MEMOIRS OF SHERESHEV

By MORRIS KANTOROWITZ

Chapter 1.B

We took up three rooms in my grandparent's house, but my mother had to share the kitchen with my grandmother. As the house was intended to be a single-family house. Sure enough, I soon got better. Too many memories from the next two years did not remain with me. I will mention only some; close to a year after we moved in there, a fire broke out on the other side of the river, which was no more than 100 metres from where we lived.There was a volunteer fire brigade in Shereshev that consisted of a couple dozen men with little training and even less equipment. This volunteer group seemed unable to bring the fire under control, and the fire spread, engulfing the neighboring houses reaching the riverbank. There was a danger that the fire could cross the few metre wide river, thus putting the entire main street including my grandparent's house in danger. My mother got a wagon-drayer (wagon owner) who came with his wagon, loading it up as high as humanly possible, we set out to our other grandparent's, my mother's parents, who lived a good distance from there. I remember that my maternal grandfather came for me in person, not letting me climb on the wagon he carried me in his arms, a distance of well over a kilometre. He was in his early seventies, looked and acted like all men of his age at that time, that is to say, much older then a man in his early seventies now a days.

I recall that while he was carrying me, I looked up to the sky and noticed that it was covered with flying sparks and small cinders that were continuously floating slowly to the ground and showering the houses we were just leaving behind. The fire was eventually put out with the help of the fire brigade from the neighboring town Pruzany that came with a fire truck and motorized pumps, which Shereshev didn't have.

The next morning we returned to find that half a dozen houses went up in flames last night but the fire didn't cross the river. My mother took us two that is, my sister Sheva and me, to look at the devastation and the still glowing cinders.

Another memory: almost across my grandfather's house a stranger to us all opened a barbershop. It was a man from deep in Poland, big bodied with to me a very strange (Polish-Yiddish) accent, by the name of Shmulevitch. He owned a small caliber rifle. Every morning after opening his shop he used to come out with his rifle, lining up a row of bottles or other discarded objects on a fence he used to shoot them down. Every time he used to do it, which used to be every sunny morning, a group of idlers used to gather around to look at the stranger who indulges in such a none Jewish sport. The end was that the man couldn't make a living in Shereshev and a couple of years later he moved away.

We lived in our paternal grandparents house to the end of 1928, we, that is my mother, my sister Sheva, and I.  My father lived all that time in the village of Wierchy, where he ran his restaurant. There he rented the bigger part of a local Jewish owned home which served as living quarters for my father, liquor retail and restaurant.

Already in summer 1927 we made our first trip there, so we could spend some time together. On holidays our father used to come to Shereshev. One such trip to Wierchy, stayed with me up to now, it could be because it might have been the first. In order to get there one had to use several means of transportation. From Shereshev, one had to get to the next town, the district town of Pruzany, by horse and buggy 18 kilometres, a three hours ride, from Pruzany to get to the railway station Oranczyce-Linovo, a distance of 12 kilometres by a narrow gauge train. From there we went by regular train to Brest-Litowsk and changed trains to Kovel.There in Kovel, for the first time in my life, I saw what the people there called an omnibus. It looked like a little bus with no motor, pulled by a team of 4 horses. The wheels were made of wood framed in a metal railing just like the farmers' wagons. On one of our trips to Wierchy, one of the wheels broke and thanks to a sturdy wire in one of our suitcases the driver managed to continue the trip.

Arriving in Wierchy, we moved in with our father in his cramped quarters.I still remember as my father took me to one of the sawmills to show me the huge steam engine. It was at a time when my father still held me by my hand.There in the noisy engine room one of the attendants climbed up the ladder and pressed the steam whistle.It frightened me immensely and I would have run out had my father not held me by my hand. I can still see the man and his wife my father rented the house from, their 2 sons, ages 10 and 12, as in that summer afternoon, they are plucking the feathers from the live geese, each is holding a goose by its neck with one hand, and with the other is plucking the feathers. Their honking could be heard far and wide.

I still remember the Jewish "Poretz" (large estate owner), a rarity in Poland, as Jews were not permitted to own land. Only those Jews that owned land before the First World War under the Czar who gave such permission to a handful of privileged Jews were permitted.

His estate was close to the village and he used to ride into the village on horseback, a tall man in riding boots and breeches with a rifle over his shoulder.Once he rode into our restaurant sitting on his horse.He always had a pocketful of a particular kind of candy, which he never failed to give me on his visit to us for a chat with my father, which was very often. He even tried to have a conversation with me in Polish and Russian, which at that age I spoke neither.

As I mentioned earlier, there were 2 large sawmills in Wierchy, the main industry and employer in the area, which employed at times several hundred people, including the farmers from the surrounding villages that used to haul the logs to the mill.They used to get paid once a month. The workers in need of money before payday, used to get from the owners a hand written note stating that the note is worth the indicated amount to the bearer.This note used to be accepted as indicated by the few local stores as currency, and cashed in at the end of the month in the mills' office.The workers, having cashed in their notes and in possession of real cash had to go to celebrate the event drinking away a fair part of their pay.Many became intoxicated and had to be driven home by their buddies.A drinking habit was innate in many gentiles in that part of the world.The handful of Jewish small store keepers including my father made a living from the non-Jewish population that was at that time fully employed as were the Jewish tradesman and artisans.

I still remember the Jewish blacksmith and his assistant, a young man with extraordinary strength, as a circle of gentiles used to gather around to admire the young Jewish strong man.He used to pick out the biggest and heaviest man around, lift him over his head and throw him several metres away.

In between our trip to Wierchy, we used to go for a summer vacation to a place called "Domaczewo".This was a summer resort near the river Bug some 40 kilometres south of Brest-Litowsk. A Jewish Shtetlwhose inhabitants main source of subsistence was renting out rooms and cottages to vacationers that used to come to spend the week, month, or summer there and to enjoy the fresh air, the walk in the forest, and the smell of its pine trees.

I can still see in my mind the Shtetland Jewish homes, a couple rows of wooden houses, built on a sandy terrain, the cobblestone streets where the vacationers walked in the late summer afternoon.I remember peeking in the open doors and windows of the Jewish homes in which I, as an inquisitive child used to look in and at times watch as the local Jews the upper part of their bodies naked, except for the "Arbah-Kanfess" (a undergarment worn by Orthodox Jews with tassels on its four corners), working in the sweltering and suffocating mid day heat, making paper bags for grocery stores to supplement their income.

The main attraction however was the surrounding pine forest where the vacationers used to spend most of their time. Even there I can see the local baker with a large baking pan resting with one side on his middle, suspended by a cord over his neck, loaded with cookies and other sweet baked stuff, walking around the groups of vacationers especially where there were children around, and yelling; "cheese cake, butter cake preserve cake".

I used to find the pronunciation of his Brest-Litowsk Yiddish intriguing, for it was very different then ours. That poor man used to spend most of his nights baking in order to be out in the morning with his freshly baked cakes.

Getting to Domaczewo was no easy matter. To begin with there was the inevitable trip from Shereshev to Pruzany, a distance of eighteen kilometres that took three hours by horse and buggy. From Pruzany to the station Oranczyce-Linovo by small gage train and from there to Brest-Litowsk by regular train. There, we changed trains for Drohyczin Lubelski and get off in Domaczewo.

Let us also keep in mind that by going there my mother had to rent a room or two, she had to do her own baking and cooking, there were no dishes available neither to buy nor to rent, so half a household of dishes, utensils, clothing and underwear had to travel with us.How my mother managed to bring all the above and us two small children along on such a long and tiresome trip I never understood.My father too used to come out to Domaczevo to spend with us a few days.

In those very early years of my life I used to spend a lot of my time at my maternal grandparents Auerbuch and often did sleep over. They used to live by themselves, a modest and peaceful way of life. My grandfather dividing his time between their children and grandchildren on one hand and his synagogue, called the "Rabbis Synagogue", in which he was the "Gabby" (Trustee) on the other.

It was a few years later, I got a bit older and they were already gone that I realized how much they loved us and how much I missed them. Their love and family devotion was boundless, so characteristic, so natural, and so innate in the AUERBUCH side of our family.