MEMOIRS OF SHERESHEV

By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ

Chapter 4.C

In grade 3, we were introduced to new subjects, like nature study, geography and even a start in physics. I can still see myself struggling to understand the map as the river Vistula flows to the Baltic Sea northwards, yet on the map is going upwards. I must have overcome the problem, for geography became one of my favorite subjects, whose teacher in grade 3 was the principal PEKER.  The principal ran the class and the school with an iron hand.  His presence in class used to instill terror within the pupils. His political conviction was Zionist-Revisionist which manifested itself in his every idea and action, even in his family life.  Revisionism, or its ideal of Zionism was until then unknown in Shereshev.  There were the so called “Leftists Zionist Organizations like the “HaHashomer Hatzair” or “Hachalutz”, to which many of the young people belonged, and in which my uncle, my father’s youngest brother Eli(Eliyah) was very active in the early 30’s. 

The new year of 1933 was approaching and I couldn’t  wait to write the year 1933, the two consecutive 3s after the number 19.  It has been my privilege to have written, not only the two consecutive numbers 3, but also the 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s and I hope to write the 3 numbers zero too.   I say privileged, for it is because of the merits and intervention to the almighty of my parents, grandparents and their ancestors, that I ascribe my survival and having lived to see it and write about it, for very few of my shtetl´s contemporaries and none of my peers, could make such a claim.

With the winter snow, farmers from the nearby villages, used to start bringing in wagons full, or sleds full, of firewood which they used to cut down in the surrounding forest, and sell to the Jewish population, which was not permitted to cut it. The wood used to be stacked in the yards where it remained until the next fall.   By then, it was good and dry and taken into wood sheds, where it was used the following winter for heating the houses and cooking.  This system, of providing fuel was a generations old tradition and the only source of fuel in our part of the world.

Thus went by the first winter in our own house, despite the cold and snow that used to accompany our severe winters.  Our home in which our father put so much of his life and soul, was a big and comfortable house for Shereshev with a large kitchen and 7 spacious rooms of which 3 served as bedrooms.  One room with a separate front entrance was left empty as my father was planning to open someday another store. The other 3 rooms served as a dining room, living room and parlour room. As far as I knew, our house was the only one in shtetl, that had permanent double windows and heavy massive outside doors.  Despite the size and spaciousness of the house, I used to loathe the so-called “laundry days” that used to take place every 2 months or so.  It was a 3-day process when the kitchen and nearby rooms were stocked with piles of dirty laundry.  First the laundry had to be washed by hand with the help of a washboard and strong soap.  Next, the washed laundry was put in a huge copper boiler that stood on the cooking stove and took up all the 4 burners.  After thorough boiling, it was washed again in a wash tub, in which a tiny tube of a dark blue substance was added with each load, which made the white laundry whiter.  It was only after the second washing and wringing that the laundry was hung out in the sun on specially strung strings to dry.  On rainy cloudy days, or in winter, it used to be hung in the attic.  Outside in the sun, the laundry used to dry within hours, but in the attic it took much longer, especially in the winter, when the wet laundry used to freeze before it had a chance to dry and had to be brought into the house still frozen and in the shape of the person it belonged to.  It was especially applicable to men’s combination underwear, which was always a subject of a remark or joke.  When it came to put the laundry away, it had to be done over with a special heavy rolling pin, ironed and everything had its place, but that was done of course later by my mother and the maid.  To do the laundry, my mother used to get another woman by the name of “Izbyta”, who spent many years in Jewish homes doing laundry and learning to speak Yiddish as good as any Jew.  Because the laundry days entailed so much work and was such a big undertaking, which involved constant trips to the well for  water, nobody looked forward to it and was putting it off for as long as possible.  Therefore, everybody in the family had cupboards full and drawers full of underwear.  The more one had, the longer one could wait for doing the laundry and the longer one waited, the more dirty laundry accumulated.  Here I’m speaking of our family and for the ones close to us. How the poor or poorer managed, I would rather not speculate.  We settled in our new and own home.  No longer did we have to think of moving, and it seemed that we found permanency where not only I, my sister and brother were born, but so were my parents. 

Half of my friends lived within 100 meters from me and from our windows I could see their homes.  On the left, on the same side of the market place (Square) as our house lived Itzel MALETZKY, his father was a half partner to the flour mill and electric station in Shtetl.  Their house was on the very corner of the Ostrowiecka Street and market square.  In the middle of the southern side of the market, lived my friend Kalman KALBKOUF, whose father was one of the ten butchers in town.  Across our house on the west side of the market lived the 2 brothers and friends of mine, Laizer  (Lazar) and Litek ROTENBERG.  With the two brothers ROTENBERG, I became very close friends and used to spend a lot of time with them.  Their father was the bookkeeper in a flour mill which belonged partly to their grandfather, Yoshua PINSKY.  Their home was attached to Yoshua PINSKY’s house, which was without a doubt, the largest house in Shereshev.  In this house where Yoshua lived with his wife, Bluma and occupied several rooms, there was also his hardware store.  Yet the largest part of the house, was rented out to the pharmacist BAUMRITER, who lived there with his wife and 2 daughters in quite roomy quarters with enough space for a large pharmacy and an additional storeroom.  The main drawing card of that place for us boys was not the building as much as everything behind it.  It stretched for many meters long.  The first thing one would notice was another house that was always rented out.  Behind that house, was a row of different buildings, like barns, stables, warehouses, and other buildings that were never used.  Behind those buildings, were large gardens in which grew all conceivable kinds of vegetables.  In season, nothing tasted better than the sweet peas off the stalk that grew there.

It was beyond the gardens, that we used to find the main attraction and challenge.  It was there, that the swamps used to start and continued without end, for we never dared to challenge the unknown.  After taking off the shoes and socks, rolling up the pants as high as they would go, we used to start moving slowly into the murky water teeming with all kinds of creatures, beetles of all sort, sizes and shapes.  Crawling wormlike creatures, whose slimy shapes were enough to scare.  Most of those swamps and marsh denizens were green, used to blend with the thick lush surroundings. Soon we had to take off our pants if we did not want to get a tongue lashing from our parents.  The challenge was to see how far one could get into that swamp before falling into it over the head.   The trick was to find with your foot a strong enough root or  vine under the water that would support you, lower your weight on it, and look for the next one.  The problem of course was that some vines or roots could let go just when you thought you were safe and you would get an unpleasant dunking.   The most unpleasant visitors were the many leeches that did not wait for an invitation to attach themselves to your exposed body.  I’ll say that neither the leeches nor the inevitable dunking  stopped us boys from spending many a day of our vacation time in that truly natural “amusement park”.  Two houses to the left of the ROTENBERG’s lived another friend of mine, Hershel SHNEIDER, who had an older brother Eli and a younger by a year, Shlomo.  That Shlomo had a beautiful voice, and given the chance and schooling, he could have been a good “Chazan” (cantor) or singer. Unfortunately, Hitler saw to it that none of his entire family would remain alive. 

There were a few other friends living nearby.  One Yosef LEBERSTEIN , Moishe GELMAN and Meir KALBKAUF.  If the above will partially account for the beautiful summer days of my pre-teen years, what about the winters, with the long clear moon-lit evenings by which one could read a book without the help of additional light.  Those beautiful evenings when we boys, or rather children, used to go sleigh-riding down the only hill in Shereshev, leading from Ostrowiecka Street into the market square, an elevation of no more than one meter.  We used to pile on top of a sleigh, one on top of the other, as high as we could.  One of us running in front pulling the rope attached to the sled.  Feeling the sled reached its ultimate speed, we would jerk the cord to the side, causing the sled to tip over, spilling the bunch of us on the snow. How we used to jump up filled with exuberant energy and enthusiasm to run up the hill and do it all over again.

The day used to start early as school used to start at eight.  That year prayers were introduced in school before the classes to which boys were obliged to attend.  So I had to be there at seven thirty. Understandably, we used to get up before daybreak.  After getting washed in the kitchen, where the sink was, one of two that I knew of in Shereshev, (the other one was at my grandparents KANTOROWITZ), the outlet led simply outside the house, as there was no sewage  system in Shereshev then, nor is there one now, 70 years later.  Water used to be brought in to the house in pails the night before and kept in them overnight until empty.  We had a sheet metal drum with a faucet, the drum held 4-5 pails full of water and stood near the sink. The facilities were outdoors and in winter, especially at night, it was an unwelcome experience.   For a reader of the 21st century, it might be difficult to understand.  

The winter attire of the population of the Shtetl at that time was far from adequate particularly considering the fact that the local moving about was done on foot and exposure to the elements was unavoidable.  More than the cold was the problem of rain and puddles which was the cause of often occurring colds.  In our home as in the few other better to do households in Shereshev, the winter breakfasts could consist of pancakes made of buckwheat flour.  An old lady used to carry it around to her regular customers every early winter morning in two baskets covered with heavy shawls to keep the heat in. My mother used to look at her with compassion and always gave her a couple more “Groshy”(pennies) than owed.  Or it could also consist of black bread and butter with milk or tea.  Usually we had with it “Swiss cheese” actually produced locally.  It could also be honey, halva, or sausage.

The snack or lunch taken with me to school consisted of the same as was breakfast and was eaten during the 20-minute recess at 11 o’clock.  For the lower grades school ended at 1p.m. Coming home there was something to eat to tie us over until dinner, usually at 4p.m. There was nothing tastier than my mother’s potato “kugel” (pudding) on a cold wintry afternoon.  I can still see my mother turning over the hot earthen pot form which the round pyramid-shaped potato dish slid out on a wide-rimmed plate. Dinner in winter always consisted of meat and soup a nourishing and filling meal.  Supper with the inevitable bread as with every meal came with cheese or halva or smoked whole fish that were available in different sizes from a sprat to a large herring.  Their skin, turned golden in smoking used to come off easily on the plate. 

The spring of 1933 was approaching and with it the nicest holiday of the year, “Pessach” (Passover).  Right after Purim, one room in the house, in our case, the parlour, was cleaned and scrubbed and became out of bounds to everybody.   In that room my mother “put-up” mead, for the four cups of wine required for the “seder” (the festive meal eaten on the first 2 nights of Passover) that used to be made from sugar, honey and hops which, after being mixed together, was left to ferment. That was the first step in getting ready for Pessach.  The next step was getting the “Matso “(the unleavened bread), which were being baked in Shereshev.  There were 3 approaches to it; the most common was that a dozen or so women used to get together and bake it for themselves in one of their homes with the largest bake oven. This entailed making not only the oven and kitchen Kosher for Passover, but most of the house so that the Matso should not come in contact with anything unleavened.  The second approach was when a group of women used to get together to bake for others so as to earn enough for themselves.  The third was the simplest which only the better to do housewives could afford,  namely to hire those women to bake for them and that was how my mother used to do.  Every house in Shereshev had a bake oven, the large majority of women baked their own bread, but even the few dozen Jewish households, like ours, that did not bake bread, baked Challah for Shabbat. The oven came in handy to cook the traditional Shabbat meal, the “Tsholant.” The bakers of course, had the largest ovens.

Not far from us on the main street, “Mostova”, was a bakery owned by a widow Sarah NEIBRIEF, from whom those organized Matso bakers used to rent out the kitchen, the living room, and a room or two in between, clean it to make Kosher for Passover, and set up an “Enterprise”.  A long table was put in the living room around which a dozen or so women stood, their hair wrapped with white clean kerchiefs, to make sure that not a single hair falls in or on anything that has to do with the “Matso”.  Each of them with a wooden roller in hand is rolling a piece of dough into a layer of dough about a foot across.  One woman nearby stands bent over a small trough kneading a piece of dough making a large piece called “Moire” just big enough to be cut up in pieces to go a round to each woman around the table, not less or more.  When the chunk of dough is ready to be divided up, the woman kneading the dough pinches off a piece of dough so called “Nemen Challah” and gives it to the man so called “Sheeber” who stood in front of the open oven door in which a constant high intensity wood fire is burning.  His job is to put in the raw Matso into the oven and take out the just baked ones which was a constant job in front of a furnace like opening.   The man takes the piece of dough and throws it in the fire.  It is only after this that the “Moire” is cut up and divided among the women, to make Matso from it.  The “Sheeber” is being handed the Matso from the “Redler” whose function is to puncture holes in the raw Matzo which is being done by rolling a pizza-like cutter with points on the edge back and forth over the Matso keeping a straight line with the help of a rolling pin held against it.  The baking of the Matso used to take place in the evenings as most of the women were married with families and were busy during the day with their own housework.

For us children it was a stimulating and interesting time of year.  The excitement of those evenings; the “To-Do”, the bustle to watch as it all takes place, to be permitted to carry on a rolling pin the raw Matso from the table to the kitchen were the finishing process takes place, that is the carrying from the rollers to the hole puncher, seeing the Matso passing from him to the one at the oven, how nimbly he handles the raw Matso putting them into the oven and taking the baked ones out.  Matso for one household was baked in one evening, regardless of the amount and carried by the family members home late at night in extra specially washed white bed sheets.  Traditionally one is not permitted to taste Matso before Pessach, but grown ups pretended not to see as we children used to sneak a piece of Matso, carrying it home and eating it on the way.  It tasted much better than during Pessach.  We used to bring in the Matso into the very same room as where my mother kept the fermenting mead, cover it tightly, not to be touched or even looked at until Pessach eve.

The only other item that was waiting for Pessach from way back was goose fat which used to be prepared starting about Chanukah. (The eight day holiday commemorating the purification of the temple of Jerusalem by the Maccabees).  My mother used to order a goose from a local Jewish man who, among other things, used to supplement his meager income buy fattening geese for the well to do housewives.  It was called not fattening but stuffing geese which it literally was.  The geese used to be kept all summer in the swampy meadow where they ate their fill of rich vegetation and plant roots.  In late fall  they were brought indoors where the owner, his wife and children used to soak in warm water stale bread bought from the bakers for next to nothing.  They mixed it with bran and make from that heavy clay-like mixture long twists.  Breaking those twists in 2-3 centimeter long pieces, holding the head of the goose with one hand and with the second forcing the peak open, they used to push a lump of that dough down the goose’s throat.  I can still see that man holding the beak shut with one hand, with the other leading a visible lump in the goose’s long neck down into its body.  This kind of forced feeding used to last 2 weeks or more.  Right after Chanukah those geese were slaughtered by the “Shoichet” (Jewish ritual slaughterer) and were sold and delivered to the local housewives.  It might sound unbelievable, but such an average goose used to fetch some 3 kilograms of fat.  It was cooked in Passover dishes, the meat eaten then, but the fat kept for Passover.  There were some housewives that bought a couple of geese, the fat of one kept for Pessach, and the fat of the second eaten during the winter which was the case in our household.

In an era of no refrigeration, no ice boxes, the goose fat kept in the cellar perfectly fresh, smelling and tasting as if it was just made.  Having provided us with 3 of a half a dozen or so main elements needed for Pessach, my mother turned to getting the house ready.  Fortunately, our house was too new to have had the opportunity to accumulate the heaps of miscellaneous items unneeded and unwanted but that a household tends to accumulate and hates to part with, like all other households in Shereshev.  Still, the cleaning of even  a new house for Pessach represented a formidable task.   The very  washing the windows in our house, the only house in town with double and permanent windows, with the inside ones swinging inwards, and the outside ones outside, where a ladder was absolutely necessary due to the high foundation on which our house stood.  The maid, a young strong village girl, used to come in very handy.  The closer to Pessach, the more frantic the preparations became.

The variety of Pessach foods available now-a-days, was not in existence then, nor was there any means of  refrigeration, so the food had to be prepared no more than a couple of days before the holiday.  An important part of the Passover diet consisted of matzo-meal and matzo-farfel of which neither was available in a ready made form, and had to be made before Pessach by the man of the house.  In our case, by my father and when I turned 12 or 13, I, too, pitched in.  Half a dozen matzos were thrown into a large mortar made from a tree stump and ground with the help of a heavy wooden pestle, some of whom had metal knobs at either end to faciliate the grinding or rather the stumping.  After a steady 10 or 15 minutes of hard stumping, most of the Matso in the mortar used to turn powdery. After sifting it, the powdery part was used as matzo-meal and the bit larger ones as matzo-farfel.  As I mentioned before, those 2 items, matzo-meal and matzo-farfel, were very much in demand during Pessach. Therefore, the men folks of the Jewish Shereshev spent the evenings before Pessach at home contributing their part to the holiday.  When we boys use to go out for a walk in those evenings, by passing the Jewish homes, one could hear the dull stumping and reverberation from the matzo grinding proprietors who were pitifully working at this back breaking task as if G-d wanted them to taste the slavery of their fore fathers in Egypt.

There was available a manufactured in Pruzany Matso.  It used to come in 2 kilogram packages, a square and softer kind, which I preferred.  It was more expensive than the locally made ones and many households could not afford it. How the housewives of Shereshev felt the couple weeks before Pessach I don’t dare to think even.  I know how the men folk felt, all the more so the women.   Still I know that everybody looked forward to the Pessach with anticipation, hope and joy.

It was a tradition, almost a “Must”, to get a new suit for Pessach, of course, for those who could afford it, particularly boys.  Some parents who could not afford new suits for their sons, used to take their son’s Shabbat suits to the tailor, and have them turned inside out, which made them appear new, that is if the boy did not grow too much over the past year.  In any case, it was good for a younger brother.  The women’s attire, I won’t describe, I am no expert now and certainly was not one then.  What I remember well is, that I used to put on a new suit, and new shoes for Pessach.  The trick was to have it ready for “Shabbat-Agodol” (the Saturday before Pessach), and to show off the new clothes in the synagogue.  Who was equal to us boys as we paraded through the streets in our new outfits?

The day before Pessach eve, the house was all clean and Kosher for the holiday.  The last couple food articles like meat and eggs were bought at that time by the gross in contrast to the usual dozens at any other time of the year. I recall my parents buying 3 gross eggs for Pessach, an unbelievable and exaggerating-sounding amount, but a correct one, that were the last food items coming into the house before the holidays.