for my contribution. A day or two later when we all met at the lawyer’s office in Kingston to annul our partnership and to be released from our financial debt to Mr. BERLIN who got his fifty five hundred dollars we owned him, I asked my former partner why I should be losing two thousand dollars in our endeavour to which he was more than an even partner and on whose credentials the partnership was built. Seeing his hesitation, the ZBARs and Mr. BERLIN agreed with my contention that he should be a partner to the loss. As he had no money, he was going to give me an “I.O.U.” for a thousand dollars. Just before signing the note, he took out a watch from his pocket and handing it to me, he said; It is worth a hundred dollars and for the balance of the nine hundred dollars, I will give your an I.O.U. Not being in the position to argue or contend the value, I accepted the watch and the I.O.U. for the nine hundred dollars.
I left for Montreal which was at that time not only the largest city in Canada, but also the centre for Canadian Jewry. I rented a room with an elderly childless Jewish couple by the name of Freedman at 990 Park Avenue for twenty dollars a month. A few days later, I found a job as a carpenter in a desk factory by the name of “Standard Desk.” There I worked ten hours a day, five days a week for the take home pay of twenty seven dollars a week. From this I had to put away five dollars a week for rent and the rest was mine to spend. Too much to spend I could not, yet I liked to take out Ruth on Saturday nights to a night club which was an expense between twelve and fifteen dollars, which left me with seven to ten dollars for food and transportation to and from work. On the way home from work, I used to stop at a corner store to buy a loaf of sliced rye bread for nineteen cents, three cans of sardines for twenty nine cents and a quarter of a pound of butter. Arriving home I used to butter all the slices of bread and make sardine sandwiches using up all the three cans. A third of those sandwiches used to make up my supper; a third for the following day’s breakfast and a third for lunch. At night, I used to start all over again. After coming from work on Friday and after a shave and shower, I used to go out to a nearby restaurant located around the corner on Bernard Street. There I used to order a hamburger served with mashed potatoes and green peas on the side and wash it down with a cup of tea. The bill used to come to ninety cents. At such an occasion I used to feel generous and after getting the cheque, I used to give the waiter a dollar and not wait for the ten cent change. When I used to get tired of eating bread and sardines three times a day, seven days a week, I used to treat myself to a lemon for a nickel and squeeze its juice over the sardines.
Friday nights we used to see a movie for free. Ruth worked for “Universal Studios.” Friday nights, the Quebec censor board used to review the movies before approving them for publication. The employees of the company were permitted to attend and bring a guest. So we used to see first run movies before anyone else, uncensored too. During the winter of 1949 and 1950, my cousin Harold was going to get married. I certainly wanted to attend and his entire family wanted to see me there including my uncle Shloime, my aunt Esther and their children. This time I knew to go first to the American consulate and ask for a one time entry visa. To my surprise I received one good for a whole year. As Ruth too had an aunt and uncle in New York, she decided to come along. We took the over night train from Montreal to New York. At the border, the train stopped and some immigration inspectors got on to check the passenger’s papers. Here again, I became apprehensive wondering if I will be permitted to enter or will I be taken off the train in the middle of the night and in the middle of nowhere. I did not even have enough money for a ticket back to Montreal. This time, however, with a visa to the states, all went well and in the morning we arrived in New York. As we were going out of the station, I heard a voice from a side saying, “Moishe?” Instinctively without thinking that there might be other Moishes in New York, I turned my head in the direction of the voice. There, some five meters away, stood three men, the youngest in his twenties, the oldest the mid forties and the third somewhere in between. By my immediate reaction they knew they got the right man. Those were my uncle’s three sons, Yankel (Jack), Avreml (Abe) and Eli, who came to pick us up from the station. After taking Ruth to her aunt and uncle, I was driven to my uncle’s on 2133 Daily Avenue. The very same address my mother gave me that unforgettable morning on the 30th of January 1943 when I parted with her before she and all other members of my family were taken to Auschwitz never to be seen again. There in their apartment was waiting my aunt Esther, her two daughters, Chvolke (Helen) and Rose, her son Lipah (Leo) and her son, the bridegroom Alchonon (Chone) Harold. After all the hugs and kisses, I asked for my uncle and was told that he was still in the nearby synagogue to which I asked to be taken. Upon seeing me and our embrace, I noticed that my uncle was wavering on his feet. He had to sit down. I took it to be because of his age but I noticed that my cousin, his son, seemed to be getting concerned. To my question if it happens often, my cousin answered that it was the first time he saw him that way. After a few minutes my uncle recovered. It turned out that it was the excitement due to his seeing me.
My cousin’s wedding took place Saturday night. It was a beautiful affair. To me, seeing only a couple weddings in Shershev and a couple more in the displaced persons camps in Italy, such a wedding was beyond my imagination. Even now after almost half a century later and after having seen many more weddings since then, I can still say that it was a lavish affair (for the time.) There I had the opportunity to meet the rest of my mother’s family that were fortunate to have left Europe before the rise of Nazi Germany. In fact, even before the First World War. Beside my uncle Shloime (Solomon) and Aunt Esther’s children at the wedding, I met my uncle’s younger brother Pesah (Phillip) with his wife Esther, their children and grandchildren, as well as my third uncle’s son Irving and his wife Ruth and their children. Unfortunately, my uncle Lipah, my mother’s third brother died a young man, a few years after coming to the states before the First World War. He left behind a wife and a small son. It was this little boy that stood before me as a grown man with his wife Ruth and their two teenage children. It was this cousin, Irving that paid for my passage from Italy to Canada. It is difficult after so many years to describe my feelings at that moment. To have discovered the entire family from my mother’s side well and alive. Sure I knew of them, but to see them in person, to be hugged and kissed by them, to see their tears running down their cheeks and feel their affection is beyond my ability, especially after so many years. There at that wedding I had the opportunity to introduce them to Ruth and if I may say so, to get their approval.
On my way back I felt invigorated even exhilarated having found such a family for real. Not just in my mind or through a letter but in reality as living, breathing, feeling, loving and affectionate members of my family. Montreal is known for its cold weather, and the winter of 1949-50 was no exception. Not being able to afford to take out Ruth anywhere except for the Saturday nights, I used to walk over to Ruth, as she was living with a family called PINSKY on Outremont, within walking distance from me. It had to be a cold evening to keep me from going over there, at least -25c. In those cold evenings, I used to stay in talking to the elderly people I stayed with. Their name was FREEDMAN. He used to eke out a living by selling newspapers at the corner of St. Catherine and St. Lawrence. I felt sorry for them. They had no children and no social help in those days. He, in his mid sixties was out of the house before I used to get up and I used to get up at five to be at work at seven. He had to be at the corner of the above mentioned streets to catch the early risers on their way to work. By then he had to have his newspapers unpacked and ready to sell to the passers by and drivers. He used to return home at about half past five in the evenings. I could never understand how this old man could withstand the bitter wintry Montreal cold for twelve hours a day. Yet he did. True, his wife used to come sometimes to give him a hand. But he never left that stand to her alone. I have heard later that he spent the rest of his days at that corner from where he was taken to a hospital where after a short stay, he passed away.
Once in a while I used to hear from my former partner who found a job with a clothing manufacturing company as a stock room man. I did see him during that winter a couple of times. At that time he was still looking for a wife. The winter was coming to an end, and with the approach of spring, the holiday of Pessach (Passover). I was invited for Pessach to Ruth’s parents in Brockville. Ruth left for home a few days before I came. When I arrived in Brockville, Ruth and her parents were waiting for me at the rail way station. Even her little brother Lenny was there. I spent a very pleasant eight days there. Mrs. PLEET, Ruth’s mother, was a very good cook and prepared a beautiful variety of food. For me it was a very welcome change from my daily diet of sardine sandwiches. During my stay there, we decided on a date for our wedding which was June 14th. A day after the holiday I returned to Montreal and back to work. A couple days before the set date, I returned to Brockville. Ruth preceded me by a few days and we began to ready ourselves for the wedding which would take place at “The Murray Street Shul” in Ottawa. All the arrangement, whatever they were, were made by Mr. & Mrs. PLEET as well as all the expenses in conjunction with the wedding were paid by them, as I had no money of my own. (Poor Poor Daddy!!) A day before the wedding, my two uncles Shloime (Solomon) and Pesah (Phillip) AUERBACH arrived from New York. In the early morning of the wedding day, Mr. PLEET, his ten year old son, Lenny, my two uncles and I got into the car and drove to Ottawa. Ruth and her mother left a day earlier. The other guests from my side so to say were Mr. & Mrs. ZBAR and Mr. BERLIN. All other guest were from Ruth’s side of the family. The wedding and reception took place in the afternoon. Ruth’s parents accompanied her to the canopy. For me, my uncle Shloime and Mrs. ZBAR took me. After a buffet luncheon and dancing, everybody went home. My uncles drove with my in-laws (Ruth’s parents) to Brockville from where they took the train to New York. Ruth and I remained in Ottawa for a couple more days and then returned to Brockville. From there we left for Old Orchard Beach on our honeymoon. Old Orchard Beach was then the place for honeymooners. I like to mention that this time the border inspector gave me a hard time, despite the fact that my year long visa was still valid. I do not know if he was this ignorant or pretended to be by asking such questions like why I did not serve in the German army. To my answer that I am a Jew, he replied: So? After a good half hour of such bright questions during which he accused Ruth of traveling under a false name, seeing that she is my wife and all she had for identification was her birth certificate claiming her as Ruth PLEET. The answer that we just got married and there was no time for changing names did not satisfy him. Finally he must have gotten tired and let us go. Old Orchard had a beautiful sandy beach that stretched for miles. Our hotel was right on the beach. Between the hotel and the Atlantic, there was nothing but a stretch of thirty to forty meters of fine sand in either direction endlessly.
After our honeymoon, we returned to Brockville where we spent a couple of months. I supposedly helped my father in law in the dry good’s store which he managed to run with his wife nicely without me. However, he used to do some credit business with some customers who at times were not prompt with their payments and had to be reminded. At times it was necessary to make a home call to collect, which I helped out with. Brockville had a close knit Jewish community at that time of about a dozen families. One of them by the name of BINDER whose head of the family was my father-in-law’s first cousin and they had four children, two of them about Ruth’s age. There was another family with three children of the same age yet there was no active Jewish life for young people and they were all striving to go to the big city Montreal. Ruth and I decided to do the same and with the approach of fall we went there. Not being able to afford rent for an apartment, we rented a room from a family by the name of GURMAN on Waverly Street. Ruth got back her job with “Universal Pictures” and I started looking for a job. With the help of a landsman (townsman) by the name of Sam (Shepsl) ZLOTNIK, who came to Canada in the twenties, I was directed to a clothing factory by the name of “Quality Pad.” They were in need of a cutter. A trade in which I did not have the slightest idea. I knocked on the office door. Upon entering I was met by the owner, Mr. LEVITT, a man in the late forties. He was well dressed, well groomed and well spoken and very presentable. To my question if he needed help, his reply was a straight forward “Yes”, adding with a question if I can cut cloth. I answered “No” but I am willing to learn. But I said: I have a condition. He looked at me inquisitively. What is that? He asked. I am a married man I said and need at least thirty five dollars a week to get by. I know it is a lot of money for a beginner, but I am willing to work hard. He thought for a moment and said; all right. We will give it a try. Be in tomorrow at eight.
I found out a couple of weeks later that the only reason he was willing to pay me twice the going wages for a beginner, was the fact that I was married. Single young men, after working at this trade for a while, used to leave him and go somewhere else as tradesmen. He knew that a married man who is getting a reasonable pay would not look for greener pastures. Besides, if he would be dissatisfied with me, he could always let me go. It was a small factory specializing in making paddings and linings for men’s suits and coats. There was the foreman, George, his two brother’s in-law, one a young man in his mid twenties who was the head cutter and his younger brother, his assistant. There was a presser and some two dozen women seamstresses. The head cutter was not very happy with me being brought in, for his younger brother who was working there for a couple of years was not permitted by the owner to be trained as a cutter. Instead he was told to train me. After a few weeks, he got used to the idea. His brother-in-law the foreman was getting along with me from the beginning and eventually everything fell into place. The most important thing was that the boss was satisfied with me. In fact the foreman told me that the owner told him in a moment of fidelity that the best decision he ever made regarding an employee was to take me in. I am not trying to be facetious if I say; the boss was darn right. Six months after I started to work there I was doing as much work as the head cutter who was getting twice my pay. Our work consisted of piling up fifty layers of cloth nicely and evenly one on top of the other. The length of a table was ten meters, the top layer was all marked up to serve as a pattern and the whole fifty layers were cut with special cutters at the same time by following the top pattern. It was a responsible job for if you made a mistake you ruin fifty pieces at once. The work itself carried with it a measure of danger, for the electric cutters were so sharp and fast that one could cut his finger or fingers off before even realizing it. Yet I did my work skillfully and neatly without ever hearing a complaint or remark.
Ruth’s work gave us the opportunity to see a movie for free each week. We stopped going out to night clubs every Saturday. Instead we used to go to see a movie and live entertainment at the same theatre by popular singers and comedians of that time. We assumed a normal life style if it can be called so in our financial position. I saw an opportunity to improve my education and in time to become an engineer, my childhood dream. I started to attend Sir George Williams College three nights a week. I used to go straight from work to school and get home at eleven at night. My entire day Sunday was taken up with doing home work. This is how the winter 1950-51 passed. For Pesach holidays, we went to Ruth’s parents in Brockville. For the summer months I gave up school and that gave us a chance to go out a little more. There were amusement parks, boat rides on the St. Lawrence River with music and dancing. Otherwise the summer of fifty one passed uneventful. In the fall my father-in-law bought a building in Montreal on Linton Avenue. It was between Lagerie and Lavua. At that time some of the buildings on that section of the street were not even finished so the street was in a mess. The building consisted of twenty apartments. It had a low government mortgage and he bought it with a small down payment. As Ruth’s parents were still living in Brockville, somebody had to look after it. Here was also an opportunity for us to get an apartment which was difficult to get in Montreal at that time. So we moved to Linton Avenue from one room to a two bedroom apartment with our own kitchen and a balcony in the back. Of course the apartment was absolutely empty. Ruth started to look for furniture.
Fortunately we still had the money we received at our wedding from family and friends, especially the generous gifts from my family in New York. Ruth found a bedroom set that she liked for which we paid some twenty five hundred dollars and which emptied almost all our savings. We had enough to buy a refrigerator, a stove, a washing machine and a kitchen table with four chairs. We had no more money left. Yet we needed a chesterfield set in the empty living room. For this we went to Eaton’s and bought it on credit, the only thing we ever bough on credit. It was a wonderful change from living in our one room and the sharing of other facilities. The unaccustomed privacy, your own kitchen with everything in it, your own stove, refrigerator, washing machine, (no dryer), electric kettle, iron and ironing board, toilet facilities and the availability of a shower at any time. All those things that most of us take so much for granted, how easily we got used to all of this. At about the same time, I went back to Sir George Williams for another semester. It was not any easier than the previous year. My day used to start at six in the morning and on the school days; I used to come back at eleven at night and sometimes later, depending on the weather. The winter of 1951-52 passed uneventfully. In spring we went to Brockville for Pessach. Two months after our return to Montreal, we found out that Ruth is pregnant. Yet she continued to work for we knew that once she stops, we can expect difficult times. I was not the only one concerned, so were Ruth’s parents, in particular her father, Mr. PLEET, who was a man of action. Ruth’s parents used to come out for a Sunday sometimes to visit us. A matter of a three hour drive in each direction. Once during an early fall visit, I happen to be alone with Ruth’s father for a minute when he said to me: We will have to find something better for you than what you are doing. Pretty soon you will have another mouth to feed and Ruth won’t be able to work. You will not be able to support them on what you are earning.
At that time I was already making forty five dollars a week. On an occasional Sunday morning I used to go in to work and get five dollars extra. It was considered good wages at that time. I was not indifferent to the increase in my wages and saw in it the appreciation of my boss for the work I produced. I tried to reciprocate in kind by working even harder. I also knew that the head cutter got the same raises too and that he was making eighty five dollars a week and not producing more than I did. I felt that if I will tell him that my wife is pregnant and that we are expecting a baby soon, he will hint about a raise. August went by. In early September, I mentioned to my boss about the fact that my wife is pregnant to which he did not react. Two weeks later I mentioned it again adding that my wife is not working and I will have to ask for a raise of five dollars as soon as the baby is born. In his always polite manner, he replied: There will be no more raises this year. I was hurt. I knew that he knew how hard I worked for him and if there was a need for an exception, it was now, even if he did not intend to give raises to anyone in the place for the rest of the year he should have done it for me. Maybe I was looking at it from my point of view only. I was disappointed because I thought of him so highly. To his workers and to all I have seen, he was always the perfect gentleman.
On Ruth’s parents next visit, my father-in-law came with a plan on which he was already working before he even confided in me. His plan was to buy a going concern, like a corner store in those days where the owner used to stay in the store from morning to almost midnight every day of the week. By putting in two shifts a day, six or seven days a week, doing all the serving by himself, not having the time to spend any money, the owner could be sure of a livelihood. Ruth’s family came with a list of several stores for sale and the two of us set out to look them over. We looked at a couple stores which seemed to be on the verge of bankruptcy. I was ready to give up, but my father-in-law kept on looking at others. We found one at the corner of Victoria Street and Linton Avenue, a block and a half from our apartment. It was owned by an elderly Jewish man who wanted desperately to sell it. It was a large store, some forty by forty feet. Along the left wall of the entrance was a soda bar at which besides cold drinks were also available sandwiches of all sorts and some pastries, as well as all style eggs, hot dogs and hamburgers. Along the counter were some twenty revolving stools for the customers. The wall facing the entrance was covered with shelves on which one could find a variety of groceries, biscuits and snacks plus a full variety of canned and bottled soft drinks. In front of those shelves stood a counter on which there was a slicing machine for slicing meats. Next to it stood a scale. Next to the counter there was a very long display refrigerator. The lower part held milk and milk products. The upper part, under glass held all kinds of smoked meats, turkey and bologna. Next to the refrigerator stood glass display cases with all kinds of bread, rolls and pastries. Along the wall to the right of the entrance, the shelved wall was full with a big variety of cigarettes, cigars and tobacco plus an assortment of toys, sweets, chocolates, candy and chocolate boxes. To add to all this, there was an assortment of handy items like writing material, notions and so on. It looked like a good going concern with customers constantly coming in.
It was too good to be true that someone with such a business would want to sell it. My father-in-law asked him outright why. The elderly man pointing at one man working there said; this is my son-in-law. He worked for years in a clothing factory. I bought this store for him and my daughter. (Here he pointed to a woman of about forty standing behind the soda bar,) each of them work here eighty hours a week. They had it for a few years and they are doing well, but my son-in-law got tired working so many hours a day, seven days a week and wants out. He wants to go back to the clothing factory where he worked eight hours a day, five days a week and had the evenings and week ends for himself. Not only this, he wants his wife to stop doing it and come back to a normal life. The two of them, he continued, are working for four people. Besides them, their two teenage children come to help out after school. It is a good store and we are doing well but without them, I cannot run it. If your daughter and son-in-law are willing to work hard, they will do fine. Judging by the location it had to be doing well. All around, a lot of residential buildings were going up and this was the only store of this kind in the neighbourhood. The elderly man asked the price and would not budge from it knowing that it was reasonable for that store. Here I saw an agreement which could only be concluded among deeply religious Jews like my father-in-law and that elderly man. Fine, said my father-in-law, it is a deal. You finish today’s business and take the cash for the day’s sales and leave everything in the store as it is. Take nothing but your hat and give me the keys. They shook hands. My father-in-law gave him the name of a lawyer that would represent him and asked him to be there next morning with his. With that, my father-in-law walked out leaving me for the rest of the day to learn a business in one afternoon and evening; a business of which I did not have the slightest idea. The store closed at midnight. The owner as agreed emptied the cash. He took literally his hat which he put over his “Kipah”, gave me the keys, wished me good luck and he and his family drove away. I locked the store and walked home up the street less than five minutes away.
I was in business. True, the store was in my father-in-law’s name for a couple reasons. Firstly, there was a balance or mortgage to be paid out weekly to the previous owner for a period of two years at which time the store could not be taken as security for the balance, and my father-in-law was the guarantor providing that he was the owner. Secondly, I myself did not want it in my name. Not having put anything in it and not wanting to carry the burden and responsibility for so much, although I was in fact running it completely. Not only is Montreal known for its cold winters, it is also known for its hot and humid summers. That summer was no exception. Very few stores had air conditioning at that time, particularly stores of this kind. During the long and hot summer days, the store used to heat up and by late afternoon and evening, it was unbearable inside. I recall closing the store at midnight and hoping that it will cool off overnight but when I opened it in the morning, it was like walking into a furnace. In those days customers did not hang around in the store too long. They bought want they needed and walked out. The only ones that used to stay a while were those sitting at the soda bar that came in to eat or drink something cool, and even they used to leave as soon as they were finished. We had half a dozen coolers in the store where we kept soft drinks. As a rule they used to be empty by midnight. It was only at midnight when I used to lock the door that I had to fill them up so they should be cool for the next day. Throughout those long and hot days, Ruth used to stay with me in the store serving customers of whom many used to remark that she should not do it, for she was noticeably pregnant. The day used to start at seven. I had to be in the store before eight in order to open at eight. However, before opening I had to take in the rye bread, rolls and bagels from the street where the delivery man used to leave them an hour or two earlier. I would put them in behind the glass display cases after counting them. Next, I had to take in all the daily newspapers, English and French which were delivered in the early morning hours by the respective delivery vans and stock them up on the stands. All this had to be done before the customers start coming in and as soon as I opened the doors, they would be waiting to enter. Quite often, they used to be waiting for me to open. The same was with the help. They too had to be there at the opening time. We had three girls working with us. One used to come in at eight and work until four in the afternoon when she was replaced by another one that worked until midnight. A third girl used to come in at ten and work until six in the afternoon when the soda bar was the busiest. The girl's job was to serve at the bar only. To serve the rest of the store we had a man of about thirty five who used to come in at eight and leave at six, five days a week, the same as for the girls. A forth girl used to work shifts in such a way as to make sure that there are enough help on the week ends. In fact the week end used to be busier than the week days, particularly Sunday evenings when many of our customers used to come back home from a weekend in the Laurentian Mountains. They were thirsty and hungry and would stop by the store to buy bread, rolls, milk, cheese, ice cream, cold brinks and delicatessen. I can recall Sunday nights that we used to run short of many items.
As soon as the store used to open, the daily deliveries used to start. We kept a variety of white sliced bread from different bakeries and their deliveries used to start one after the other. As soon as one company’s delivery truck used to pull away, another one took its place. The same with the milk, ice cream, cheese, eggs, delicatessen from various companies and a full variety of soft drinks. As soon as each delivery man used to unload his goods, he gave me the bill and received at once the full payment. I used to get weary having to pay out continually all morning long, morning after morning, so much money not knowing if it will be sold or not. But sold it was and next morning, I was there again with money in my pocket and start all over again. Saturday and Sunday, the busiest days of the week, the only help I had besides the girls at the soda bar, was my wife Ruth, which was not enough. I arranged for two men to come in those two days a week. They were two survivors of the Holocaust from Romania who came with their families to Canada at about the same time as I and were working in clothing factories. Those extra two days work was a G-d sent gift for them. In fact if I was unusually busy some evening and needed help they were more than happy to come, especially since they lived not far from the store. I knew only too well what it meant to a newcomer with a family, to have a few extra dollars.
My father-in-law came in from Brockville to see how we are doing and realized how hard I worked. After a couple visits, he decided to come in on every second Sunday, so I could have the day off. I sure was thankful for it and took advantage of it to catch up on some needed sleep. With the beginning of September the weather got cooler and the store more bearable. Across the road was a large so called Protestant school whose student were ninety percent Jewish for the whole neighbourhood at that time was almost all Jewish. They used to say that there are sixteen hundred students there. Lunch time many of them used to come into the store to buy sweets, snacks and drinks. During that hour the store was like a mad house with as many children as the store could hold yelling, screaming, pushing and shoving, one trying to outdo the other. It was a daily occurrence to see grown up customers trying to push their way to a counter in order to be served and give up in the middle. Yet I used to put up with it. It was surprising to see how much it amounts to when each small customer spend five or ten cents and the customers come in by the hundreds. The only drawback regarding the children was that on the right side to the entrance, along the wall, there were many stands with magazines, books, newspapers and comic books. It was the comic books that attracted the children like bees to honey. Those that succeeded to get close to them read them up to the moment the bell rang calling them back to class. There were those, but not many, that in the dash to get back to school ran out with comic books hidden under their jacket. We knew of it but were unable to keep an eye on everyone of them. If keeping comic books was profitable, I do not know. Frankly I was in doubt, but having “inherited” from the previous owner, we continued it. The most enjoyable time for me in the store used to be Sunday morning. For some unknown reason it became almost a tradition for Jewish men to go Sunday morning to their favourite bakery for fresh bread, rolls or bagel and to the delicatessen store for some lox, cream cheese and other delicacies and bring it home to their family. Here in our store they could get all they needed in one trip, plus the Jewish papers which we used to sell. As in our neighbourhood lived many Jewish newcomers, Sunday morning the store used to be jammed with Jewish men; some waiting in line to be served; some with their bags full but not wanting to leave a conversation or listening to one; some discussing trivial subjects like the weather and some much more serious subjects like world politics or anti Semitism. Everything was said in a loud voice as if the power of persuasion lay in the loudness of the voice. I liked to listen to those discussions in between serving the customers. I would listen to the arguments, some silly, some bordering on ignorant but some brilliant. How I would have liked to join them in those conversations, but I was too busy. The remarks one could hear, the comments, the statements, the absurdity of some of them and the genius of others. To think of them now, they seem so irrelevant. But then they were so applicable, so pertinent to those individuals at that time and to their situation.
With the beginning of October Ruth began to stay home more of the time as the date of the birth of our first child was approaching according to the obstetrician Dr. GOLD. In fact I began to run over to the house to see how Ruth was doing. Friday, the tenth of October (Hashana Rabah) Ruth began to feel the first childbirth pains, but they were long in between coming. In the evening they began to come at shorter intervals. I ran home where Ruth was alone in the apartment but more calm than I was. When she told me to call a taxi, in great excitement I could not recall our building number or the apartment number. Ruth had to take the telephone and tell the dispatcher our address. I took her to the Jewish General Hospital and after checking her in at about eight; I went back to the store. We were busy that night as every Friday. At about a quarter to eleven, the phone rang. I picked it up and heard a voice on the other end: This is Dr. GOLD. Your wife had a baby. I had enough wits about me to ask what it was. A boy, he answered. All I remember saying was, “Thank-you, Thank-you Dr. GOLD”. I must have said it a dozen times. He finally managed to squeeze in the couple words; you can see her now. In great excitement I grabbed a box of cigars from a shelf and started handing them out to all the customers in the store yelling: It’s a boy! It’s a boy! I can still see the surprised looks of some of the customers that did not know Ruth was even pregnant. Within a few minutes I was in the hospital. Before I had a chance to push the elevator button, the door opened and Dr. Gold, Ruth’s obstetrician, steps out. I shook his hand thanking him for his help and got into the elevator. I was directed to a room where Ruth was resting. After a gentle kiss and a few tender inquiries, I asked for the baby and was told to go to the nursery. After writing the name “KANTOROWITZ” on a piece of paper I showed it to one of the nurses behind a double glass in a room full of babies, she pointed to one of them. To be honest his almost completely covered face did not look much different from all the others in the room, yet I instantly felt warmth coming over me towards that not yet one hour old infant. That feeling came to me and over-whelmed me but with much more intensity eight days later. That’s when I held him at his Brith Milah (circumcision) tied down on a special contraption before the well known (in Montreal) Rabbi HIRSHORN who was bestowing on him all the traditional blessings required at such a ceremony according to the laws of Moses and Israel, and having him named with the names of my father Itzchak (Isaak) and the name of my grand father, my father’s father Koppel-Yaakov. Both of whom perished together in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on January 1, 1943.
Holding him I was speaking to them all. To both my parents, grandparents, sisters, brother, uncles, aunts and cousins, saying to them, not with my lips but with my heart crying out to them with all my being; look, here is your continuity. You will not be forgotten. Neither will your names. Despite all attempts, you will live in them, in their souls and in their memories which I intend to instill. Maybe because of the passing of so many years or maybe my inability to verbalize my feelings at that moment, but all I knew was that I was very excited, very agitated at that time and felt closer to them in heaven than to those on earth. In those days a woman giving birth to a girl was kept in the hospital for seven days, a boy for eight. Right after the “Brith Milah”, Ruth and the baby were discharged. Ruth’s parents came from Brockville as soon as I called them with the good news, and helped with bringing Ruth home. After a few days we arranged for a nurse to sty with us and Ruth’s parents left for home. I will admit that the first couple nurses were not to our satisfaction, but Ruth found a nice middle aged nurse by the name of Mrs. Chapman who became like a member of the family and who stayed with us for a year. She slept in the second bed room of our two bedroom apartment with our son whose first name we anglicized to Earl Kenneth. After a couple of months, Ruth started to come into the store to help out, but not for the length of time she used to. I myself started feeling the physical exhaustion from the sixteen hour a day work, not counting the hour of cleaning up after closing and an hour from locking the store and going to bed. The sixteen hours of each day I was constantly on my feet and on the go. Even my meals which most of the time consisted of a sandwich, I used to eat standing, with one hand holding the food and serving a customer with the other. If there was no customer for a minute, I could bring up a case of soft drinks with one hand from the basement and start putting the bottles in the cooler.
Even every second Sunday’s day off when Ruth’s father used to come in for the day to relieve me, did not restore my full energy. I decided to give Carl, the full time worker, the keys to the store. I left him money to start paying out for the early deliveries, and I myself started to come in an hour later. Thus passed the winter 1952-53. With spring, Ruth began to take our son for walks in a carriage. The most likely place of course, was the store where he used to be admired by the customers whom we got to know pretty well and with some we became friends. Our son, of course in our eyes, was a good looking child, but was indeed a big child for his age taking after Ruth’s father’s family who were big people. In fact Ruth had a couple first cousins living in Montreal who moved from Ottawa, where the rest of her father’s family, the family PLEET, lived. Ruth’s father, Penny (Pinchus) grew up in Ottawa where he had five brothers and one sister Sarah. They were all married and some of them had grandchildren at that time like the older Meir, next Hersh and Avrom. The other two were Aaron and Issie (Isaak). A second sister lived at that time in New York and her name was Goldie, who after the death of her husband moved to Jerusalem to be with her son. Ruth’s mother’s family in contrast all grew up in Montreal. At that time Ruth’s maternal grandmother, Clara (Kaine) was still living in Montreal on City Hall Street. Ruth’s mother’s oldest brother Harry (Hersh) was living in San Francisco and so was his brother Hymie (Chaim). Another brother Larry was living in Ellenville, New York and the youngest brother Isroel better known as Irving Layton, and the two sisters Gerti (Gittel) and Esther were living in Montreal. All of them were married with children.
It was their children, Ruth’s first cousins that were around our age, some ten years younger and some as many years older. All of them, all of us were working. We were all at our most productive age and knew it. So we worked hard to get ahead. And get ahead we did. In the next two years we managed to pay up the balance on the store and could in all honesty say that we owned it. The fear of losing it by missing one weekly payment on the mortgage was gone and with it the fear of losing it due to other unforeseen circumstances like sickness or even drop in sales. Looking back I would say that those were good years. If one does not aspire or demand too much from life. There is no question that I worked hard, punching in twice as many hours a week as the average worker. The physical work compounded by the strain of running the business, which had its daily amounts of unpleasant surprises big and small, is very demanding. Yet we managed to overcome it in no small measure thanks to my willingness to look back to another time, to another era and see how meaningless, how trivial those problems were in comparison to what I have seen and went through. Daily there were problems with rowdy teenagers from having to ask them to leave the store to calling the police to chase them out. Catching youngsters at the store’s doors with school bags full with comic books and after calling their parents to the store and expecting them to give their children a spanking, it was I who used to get tongue lashed for accusing their children of thievery. One mother even went as far as to threaten me with court action. Of course there was a dozen people who witnessed the whole affair who were mostly neighbours and who knew that woman and who were not shy to tell her that she was in the wrong. Still, we had that dollar we needed, even though we had no time to spend it. Yet thanks to Ruth’s father who used to come in from Brockville every second Sunday morning, a three hour drive and give me the day off that we could take in some of what Montreal had to offer. In those days Montreal was known for its nightclubs. In fact it was rivaling New York in number. Some used to say that even in entertainment quality. So every second Sunday night was our night. After a dinner in a nice restaurant we used to go to a nightclub for entertainment and dancing.