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.