Memoirs of a Yiddish Actress, by Cypora Glikson (translator).
Chapter One:
A Warsaw Childhood
I was born in Warsaw on 19 Milo Street, the youngest of six girls. My brother, David, the last born, was the only boy in the family.
Our home was directly opposite 18 Milo Street, which later served as the headquarters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
18 Milo Street had a small grocery store with a side entrance onto Muranurska Street. We children often used the store as a shortcut. We would enter the shop, pretending that we wanted to buy something, and when the owner came over, we would run out through the other door. He would shout after us, “I’d like to see you come in here just one more time! Brats! Just one more time, do you hear?”
My family was very poor, and we barely managed to get enough food to feed nine mouths. My parents had met and married in my father’s small hometown of Laskazhev. My mother had one brother. Her father had worked supplying the soldiers, who were bivouacked in the town, and as a result, he had been able to find my father a job as an accountant in a barrack.
When my parents came to Warsaw, my father, as a religious Jew with a beard, sidelocks and a long caftan, was unable to get an office job, and so he couldn’t earn enough to support the family. As a result, hunger was a frequent visitor to our house.
However, poor as we were, our house was well-known and even popular among our many friends, for two reasons: first, for its cleanliness, and second, for its “beautiful six girls,” as we were called. And in truth, one was more beautiful than the next. I believe that as a child I was the least attractive. I was thin and undernourished, with a poor complexion. But I was a happy child without problems. I never complained, and I never felt that it was unfair that I was poor. After all, my friends were no better off than I. There were only a very few girls in my class who were better off.
My best friend was a girl named Miriam. She was very attractive and charming, with two great eyes and a pale face. Her clothes were always clean. She didn’t change her dress too often, but she always had a different ribbon in her hair. Miriam lived on Wolynska Street—one merely has to mention the name of this street and anyone who knows Warsaw can picture a street of dirt, infested with brothels, prostitutes, common porters and young ruffians—in short, a nest of thieves. In that environment lived the sensitive and delicate Miriam.
An only child, Miriam lived in one room with her mother and father. She didn’t live far from me, and I used to go to her house often to do homework with her. We would sit on her iron bed, which stood alongside one wall of the room. Along the opposite wall stood the two beds of her parents. A window in a corner of the room looked out onto a dark wall that one could touch by stretching out one’s hand.
Her father, a small, thin Jew with a long, black-gray beard, always sat at the table in the middle of the room, which was never covered with a table cloth, and studied a religious book. Her mother, a good soul, with a kerchief on her head, was usually in the kitchen, in a dark corner of the room, preparing a meal.
Miriam’s poverty didn’t prevent her from being one of the best students in our class. Everyone liked her, and she would often tell us about the many books that she was reading. She had never seen a forest or a field—she knew about them only from her books.
Compared to Miriam’s apartment, my home was a palace. We lived in two rooms, with a kitchen and a toilet. In our circles, this was considered a luxury apartment. In the middle of the first room, the dining room, was a large table with chairs, a dresser and two shiny, brass beds, one on each wall. In one bed my father slept together with my brother Dovid, and in the other bed my mother slept with me. The room had an opening onto a balcony and, a little further off, a window. Both were covered with snow-white, starched lace curtains that always appeared brand-new. After my mother died, a portrait of her was painted and hung up between the balcony and the window.
The other room was small and narrow. Two beds stood alongside one wall, head to foot, and on the other side of the room, not far from the door, was a third bed. Altogether, eleven people slept in these five beds: my parents, the children and two lodgers.
During the day, when all the children were out of the house, the apartment stood empty. So my mother decided to take in boarders. She found two sisters, Feiga and Bashke, who brought with them a sewing machine, which stood in the large dining room. These women worked as embroiderers on bridal outfits.
Eventually, Bashke and Feiga became very close to us, and it was as though we were one family. My mother decided that the two sisters should sleep with us in the house. And so we nine became eleven and we had to squeeze into the five beds. How did we do it? Where there’s a will, there’s a way. The older sisters slept two in a bed. And if there wasn’t enough room for everyone, there was a very large floor. Our room might well have been the model for Avraham Reisen’s song, “A Family of Eight and Only Two Beds,” but we did manage to sleep.
Every morning, my father went out to pray. When he returned, my mother gave him something to eat, and then he went out to look for a way to earn a living; maybe he would have some business, maybe he would earn something on a sale. These were all shaky enterprises, and he didn’t always make money. When he did earn some money, he immediately bought food and joyfully ran home. But if his business didn’t succeed, he might go to his brother, my Uncle Moshe, who had a milk business. But my father only went over when Moshe’s wife, my Aunt Sarah, wasn’t there. She was not at all good-hearted. As soon as she would see my Uncle Moshe putting milk and cheese into a bag, she would realize immediately that it was for my father, and she would start complaining that my uncle was reducing them to poverty.
Every day, I would wait on the balcony for my father. If I saw that he was carrying a package, I would run into the house and happily cry out, “Father is coming, he’s carrying a large bag!” As soon as my father stepped into the house with a package from Uncle Moshe, my mother would take the bag out of his hands and put it on the table, and give us children white bread, cheese and butter. We would spread the butter on the bread, and I would take the left-over fatty paper in which the butter had been wrapped, and smear it onto the bread to get the last particle of butter. Such an afternoon was a party for us. Sadly, this did not occur too often.
It was very difficult for my mother to cook for such a large household. When she portioned out the food, she would always take less for herself, with the excuse that she had already eaten in the kitchen. But we children never accepted this, and before we brought the food to the table, we would make sure that all the portions were equal.
When I was still very young, we had no electricity. The house was lit by gas and, in the winter, it was heated with coals. In the dining room was a tall, white-tiled oven with a little door through which one put the coals. When the coal burned, the tiles grew hot and heated the room.
At night, my bed was ice-cold. My father came up with the idea of draping the bedcovers over the oven until they became warm, as he sat next to them. As soon as they warmed up, he would grab them, quickly run to the bed, where I was already curled up, and throw the bedcover over me. I was so thankful to my father for his good idea.
There was no heat in the small corridor and the toilet. It was always cold and dark. In the winter, after the meal we all used to gather in the kitchen. The door was closed to keep warmth from escaping. There, my sisters used to play bingo. In order to keep the gas light on, one had to throw 25 groshen into the meter from time to time. If not, the flame would slowly begin to sink. Then, if one didn’t immediately put in money, the flame would suddenly go out. But we figured out a trick: we discovered that if we kept banging on the meter with a stick or a brush, the gas would keep burning.
Sometimes, in the middle of a bingo game, the gas would start sinking. But who should get up and bang on the meter, if everyone is playing? Me! My sisters sent me into the dark corridor to bang on the meter for as long as they continued playing bingo. They gave me a coat and a shawl, and I had to stand in the dark and bang on the gas meter, which was high up, close to the ceiling. In return for this, my sisters made an agreement with me that whoever won the bingo would share her winnings with me.
Once, my dear mother passed by and saw me standing in the dark, cold corridor, banging the gas meter with a brush. She took me by the hand, brought me into the warm kitchen and rebuked my older sisters for “torturing the child.”
After school, all of us children did what we could to help support the family. I was very good at all sorts of work. From the time I was a young girl, I had wanted to know everything and not to lag behind my older sisters. Bashke taught me how to use the sewing machine, and by the time I was ten or eleven, I knew how to sew, knit and embroider, and I was already earning money. I played mandolin, and my father even taught me how to play chess. I embroidered things for the room, and I made sweaters and knit dresses for my sisters. I did not find this work difficult.
With my older sisters, every day after school, before doing my homework, I would go to a neighbor and wind threads on small, round, spiked disks by hand. It may sound simple, but it wasn’t at all easy, for it hurt one’s finger to have the thread rub against it constantly on the same spot. I stood working at a window that looked out at our house. When my mother was ready with lunch and I heard her call, I would just drop everything, pell mell, and run home.
As the youngest person in the house, I was always the most privileged—but at the same time, I had to do everything that my older sisters didn’t want to do. When we had to borrow something from the store, I was always the scapegoat. If my mother was in the middle of cooking and she needed some flour, sugar or even a piece of garlic, she would send me out and wait until I came back so she could finish her cooking. I hated the son of the owner. Whenever I asked to buy something on credit, he would always refuse, and I, ashamed, would run home. But his mother, Malkeleh, who was a very warm woman, always gave me whatever I asked for. She would write down the account in a black notebook, which was full of half-written and half-erased pages. Malkeleh was a rare woman. She saw clearly that I felt ashamed when I had to borrow something. As soon as I stepped into the store, she would pat my head and say with a smile, “What do you need, child?” I would immediately feel that she had taken a weight from my shoulders.
Despite our poverty, we celebrated all the Jewish holidays festively. On Friday evening, a snow-white tablecloth lay on the table. My mother, dressed in her Shabbos best, lit the Shabbos candles, and my father put on his black caftan and went to the synagogue.
On Shabbos at dusk, after the third meal, when everyone had left the table, my father used to remain at the table and softly sing Shabbos songs, beating the rhythm with a fork. I sometimes sat on the balcony and listened. One song has remained etched in my memory, for he used to sing this every Shabbos at dusk:
We cry out on one side of the river,
Have mercy, brothers, and take us over to you.
We will be content with a dry crust of bread,
As long as we do not have to see the murderers causing death.
Where is our God, why do You punish us so?
Father, where is Your mercy? Oh, God!
Look down from heaven, look at the Jews,
Put out the fire, let it be enough!
He would then go to the window, make Havdalah, and express his wishes for a good week to come.
On a holiday, such as Yom Kippur, my mother wanted to pray in the synagogue on Pawia Street because there the more well-to-do women prayed. She didn’t allow herself to spend the money to buy a seat. She said that she would hear better standing—she just wanted to be in that synagogue. But how can one let one’s mother stand for an entire day? So I picked up a chair and, carrying it on my head, walked with my mother to the synagogue. It was quite far. As soon as I arrived, I put down the chair, my mother sat down and kissed me on the head, and I ran off to my friends. When night began to fall, I would stand in front of the synagogue, ready to take the chair back home with my mother.
To tell the truth, I didn’t like to do this. But I was very happy that I could do something to help my mother. Although she hadn’t eaten anything the entire day and was tired, she looked like a queen. She always had a warm smile and the white, pressed lace around her neck complimented her round face and her blue-green eyes.
Every year, my oldest sister, who was a wig maker, would make sure that my mother had a new sheitel for the holidays. My mother had an aristocratic bearing. Whatever she wore looked good on her, and I was proud to be seen with her.
With the exception of one incident, I don’t remember ever having been angry at my mother. This took place during one winter. There was a great frost, and it was not easy to go off to school early in the morning. Taking a tram was out of the question. One day, I left, as usual, for school at dawn. After the second class or so, I was summoned to the teachers’ lounge. When I heard this, I grew frightened. I was afraid that I must have done something terrible.
When I came into the room, I saw my mother standing among several male and female teachers. On the desk lay a pair of thick, beige, woollen long-johns, and my mother, beside herself, proclaimed to the teachers, “I ask you, tell me yourself, should such a child, who is so weak and thin, go out in a frost like this without putting on her long underwear?” I was stunned, and my blood rushed to my head. I didn’t know what to do, and I was unable to say a single word. I don’t dare think what I would have done to my mother at that moment if I had had the strength. To do such a thing to me? To shame me like that? I said nothing and ran out, humiliated. When I came home from school, I didn’t say a word to my mother. I was so angry at her that I didn’t want to eat. But this couldn’t last long. My mother was goodness itself, and she quickly found a way to make up with me.
I don’t remember ever having had a toy. I made a doll out of rags. I would make a mouse with a tail from a handkerchief and scare my sisters with it. I could also make silhouettes on the wall with my hands, of a fish or an old woman. I would play house with my younger brother. When I was a little older, I would sometimes put on a show in the house. I hung a blanket up on the door between the dining room and the bedroom, which now served as the stage. I set up chairs for the children in the dining room, and when the curtain was moved aside, I began the production.
I had many friends, and was very popular in class, because I learned well, and everyone wanted to become friends with a good student.
Once, my class was reading the novel, “Sarah Bas Tovim,” by Y.L. Peretz. When I was given a chance to speak, I began and didn’t stop. The other children started springing up from their seats, eager to say something as well. But the teacher was so impressed by my recitation that he didn’t stop me, and I continued talking for the remainder of the class.
The Jewish school system was something special. These were day schools with hundreds of students. The atmosphere, the teachers and the studies were all different from public school. The students felt quite at home. In the evening, our school had a club, where we would go, whenever we could, to spend time with our friends. The school’s educational method was special. There were Bundist schools (the Bund was the socialist worker’s party) as well as Zionist Labor schools. I went to a Bundist school. First, I was among children who belonged to Skif, and later I was with young people from Tzukunft, both youth organizations of the Bund. But politics never mattered to me.
In addition to this, I spent a good deal of my childhood at the Medem Sanitarium. When one hears the word Sanitarium, one imagines an institution for sick people. But this was not true of the Medem Sanitarium. To the contrary, sick children were not admitted. Only children who were susceptible to becoming ill were taken in: weak children with some fever, undernourished children, children from poor homes—in a word, children who needed a little fresh air and physical recuperation. I spent much of my childhood there, and it had a very great effect on my upbringing.
In the sanitarium, the children’s lonely, gray lives were transformed into joyful and sunny days. Love for the child was the foundation of day-to-day life.
The Medem Sanitarium was in the countryside. We didn’t only live amidst nature, but together with nature; for instance, we learned biology by bringing up doves, chickens, birds, dogs, squirrels, and so on. We also learned how to plant vegetables.
The Medem Sanitarium was world-renowned not only as a health-institute but as an educational institute founded on socialist principles. People used to come from all over the world to observe this children’s paradise.
Much has been written about the sanitarium. After a visit from America, Daniel Charny-Niger wrote, “I saw modern children’s institutions in Germany and France, but nowhere did I see a place like the Medem Sanitarium.”
This children’s paradise had a great effect on my life. I will never, to the end of my days, forget the Medem Sanitarium.
***
When I was 10 or eleven years old and my mother was 46, she grew very ill. As much money as possible was collected, and the greatest, most renowned doctor in the field of cancer was summoned. After the doctor examined my mother, my father and older sisters accompanied him to the door with tears in their eyes. My father pleaded with him, “Help us, doctor. We will pay you whatever you ask for. Look at this house full of children.”
“If I knew something that could help,” replied the doctor. “I would tell you to sell everything and do it. But it is hopeless. Unfortunately, nothing more can be done. The woman is a lost case.” With these words, spoken with great authority, the doctor left.
A short while later, on a Shabbos afternoon, my mother battled with the angel of death. “God,” I heard her bargain in a quiet voice, “All I ask is that I shouldn’t die on Shabbos. Keep me alive at least until nightfall.” I asked my father why my mother was speaking like that. He explained to me that according to Jewish law, a dead person cannot be moved on Shabbos, but he may not lie in the bed either. Therefore, my mother was asking that she should remain alive until after Shabbos. I burst into bitter tears. Only now did I understand how grave the situation was.
The house filled with people. The apartment door stood open and neighbors, friends and relatives streamed in to visit my mother. Malkeleh, from the store where we would sometimes buy on credit, came to the foot of the bed. When my mother, whose eyes were already half-closed, noticed her, she forced out the words, “Children, remember to pay Malkeleh what we owe her.” When Malkeleh heard this, she burst into a stifled cry, and left my mother’s bedside.
My mother was the embodiment of saintliness. God heard her request and kept her alive until Shabbos was over. It was already dark outside when my mother breathed out her beautiful soul.
My father was left with seven children to bring up.
Once, someone asked him, “Mendel, where will you get dowries for six daughters?”
He answered, “My daughters do not need dowries—my daughters will be given dowries. But the main thing is that they should have good luck!”
I missed my mother terribly. I remember that when I had my first period, I was completely lost. I was ashamed to tell my sisters. I needed my mother so strongly, to cuddle up to her and to tell her the great experience I was going through, now that I was a grown-up woman for the first time.
The situation in the house was very, very difficult. My oldest sister, Rivkah (she later called herself Renee), went to Paris to join her fiance, and got married. Unfortunately, the man had tuberculosis and died young.
The entire burden of the household fell upon the second-oldest girl, Reizel (Rose).
I finished seventh grade, and faced the problem of what to do next.
I had a great desire to continue my studies, but this was out of the question. So, like my other sisters, I went to work at various jobs that didn’t require any qualifications. I wasn’t very happy. Such work didn’t satisfy a young person who was eager to learn more. But, I could do nothing. I could only lie on my bed and dream, fantasizing about the wealthy children whom I would see in the morning, dressed in their school uniforms. Now, for the first time, I learned the meaning of the word jealousy.
A Warsaw Childhood
I was born in Warsaw on 19 Milo Street, the youngest of six girls. My brother, David, the last born, was the only boy in the family.
Our home was directly opposite 18 Milo Street, which later served as the headquarters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
18 Milo Street had a small grocery store with a side entrance onto Muranurska Street. We children often used the store as a shortcut. We would enter the shop, pretending that we wanted to buy something, and when the owner came over, we would run out through the other door. He would shout after us, “I’d like to see you come in here just one more time! Brats! Just one more time, do you hear?”
My family was very poor, and we barely managed to get enough food to feed nine mouths. My parents had met and married in my father’s small hometown of Laskazhev. My mother had one brother. Her father had worked supplying the soldiers, who were bivouacked in the town, and as a result, he had been able to find my father a job as an accountant in a barrack.
When my parents came to Warsaw, my father, as a religious Jew with a beard, sidelocks and a long caftan, was unable to get an office job, and so he couldn’t earn enough to support the family. As a result, hunger was a frequent visitor to our house.
However, poor as we were, our house was well-known and even popular among our many friends, for two reasons: first, for its cleanliness, and second, for its “beautiful six girls,” as we were called. And in truth, one was more beautiful than the next. I believe that as a child I was the least attractive. I was thin and undernourished, with a poor complexion. But I was a happy child without problems. I never complained, and I never felt that it was unfair that I was poor. After all, my friends were no better off than I. There were only a very few girls in my class who were better off.
My best friend was a girl named Miriam. She was very attractive and charming, with two great eyes and a pale face. Her clothes were always clean. She didn’t change her dress too often, but she always had a different ribbon in her hair. Miriam lived on Wolynska Street—one merely has to mention the name of this street and anyone who knows Warsaw can picture a street of dirt, infested with brothels, prostitutes, common porters and young ruffians—in short, a nest of thieves. In that environment lived the sensitive and delicate Miriam.
An only child, Miriam lived in one room with her mother and father. She didn’t live far from me, and I used to go to her house often to do homework with her. We would sit on her iron bed, which stood alongside one wall of the room. Along the opposite wall stood the two beds of her parents. A window in a corner of the room looked out onto a dark wall that one could touch by stretching out one’s hand.
Her father, a small, thin Jew with a long, black-gray beard, always sat at the table in the middle of the room, which was never covered with a table cloth, and studied a religious book. Her mother, a good soul, with a kerchief on her head, was usually in the kitchen, in a dark corner of the room, preparing a meal.
Miriam’s poverty didn’t prevent her from being one of the best students in our class. Everyone liked her, and she would often tell us about the many books that she was reading. She had never seen a forest or a field—she knew about them only from her books.
Compared to Miriam’s apartment, my home was a palace. We lived in two rooms, with a kitchen and a toilet. In our circles, this was considered a luxury apartment. In the middle of the first room, the dining room, was a large table with chairs, a dresser and two shiny, brass beds, one on each wall. In one bed my father slept together with my brother Dovid, and in the other bed my mother slept with me. The room had an opening onto a balcony and, a little further off, a window. Both were covered with snow-white, starched lace curtains that always appeared brand-new. After my mother died, a portrait of her was painted and hung up between the balcony and the window.
The other room was small and narrow. Two beds stood alongside one wall, head to foot, and on the other side of the room, not far from the door, was a third bed. Altogether, eleven people slept in these five beds: my parents, the children and two lodgers.
During the day, when all the children were out of the house, the apartment stood empty. So my mother decided to take in boarders. She found two sisters, Feiga and Bashke, who brought with them a sewing machine, which stood in the large dining room. These women worked as embroiderers on bridal outfits.
Eventually, Bashke and Feiga became very close to us, and it was as though we were one family. My mother decided that the two sisters should sleep with us in the house. And so we nine became eleven and we had to squeeze into the five beds. How did we do it? Where there’s a will, there’s a way. The older sisters slept two in a bed. And if there wasn’t enough room for everyone, there was a very large floor. Our room might well have been the model for Avraham Reisen’s song, “A Family of Eight and Only Two Beds,” but we did manage to sleep.
Every morning, my father went out to pray. When he returned, my mother gave him something to eat, and then he went out to look for a way to earn a living; maybe he would have some business, maybe he would earn something on a sale. These were all shaky enterprises, and he didn’t always make money. When he did earn some money, he immediately bought food and joyfully ran home. But if his business didn’t succeed, he might go to his brother, my Uncle Moshe, who had a milk business. But my father only went over when Moshe’s wife, my Aunt Sarah, wasn’t there. She was not at all good-hearted. As soon as she would see my Uncle Moshe putting milk and cheese into a bag, she would realize immediately that it was for my father, and she would start complaining that my uncle was reducing them to poverty.
Every day, I would wait on the balcony for my father. If I saw that he was carrying a package, I would run into the house and happily cry out, “Father is coming, he’s carrying a large bag!” As soon as my father stepped into the house with a package from Uncle Moshe, my mother would take the bag out of his hands and put it on the table, and give us children white bread, cheese and butter. We would spread the butter on the bread, and I would take the left-over fatty paper in which the butter had been wrapped, and smear it onto the bread to get the last particle of butter. Such an afternoon was a party for us. Sadly, this did not occur too often.
It was very difficult for my mother to cook for such a large household. When she portioned out the food, she would always take less for herself, with the excuse that she had already eaten in the kitchen. But we children never accepted this, and before we brought the food to the table, we would make sure that all the portions were equal.
When I was still very young, we had no electricity. The house was lit by gas and, in the winter, it was heated with coals. In the dining room was a tall, white-tiled oven with a little door through which one put the coals. When the coal burned, the tiles grew hot and heated the room.
At night, my bed was ice-cold. My father came up with the idea of draping the bedcovers over the oven until they became warm, as he sat next to them. As soon as they warmed up, he would grab them, quickly run to the bed, where I was already curled up, and throw the bedcover over me. I was so thankful to my father for his good idea.
There was no heat in the small corridor and the toilet. It was always cold and dark. In the winter, after the meal we all used to gather in the kitchen. The door was closed to keep warmth from escaping. There, my sisters used to play bingo. In order to keep the gas light on, one had to throw 25 groshen into the meter from time to time. If not, the flame would slowly begin to sink. Then, if one didn’t immediately put in money, the flame would suddenly go out. But we figured out a trick: we discovered that if we kept banging on the meter with a stick or a brush, the gas would keep burning.
Sometimes, in the middle of a bingo game, the gas would start sinking. But who should get up and bang on the meter, if everyone is playing? Me! My sisters sent me into the dark corridor to bang on the meter for as long as they continued playing bingo. They gave me a coat and a shawl, and I had to stand in the dark and bang on the gas meter, which was high up, close to the ceiling. In return for this, my sisters made an agreement with me that whoever won the bingo would share her winnings with me.
Once, my dear mother passed by and saw me standing in the dark, cold corridor, banging the gas meter with a brush. She took me by the hand, brought me into the warm kitchen and rebuked my older sisters for “torturing the child.”
After school, all of us children did what we could to help support the family. I was very good at all sorts of work. From the time I was a young girl, I had wanted to know everything and not to lag behind my older sisters. Bashke taught me how to use the sewing machine, and by the time I was ten or eleven, I knew how to sew, knit and embroider, and I was already earning money. I played mandolin, and my father even taught me how to play chess. I embroidered things for the room, and I made sweaters and knit dresses for my sisters. I did not find this work difficult.
With my older sisters, every day after school, before doing my homework, I would go to a neighbor and wind threads on small, round, spiked disks by hand. It may sound simple, but it wasn’t at all easy, for it hurt one’s finger to have the thread rub against it constantly on the same spot. I stood working at a window that looked out at our house. When my mother was ready with lunch and I heard her call, I would just drop everything, pell mell, and run home.
As the youngest person in the house, I was always the most privileged—but at the same time, I had to do everything that my older sisters didn’t want to do. When we had to borrow something from the store, I was always the scapegoat. If my mother was in the middle of cooking and she needed some flour, sugar or even a piece of garlic, she would send me out and wait until I came back so she could finish her cooking. I hated the son of the owner. Whenever I asked to buy something on credit, he would always refuse, and I, ashamed, would run home. But his mother, Malkeleh, who was a very warm woman, always gave me whatever I asked for. She would write down the account in a black notebook, which was full of half-written and half-erased pages. Malkeleh was a rare woman. She saw clearly that I felt ashamed when I had to borrow something. As soon as I stepped into the store, she would pat my head and say with a smile, “What do you need, child?” I would immediately feel that she had taken a weight from my shoulders.
Despite our poverty, we celebrated all the Jewish holidays festively. On Friday evening, a snow-white tablecloth lay on the table. My mother, dressed in her Shabbos best, lit the Shabbos candles, and my father put on his black caftan and went to the synagogue.
On Shabbos at dusk, after the third meal, when everyone had left the table, my father used to remain at the table and softly sing Shabbos songs, beating the rhythm with a fork. I sometimes sat on the balcony and listened. One song has remained etched in my memory, for he used to sing this every Shabbos at dusk:
We cry out on one side of the river,
Have mercy, brothers, and take us over to you.
We will be content with a dry crust of bread,
As long as we do not have to see the murderers causing death.
Where is our God, why do You punish us so?
Father, where is Your mercy? Oh, God!
Look down from heaven, look at the Jews,
Put out the fire, let it be enough!
He would then go to the window, make Havdalah, and express his wishes for a good week to come.
On a holiday, such as Yom Kippur, my mother wanted to pray in the synagogue on Pawia Street because there the more well-to-do women prayed. She didn’t allow herself to spend the money to buy a seat. She said that she would hear better standing—she just wanted to be in that synagogue. But how can one let one’s mother stand for an entire day? So I picked up a chair and, carrying it on my head, walked with my mother to the synagogue. It was quite far. As soon as I arrived, I put down the chair, my mother sat down and kissed me on the head, and I ran off to my friends. When night began to fall, I would stand in front of the synagogue, ready to take the chair back home with my mother.
To tell the truth, I didn’t like to do this. But I was very happy that I could do something to help my mother. Although she hadn’t eaten anything the entire day and was tired, she looked like a queen. She always had a warm smile and the white, pressed lace around her neck complimented her round face and her blue-green eyes.
Every year, my oldest sister, who was a wig maker, would make sure that my mother had a new sheitel for the holidays. My mother had an aristocratic bearing. Whatever she wore looked good on her, and I was proud to be seen with her.
With the exception of one incident, I don’t remember ever having been angry at my mother. This took place during one winter. There was a great frost, and it was not easy to go off to school early in the morning. Taking a tram was out of the question. One day, I left, as usual, for school at dawn. After the second class or so, I was summoned to the teachers’ lounge. When I heard this, I grew frightened. I was afraid that I must have done something terrible.
When I came into the room, I saw my mother standing among several male and female teachers. On the desk lay a pair of thick, beige, woollen long-johns, and my mother, beside herself, proclaimed to the teachers, “I ask you, tell me yourself, should such a child, who is so weak and thin, go out in a frost like this without putting on her long underwear?” I was stunned, and my blood rushed to my head. I didn’t know what to do, and I was unable to say a single word. I don’t dare think what I would have done to my mother at that moment if I had had the strength. To do such a thing to me? To shame me like that? I said nothing and ran out, humiliated. When I came home from school, I didn’t say a word to my mother. I was so angry at her that I didn’t want to eat. But this couldn’t last long. My mother was goodness itself, and she quickly found a way to make up with me.
I don’t remember ever having had a toy. I made a doll out of rags. I would make a mouse with a tail from a handkerchief and scare my sisters with it. I could also make silhouettes on the wall with my hands, of a fish or an old woman. I would play house with my younger brother. When I was a little older, I would sometimes put on a show in the house. I hung a blanket up on the door between the dining room and the bedroom, which now served as the stage. I set up chairs for the children in the dining room, and when the curtain was moved aside, I began the production.
I had many friends, and was very popular in class, because I learned well, and everyone wanted to become friends with a good student.
Once, my class was reading the novel, “Sarah Bas Tovim,” by Y.L. Peretz. When I was given a chance to speak, I began and didn’t stop. The other children started springing up from their seats, eager to say something as well. But the teacher was so impressed by my recitation that he didn’t stop me, and I continued talking for the remainder of the class.
The Jewish school system was something special. These were day schools with hundreds of students. The atmosphere, the teachers and the studies were all different from public school. The students felt quite at home. In the evening, our school had a club, where we would go, whenever we could, to spend time with our friends. The school’s educational method was special. There were Bundist schools (the Bund was the socialist worker’s party) as well as Zionist Labor schools. I went to a Bundist school. First, I was among children who belonged to Skif, and later I was with young people from Tzukunft, both youth organizations of the Bund. But politics never mattered to me.
In addition to this, I spent a good deal of my childhood at the Medem Sanitarium. When one hears the word Sanitarium, one imagines an institution for sick people. But this was not true of the Medem Sanitarium. To the contrary, sick children were not admitted. Only children who were susceptible to becoming ill were taken in: weak children with some fever, undernourished children, children from poor homes—in a word, children who needed a little fresh air and physical recuperation. I spent much of my childhood there, and it had a very great effect on my upbringing.
In the sanitarium, the children’s lonely, gray lives were transformed into joyful and sunny days. Love for the child was the foundation of day-to-day life.
The Medem Sanitarium was in the countryside. We didn’t only live amidst nature, but together with nature; for instance, we learned biology by bringing up doves, chickens, birds, dogs, squirrels, and so on. We also learned how to plant vegetables.
The Medem Sanitarium was world-renowned not only as a health-institute but as an educational institute founded on socialist principles. People used to come from all over the world to observe this children’s paradise.
Much has been written about the sanitarium. After a visit from America, Daniel Charny-Niger wrote, “I saw modern children’s institutions in Germany and France, but nowhere did I see a place like the Medem Sanitarium.”
This children’s paradise had a great effect on my life. I will never, to the end of my days, forget the Medem Sanitarium.
***
When I was 10 or eleven years old and my mother was 46, she grew very ill. As much money as possible was collected, and the greatest, most renowned doctor in the field of cancer was summoned. After the doctor examined my mother, my father and older sisters accompanied him to the door with tears in their eyes. My father pleaded with him, “Help us, doctor. We will pay you whatever you ask for. Look at this house full of children.”
“If I knew something that could help,” replied the doctor. “I would tell you to sell everything and do it. But it is hopeless. Unfortunately, nothing more can be done. The woman is a lost case.” With these words, spoken with great authority, the doctor left.
A short while later, on a Shabbos afternoon, my mother battled with the angel of death. “God,” I heard her bargain in a quiet voice, “All I ask is that I shouldn’t die on Shabbos. Keep me alive at least until nightfall.” I asked my father why my mother was speaking like that. He explained to me that according to Jewish law, a dead person cannot be moved on Shabbos, but he may not lie in the bed either. Therefore, my mother was asking that she should remain alive until after Shabbos. I burst into bitter tears. Only now did I understand how grave the situation was.
The house filled with people. The apartment door stood open and neighbors, friends and relatives streamed in to visit my mother. Malkeleh, from the store where we would sometimes buy on credit, came to the foot of the bed. When my mother, whose eyes were already half-closed, noticed her, she forced out the words, “Children, remember to pay Malkeleh what we owe her.” When Malkeleh heard this, she burst into a stifled cry, and left my mother’s bedside.
My mother was the embodiment of saintliness. God heard her request and kept her alive until Shabbos was over. It was already dark outside when my mother breathed out her beautiful soul.
My father was left with seven children to bring up.
Once, someone asked him, “Mendel, where will you get dowries for six daughters?”
He answered, “My daughters do not need dowries—my daughters will be given dowries. But the main thing is that they should have good luck!”
I missed my mother terribly. I remember that when I had my first period, I was completely lost. I was ashamed to tell my sisters. I needed my mother so strongly, to cuddle up to her and to tell her the great experience I was going through, now that I was a grown-up woman for the first time.
The situation in the house was very, very difficult. My oldest sister, Rivkah (she later called herself Renee), went to Paris to join her fiance, and got married. Unfortunately, the man had tuberculosis and died young.
The entire burden of the household fell upon the second-oldest girl, Reizel (Rose).
I finished seventh grade, and faced the problem of what to do next.
I had a great desire to continue my studies, but this was out of the question. So, like my other sisters, I went to work at various jobs that didn’t require any qualifications. I wasn’t very happy. Such work didn’t satisfy a young person who was eager to learn more. But, I could do nothing. I could only lie on my bed and dream, fantasizing about the wealthy children whom I would see in the morning, dressed in their school uniforms. Now, for the first time, I learned the meaning of the word jealousy.