MEMOIRS OF SHERESHEV

By MOISHE KANTOROWITZ

Chapter 5.C

The J.N.F. (Jewish National Fund) supporters in Shershev were quite active. Young boys and girls used to go around weekly to Jewish homes with a list in hand to collect for J.N.F. and to make sure that the contributor does not reduce his or her contribution from last week.  There were of course many poor Jews who could not afford to contribute anything and in order not to embarrass them the collectors used to by pass their homes.

Our Hebrew school under the name of “Bet-Saifer-Yavnah-Al-Yad-Tarbut” had it’s own method of collecting money for J.N.F. From the central office of the J.N.F. in Warsaw, they use to get little booklets of ten to twelve pages. On each page there was a map of a certain part of the land of Israel, like the upper Galilee, lower Galilee, the valley of Jezrael, the valley of Sharon and so on. Each page was divided by lines into squares of three centimetres across. Each student use to receive a booklet and his or her assignment was to cover each page with three centimetre across J.N.F. stamps that use to cost five “Groshy” each. One needed a dozen stamps to fill up a page and ten times as much to fill up the booklet. It was a lot of money for some youngsters who didn’t get more then five “Groshy” a week spending money, considering that five “Groshy” could get you a chocolate bar or a handful of candy or a packet full of pumpkin or sunflower seeds. Some parents use to give their children five “Groshy” to buy on the way to school few grams of salami or “Halva” to have with the plain black bread during the lunch break. Some of the kids use to give up the delicacy and settle for dry bread alone in order to buy a stamp so as to sooner fill up the maps in the booklet.  A substantial part of my sister Sheva’s and my money used to go for those stamps.  How much we children, speaking for my sister and myself, and, I am sure for many others, felt affection, commitment and dedication to the ideal of Zionism and the land of Israel, is now that the dream is realized, difficult to comprehend.  The willingness or even concept of self-sacrifice for Israel among many of the diaspora Jewish youth in those days, I am afraid, is a thing of the past.  The importance of collecting money for the above mentioned purpose was not left only to school children and their teachers. Young people, teenagers and older people used to organize evening entertainment for the purpose of raising money for J.N.F.  The main project used to be the so-called “Bazaar”. That was a weeklong festival that used to start with a “Purim-Ball” and indeed lasted a whole week. Working people did not spend late evenings there but the young and the not working ones use to spend most of their time there. The dancing used to take place in the large room in our school. In fact the entire school used to be emptied for this purpose, suspending lessons for a whole week.  We children used to go home for a few hours of sleep and eating, spending the rest of the time at the “Bazaar”. It was the only time of the year when parents did not tell their children when to be home and we could come and go as we pleased.

For the first, the opening evening, they used to bring an orchestra from Pruzany, consisting of half a dozen Jewish musicians playing wind instruments. The other nights we used to be entertained by a few local amateur musicians playing string-instruments. They would play for a much lesser fee, not being professionals, and they did need traveling expenses. After all, the purpose of the “Bazaar” was to raise money. One classroom used to be converted into a modest cafeteria where one could buy tea, coffee and “Kvass” (a kind of a soft drink) to wash down the available light sandwiches, jelly-doughnuts and other kind of sweets. Another classroom used to serve as a store where on display one could find merchandise donated by the local storekeepers, but mainly merchandise donated by manufacturers from across Poland.

I recall my father’s youngest brother, Eli, who having come for weekends from high school in Pruzany, sitting and writing letters to Jewish manufacturers asking for contributions of their product to the “Bazaar”. In a sense their contribution was beneficial to both parties. Firstly for us, their gratis merchandise, after selling, brought in additional money for the “Bazaar” and secondly the manufacturer got almost free advertising of his product or at least for a minimal price.  Here I’d like to mention that some firms and factories responded quite generously. Although the Jews of Poland lived in poverty, never-the-less there were, among the three and a half million Jews of Poland, some rich and warm hearted individuals who held fast to the ancient Jewish tradition of charity, not to mention the fact that half of the Polish Jewry were active Zionists.

With the establishment of the “Betar” in Shershev there was also organized a campaign to raise money for “Keren-Tel-Chai” (fund for the revisionist organization). However when JABOTINSKY quit the old established Zionist organization and set up a new one, he lost temporarily some of his supporters because of the fact that his sympathizers lost any chance of receiving a “certificate”, that is a permit to go to the land of Israel, as the old leftist Zionist organization remained the sole authority to dispose with those permits.  This affected negatively the will and striving of the public to come up with more substantial contributions. as a result the “Keren-Tel-Chai” never reached the level of becoming a serious competitor to the J.N.F.

My mother and my grandmother, Freida-Leah, both decided that my grandmother should move over closer to us. They found a room in a house belonging to a certain Chaya-Liba SHTERMAN, one house away from our house. In the house between us and the SHTERMAN’s there lived Nachman FELDMAN with his wife Tzinah and daughter Sarah.  Nachman was an upper-shoe stitcher and, in my time, he wasn’t working anymore but had a couple young apprentices working for him. Our two houses were separated by a driveway that led to both our backyards. His house was perpendicular to the market square, that is with the narrow side facing it.  It had in front a Haberdashery store. There was talk in Shtetl that the store was to be his daughter´s dowry.  Indeed shortly after, his daughter Sarah got married and remained living in the house with her parents.  She ran the store while her husband Osher, a decent and pleasant young man, whom Sarah’s father Nachman found in the “Yeshiva” (Talmudic academy) in Brest-Litovsk, sat in the house all day studying “Torah”.  I doubt if he ever entered the store or knew what was going on in there. As far as I remember he sat continuously over the holy books being waited upon by two women, his wife and his mother-in-law who were doing it with great love.

The main reason for my grandmother’s moving nearer to us was her deteriorating health. Her new landlady Chaya-Liba SHTERNMAN was then a woman of about fifty, a widow who lived with her daughter Shaina of already marriageable age. Mother and daughter lived from a small yard-goods store which was in their half of a large house. The other half of the house belonged to Nechemya Der-Shteper (an upper shoe stitcher) with his wife Rivka and three children. This Rivka was a daughter of my very first “Melamed” (teacher) when I wasn’t yet five years old.  Thus we had our grandmother Freida-Leah very close to us, and my sister Sheva and I use to come in intermittently to her, bringing with us food so she shouldn’t have to cook herself even though she liked to do it.

From my father’s side of the family there were in Shershev my grandparents Yaakov-Kopel and Chinka KANTOROWICZ who lived on the main street “Mostowa”, later renamed “Pieraciego”. With them lived their younger daughter Pola (Pesl), their second younger son Hershl and the youngest son Eli, who was nine years older then I.  Besides them my father had in Shershev another brother Reuben, some five years my father’s junior and his wife Chashka (nee PINSKY). They had a daughter Michla two years my junior, a son Shalom born in 1928 and in the mid 1930’s were blessed with another baby boy whom they named Shevach after my father’s older brother who perished in World War one and after whom my sister Sheva was named. Besides them my father had a sister Shaindl in near by Pruzany married to Leibel PINSKY who by the way was a brother to my aunt Chashka KANTOROWICZ. Both, Leibel and his wife Shaindl were born in Shershev but in my time lived in Pruzany.  My father also had a married brother in Pruzany, Joshua with his wife Mushkah, who gave birth to a son Shalom at about the same time as my brother Leibel (Liova) was born.  This Mushkah, nee LESHTCHINSKY, too was born in Shershev to Mordchai. It was from him that my father bought the store in the Rad-Kroman (row-of stores) in the market square in the year 1930. Mordchai LESHTCHINSKY used to sell yard goods in that store. After selling the premises he moved his merchandise to his house where he lived with his daughter Sarah-Esther whose time for marriage was long overdue. He continued to sell off his wares from his house.

Reb Mordchai, as he was known in Shtetl, was thus related to my grandfather Yaakov-Kopel by marriage. Having got rid of his store he use to come often to my grandfather’s store to discus politics. He was an intelligent and well-read man, charitable, respected and I would add the best-dressed man of his age in Shtetl. I can’t recall a time not having seen him in a suit, a freshly pressed white shirt and a matching tie.

In closing his chapter I’ll add that he had the “Zchut-avot” (ancestral merit) to die in Shershev two days before the expulsion of the Jewish community. He was last Jew to come to “Kever-Israel” (a Jewish burial on a Jewish cemetery) in Shereshev.  With this man Mordchai, my grandfather Yaakov-Kopel remained friends up to Mordchai’s demise. It wasn’t interrupted even after my aunt Mushkah died in 1934 when my uncle, her husband, Joshua had to take her for an operation to Stockholm, for there were no facilities nor doctors in Poland to perform such an operation.  My uncle Joshua remained a widower with two small children for a year and married a single girl from Pruzany, quite a few years younger then he by the name of Freida GOLDFARB (Chayim KUBLINERs daughter) and they had two more children of their own before the war.

Going back some years I would like to point out that a mass emigration was taking place in Europe that started yet in the nineteenth century and took in all levels of the population regardless of nationality of religion, among them many Jews. The direction was over-seas, mainly the American Continent, in particular the United States.  After the 1st World War the gates of this country were partly closed, and the second best place became South America. The majority of the emigrants were poor people who worked hard to make a living or couldn’t make one at all. Others felt that they could improve their standard of living somewhere else. Still others wanted to escape their mundane small town life and look for a more exciting a more promising and a more assured tomorrow. To this last category belonged my father’s brother Shalom. From all my grandparents KANTOROWICZ’s nine children he was the only one that left his birthplace to look for new horizons in the far away world. The place he chose was Argentina. I personally don’t remember him but as long as I can remember I knew that my father had a brother in Argentina.

With the start of the great depression in 1929 and the few following years it became stylish in the so called civilized world to lean to the left, that is to be socialistically or communistically inclined, a direct result of the then difficult times that prevailed in the world.  Idealistically motivated young people in the industrial and partly industrialized world saw a solution to the problem by helping to build a socialistic society, a workers paradise, in the existing Soviet Union.  Many of those young idealists made the terrible mistake of volunteering to go to the Soviet Union; among them was my uncle Shalom with his young bride Sarah.

In 1930 they left Buenos-Aires for the Soviet Union. Somehow the road took them via Warsaw to where my father traveled on the quiet to meet him. The reason for my father’s trip being secretive was twofold. Firstly: my father’s brother was a Polish citizen and Poland was on bad terms with the Soviets to the extent that the border was closed for Polish citizens and communists were being arrested and persecuted in Poland. Secondly, to meet someone traveling to the Soviet Union would make my father a suspect in the eyes of the Polish law, not only him but the entire KANTOROWICZ clan.  My father did go to see him and it remained a secret for a long time. As soon as my grandparents received from him the first letter that they arrived in the Soviet Union my uncle’s whereabouts was no more a secret. But my father’s meeting him in Warsaw remained a secret.  The correspondence between them and my grandparents continued until 1933 when it suddenly stopped. The entire family became uneasy, for we knew in part the situation in the Soviet Union. Although part of the rumors were attributed to Polish anti-Bolshevik propaganda we also knew that each person in the Soviet Union was walking a tightrope.

Late in fall of 1933 a letter came from Shalom’s wife not from the Soviet Union but from Argentina and it came to my parents and not to my grandparents. She deliberately addressed it to us in order not to have to tell the sad news to her in-laws. She wrote that she gave birth to a baby girl in Biribijan and shortly after her husband passed away she with her three-month year old baby returned to Buenos-Aires. Accurately how he died I don’t know, as it was never spoken about in the presence of us children. In my opinion it could have been one of two reasons: A sickness, fatal without proper medical attention or he fell victim to Stalin’s terror.  My father and his brothers were not in a hurry to pass on such news to their parents. My grandmother, father’s mother had a premonition that something happened to her son and finally wrote a letter to her daughter-in-law’s parents in Argentina asking them for the anniversary of her son’s demise. They, taking it for granted that she knew the truth, wrote her the date. My grandmother observed a full years mourning from the time she found out, thus being stricter in observance than required by tradition.

My father’s two younger brothers being single and still living at home with the parents used to enjoy listening to music on their record player. In compliance with Jewish tradition, my grandmother removed the arm of the record player thus preventing them from using it, so that no music shall be heard in the house for a year. She gave the removed arm to my father for safekeeping first extracting from him a promise not to return it to his brothers before the year is up.  With the demise of my father’s brother Shalom, the only child or descendant of the nine children of my grandparents KANTOROWICZ, that got out of Europe before the war, the fate of the entire KANTOROWITCZ clan was destined to share the fate of the rest of European Jewry.

With early spring of 1934, Berl GICHMAN or rather his wife started selling off their last half-rotten apples from last fall. I think it is worthwhile telling this little story. Barl GICHMAN and his wife, his two sons Chayim-Todle and Moshe and their daughter Malkah lived a good distance behind their cousins house the brother’s Isser and Faivel GICHMAN, right on the river bend, giving the appearance that the house was in the GICHMAN brother’s yard. In that yard with a wide gate to the street were a few large, for Shershev, warehouses in which the GICHMAN brothers kept their wares. The wares consisted of rags, which they used to buy from the couple dozen ragmen.  They, the ragmen, used to return home on Thursday evening or early Friday morning for Shabbat from their week’s business in the surrounding villages. Coming into the Shtetl they used to drive their horse and buggy to the GICHMAN brothers yard with the rags which they succeeded to get in the villages in barter for needles, thread, drinking glasses, kitchen utensils, pocket knives and the like. At times they used to bring bristle and horse hair, which the GICHMANS used to buy from them together with the rags. In the warehouse full of rags, filth and dust sat two permanent employees all day long sowing together by hand rags, making from them large bags and stuffing in them more rags or bristle and horse hair.  The stuffed bags used to be taken by horse and wagon to the railway-station Linovo-Onarczyce thirty kilometres away and from there by train to Warsaw where the hair and bristle used to go to brush making factories and the rags to be made into fiber for new yard goods.

In summer many women, Jews and non-Jews used to supplement their husbands income by picking blueberries and cranberries in season in the surrounding forest and selling them by the tea-glass in the street. However, most of them used to sell it to the GICHMAN brothers who used to send it off the same day to the larger centers.  Many men, but mostly boys use to go picking mushrooms, some for themselves but many used to dry them and sell them to the GICHMAN brothers who used to export them abroad.  I would like to mention that the two permanent employees of the GICHMAN brothers, maybe because they were so poor and wretched or maybe because they were among the millions whose names nobody is left to remember, I will mention. One middle age man Reuben VALDMAN, married with half a dozen children. One of his daughters was in my class in the Polish school. He was a tailor by trade but unfortunately he couldn’t speak or hear from birth. In those days it was a much greater impediment then now a days. He could not get employment with other tailors nor could he get his own clients. The only job he could find was to sow rags into socks.  The other man was in his fifties. I doubt if anyone in the Shtetl new his family name. His first name was Avromkah, a singe man, short, stocky, with a short gray beard. He spent some years in the States and apparently due to his mental illness was sent back to where he came from. In my time he lived in a small house on “Chazer-Gesl” (pig lane) that was owned by a widow woman with children. She, poor soul, needed the couple “Zloty” so badly that she let him have a tiny room that only a man five feet tall like Avromkah could stretch his full length out on the floor in that room.  Still working all year round he could not exist on his pay and used to take off Thursday afternoon’s to go around to the homes for alms.  When I got older and my father used to leave me alone to mind the store for a couple of hours during vacation time and my friends used to join me, it happened that this Avromkah came in for his weekly handout; for a few extra “Groshy” he used to sing for us Jewish songs he brought from America. Songs like “Der Talisl” or “Aless Oif Steam” and others, which I have since forgotten. Two wretched, poor things among many in Shtetl that nature, fate and humanity wronged so much.

I like to go back to Beril GICHMAN who lived at the river band behind the two GICHMAN brothers.  In the spring Beril GICHMAN used to rent a couple orchards from the surrounding large landowners. It always represented a gamble, for if the harvest was a good one he could remain with a few “Zloty” to see him through the winter, but if not, his family went hungry all winter long.  In peoples opinion he couldn’t win in any case. If the harvest was mediocre he some how managed to survive the winter, if poor he starved, but even when the harvest was a good one he was in trouble too. Normally he kept the fruits in the attic over the winter up to the early spring. Not having another place to keep it as his house had no cellar for it was too close to the river which used to flood every fall and spring covering even the floor of the house. So he was forced to sell the extra fruits in season for a very low price.  The attic was the only place where apples somehow survived the winter, not too cold to freeze and not to warm to spoil. Yet spoil it did. So almost every day he and his children had to pick over the apples taking out the ´started to rotten ones´ to be sold first. As a result his wife used to spend every day of the week except for the Sabbath throughout the entire winter selling half rotten apples.  I will mention that in fall he did keep some apples and pears in the maze of cellars under the brick synagogue which was in the lane starting between my uncle Rueben and the Rabbi’s house in the market square.