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Abraham Zalman Cohen, born 1903, left Bogushevici
in 1923 to immigrate to the United States. He was a resident of Ossining, NY until his death in 1987. He wrote this sketch of Bogushevici, his home town in Belarus.
We thank his son, Zvi
Peretz Cohen, for sharing this window into our ancestors’
lives.
© This
article is copyrighted by Zvi Peretz Cohen
Reprinting or copying of this
article is not allowed
without prior permission from the copyrightholders.
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Bogushevici
by Abraham Zalman Cohen
Circa 1923
Bogushevici, in Russian, or Bushavitz, in Yiddish, was a small “mestichko” or “shtetl”
in the “gebenya” of Minsk, White Russia. The distance from the village
to the Berezina River was about 8 viorst
(Ed. Note--a viorst is approximately .662
mile). It was about 20 viorst from the village of Bogushevici to the town of Berezin, which was on the Berezina River. Bogushevici
was encircled by forests. About 3 viorst from the
town, deep in the woods, there was a plant to extract tar and scipidar (turpentine) from the tree roots, which
the farmers from the surrounding villages used to dig out in the fall. The
roots were afterwards used as coals by the blacksmiths, of which there were
three in the village. There were about 40 Jewish families in the village and
also about 75 Christians:- Russians and Poles. There
was a Russian Orthodox Church and a Polish Catholic “costiol”. There was a market place in the center of
the village, surrounded by a half a dozen stores owned by Jews. There were
about 5 shoemakers, 2 tailors, 2 butchers, and one glazier. The Rabbi was Shlomo Welitowsky and the Shochet was Eliyahu Hirsh Kagan (father of Abraham Cohen). The community had a
“shul”, a bathhouse, a “cheder”, a mill, a very old cemetery about 300
years old, and also a new cemetery. During World War I, the town was occupied
by the Germans, Polish and Russian armies. Under the Communist regime the
Jewish way of life changed greatly. During the Nazi invasion, the Jewish
Community was wiped out.
 
Abraham Cohen circa 1929
circa 1985
Zvi Cohen provides more information
about his father’s life:
Abe Cohen, the oldest of six brothers and
sisters, and two additional half-brothers, was born in 1903 in Bogushevici. He had to leave his traditional Jewish
education due to the First World War. Their home was overrun by Czarist,
German, Polish and Communist troops and their horse and wagon was confiscated
by three armies, with Abe as the driver. The family’s linseed oil press
and tannery was also confiscated.
In 1923, an uncle in NYC sent an
immigration affidavit and Abe crossed the border illegally to Latvia, to avoid draft to the Red Army. His father died in Stalin's
Siberian camps, and none of the family that remained in Russia survived the Holocaust.
Following six months in a HIAS camp in
Riga, Abe received a visa to the USA, after HIAS recommended that he not sail to Cuba. Abe settled in NYC and worked as a butcher, both as an employee
and self-employed. He later moved to Peekskill, in Westchester County, New York, and continued to work as a butcher. In 1930 he married Rachel
Grossman of Montreal, Canada. After ten years in Peekskill, Abe moved
to neighboring Ossining, NY with his new bride and opened his own Kosher butcher market
which became a pillar of the Jewish community for 40 years. The couple had
three children.
Abe was very active in the synagogue,
Zionists, Bnai Brith, Masons and local activities
until his sudden death in 1987. Over 300 of his famous Letters to the Editor
were published in the "Ossining Citizen Register" newspaper. An
anthology of the letters is available at the Ossining Historical Society and
Westchester Historical Society. Abe wrote an autobiography describing his
life from Czarist Russia to Ossining, NY, copies of which
are also in the above historical societies. The autobiography has been
translated to Hebrew by his son. A digital copy of the autobiography is in
preparation and will be forwarded to JewishGen.
(Ed. Note—We have no photos
of the shtetl of Bogushevici,
but here are pre-WWOne scenes, via postcard, of the
town of Berezin, thanks to my late father, Matthew
Elkin, who was born in Berezin in 1897 and came to
New York early in 1914.)
Copyright © 2006 Belarus
SIG and Zvi
Peretz Cohen
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