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 travelled 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 neighbours. 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 neighbours 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 travelled 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 travelled. 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 travelled 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 travelled 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.