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Through the Eye of the Needle

Meyer Kron

Through the Eye of the Needle

published by the
Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies

http://migs.concordia.ca/memoirs/kron/kron.html

Abstract

Written in 1980, the author describes his life and family environment in pre-World War I Shavli, Lithuania. Author describes hardships experienced by family in the years of World War I and the period immediately after the Russian Revolution. He received education and training as an engineer in Belgium and Germany specializing in leather tanning, leading to a career with a major enterprise in Shavli. The difficulties resulting from the new Communist regime are softened for him by his senior and indispensable position in the tannery enterprise. Marries in 1934 and has two daughters. Describes the German occupation of Shavli in World War II, the restrictions on Jews and the confinement to the ghetto from where most Shavli Jews were sent to their death. Again, his position in what the Germans also considered an essential industry made his life a little more bearable. It was not enough to protect his daughters. November 3, 1943, the Germans removed children from the ghetto. The author and his wife were at work at the tannery and could not help. His daughter, Ruth, age seven, was spared thanks to the ghetto doctor who claimed her as his illegitimate child. The Germans decided she could be spared because she was old enough to work. The other daughter, Tamara, was four-years old and too young for work. She was sent to a concentration camp and did not survive. Author and wife find a Christian couple willing to help and Ruth stays with them until liberation. Describes liberation by Russian army and the readjustment to Soviet rule. Describes in some detail how shortages and bureaucratic restrictions created a pervasive system of bribery and corruption. While his specialized expertise continued to provide a position with many privileges, he is also suspected of having collaborated with the Germans. Being warned of impending imprisonment, he plots and carries out an escape to Poland and then Germany. He founds another tanning enterprise there, but eventually moves to Canada. Concludes with a description of adjusting to life in Canada. After some false starts in Montreal and Regina, he and his family settle in Vancouver.

Chapter One

Childhood

It is now January of 1980 and Gita and I live in Vancouver. We have lived here, at 340 west 13th Avenue in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, since 1954. Our grandchildren have never seen us in another place. Even our children, Ruth and Leo, cannot visualize any other place for us to live. But Gita and I still consider this a temporary residence because, actually, our roots are far away from here and our birthplace is a long distance from here in time and space.

Seventy-five years ago I was born in Lithuania in the town of Shavli. (Shavli is the Russian name. In German it is Schaulen, in Lithuanian, Siauliai.) Lithuania is one of the three Baltic states, the southern one. To the north is Latvia and further north still is Estonia. All lie on the Baltic Sea.

At the time when I was born (in the year 1905) Lithuania was under Tzarist rule. In earlier times, Lithuania was quite an important independent country and played a prominent role in the history of Eastern Europe between the twelfth and the fifteenth centuries. It covered an area which reached south to the Black Sea and north close to Moscow. Later, it went through three unions with Poland and was very much influenced by Polish culture and Polish attitudes. In 1815, Eastern Europe was partitioned between Russia, Austria and Prussia. As a result, Poland and Lithuania, which were shrunk by that time, became part of Russia. Lithuania had been under Russian rule one hundred years by the time of the First World War. During this period an attempt was made to spread the Russian culture in Lithuania. In fact, Lithuania was the last frontier of Russian influence at that time. Across the border was Germany. In the northern Baltic states, such as Latvia, the German influence was more prominent and the people who lived there, like my father, were more exposed to the German language and culture than to the Russian.

Throughout the centuries both the rulers and the clergy in Eastern Europe were viciously anti-Semitic. The Jewish people in Russia survived all kinds of political restrictions. They were allowed to live only in certain areas and were thrown out of many places. In Russia proper Jews were not allowed to own real estate so their activities were limited to trades and to small businesses. They were subjected numerous times and in many place to atrocities and pogroms and killings. These were probably inspired by the Christian clergy who claimed that the Jews were the killers of Christ. Religious libels against Jews by the clergy and by the government were used to divert the attention of the people from other problems in the country and the church. By the time that I was born, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Jews were segregated in the Pale of Settlement, being allowed to live only in that area which was in southern and western Russia. They were allowed to attend the universities only in very small numbers. This restriction was termed numerus clausus and means limited number. Jews were not allowed in banking, in big business, large industry, etc. Very few could get around the law and attain high positions.

The most widespread of the libels against the Jews was the one in which the people insisted that Jews used Christian blood to make matzos (unleavened bread, the only kind of bread that can be used, according to Jewish law, during the eight days of Passover). This belief was spread through the masses and from time to time incidents were fabricated and Jews were accused of using the blood of Russian children. Some of these cases were brought to court. Such libels were still being spread at the time I was born. The case I remember was the one called the Beiliss Process. It took two or three years before it was settled and was followed throughout the whole world. Every day we used to follow this process.

I was at that time seven or eight years old and I remember clearly that, during the lunch hour, when the whole family was around the table, my father would read the Jewish newspaper, Heint, where the details of the process were related daily. Even at that young age I was very interested in these proceedings. Later on my brother, Yaakov, acquired a transcription of the whole process and he kept it, as one of his greatest treasures, for as long as he lived.

My birthday was on the first of the Jewish month of Nissan, called Rosh Chodesh Nissan in Hebrew, which is exactly two weeks before Passover (the Jewish holiday commemorating the deliverance of the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage about 1300 years before the birth of Christ). The language in our family was Yiddish and the calendar we used was the Jewish one. I never knew the date of my birth in the general calendar and when I checked with my sister Chaytze some time ago about her birth date and those of our other brothers and sisters the dates she remembered were the Jewish ones. Later on I had to invent, due to circumstances, my official birth date, March 17th, 1905, which now appears in all my documents.

I was the youngest in a family of seven children. The oldest was Mary Leah and following her were, in order of birth, Jacob (Yaakov), Chaya (Chaytze), Asya, Anne (Chantze), Tzilia and myself, Meyer (Meytzke). Today, of the seven of us, the only survivors are Chaytze, who is now eighty-five years old and lives in an old-folks home in Moscow, and myself.

My earliest memories are probably from the time when I was five or six years old and are of the place where we lived, as a large and happy family, in a house that belonged to my grandfather, Samuel Weiss, and my grandmother, Rivka Weiss. They lived in a separate house on the same property on Varpo Gatve in Shavli. Ours was a long wooden structure divided in two halves by a room, called the middle room, where the kitchen was located. On one side of this room was a large dining room and two small bedrooms for the younger children. On the other side was a large salon (living room), our parents' bedroom and a bedroom for the older sisters.

The central room was at that time the most interesting to me because the kitchen was there with its large oven for baking bread - and for baking matzos before Passover - and because that was where the wine for Passover and the mead (of honey and hops) were made, where preserves such as sauerkraut (made in large wooden barrels) and pickles (also made in barrels) were put down. For a boy of six, all these activities were very interesting.

One of the most exciting events was the Passover Seder (festive meal held on the first and second nights of Passover) and the preparations for Passover. On the evening before the Seder, the housewives, with the help of their families, would clean the houses. Then they would go over the house with a candle, going all through the corners and under the beds and other furniture, to make sure there was no chametz (leavened bread) left. If some pieces of bread were found they were swept up with a feather into a wooden spoon to be burned next morning. Next morning we had also to clean all pots and pans. Some of them were just washed with lye and some were heated to high temperatures to make sure that all leftover chametz was destroyed. From 10:00 a.m. on the day of the Festival it was not allowed to eat bread, nor to eat matzos until the Seder. This was the best time to go to the public steam baths with my father. We went equipped with twig brooms designed for a more effective massage. On the day before the Seder the younger children used to be put to bed during the day so they would be able to participate as long as possible in the celebrations.

It was also a lot of fun to go to the synagogue on Simchat Torah (the festival of being given the Torah. This is the most joyous day in Jewish tradition). We children used to be given little Torah scrolls and we all went around in the procession. Like Simchat Torah, Purim, with its noise makers and chants, was a gay and happy time.

Not so gay were the Yomim Norayim (Awesome Days). These were the ten days beginning with Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and ending with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. I could not, at that time, understand why my parents took these days so seriously. According to our belief, during these days every one of us has to make an inventory of his good and bad deeds during the year which is just ending and has to confess his sins, ask forgiveness and pray for a good year to come. There were multitudes of prayers read silently, as well as recited aloud, by the Hazzan (Cantor) with the complete participation of the congregation. I can still visualize everyone, tallitsim (prayer shawls) over their heads, reading the prayers aloud while tears ran down their faces. The climax would come on the eve of Yom Kippur when our grandfather used to shloggen kapores. He would take a chicken and, while turning it around our heads, would recite a prayer that this bird would be accepted in atonement for our sins. In later days, father used to perform this ceremony, replacing the bird with money given to the poor. In mid-afternoon everybody used to come to the Farfasten, the last meal before the fast. The Birkat hamazon, the prayer after the meal, was chanted by grandpapa in a very solemn and emotional manner. Then, before going to the synagogue, grandpapa would gather the grandchildren under his tallit and bless them.

The house in which we lived was very nicely furnished, especially the salon with its soft furniture. When I was very young a piano was brought in and placed in the salon. I remember it well and that I had to lift my arms to be able to get at the keys. I was quite afraid of this piano because of the two heads of mythical animals which were carved on its front panel.

There was, at that time, no electricity or running water. Radios and television hadn't even been invented. We lived quite comfortably nonetheless, using the outhouses and the ornate kerosene lamps and using the well for water. We had two sets of dishes--dairy dishes and meat dishes--and parallel sets for Passover use.

As a rule we had a maid who helped my mother with cooking, shopping, laundry, etc. Usually the maid, although she was a gentile, spoke fluent Yiddish and knew the laws of kashruth (Jewish dietary laws). Twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays, the peasants would come to the market place, their wagons loaded with their produce. On these days, the housewives and their maids would go shopping for chicken and eggs, fish and butter, etc. This was usually an exciting affair involving a lot of hard bargaining, much comparing of prices between the wagons of competing countrymen and attempts by the women to satisfy themselves that they had got the best possible bargain.

Weeks before Passover my mother would buy a turkey and it was usually my grandmother's task to fatten the bird up by force feeding it with grains. The maid would take any poultry to the shochet (the approved religious slaughterer) to have it properly killed and she would then pluck it herself, wash and salt and rinse it, and then examine it closely to make sure it was completely healthy. If it didn't look completely right she would go to the rabbi with a shyla (question) to establish whether or not the bird was suitable to eat.

The whole family used to breakfast together in the dining room and, for two o'clock lunch, father would come home from work. Lunch was the main meal of the day. On Saturdays we ate meals at our grandparents' house. This was a lot of fun because my grandfather, a man with lots of humor, used to sing zemirot (Sabbath songs) and, when he was in a good mood, after he had had a couple of glasses of wine, he used to use a lot of French expressions which probably remained from the time of Napoleon. At our grandparents' place on Shabbat (the Sabbath) we used to get white chala (during the week we had only black bread) and other delicacies like tcholnt, cuggel, tzimmess and so forth. They were just excellent.

My grandfather was a tall, heavy, good-looking man with a long square white beard. He was a learned man in Bible and Talmud and was a very good tailor. He was respected in the Jewish community and was one of the leaders of his synagogue, the Merchants' Shul. Almost every Friday night he (and later my father) would bring orchim (guests) from the synagogue for the Shabbos meals. I still remember how amazed I was at the happy expressions on the faces of these guests when they partook of the delicious meals. It seemed to me that they liked everything much more than I did and this puzzled me, but now I understand the reason why. Probably, they had no other meals during the week--or very few of them. There were some who used to come during the week as well. Mostly these were poor students at the Yeshiva (Jewish religious high school) who used to be invited to different families to eat on different days of the week. One of our steady dinner guests I remember clearly. We used to call him Yosse Kez. He was a slim man with a little black beard and was always very clean and formally dressed. He impressed me very much because he spoke to me like I was a grown-up man, even though I was only five years old. I know I was this age exactly because it was on one such evening, while I talked to him during the Friday night dinner, that the maid came running in shouting that the end of the world had come. We all ran outside. The sky was full of falling stars, coming down like rain. I found out later that what we had seen was the tail of Halley's Comet. This was in 1910.

Between the two houses, ours and our grandparents', there was an orchard that seemed to me to be very large. During the warm days I used to play with my friends in this orchard in primitive, but extremely interesting, games. One of the games, called catchkus, involved placing a short stick, sharpened at both ends, on the ground and hitting it at one end with another stick. When it bounced up we hit it again, trying to make it go as far as possible. The one who hit the stick furthest was the winner. Another game was palantes. In this, we would support a stick on two bricks and throw it with another stick and again the winner was the one who threw it the furthest.

On Passover we had lots of fun playing with nuts. There were several different games we could play with these. For instance, we would put a board on an incline and let our nuts roll down and see if we could hit other nuts that were already on the floor. The one that hit the most nuts was the winner. This was a very exciting game for me right up to the advanced age of nine. I do not remember having any toys and I don't think that I missed them.

Being the youngest member of the family, and since I was a boy born after four girls, I was the favorite. My birth caused a great sensation in the town and, as a result, a splendid party was thrown for my bris (circumcision). I was told later that the gefillte fish at this party was so good that the millionaire of the town, Chaim Frankel, asked for a second piece. This caused quite a stir. The story was told to me later many times over.

For the most part my older sisters looked after me. I still remember them putting me to bed to sleep while they sat around doing their homework, using such expressions as x-squared, y-squared, sine, cosine and so on. I was a weak boy and used to catch many sicknesses - measles, scarlet fever and all kinds of children's diseases. Always, my older sisters took good care of me.

Looking back, it was a very happy time for me. It was not so happy for my parents, however. I was told later that at the time I was born there was such a great danger of pogroms that my father had detached several boards of the fence in case we had to escape.

My father, Leib Kron, was born in a part of Latvia called Kurland (pronounced Koorland) in the town of Tuckum (pronounced Toquecoumb). He became an orphan, losing both his father and his mother while he was still a young boy and grew up with the help of others whom I never heard much about. He didn't talk much about his early days. I know that he had two brothers in South Africa but they never corresponded. By the time he was eighteen years old he was already well acquainted with the Bible and Talmud and studied them regularly. At that time he came to Shavli to continue his studies in the Yeshiva. He came with his friend, Saul Feldman, and these two young and elegant men, coming to the small Lithuanian town, made a big impression. Soon my father got married, with the help of a matchmaker, to my mother, Shana Liebe Weiss.

Besides being very learned in Hebrew studies, my father knew German literature very well. As far back as I can remember, he had a library of German books, mostly classics and philosophic works, and also a library of books by Jewish writers. Some of these were in the original Hebrew and others were translations. He also subscribed to Hebrew and Yiddish daily newspapers and periodicals. The last present he made to me, shortly before his final illness, was the German encyclopedia, the large Brockhaus, which I cherished very much. I still regret that I was forced to leave it when I fled the communists later on in 1946.

While still young, my father learned bookkeeping and got a job at a tannery owned by the millionaire, Frankel. The tannery was, at that time, a small enterprise but in a short time it developed into a multi-million-dollar concern. My father continued as the bookkeeper there and became a trusted employee and a respected man in the Jewish community. By the beginning of the First World War he was quite well situated. He owned a four-plex from which he received rental income. He had money invested in banks in Russia and in Germany. He also secured dowries for the girls. Each time a daughter was born he took out insurance policies, his intention being, in this way, to be certain he could provide a dowry for them when they reached the age to marry.

Father had two or three close friends. Our family and theirs used to get together during the festivals - at Passover and on Succoth (Jewish harvest festival). When we visited each other there would be treats of cookies and teiglach, jams, honey cake and, especially at Passover, mead and wine.

On regular weekdays the children would go to school. My father would go to work until eight o'clock in the evening, eat his dinner, then put on his robe and study a blatt of Gemorrah (a page of Talmud). On Fridays he would come home early, especially in the winter when the sun set early, and walk to Shul (synagogue).

Papa used to have an enjoyable Saturday, the only problem being with smoking. He was a very heavy smoker but on Saturdays he abstained. Toward evening on Saturday I would often notice him looking through the window for the first star so he could have a papiros (cigarette). Not smoking on Saturdays wasn't an overwhelming problem, though, because his whole life was imbedded in Jewish tradition. All the rules of the Jewish religion were implemented fully and naturally by every one of us. All our friends were Jewish, our language was Yiddish and ours was a natural Jewish life without too much contact with Lithuanians.

Every Saturday evening after the Havdalah (prayer marking the transition from a festive day to a regular day) our family had a meal which we called a "potato ball". The main dish was potatoes cooked with the skin on and served with dried salt herring. Most of the time during this meal my father would test me on my progress in school. On the occasions when I knew the answers to all of the questions he asked he used to drop a copic (penny) behind me so I couldn't see him do it. The copic was supposed to have been dropped there by an angel as a prize for being a good student.

My mother, Shana Liebe, was born in Shavli. She was the older child of Samuel Weiss. I remember her as a round, sweet woman who seemed to me the most beautiful woman in the world. She was always around when we were in need, always busy at home, and I cannot remember once, right up to the last day of her life, hearing of any misunderstandings between her and my father or ever hearing any complaints from her though she suffered badly from gallstone attacks. These used to cause her terrible pain quite often, especially before Passover when she was very busy with preparations for the festival. Yaakov and Asya used to have similar attacks. At that time, a gallbladder operation was not yet perfected and they had to simply endure the discomfort.

Mother had only one brother who was ten years younger than she was. His name was Bere-Meyshe. He was a handsome man with a small mustache and very elegant. I don't know anything about his education but I remember that he worked as a bookkeeper all his life.

I still recall Bere-Meyshe's wedding. This was, for me, a great event. It involved a whole week of celebrations and ceremonies, some of which took place in our garden. He married Tzipora (Tzipe) Kubovitzky, a daughter of the beadle of the Great Synagogue of Shavli. I think her first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Later, in Russia, they had another child, a boy by the name of Mulia (Samuel) but he also died tragically during the October Revolution. Still surviving now are my cousins, Monia Weiss, who is now living in Israel in Natanya, and Esther, who is married to her cousin Kubovitzky and living in Tel Aviv.

The Weisses had cousins by the family names of Zaron and Weiss. They were much younger than my mother and became orphans in their early days. Mama took care of them. After they grew up, they all moved to the United States and by the time of the First World War they had married and had become well established there. Mother was always in touch with them. Some of them are now dead but many of their children still live in America. Gita and I keep in touch with these cousins from time to time. For instance, there was Milton Shufro, who died a couple of years ago. He was the son of mama's cousin, Liebe Tcherne. Jeanette Goldwater, from Montreal, was another cousin. There are also Mary Jacobson and her brothers in Chicago who were so helpful to us after the Holocaust. They are all children of mama's cousins.

During the years between 1910 and 1914 my two oldest sisters were in the high grades of the Russian progymnasium, an eight year high school for girls. Both of them were very good students and before the start of the year 1914 they graduated from this school. Asya, Anne and Tzilia were in the middle grades of the elementary school. I started my education in Cheder in 1910 at the age of five.

Cheder was a primitive sort of school. Translated literally, Cheder means "room" and many have probably had occasion to see a famous painting of such a room with little boys sitting around a long table while the rebbe instructed them in the holy Bible. The boys usually started at the age of five or six years. My rebbe was called the Keidaner rebbe because he had come to our town from Keidan. As I remember him, he was a very tall man with a black beard and he was very strict with us. Whenever he found any faults with one of us he would twist our ear or put us in the corner. He had a canchik (cat-o'-nine-tails) for more severe cases. This still didn't stop us from playing many tricks to irritate him, like putting thumb tacks on his chair, soiling his coat or annoying his wife and his many children.

I remember that we boys would all sit around the table, wearing all manner of head covers. We spent the whole day at the rebbe's house. Even on cold winter days we had to go to school and at night we would make our way home using lanterns to light the way and wearing high felt boots to keep us warm. On school days mother would pack me a lunch as there was no break during which we could go home. The best lunch, especially in wintertime, was black bread (spread with goose fat) and sausage. Sometimes mother would add an orange or grapes. These were considered to be great delicacies and were usually used for sick people only. Bananas, grapefruit and tomatoes were unknown in our country at that time. They were too expensive. I was always a slim fellow and, to keep me a little plumper, I had to have quite a bit of milk, which I didn't like. As an incentive to drink the milk, mother would give me some chocolate. On days when I had milk in my lunch I could not have sausage because, according to the laws of kashruth, one must wait a couple of hours after drinking milk before consuming meat. If meat is eaten first, one must wait six hours before drinking milk.

It was probably in 1912 (I was seven at the time) that a new school was organized in our town, called Yeshibot. It was a combined school similar to our Talmud Torah here in Vancouver. At this school we were taught Jewish subjects in the mornings and Russian subjects in the afternoons. As far as I can remember it was a very good school because, later, when we were forced to go to central Russia and I wrote entering exams to join another school I had no difficulty in passing them all. As for the Jewish studies, I know that by 1914, when I was nine years of age, we had already studied the Bible and the Hebrew language and had also covered two volumes of the Talmud, Babe Metzeah and Baba Kamah.

Up to now I haven't mentioned much about my brother Yaakov. The reason is that at this period of time he was not living with us. Yaakov was about ten years older than I was and he did not do too well in school so, while he was still quite young, my father sent him to Libau for business training. A friend of my father's had a large import-export company in Libau and he took Yaakov in, first for training and then as an employee of his company. Yaakov used to come home only a couple of times a year - for Passover and for Succoth. There was invariably a great deal of excitement at home when he came. He always brought me presents from the big city. I was very excited when, one time, he brought me a full costume of a hussar--complete with big, beautiful hat, shiny buttons, sword and so forth. The outfit caused quite a sensation in the town. I loved my brother very much and always regretted that he was far away so that I was the only boy amongst all those sisters. I remember the first letter that I wrote to him in Libau. It was just after I got a sheepskin coat. My mother told me to, "Go ahead and write a letter to Yaakov," so I did. I recall the text of the letter clearly. It ran as follows:

Dear brother Yaakov,

I have a fur coat.

Your brother,

Meyer.

I remember this letter so well because, much later, when we were deep in Russia, Yaakov was going through his papers and he found my letter amongst them. He had kept it and showed it to me then.

There is one more aspect of our life during this period of time before World War One that I want to relate. It is about the summers. In summertime our family used to go to the Baltic Sea near Riga. The place was known as Dubbeln (now called Dubulti). It was a summer resort with a beautiful beach and a pine forest near it. My father used to rent a villa with a garden and we spent the whole summer there. Father used to come down to join us every weekend by train. These summers were very enjoyable times for us. We children would play in the woods and fields and go to swim in the Baltic Sea.

At that time, men and women used to have separate beaches and didn't use any swimming suits. In the later years the beaches were used by both men and women, but they were there at different times of the day. It was not until after the First World War that people started to use bathing suits and had mixed beaches.

The last time I was at this summer resort was in the year 1914. Had it not been for the tragic event that occurred in August, the year 1914 would have been, for me, a time of sheer delight. In July I was enjoying my vacation at the Baltic Sea with my aunt, Tzipe Weiss, and her sister Sara. My chaperones, though both considerably older than I was, were in their twenties and they tried to enjoy to the full the wonderful weather and the sandy beaches, allowing me complete freedom.

Rita, the girl next door, was my steady companion. She lived with her grandparents in their own datcha, where she had spent the summer months since her early childhood. She knew every corner of the village and surrounding areas and was eager to share her knowledge with me. I can still see her when I close my eyes: black curly hair, a tiny agile body, a birth mark over her eyebrow. Most of her dresses were with polka dots, which was her grandmother's preference.

For three weeks we spent our days together on the beach, in the wonderful pine woods and further down in the fields where we used to enjoy watching the crowded trains sluggishly approaching the station and waving to the passengers looking through the windows. We used to return home loaded with short shishki (pine cones) for the samovar, wild strawberries and bouquets of Vasilki, the bright blue flowers which covered the fields in millions.

All this stopped on August first. When news spread that the country was involved in war panic engulfed the village. Immediately everyone began packing and rushing to the station. Leaving many things behind, but making sure that the two large, round hat boxes were with us, (they contained the girls' hats and, at that time, a lady's hat was the most important item in her wardrobe) we moved to the station, helped by Sara's boyfriend, a wrestler.

The station was a beehive. We had to skip two trains before we managed to advance to the landing platform. We then poised for the final assault. When our train came a real pandemonium started. It was a short, savage fight. We were pressed from behind by an irresistible force. Tzippe and Sara were pushed through the door holding the wreckage of their hatboxes and I was lifted through a window by the powerful hands of the wrestler. All this lasted merely a few minutes.

Soon it was quiet again. We could hear the sound of the whistle, but the train did not move. I looked through the window. The crowd stood unusually quiet, almost like they were paralyzed. Then it parted to allow passage for two men carrying a stretcher. From far away I recognized the familiar polka dots. It was Rita - dead. The poor girl had been crushed by the crowd.

Chapter Two

World War One

Being situated close to the German border, our town of Shavli became a center for wartime activities. Shortly after the declaration of war, Russian soldiers started to move through the city in endless columns. Their infantry, which always moved on foot, used to travel hundreds of miles direct from the center of Russia to the border. We would watch them pass by with their shinel (great coats) rolled up over their shoulders and secured at the waist with their belts. They wore heavy boots and had containers for meals attached to their belts. Their ammunition also hung around their waists.

After the infantry came the artillery, their heavy guns towed by three or more pairs of horses. Their kitchens and provisions moved across the city day and night. Everything was moving to the western front. Shavli was full of soldiers all the time. They were billeted in every house-- every family had to give up a part of their space for them. Half of our house was given up to a group of infantrymen.

I had a lot of fun around the soldiers because they used to tell all kinds of stories about their exploits. One of them, a tall man by the name of Kuchta, was very friendly. He was always in high spirits, probably because he used to be drunk most of the time. He taught me how to take care of a rifle--how to take it apart and put it back together again. I even tried shooting with it. In the evenings the soldiers used to sit around and play the harmonica and sing Russian folk songs. Then they would get the order to move, only to be replaced by other companies.

It wasn't long before another traffic started crossing through in the opposite direction. These were the wounded, bloody, bandaged and suffering. They traveled in dilapidated horse-drawn vehicles back toward Russia. In one of these vehicles I came across, just by accident, Kuchta. He was badly wounded and could hardly talk to me.

For me, the whole war was a chain of very interesting events. I didn't realize what the general situation of the war was. The fact was that the early Russian victories didn't last long and, in a few months, the Germans counterattacked. The Russians suffered a tremendous defeat in the famous Battle of Tannenberg. After that the slow advance of the Germans to the east began. Soon, they were approaching our area. Prince Micholai Nicholaiyevitsch, a cousin of the Tzar, was appointed as the chief of the army at this time and, as he did not trust the Jewish population of our area, he decreed that all the Jews had to move from the Pale of Settlement eastward. The time allotted for this move was limited and, as a result, quite a panic ensued. People used all means of transportation to move. Our family was lucky enough to get onto a railway car.

We first moved to Vitebsk, where we stayed for about a year, then to the small town of Bogorodsk, approximately forty miles from Moscow. The office of Frankel's tannery also moved to this town for a short time before it found plush offices in the center of Moscow. There, in Bogorodsk, we found a large suite in a building on the main street of the city. Part of this building was occupied by the offices of the tannery. On the first day of the decree to move, my grandfather died suddenly. Grandmother had to move with other people to Russia, where she finally joined us in Bogorodsk. Soon after the decree, the German army occupied the western area where we lived, but they were stopped somewhere in White Russia.

Bogorodsk was a typical Russian town altogether different from Shavli. I still remember that the railway station had a "red corner" which was illuminated by candles and icons. Everyone used to kneel in this place and cross themselves right there at the station. The main street of the town was occupied by businesses which carried on in the traditional Russian manner, each business being handed down from father to son to grandson. These Russian people were a very solid and sturdy type.

For me this was a critical time because I had to get into school. There was a "Real" high school in Bogorodsk. (In a "Real" high school such things as math, science and engineering were taught. Gymnasium, on the other hand, concentrated on the humanities.) I intended to go into second year but to be accepted I had to pass exams in all subjects. One of the exams was drawing by hand, which was something I had never learned to do, so I went to another town which was not far away, Pokrov, where there was a Gymnasium. There I passed the necessary exams and was accepted. Later, I transferred back to the "Real" school in Bogorodsk.

Before the war there were no Jews in Bogorodsk except for one "Nicholai soldier". Many years previously, Tzar Nicholai the First, grandfather of then-ruling Nicholai the Second, used to mobilize young boys between the ages of nine and twelve and keep them in the army for twenty-five years. Usually, Jewish parents used to hide their boys and there was a special group of people--Happars (Catchers)--who would search out the boys whenever possible and transfer them into the army. After twenty-five years of service they were released. People used to call them "Nicholai soldiers". Jews who had served their full term in the army had all restrictions on Jews removed from them. This conscription of boys had been discontinued by my time. One such man was living in Bogorodsk at the time. He was a very fine old gentleman and very good to us.

The schools in Russia used to run six days a week, Monday to Saturday. This created a problem for me. What was I to do about Saturdays? It was unimaginable that I should write on Saturday or that I should carry books to school on that day. My father went to the principal and explained my situation to him. The principal, unacquainted with Jews, had never heard of such crazy requirements but said that he had nothing against them and that it would depend on the individual teachers. All of the teachers except one were cooperative. They never called me to the board on Saturdays and never gave any written tests on that day. The exception was a teacher of the German language, a German man by nationality. He did just the opposite. As a result, every summer I had to write a special exam in German to be able to be transferred to the next level. I passed them all with ease.

Looking back, I must admire the other boys in that school--my friends. Boys are usually inclined to be rude at that age, especially with a newcomer in school and even more so with a "different" newcomer such as I was. They, however, were very good to me. I can't remember any unpleasant incident or any discrimination shown toward me in games or otherwise. For a couple of years it was an established tradition that on Saturdays I would walk through the town to the outskirts where the school was located with a maid carrying my books. At the end of the day we would proceed in a similar fashion back home. I became a preferred pupil in that school where never before in their lives had they seen a Jew.

We had a lot of homework in school and quite often I used to study together with a friend of mine, a Russian boy by the name of Grisha. We used to study alternately at his house and my house and I was very well-accepted by his family. Then on a certain day in the spring of 1916, when it was his turn to come to my house to study arithmetic, he refused. When I insisted that he tell me why he refused to come to my place he reluctantly revealed his reason. He told me he was afraid to go to a Jewish home in the days before Passover because he thought he might be killed and his blood used for making matzos--so deep were anti-Jewish prejudices imbedded in the Russian population. Our previous good relationship was resumed immediately the eight days of Passover were over.

In the meantime the war was progressing. The number of Jewish families in Bogorodsk increased and people of various professions established themselves in this town. My father looked for a teacher for me--a rebbe--for Jewish religious education and found, first, a man who was the owner of a "restaurant". His wife used to serve his customers in her living room with good-tasting Jewish dishes. We, the pupils, used to have to help them with the dishes, cleaning house and other chores. I don't remember exactly what the program was in my Jewish studies at that time. I do remember that we had lots of fun and learned nothing.

The second rebbe I had in Bogorodsk was an awful person. He was an older man with a greying beard. He used to be very strict with us and enforced discipline by keeping a cane handy at all times. He was a very dirty fellow. Lice crawled on his jacket. The tract we took up with him was Gitten. That, directly translated, means "rules about divorces". In general, it is supposed to be rules about family relationships. The fact that I don't remember anything from this part of the Talmud shows that I was not interested. This kind of Jewish education didn't appeal to anybody and didn't last long.

I had another religious influence in my life at that time. Just across the street from us there settled a Yeshiva which was evacuated from the town of Tavrik in Lithuania. The rabbi there allowed me, in my free time from school, to listen to his lectures and to study Gemorrah. I very much enjoyed the company of the pupils (who were called Yeshiva-Bochurim and who ranged in age from the teens to the middle twenties). After regular hours these young men used to have a good time telling stories. They would also use any available pretext for going out of town for walks in the woods and any religious holiday to arrange plays and dances (no girls). Their company helped to keep me on the right track where religiosity was concerned. They were, to me, a counterbalance to the general trend in Russia at that time which was away from religion and toward the revolution.

Although there was at that time no radio or television and the press was censored by the government, the news from the front and from high political circles spread from mouth to mouth. It was a time of heavy defeats for the Russian army and of big intrigues around the Tzar. We were influenced by the news about Rasputin as well. This ex-monk from deep Russia got into favor with Nicholai the Second's wife, Alexandra. She believed he had healing powers which could help her ailing son Alexis who was a hemophiliac. In a short time Rasputin gained tremendous influence in the Tzar's family and, through that, in the government, especially during the time the Tzar was at the front as commander in chief of the army. Rasputin forced himself into high society where he hired and fired the highest officials. All the ladies of society were at his mercy and anybody who dared say a word against him risked being punished by Alexandra. There was no secret about his debaucheries and the whole population of Russia knew what was going on there in Petrograd. These stories, in addition to the bad news from the front and the bad economic situation of the country, greatly enhanced the revolutionary movement in Russia. All these news items were debated by everyone.

I was at that time a boy of eleven or twelve and not too interested in politics. My older sisters, however, used to participate in various meetings in our house and much of the truth of what was happening filtered into my mind. I used to get a lot of indoctrination in politics through a man who was employed in the office of the tannery as a bookkeeper. His name was Teitelbaum.

I was also, for a certain time, employed by the office and was paid five rubles a month. My job was to type up addresses and make copies of letters and financial statements. This job wasn't easy. At that time carbon paper had not been invented, never mind Xerox. Letters used to be copied by using a certain type of ink for the original. This original was then put in a book which had very thin paper. The paper was brushed with a damp paintbrush and then the book was closed and put under a press. After a couple of hours the ink would be transferred to the paper and you had your copy in the book. That, and the filing of documents, was my job.

After a certain time in the job I felt that I should be paid better and I asked Teitelbaum what to do about it. (The boss was my father.) Teitelbaum said: "Well, that's simple enough. Just write to the company." He gave me the text and told me to sign, "Proletarian Meyer Kron". I asked him what "proletarian" meant. His reply was: "You are not supposed to know yet what it means." The fact was that that word was used a lot around Russia during that revolutionary time. In ruling circles proletarian was a despised expression. The general trend in the middle classes was to protect the children from getting involved in the turbulence of the revolutionary movement.

During the February Revolution in 1917, the Tzar was removed from power in Russia. This was a great event and caused terrific excitement all over the country. The endless demonstrations by the people, with their revolutionary slogans and signs, were very exciting. The boys from the Yeshiva across the street participated in these demonstrations and everybody felt happy and full of hope for the future. The Jewish people were the happiest because they believed that NOW there would be no more oppression.

Following the removal of the Tzar a provisional government was set up. In no time various political parties appeared on the scene. Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, social revolutionaries--everybody started propaganda programs for their parties for the upcoming elections of the Constituent Assembly. Everyone was ready for the elections. But they did not come to pass because of the Coup of November--the so-called October Revolution.

The October Revolution came at the time when the Constituent Assembly of the new order was to be set up. Lenin, the leader of the Bolsheviks, suddenly appeared on the scene after travelling in a clandestine railway car from Switzerland through Germany to Russia. Lenin had been banned from Russia by the Tzar and had been organizing the revolution from Switzerland. His party was well organized by the time he arrived.

While the Mensheviks wanted to continue the war with Germany, the Bolsheviks were against it. Their ambition was to make peace on any terms. "Bread and Peace" was their slogan. As a result, the Germans, who were fighting on two fronts--in the east with Russia and in the west with France and Britain--wanted the Bolsheviks in power in Russia as this would eliminate their Eastern Front and allow them to concentrate on France and Britain. They therefore allowed Lenin to pass through Germany and, in fact, helped him to reach Russia.

The November Coup succeeded. When Lenin arrived he had not only the navy behind him but a good part of the workers as well. He also had the soldiers. The soldiers, who were fighting on the front, wanted peace, naturally. At the time of the first meetings of the new parliament, the marines aimed the guns of their armored ships at the parliament buildings and the Bolsheviks stormed the buildings and took over power.

A new era began then in Russia and, actually, in the whole world. These events happened in the Tzarist capital of Petrograd (now Leningrad). Petrograd is quite a distance from Moscow, which is situated in the central part of Russia, but the news spread very fast. The Bolsheviks, having seized power, eliminated in a short time all other parties. They abolished the old capitalist system to organize something new - the soviet system. (A soviet is a committee.) New slogans appeared. "All power to the Soviets"; "Proletarians from all countries unite!"

News of these events was not late in coming to Moscow and to Bogorodsk. Life in the little town of Bogorodsk was affected in many ways. There was no more Yeshiva. The public school became less disciplined. Some teachers disappeared and the students were put in charge of the school. Committees were established for the Chemistry lab, for the Physics department and for every other department. At the same time, more cultural activities appeared on the scene. A People's University was established as well as a music school and many free lectures were given in different places on political and materialistic subjects. There was much excitement.

By that time I had become Bar Mitzvah (a Jewish boy who reaches his thirteenth birthday). This was not such an elaborate affair as it is today in Vancouver. We had no synagogue and religious services used to be held once a week in a private house with perhaps two scores of people attending. In this setting I read my Maftir (portion of the Prophets a Bar Mitzvah boy reads in public). After prayers we had a couple of our friends over to our house for the kiddush (festive religious meal). I got some presents--the works of Tolstoy from my older sisters and the works of An-Ski from the younger set of sisters. I got a violin from my uncle, Bere-Meyshe. This last gift and the fact that a music school was established in Bogorodsk helped me to become interested in music.

The consequences of the October Revolution were very far-reaching and complicated. Normal life in the whole vast Russian Empire collapsed. The Germans continued their aggression and millions of Russian soldiers were killed or starved to death due to lack of food or lack of transportation. In a short time the whole country began to feel the squeeze. There was no food, there were no industrial products and, as time went on, shortages increased. In our family the situation was bad and getting worse. My father lost his job, naturally, as the whole business of the tannery collapsed. He got another job temporarily as bookkeeper. His salary was sixteen kilograms of grain per month. I used to bring the grain to the mill and mother used to bake bread from it. Tzilia got a job as a private teacher and she was paid two kilograms of sugar per month.

Soon thereafter my father became very ill with colitis and could hardly do anything at all. By this time the older sisters were in Moscow finishing university. They could barely supply themselves with the necessities of life. Yaakov was on the move all the time and couldn't help too much so, as it turned out, I became the main breadwinner in the family.

The only way of winning bread was the Black Market. There were very large textile factories around Bogorodsk, called Morozoff Manufacturing, which produced mostly silk. The people at the factory used to steal this to be sold on the Black Market. I used to get bolts of silk from neighbors. These I would twist around my body, cover them with my clothes and smuggle them into Moscow by train. This was very dangerous and was made more so by the fact that the silk was noisy and could easily be detected. I would go to the train very early--at 5:00 a.m--board it and lie down on the top shelf which, actually, was designed for luggage. There I would lie until we arrived in Moscow. The trip sometimes took up to three or four hours and did not always go smoothly. Sometimes there were complaints from the people who were "downstairs" from me. They wondered where the "rain" was coming from. I was a young boy and could not always contain myself. They couldn't do much about it, however, because the train was so jammed that they could not move to call the police.

With the police I didn't have any problem. Although they checked almost everybody when we entered Kurski station in Moscow nobody paid any attention to me. As a small, slight school boy I passed through the gates unnoticed. The material which I smuggled was sold to "speculators" and was finally transformed into money or food.

My sisters, at that time, were living in a very beautiful apartment at number nine on Kreevokoleny Lane in central Moscow. This apartment was situated in the building where the offices of the tannery had been located. In October, when the offices closed down, the ten rooms of this apartment were occupied by ten different tenants. One of these rooms was occupied by my sisters, who stayed there until last year. They lived there exactly sixty years. Later on, Chaytze married and her husband lived there as well.

Comfort was not too high in the apartment. The toilet and bathroom were usually out of order and the gas not functioning. In the kitchen every tenant had a primus (a kerosene burner). By the door there was an electric bell and you signaled by the number of times you pressed the bell which room you wished to enter.

There were many difficulties during this period of time but they didn't affect me as a boy. Every time I went to Moscow I stayed a couple of days. I liked to go to the Bolshoi Theatre and to other theatres and to ballets and concerts. Naturally, I had no way to buy tickets at the door, but as far as I remember, I never failed to get in. I would wait until the big crowd had gone in so there would be no witnesses and would then negotiate with the doorman. Sometimes, though, especially in winter, these experiences were not very pleasant. One evening I was desperate. All my attempts to get into the Bolshoi had failed. I went to the end of the horse-shoe-like corridor which surrounded the great performance hall where I noticed a camouflaged door. I tried to open it, it gave way, and I entered a dark place with a winding staircase leading upward. It took me to the top floor and directly into a box with a beautiful view of the stage. After that I had no problems getting into the theatre.

As time progressed a shortage of fuel developed for driving the train, which was fueled by wood. The regular travelling time now became twice as long and we used to be lucky to arrive at our destination in five or six hours. Often the train would stop in a forest wherever the fireman spotted cut wood and the passengers would help load the locomotive with wood.

During one of these journeys, on a severe winter night, we arrived in Moscow very late. It was the middle of the night. On this occasion I had no textiles with me but I had a sack, tied at the end and tied, as well, in the middle so that I could carry it balanced over my shoulder. This was filled with very valuable things like potatoes and carrots, bread and other foods for my sisters. It was a very cold night and I had to walk for about an hour from the station to the city. When I came to number nine Kreevokoleny Lane the door was locked and, as I might have expected, the bell was not functioning. I tried and tried again but there was no response to my ringing.

Eventually I lay down and, using my sack as a pillow, fell asleep in front of the door. Luckily, one of the tenants of the ten-story building came home in time and found me before I froze. I was half-dead and at that temperature could not have survived for more than ten or fifteen minutes longer. My doctor sister knew exactly what to do to revive me properly so that there would be no ill effects later on. I was lucky that time.

By chance I found another source of revenue for my family a little later on. As I said, I was the only man in the family by this time and I had to procure fuel for the ovens along with everything else. I used to bring wood from the forest surrounding Bogorodsk by sleigh and would chop the wood up in a shed near our home. It was while chopping wood that I heard a kind of hollow sound from the floor. I looked and found a space under the floor where, to my surprise, I found a huge box full of table salt packed into neat packages of one pound each. Because at that time money had little value and salt was scarce we used the salt I found to procure other kinds of food. This find kept us alive--the whole family--for a long time.

The general situation in Russia at that time continued to deteriorate. While the Bolsheviks tried to expand their power under the leadership of Lenin, Trotsky, and their colleagues, that part of the population which remained loyal to the Tzar started to organize. Some generals put together their own so-called "White Armies" which inflicted heavy casualties on the newly organized Red Army. Kolchack, Denykin and other "White" generals occupied sizable territories in the south and east of Russia and were moving toward Moscow. At that time the western powers, which had been left to fight the Germans alone after the Russians made their separate "Peace of Brest" agreement with Germany, landed troops in the far east and in the south of Russia in an attempt to quell the revolution.

A civil war of tremendous activity developed in the whole country. The civil population was the main victim. Besides shortages of food and clothing, there were epidemics of typhoid fever and, later, hispanka (now called the Russian Flu) killed millions. We had no medicines at the time and there was no such thing as vaccinations.

I imagine that the grown-ups suffered very much from all this but it didn't really affect me. I was a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy and, as far as I remember, I was quite happy and busy with trying to feed the family, playing music and going to various lectures, especially those concerned with Russian history and biology.

The salt I found in the barn was a great help to us, but we still had the problem of the scarcity of food. It was impossible for us to find bread, butter and other articles, even in exchange for salt. Then I heard that more food was available in the south of Russia around the Volga and many people went down there in search of it. Naturally, this was a job for grown-up men but, not having anyone else in our family who would be able to do something about the situation, I joined some neighbors who were going south and we went together. I took some packages of salt and, somehow, I had managed to obtain a pair of shoes to trade for food. I also took my brother Yaakov's coat and, with this and my salt as capital, I joined the group.

It wasn't just a question of buying a ticket and then sitting in a railway car. To get into a car was a very difficult problem. The trains were very crowded. People traveled on the steps of the wagons and on the roofs. However, my group somehow managed to get on the train. We disembarked in a field at a station called Mylnaya which is near the Volga. The nearest village was eleven kilometers away. Naturally, we walked this distance and, to me, it was an extremely trying journey. I scarcely had the power to drive myself along with the group of sturdy men with whom I traveled. It was a very hot summer day and I thought I would not survive the trip to the village. However, I got there with the rest of them and we spread out to different peasant people in our search for food. I knocked at the door of a house and, as it turned out, it was the doctor's house. He and his family put me in the kitchen together with a maid and gave me food and promised to help me barter for food supplies to take home. At the end of a day or two I was a rich man. I had accumulated about twenty puds (approximately 800 pounds) of grain, butter, meal, meat, water melons and many other kinds of foodstuffs.

The doctor also helped to arrange transportation back to the railway station for me and my bounty and I gathered again with my group in the same field where we had landed. Then the difficulties began. Tens of thousands of people were sitting on the fields in this area with their sacks of goods. There were people as far as you could see in all directions, but no trains came. As it turned out, this was a critical location in the civil war. We were close to the only bridge over the Volga. From the other side of the Volga, Kolchack was approaching with his armies and, while we waited there, the bridge was blown up. Consequently, there was no way for north-bound trains to cross the river to where we were. A committee was organized to do something about the situation, but the only thing they could do was send telegrams to Lenin and to Trotsky asking for trains.

At first we hoped to get a train in a day or two. Later on, week passed after week. Only after five weeks of waiting did the first set of wagons arrive. One can imagine what kind of a fight broke out as to who should be the first to get on the train. I was lucky again.

When I left for the trip mother had given me a little basket with various items for first aid: iodine, bandages, etc. Being in the field where all kinds of injuries occurred every day I became the first aid man. Because of this and because I was the youngest of all of them I was the first to be put on the train with my goods. This wasn't a passenger wagon but a cattle wagon. Despite this, we (myself and the others) were happy that we got in at all with our sacks of food.

It took another two weeks before we arrived home. We were stopped at several stations and our goods were searched by the NKVD. Somehow, it had been decided not to let anyone bring more than forty pounds of food home. However, through all kinds of tricks, we managed to secure about three-quarters of our bounty. We had to give the rest away to the authorities.

The inside of the train we traveled in was terribly hot and dirty. All kinds of insects, including lice, covered everyone. The trains used to stand for hours at a station waiting for a locomotive. At these times, we used to try to swim in the nearest river, wash our clothes in a pool or get hot water for a cup of tea. The rest of the waiting was boring. The men used to sit under the wagons to keep in the shade and play cards. Money had no value so they gambled for grain.

One such day I was somewhere around the train when I heard a shot. A fellow in our group had lost all his goods playing cards. Most likely he had had a good shot of Vodka as well. In any case, he couldn't stand the loss and shot himself.

It was a miracle that I finally got home. Once there, I did not enter the house until I had thrown away my clothes and burned them so as not to bring any lice in. Lice are the main carriers of typhoid.

This journey, which was supposed to last three or four days, took instead several weeks. I wasn't scared but I can imagine how my mother suffered, not knowing my whereabouts and hearing that the Syzran bridge had been destroyed. I was told later that mama never went to bed all this time. As a result of this trip and the goods I brought home, the situation in our family improved greatly.

As time passed the Soviet regime established itself completely. The White Armies were destroyed. The Allied capitalist states suffered a fiasco. They had landed in Russia to overthrow the government but they were driven off. The new government took its first steps toward organizing a new life and a new society for the country.

The Bolsheviks had very high ideals about a just society where there would be no exploitation of one group of people by another group. Theoretically, the aim of communism was to establish a society where everyone would receive according to his needs and give according to his ability. In the ideal communist society, everyone would do the best he could and the goods would be distributed to everyone according to need. That was a very high ideal but, in actuality, it was impossible to carry out unless the country has unlimited prosperity and very high productivity. However, until this is achieved, they must be contented with "socialism" where everyone gives according to his abilities and receives according to his achievement. This is why Soviet Russia calls itself, not Union of Soviet Communist Republics, but Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Thus a situation developed in Russia in which citizens who worked longer hours or produced more received better pay than their friends who did less. Physically or intellectually more able people received more advantages in materials goods than less well-equipped individuals. Thus there arose different classes with different earnings, different status and different standards of living.

Private property, even in agriculture, was abolished. All factories, buildings, real estate and farms were taken over by the local soviets and only selected people were entrusted with heading the country. Most of them were ill-equipped and looked out for their own interests. Consequently the whole economy went to ruin. Factories had no materials, money was worthless, services were not provided and, to more-or-less keep order, a drastic totalitarian regime had to be established, the dictatorship of the proletariat. This was a regime of terrorism originating with the government and it swept all around this huge country with unimaginable ferocity. In the beginning the government agency responsible for this was called Tchresvytchika (Cheka) or "extraordinary commission". Later it was called GPU and today it is called the NKGB. Under this organization agents penetrated the whole country - all towns and villages, offices and factories, collective farms and schools. Nobody was immune or unnoticed by the agents of the organization and fear engulfed the whole country. People did not trust their own brothers. Arrests occurred every day and this continued with unrelenting furor for years, far beyond the death of Lenin and until the death of his successor, Stalin. Especially in Stalin's time, millions of people, including leading communists, military commanders, scientists and artists were put to death.

In later years, after Stalin's death, the brutality of the regime relented a little, but there is still no freedom in the country. People are controlled by fear of authority wherever they go and whatever they do. They cannot travel where they want, cannot correspond freely with people abroad, cannot read any literature except that which is allowed by the authorities. Even musical compositions and art are regulated by law.

Up to this day people in the Soviet Union never had a taste of freedom. The standard of living there is still very low. As one of my friends, Slavkin, a professor of Marxism and Leninism in Moscow, put it, "There is no way to have a normal economy when nobody is personally interested."

After the peace treaty with Germany in 1918 Lithuania became an independent state and it was proclaimed that residents of Lithuania before the war had the option of becoming Lithuanian citizens. The Soviet government gave their consent to this.

In our critical position this seemed to be a ray of light and my father put in an application to go. The younger members of our family, Tzilia and myself, were not given a choice but the older sisters decided not to return to Lithuania with us. Just at that time, Mary, the oldest, and Chaytze had graduated from university as doctors. The other sisters, Asya and Anne, also decided to stay in Russia.

The date of departure for the rest of us was established as some time in August of 1920. After finishing university, Mary immediately received a job in Moscow, specializing in ear, nose and throat ailments. Chaytze, however, did not register as a doctor as was required by law. At that time, while wars were still going on, the doctors were the first to be mobilized. Chaytze stayed in Bogorodsk with us but, when the time came for us to leave, she finally decided to go to the appropriate security station and report. I accompanied her to the NKVD (the security station). They didn't let her out again. They arrested her immediately for not registering sooner. I managed to find out the name of the official who made the arrest and left her there.

Two weeks later we had to leave. The last time I saw Chaytze was through a tunnel in the security building. This tunnel ran from the street to the yard and was designed for vehicles to pass through. I saw Chaytze in the yard at the other end of the tunnel. I was on the street. Knowing the name of the arresting officer and through using a series of bribes Yaakov managed to get her released from prison. She was then sent directly to the front where she met her husband, Yuly.

The last episode I had in Russia was on the steps of a streetcar after I left Chaytze at the NKVD. On the steps of the car was a person who was holding onto the rails. I was on the lowest step and he was in front of me. In front of him was a woman wearing a grey Persian Lamb coat. Between two stations the man in front of me took out a razor and cut out the whole back of the woman's coat. At the next stop he jumped off the car without the poor woman even knowing anything had happened.

Sometime later that night our train moved, its direction west. Our belongings were loaded in the same car with us. At that time nobody believed in the new Soviet rubles. People still clung to the Tzarist paper money and believed it had value. It was illegal to take it out of the country. One accepted procedure, which everyone kept secret, was to roll up the paper bills into thin tubes and put them into the thick down comforters. When we arrived at the border everyone (and everything, including furniture, comforters and everything else) was searched. Luckily, our family passed with flying colors. However, a couple of minutes before starting time another officer jumped in the car to make a second check. He put his hand in a comforter and immediately grabbed a handful of Tzarist bills. As a result they opened all the comforters. The whole train was full of down. This held up the train for another twelve hours and it took months before we got rid of the down and feathers. The tragi-comedy was that the money was worth nothing at all.

That was our goodbye to Russia. We arrived back in Shavli on September first 1920. The next time I saw my older sisters was when I went to visit them during the last days of World War Two. This was on the fifteenth of March, 1945. I did not see Chaytze again as, at that time, she was still on the Japanese front.

Yaakov and his wife, Eva, also lived in Moscow at that time. They left Russia later and returned to Shavli for a short while, then they settled in Riga, Latvia. In Riga their first son was born in 1924. Most of the war years from 1914 to 1920 Yaakov had been away from home trying to avoid the draft. He and some of his friends used to travel from one corner of Russia to the other trying to land in a province where their age group was not being drafted. Finally, when this means was exhausted, they found out that near the front there was no draft for people of certain ages. They went there and found some means of changing their birth dates on their official papers. All in all, they moved from one place to another for years until the Revolution released them from this worry. Yaakov had a bad time all those years but luckily he survived and joined us in Bogorodsk at the time of the Revolution. He married at that time and went to live in Moscow. He and his wife left Moscow a little after us.

At the beginning Asya also stayed in Moscow after we left, but she joined us a year or two later and stayed with us in Shavli. Thus our family was divided. Mary, Chaytze, Chaytze's husband, Yuly, and Anne stayed in Moscow. My parents, my grandmother Rivka Weiss, Tzilia, Asya and I settled in Shavli. Yaakov and his family moved to Riga. There remained a close connection, however, between Yaakov and us. Riga is situated about one hundred and twenty miles from Shavli but, though it was in a different country and we needed visas to, we visited back and forth very often. Their family used to come to us on holidays and we used to spend summer vacations at the famous Baltic beaches near Riga.

With Russia communications were always strained and difficult. Naturally the girls couldn't write freely or tell us the truth of what was happening there but we corresponded more or less regularly all the same.

In 1928, when I finished university, there was a kind of a dÈtente between Lithuania and Russia. I was looking for a job at that time and I even considered taking a job in Russia. Russia had advertised for engineers and I considered applying. My sisters, however, gave me a hint in one of their letters to drop all such thoughts.

In 1938 there was a possibility, for a certain time, of visiting Russia from Lithuania. My mother took advantage of this and traveled to Moscow. She stayed for several weeks. Naturally, she took with her all kinds of goods--clothing, linens, underwear, etc.--and gave everything away while she was there, including her own coat and dress. When I went to the border to meet her on her way back I couldn't even recognize her.

After eighteen years of separation it was a great thing for all of them to meet again. The girls all lived in the room on Kreevokoleny Lane in Moscow. For my mother's coming they changed all the dishes and pots and pans to make sure that mother could eat kosher food while she was there. Seventeen years after that visit, when my sisters in Russia found out that I had stayed alive again after the German occupation, the first thing they did was send me a package of goods which contained exactly the same items my mother had brought them--linens, clothing, fancy pantaloons with white lace, etc.

Return to Shavli

When we arrived in Shavli in September, 1920, Lithuania was a sovereign state. The people there were recovering from the disasters of the First World War. Our relatives, the Schochet family (they were distant cousins of ours but we had always been close to them), helped us out. They had somehow managed to stay in Lithuania during the war. The head of the family, Hirsch, was a tinsmith and a good businessman. He was quite well off at that time. He ran a kind of restaurant in his house in addition to his tinsmith business. We stayed with him for a time until we found a place of our own. The house we had lived in before the war had burned down, as had the four-plex. The first thing to do was for father, who now felt better, to find some work and, to begin with, he got a job as bookkeeper for the Jewish community. This was just a part-time job and the pay was very low. We could hardly survive on it. At that time we got in touch with mama's relatives in the United States. They were very good to us and helped my parents to get through the first difficult years.

There was at that time a Hebrew school in Shavli. I wanted very much to enlist in that school but, for a year or more, we could not afford this. As it was a private school the fees were very high. I envied the boys and girls who used to go to the school but I took it philosophically and waited patiently.

The bookkeeping job did not work out for papa so he, together with his old friend Feldman, tried to open a grocery store in the marketplace. We had to deal mainly with the Lithuanian peasants who came to the market every Monday and Thursday. The main items of merchandise were supplies for them such as grease for wheels, salt herring from the barrel (these we used to wrap up in newspaper), salt, horseshoes and similar things. I was the "sales representative" from our family and there was a girl who was sales representative for Feldman's side. I don't think the business was too profitable because we didn't survive until the winter.

But better times were coming and we didn't have to wait long. Old Frankel, the owner of the tannery, had run away from Russia during the Revolution. He had landed in Germany but died in Bad Homburg in 1920 at the age of sixty. He left his property to his only son, Yaakov, and to his wife. They lived at that time in Berlin. By the time we came to Shavli, two years after the war ended, Yaakov Frankel was trying to reorganize his father's tannery. He was not as capable a person as his father had been but he was smart enough to start the business again with the help of previous employees and relatives. Soon the business began to take shape again. He had four cousins who had worked with his father before the war. They were Chaim-Leib Sheskin, Ilya and Isaac Mordel and Fiva Potruch. The only person involved in the reconstruction of the factory who was not a relative was my father. Each of the cousins had his own specialty. Sheskin was the sales director, Ilya the technical manager, Isaac was in charge of the shoe factory and Potruch in charge of the sole leather department. My father was the financial director and a trusted man with Yaakov Frankel just as he had been with Yaakov's father. Yaakov Frankel and his mother stayed in Berlin after the father died but they used to come to Shavli occasionally. Their mansion was repaired at that time. Half of it, with a separate entrance, he used for himself when he was in Shavli. With him and his family lived his mother and his mother-in-law. The other half of the house he gave to the Jewish community to use for the Hebrew high school. In the garden was a two-wing house, one wing of which was occupied by us and the other by Sheskin.

The business arrangement with Frankel was not a complicated one. He provided the capital and the facilities and took sixty-five percent of the profits and the five directors divided, more-or-less equally, the other thirty-five percent. It was quite a difficult task to rebuild the tannery but in the end the directors were successful. In no time they had re-established the business as a multi-million dollar concern and the financial worries which had plagued my father so much in the foregoing several years were over.

Tzilia became papa's secretary and I was happy that I could join the school, which was in the same yard where we lived. To be able to get in I had to find a tutor. The tutor I found was a pupil in the same class, the fifth class, which I intended to join. (The fifth class there would be the same as our ninth grade.) His name was Naftalevitz and this boy later became one of my best friends. It didn't take me long to adjust and I passed from class to class with no difficulties.

In the wing of the house where we lived we had one bedroom, a dining room, a kitchen and a small, dark room for grandma. Nesia, a cousin from mama's, joined us there and, for awhile, so did Bere-Meyshe and his family when they came back to Shavli. It may seem that it was a crowded arrangement but we were pretty happy at that time. Just in case any complaints should arise my father put a sign in the corner which said, simply, "REMEMBER BOGORODSK". It was a happy time. All our friends, especially father's, were poor, but nobody complained for a better life was here and there was no jealousy. Everybody enjoyed the sense of freedom. We used to celebrate the holidays by going to visit each other, especially on Succoth and Simchat Torah. There was then a feeling which I felt only on one other occasion - when liberated from the Soviets after World War Two. My friends used to come at Hannukah and play cards and music. This was a happy time and lasted a couple of years. Then everyone began to re-establish themselves, each in his own way, and jealousies and conflicts once again began to develop. The happiness of freedom dissipated.

The house where we lived was not too comfortable and we were anxious to rebuild our old four-plex at 186 Vilniaus Gatve. We got financial help for this from Nathan Weiss in the United States. He was a wonderful man. He owned a factory which made electric light bulbs and was rich. He was very devoted to my mother and continued to send us money until we were able to rebuild the house.

We moved back there in 1925. (At that time I was not at home any longer.) The ties we had with Nathan were always close. He died shortly before Tzilia's son was born and they named him Nathan after Nathan Weiss. Nathan, Tzilia's son, would now be about fifty years old had he lived but he perished during the Second World War.

My studies in high school went pretty smoothly. I was one of the top students, though not the best one. All subjects were taught in Hebrew, including mathematics, physics, history and so forth. A good deal of time was devoted to the Lithuanian language as the language of the country. Besides these subjects, we had to take foreign languages--Russian, German and English. In the top two classes we had to take Latin as well. We had a wonderful set of teachers and the best of all of them was the principal, a man by the name of Brozer. He was a small man with a red goatee. I have never seen a man with as much knowledge as Brozer. He was able to substitute for any teacher at any time. It could be in physics or mathematics or Bible or Prophets. His lessons, especially in Prophets, left an imprint on me which lasted for the rest of my life. His interpretations of the Bible were excellent and we used to sit in his lessons and swallow every word he spoke. He managed to lead our school until the first issue of students, who had begun in grade four, graduated.

To get through the final exams, the Ministry of Education from our capital, Kaunas (Kovno), sent representatives to supervise the exams. Most of the exams were oral but the language exams were both oral and written. The main thing was to get through the Lithuanian language course. Our principal, as well as the teachers, was as nervous about the exams as we pupils and tried to help us in every way. The teacher for the Lithuanian language, Kovalevsky, gave us a number of essays to be prepared. We wrote them down and he checked them and then we tried to remember them as we were sure one of these essays would be received as the written examination. The poor man who taught us didn't know that the commissioner would come with a sealed envelope and that he had something entirely different for us than anything we had prepared. This was a great shock for all of us but we could do nothing about it and had to write the exam that was brought. When the results were announced I found that I had received the highest mark. I got three A's--A from the teacher, A from the principal and A from the commissioner .

The next exam was Latin. It was a day or two after the first one. As I lived in the same yard as the school was in it happened that I had to go see the principal for some reason or other. I knocked at his door but didn't wait for a reply. I entered his office where, to my amazement, I found the principal involved in a deep discussion with the commissioner for Latin. The discussion was about the form that the Latin exam would take. The principal wanted to divide the whole course into sections and to give tickets which the pupils would draw. All the questions would thus be known in advance. The other man wanted to conduct the exam as "open book" where the pupil came, opened the book at random, and read. This way he couldn't be as prepared as in the type of exam the principal wanted. I came in at this point of the discussion and the principal said, "This is one of the students who will be writing the exam. Let's try it out on him. They gave me the book and I translated the section indicated without any problem and also answered some questions on grammar. When the exams came a couple of days later and I, in my turn, was called before the commissioner, he recognized me. He said I did not have to be examined and gave me the highest mark immediately. Naturally the principal and the teacher followed the lead. These two cases, the exams in Lithuanian and Latin, established for me a trend for all the rest of the exams. Whether or not I was the best student, the final result was that I got, in all seventeen subjects, only A's. Later on the principal told me he had sent my application to the Ministry asking that they give me a gold medal but they refused because no other school in the country got a gold metal. Consequently, they didn't want to give one to a Jewish school. I, however, was happy nevertheless. The principal was happy and the teachers were happy. This may not have been worth too much practically in my life, but it was very satisfying.

Looking back on my school years in Shavli there is nothing exciting to report. The concept, at the time, of teenagers as a group did not exist. This age group was completely neglected by society. The boys' and girls' time was absorbed by school activities - long hours spent in school and long hours spent in homework after school hours. There were no Parent-Teacher Conferences or PTA meetings. Nobody asked us if we liked or disliked a teacher. As far as our parents were concerned, the teacher was always right. Very few types of entertainment were available to us. Mostly, there were only movies and attendance at these was controlled by the representatives of the school to make sure that students did not attend any immoral movies. There were no special dress styles for the teenagers as we have now in the department stores. We wore uniforms. However, we had special groups in school, mostly of an educational character, and some of them political ones. Sometimes a teacher tried to indoctrinate us with certain political views, like one of our teachers, Ratner, who taught the Marxist Communist Manifesto, but this was an exception. The majority of extracurricular activities in our school were devoted to the Zionist cause. Most students eagerly attended these activities. We had a very good group of students, mostly from the Jewish middle class. We were good friends during our school years and remained so after graduation even though we dispersed in all directions.

Two years ago, when I was in Israel, I happened to meet eight of the students from that school and we organized a reunion. It was held in the home of my friend, Chaim Hirschovitz, who had recently arrived from Russia. There was Nathan Lass, Hanan Sacks, Abraham Brudno, Itzik Levitats, Isia Shapiro and Moishe Shapiro, as well as Chaim and myself. We had a party in Chaim's house. We also met together with our wives and, at that time, we reviewed what had happened to the rest of our former classmates. It turned out that we were the sole survivors from our grade of thirty. Most of the others had perished in the Holocaust. Only two had died of natural causes.

While in school, all of us used to spend the summer holidays with our families. There was no urging from our parents for us to work or to make money or to sell papers during the holidays as there is now in this country. The same held true later on for those of us who attended university. Only students who needed money for survival or to pay their fees went to work. The rest of us used our holidays for fun. Nevertheless, when it came time for us to go to work later on and make a living, every one of us was able to take on the responsibility. In the group that met in Israel there were two physicians, one professor and three engineers. All had good careers.

When we finished high school everyone tried to plan his further activities. Some had relatives abroad, mostly in the United States. Some stayed with their parents and helped them in business. The majority decided to continue their education in universities. My family wanted me to take up medicine but I joined the group who went in for engineering. At that time the universities in Belgium were known to educate top quality engineers so I applied to Gent University Engineering School. This was called Šcole du GÈnie Civil et des Arts et Manufactures. I planned to go there together with my friend Hirshovitz. The language was French. We had to write an entrance exam in descriptive geometry to get accepted.

I had, at first, some problems getting a passport. My birth certificate was lost during the First World War so I had no proof of my age. To get some proof, I went to the draft commission. At that time the draft of those born in 1903 was going on in Lithuania. Wanting all the recruits they could get, they gave me a birth year of 1903. That made me two years older but gave me the necessary "proof" of my age.

Shortly after receiving my passport with the new birth date I received notice to appear before the draft board. At that time I was packed to go to Belgium. Since it seemed to me that the whole police force was after me I did not wait till the next train going west, which would arrive at two o'clock in the morning. I took the first available train going in the opposite direction and stayed with a friend of mine in another town fifty kilometers away. I joined the right train in the middle of the night from there and my baggage was delivered to me at the train. I was quite relieved when I passed over the border to Germany, thinking I had escaped the draft. It turned out that the danger was not so great after all, however. A little later I received a paper indicating that I could have gone to Belgium officially by simply presenting my university papers to the commission. But who knew what the rules were beforehand at that time?

In any case, I arrived safely in Gent. There I rented a room in the same building as my friend, Chain Hirshovitz. This was in 1924.

University

We had to work pretty hard to keep up with the level of studies at university. There were students from various European countries, all with different levels of education. It turned out that students from other countries had much more knowledge than we did, especially those students from Germany and Belgium. We also had the handicap of not knowing the language perfectly.

There was strict discipline in the school. We had to sign in every day and out at noon time. From eight to twelve we had lectures. After three there were labs, drawing sessions, etc. At intervals during the year we had "interrogations" (called midterms here). There was not much in the way of entertainment but still, and despite the heavy workload, I managed to go to concerts, operas and movies.

There was quite a bit of political activity in the student society, especially the Jewish part of it. A high percentage of the students were Jewish. Because some other countries would not allow Jews to go to university, they came to Belgium. These Jews held various political views and some of them had pretty good political leaders. We had a special home for Jewish students at number four Orange Street. Quite often the meetings of different political parties were held there - the Zionists, communists, etc. There was energetic debating which sometimes came close to violence. There were also cultural activities there and various artistic groups met, but there wasn't very much of this.

The first two years of the school were called Šcole Preparatoire and the second two years Šcole Speciale. Not knowing exactly what kind of engineering I wanted to go in for, I tried to take a majority of subjects so that later I would have a free choice. In the beginning I was still thinking of medicine as I had to consider my weakness in drawing. I decided that if, in the first exams, I got less than thirteen out of twenty I would switch to medicine. Probably it was my fate to continue in this school. We had a very good professor in Chemistry, Van Howe, who attracted not only me but crowds from the city with his interesting lectures and I decided to take Chemical Engineering

With Chaim Hirshovitz the togetherness didn't work out very well. We lived in two adjacent rooms in the same suite and we used to share most of our time. Our arrangement soon became unhappy, however. Probably our interests differed somehow, not in major outlooks but in minor things. We became very angry with each other until we decided to have a good talk and analyze our relationship. We decided that the major obstacle to good friendship was to live together. We split by the end of the first term. After that, we became very good friends again and this friendship still exists to this day.

The yearly exams were very tough. Before the exams we were given a free month for preparing which was called Mois de Block. After that, on a certain date, the exams were announced. The examinations were oral. The students were divided into groups of less than ten and the dates for each group were designated. If a student failed a subject he didn't have to take the rest of the exams because he was automatically failed. The rate of failure was high from the first day so from the next day there were empty seats and free time for the professors. Because of this free time, other students were called to the examinations at any time, even though they were scheduled to appear much later. Thus every one of us had to be prepared to be called at any time. They used to send messengers to the students' homes telling them to come immediately. This made things very difficult. My friend Chaim failed physics the first day of ex