Return to Shavli

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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