Table of Contents

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Editing Board: Pesach Chitin (Weitzer) Arie Ginzburg Zalman Gladstone Adv. Shmuel Hadari Chaim Landsberg Baruch Ofek (Upnicki) Adv. Shimon Shibolet Printed in Israel Israel Press Ltd. Tel-Aviv

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At first glance, this book is like all the other hundreds of books published since the end of World War II in memory of the Jewish ”shtetl” in Eastern Europe that had been and is no more. Keidan was one of those thousands of towns in the old Pale. Small towns with all their lights and shadows; their geographical and human landscape; their spiritual climate and the Jewish people who worked and toiled all week like busy ants in order to bring food to the family.

Even so,, Keidan was worthy of an eternal monument in form of a book which would tell the new generations about their fathers and mothers who were the public workers and honorary officers, the righteous women, students of the Tora and ordinary people, rabbis and judges and unknown soldiers, each of whom made his contribution, with or without knowledge, to the chain of generations of the ancient nation.

Yet Keidan was also outstanding and we are even allowed to say of a special lineage with the legends pertaining to the beginning of the Jewish settlement in Keidan, the pride of its Jews, the consciousness of self-importance of its sons who found its expression in the famous rebellion against the community leaders, the efforts to appoint as its spiritual leaders the greatest Rabbis in the Diaspora, the special contribution made by its sons to the Jewish renaissance movement and finally, the single revolt crowned with heroism and splendour of one of its sons within the mass grave. All this demanded its commemoration for the future generations.

The birth pangs of this book were hard and prolonged. Yet it is natural and it doesn't lessen its importance if we shall consider that the whole book is a product of the common effort of the town's people who invested in it the most important element – love. Actually, no scientific research works have been included in this book but memories which sometimes reach the height of true art, and – what is even more important – they distinguish themselves with a clean and refined truth, as it was seen with the eyes of the writers.

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They described all which they had seen in a quiet and restrained way, without any trimmings, yet, for all that these memories speak to the reader with an unusual strength of expression.

One of the main goals of the book is the commemoration of the period of the Holocaust. Very few people have remained from that terrible period. Very few of those who had seen the terror from close-up saved themselves by a miracle, and it is their duty to tell about their personal experiences. There are others who succeeded to escape from the Holocaust and to spend the war in wanderings in distant places or in fighting the cruel enemy. Each one told, in his own language, the facts as he knew them. More than once the book contains different versions of the same events. This fact which can happen in historical scientific works too will no doubt be forgiven in a book which was written not by historians, but by men who drew their descriptions not from documents in an ivory tower of a library, but from their memories that were tortured in the ghettos, concentration camps and forests. This is, however, the naked truth, rough and unpolished, a truth solid like rock from which eternal monuments are shaped.

Still, this book is more than an eternal monument. It is an effort to return to the “shtetl” in its happy moments as well as in its last hours, to be together with the father and the mother, with the brothers and sisters at the Shabbat-table as well as at the mass grave on the fateful day; to isolate oneself within Keidan – one of the precious stones in the lost crown whose name was the Eastern European Jewry.

There is no relief in this book for the wounded soul of a son of Keidan, but there is in it a eulogy and a Kaddish which was not said on the grave of the martyrs and which will be said now whenever we shall take this book in our hands.

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Bernard Gerson Richards (1877-1971) U.S. journalist, widely active in Jewish affairs. Richard was born in Keiden (Kedziniai) Lithuania and was taken to the U.S. in 1886. He began his journalistic career as a report on the Boston Post and wrote for several Boston and New York papers as well as for Yiddish and other Jewish journals including the American Hebrew and The New Palestine. He also edited the magazine 'New Era'. From 1906 to 1911, Richard served as secretary of the Jewish Community in New York City, an organization designed to further the cause of Judaism and in 1915, he helped found the American Jewish Congress of which he was executive director until 1932. At the end of World War I, he was a member of the American Jewish delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. He also founded the Jewish Information Bureau of Greater New York (1932), and the American Jewish Institute, N.Y. (1942) to further adult education. He was director of both these institutions. He was also a member of the Zionist Organization of America and his revised edition of I. Cohen's 'The Zionist Movement (1946)' included a supplementary chapter of his own on Zionism in the U.S. His other books were: 'The Discourses of Keidansky (1903)' and 'Organizing American Jewry (1947)'. His papers are in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, N.Y.

(Encyclopaedia Judaica)

My first childhood recollections go back to early mornings in my grandfather's house at the end of Smilga Gass in the Lithuanian town of Keidan. I remember fearfully cold mornings when the windows were covered with ornate designs wrought by the frost, allowing but little day-light to enter the dim stoob, or living room. It was lit up only by a smoky kerosene lamp, sometimes augmented by candles and burning balonas, or faggots, stuck onto crevices of the huge brick oven. I recall the crunching of the snow and ice under the creaking wheels of the peasant wagons passing our front door on their way to the market to dispose of their products. After a while, the blazing fire in the stove would add illumination and warmth and cheer to the room.

My maternal grandfather, Yakov Herz Sirk – everybody called him Herz Yankel – usually rose with the first signs of dawn. Often, he got ahead of the dawn. “I work fast, I eat fast, I sleep fast”, he would say. He loved company and conversation so much that whichever grandson was staying with him at the time was roused from his sleep soon after the fire was lit and the morning activities begun. His method of waking the household was to

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walk through all the rooms and call out: “Get up, kinder – it's six, seven, eight, nine o'clock! Get up, kinder”. Or, he would announce to my grandmother that it was high time to get up and start household affairs going because: “der bettler is schein in ziebetin dorf!” (the itinerant beggar has already reached his seventh village!)”.

For the visiting little grandson to climb down from the high and warm sleeping perch built into the oven, to dress and wash and hurry through the morning prayers, the incentive was the privilege of participating in all the early household operations. There was wood chopping; there were odd repair jobs around the house; butter churning; preparations for cheese making, to say nothing of feeding the cow and the chickens and perhaps a goose or a couple of ducks. If the domestic animals, including all-wise Spitzka, the dog – had been increased in numbers by the arrival of a new-born calf, then the barn at the back of the house was the special centre of attraction.

My grandfather was not satisfied with the regular arrangement for the pasture of his cow in summertime. A Polish peasant boy would come every morning, assemble of the “Jewish cows” from our street in a vacant field and then drive them all to a field “up the hill”, a distant and nebulous spot. At the close of the day, the boy would bring them back to the border of the town: then, ready to be milked and fed, the animals would come plodding through the streets and find their respective homes and barns. My grandfather, however, needed to get in an hour of pre-official pasture. When it was still dark, he would take the cow out and give her a special treat of some high, sweet, and luscious grass in a spot near the town that only he knew how to find.

In all the household chores multiplied by the restless energy of my grandfather, the six or seven-year old grandson somehow was credited with making practical suggestions and thus was prematurely promoted to chief assistant and advisor. In this elevation, he undoubtedly found compensation for the minor status bestowed upon him by two elder brothers who always played more vigorously, fought harder, ran faster and swam better than he did.

My grandfather's instructions and improvisations in the housekeeping tasks of the family were largely actuated, aside from the need of letting out his surplus energy, by the special interests of the domestic animals. Whether handling cereals, cutting bread or preparing vegetables or fruits for cooking, he would so manage as to leave behind sufficient surplus or waste to benefit beast or fowl. My grandmother Reva, rising much later than her husband,

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would be horrified to find several pots filled with peeled potatoes, turnips, carrots or beets, mounds of peelings as thick and lavish as to redound only to the advantages of the livestock. Then too, as the amount of vegetables prepared was far above the immediate needs of the family, the animals would benefit some more. Grandmother would scold in her mild and restrained manner. Grandfather would explain and apologize. But, he remained incorrigible, just as he never ceased being proud and boastful among his neighbours of the fine and sleek appearance of his animals. As for the exploits of Spitzka, faithful guardian of the home, protector of the chickens and the ducks, the children and the grandchildren – Spitzka who one dark night returned from a distance of over fifty miles after having been sold for a sum much needed by the family to a dog-fancying poritz, or landowner – how could one stop talking about Spitzka?

My grandfather's home, where I spent so much of my childhood, is more familiar to me than the successive domiciles of my parents. Grandfather's house, built of logs partially covered with boards in the primitive manner of the time, was the last but one on the street named after the river Smilga and paralleling its winding course. In the rear of the houses were truck gardens extending to the river's bank. This was the lower end of the town. The last house on the street, also built of logs with a straw-thatched roof, belonged to my grandmother's brother, Baruch Kamber whose family hailed from a dorf, or farm settlement, not far from Keidan called Kaneberaz. The road at the end of the street passing the soldier's barracks and stables on the right and the drill grounds on the left, led to the open country with fields and woods on all sides.

A quarter of a mile above the town was the bridge that crossed the deep and wide Navyaza River into which the Smilga flowed. Farther away, about four miles from the town in the other direction, was the railroad station, a place of special wonder to the children who would occasionally be taken there. The arrival of a train, pulled by a bellowing and clanging engine, the ceremonial waving by the flagman to hold back all bystanders, the formal salute of the stationmaster to the conductors in their military-style uniforms as they alighted from the cars and in most resounding Russian, announced the name of the station and the length of the stop, the emotional meetings between arriving passengers and their friends, the frantic farewells as the loud bell over the engine signalled imminent departure – this was enough thrill and excitement to last a young lifetime.

The railroad was, of course, our chief means of communication and contact

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with the great world outside or at least with the large cities of Russia which then held Lithuania as well as Poland under its domination. Beyond were far-off marvellous cities and lands about which we children spun our fancies, drawing upon tales we heard from our elders about Germany, France and England and above all, miraculous America to which a good number of natives had betaken themselves and from which they sent letters describing incredible happenings.

Down the open road which connected with the outlying farm settlements of Lithuanian and Polish peasants, came all the traffic from those sections. The farmers, with their crude wooden wagons, heavily loaded and drawn by stalwart country horses, winded their way up Smilga Gass to the centre of the town and to the main market place.

It was the practice of the small traders and brokers, the hendlers and meklers of Keidan to converge on this street and walk down the road as far as the bridge in the early morning of the market, accosting the incoming farmers they would start negotiations with them while in transit. “What have you to sell?” was the usual question: “Zo mas pseditz?” in Polish, “Ko turo pardot?” in the more difficult Lithuanian.

If the two parties hit it off, or if they knew each from previous dealings, the peasant would invite the prospective purchaser or agent to jump on the wagon and take a seat beside him. They would continue their discussion as they rode on together toward the centre of the town. The subject of the bargaining might be several bushels of wheat or corn or a few bags of potatoes or some pairs of ducks or chickens contained in a covered basket in the back of the wagon. If a price was agreed upon, the trader would ride with his host into the town looking proud of his capture of business. In less favourable circumstances, the trader would walk along beside the farmer's wagon until his final offer was either accepted or rejected.

Some of these hendlers and meklers were old colleagues and cronies of my grandfather and his warm and always hospitable house at the foot of the street, in the path of their pursuit of trade, offered a welcome retreat on stormy and bitterly cold winter days. These early morning visitors would be asked to join us at the frugal breakfast table and offered some hot tea or coffee with perhaps a beigel or a slice of chala. After hours of exposure to the raw and biting Russian frost, this was a most grateful opportunity to warm up and relax for a few minutes.

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Above this bleak existence of uncertainty and privation as I now recall it, over this sordid haggling and bargaining rose a gleam of hope for those harried people, beckoning like a train-bow of promise from far-off America. To that land of mystery and wonder, some of our younger neighbours and friends had immigrated; traveling singly in advance of their families, some of the older and less adventurous denizens of our town had sent their sons to explore the new country. These husbands and sons soon sent rosy reports and remittances that served not only to raise the spirits of their families but to keep the Russian wolf from the door.

During their fleeting moments of rest, the motley and weary chasers after the perambulating market would stop to dilate on their news from the distant and incredible land. Not the least quaint feature of these conversations was the naming of the various centres of population in the New World from which letters and messages and money had been received. Outside of New York and Brooklyn, cities less known such as Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore were bewildering appellations. Philadelphia was called “the second America”, Boston, 'the third America”, Baltimore “the Fourth” and any new city discovered was given a higher number until perhaps Chicago became the “sixteenth America”.

Reflecting upon episodes of these distant days, I recall more distinctly than other incidents in my boyhood, not the turmoil attending my arrival in America – with the excitement of entering Castle Garden and being taken on another long journey to a place called Brooklyn – but my return from the United States to my native Keidan. Then I had the thrill of being hailed as “an American boy”, a strange phenomenon who was followed and admired for months and whose unfamiliar English speech was listened to with wide-eyed awe and wonder.

Like most immigrants of that time before the turn of the century, my father had sailed to America ahead of the family with the expectation, which all those doughty explorers shared, of sending for their wives and children a year or two later, after securing an economic foothold. But my father did rather better, or worse. He had proceeded to the New World with the eldest of three boys and he sent for the rest of the family after a little less than a year, long before he was well enough established in his small dry-goods business.

My mother's retiring nature and almost morbid dread of change and excitement, her rustic small-town habits of life, her utter inability to adjust herself to the bustle and rush of New York existence – even in those calmer

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days – served to aggravate a situation which was much more difficult and complicated than the average problem of adaptation to a new, bewildering environment. After prolonged discussion in the family circle and consultations with landslayt over a period of more than a year, it was decided that my mother and the two younger children – myself aged eight and a younger sister of seven – return to the home country to live with our grandparents in Keidan. Since the old folks had their own home with some small means of subsistence, it seemed best that we stay with them for a year or two or until such time as my father should be more firmly settled in the new land.

Traveling back to Europe, we experienced anew all the hardships, perplexities and mishaps of steerage passengers. Then the long train journey through Germany, from Hamburg to Kovno with many changes, stopovers and loss of baggage caused my mother such anxiety and anguish that she was driven to distraction. Whatever luggage was left, after most of it had been lost or stolen on the way, was taken in charge by pretended travel agents or guides who offered to befriend us in the name of some society. They managed to take us across the frontier all right but they never came back with the bags and satchels of clothes that they had promised to deliver. We were pushed and hustled into another train before we could ask any questions.

At the station four miles out of Keidan, we arrived with only one traveling basket of belongings. But, we wore American clothes and that was enough to attract attention.

No sooner had the crude wooden wagon that served as a droshke driven up to our grandfather's house than we became the cynosure of all eyes. All the neighbours of Smilga Gass flocked to the end of the street and surrounded the house to catch a glimpse of the new arrivals from the far-off land of wonder. Those who were not invited or could not be accommodated indoors shamelessly stared in through the low windows of the small house to see the guests from abroad. All day long, people went back and forth, peeping, tiptoeing, expostulating and chattering about the Americans who had come to Keidan and especially about the “American children”.

After a day or two, the hubbub subsided. No longer afraid of the advances of the curiosity seekers, my sister and I at length ventured outdoors to renew our acquaintance with the street, the things around the house and the vegetable patches in the back row of houses. These sloping grounds, when cleared of their harvest, were trampled on by the youngsters of the neighbourhood for a direct route to the pebbly and purling river running below. But

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instead of their usual frolic and play at the riverside, the children persisted in following the two young Amerikaner around, plying them with questions and above all, straining their ears to hear the strange, outlandish American language they spoke.

Whether, pathetically enough, we were striving to retain our knowledge of the few precious English words, we had brought from the marvellous land whence we had been ruthlessly torn away, or whether we sought, childlike, to show off our accomplishments, we did lapse into English such as it was every now and then and our former playmates listened spellbound. How pitifully limited that vocabulary was; how halting the speech; how hopelessly intermixed it was with Yiddish expressions (it may have been only Americanized Yiddish); there was no one present to determine. Nor did anyone within our hearing know that, while I attended public school in Brooklyn for several weeks, my sister had had no such advantage and had picked up the few words she knew from hearing them pronounced or rather mispronounced at home or on the street. Yet, our conversations in the unknown tongue were listened to by young and old with intense interest and admiration.

There was one red-letter day which may well have been entered in the pinkes – the official register of the community, among the records of expanding relations, transactions and communications between obscure Keidan and the grand New World beyond the seas. That day, a full-fledged 'American', an adult native who had returned, walked up the road with our little man. Both displayed their American attire and both conversed in the outlandish but fascinating language. Getzel Glusonock, back from the United States after a sojourn of four years, may have wished only to question the boy about where he had lived and at the same time perhaps indulge in a little practice in baffling and fast-slipping language. Whatever his motive, he surely was not conscious of the sensation he was to create.

It was on a Saturday afternoon when many of the burghers with their families were out for their Sabbath walk, winding their way up the road at the end of town that led to the highway, the railroad station and the great world beyond. Some boisterous and romping youngsters had passed the word: “They are talking English!” There was a rush of old and young to follow them closely, to overhear their talk so that the conversationalists were plainly disconcerted by the eager intruders. Nevertheless, Mr. Glusonock was too proud of his knowledge to quail before the distraction of many eyes and ears. So the dialogue, meagre and monosyllabic though it was, went on until the

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enthusiastic pursuers grew weary of hearing sounds whose meaning they did not understand and the cluster of people gradually fell away. Walking back, my fellow American and I reached the Smilga Gass and parted.

As far as my hazy memory can produce, our talk proceeded something like this:

“How long you in America?”

“Two years nearly”.

“Where you live?”

“Brooklyn”.

“You go to school?”

“Yes, four weeks”.

“What grade?”

“I no remember”.

“You like America?”

“Very much”.

“Why you come back?”

“My mother no like”.

“Oh. Here you like to stay?”

“Am glad to see my bobe and zaide”.

“You going back to America, bye and bye?”

“Sure when I grow big”?

After this encounter, Mr. Glusonock often noticed and spoke to me on the street. It was always: “Well, how you getting along here? When you go back to America?”

I would answer in a vague and general manner not being able to announce any family plans. But it was always enough of an incomprehensible conversation to make any by-standers prick up their years and listen. After a while, however, these salutations became less frequent and the English words and sounds and names gradually faded and became obliterated from memory, just as my American kapelush (blocked hat), my jacket, knickers and shoes grew discoloured and dilapidated.

My heart sank as these outward insignia of the new life abroad were gradually discarded. I donned long pants with the bottoms shoved into high boots, put on a Russian shirt and longish coat and a cap with shining black visor, after the fashion of Keidan. I was no longer an American.

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I was soon indistinguishable from the forty-odd other little boys of similar appearance with whom I sat at the long tables of the cheder (Hebrew school), reciting the Bible lessons in singsong and plaintive melody, and there was hardly any trace left of my former distinction among these pupils and playmates.

It was five years before I was shipped back as a lone boy-passenger to the United States; and it took much longer for the other members of my family to return to the New World.

In our family's difficult situation, incident to the struggle for existence in a small town like Keidan without industry and with a minimum of commerce, we children were continually being farmed out, one or two at a time, to our maternal grandparents. After all, in their house at the end of the town, they had plenty of room. They had milk from their own cow and fruits and vegetables were obtainable from all the incoming vendors on their way from the country to the market. Besides, Bobe and especially Zaide loved to putter around and busy themselves with the preparations for cooking big meals.

In cases of emergency, my grandfather would hurry over to our parents' place and carry one of us children off to his house in his arms. I remember that on one occasion, probably because I was snatched from my play without warning, I became quite unruly while he was carrying me and took off his hat and threw it on the ground, thus exposing him to the shame of appearing bareheaded on the street.

Left to the care of my mother's parents, the Sirks, so much of the time, I have only vague recollection of my own parents' home during those early years. It is strange and I am troubled in mind when I strain to invoke a clearer picture of my father and mother and the separate or independent life of our family. I remember hazily a little grocery store on a small cross street between Smilga Gass and Langer Gass which was the fashionable business street. I remember climbing up a winding and rickety staircase to our small apartment over the store. The rooms were nearly always in a state of disarray as most of the day my mother was downstairs tending the store.

This was the time when my father, Sender Rubinovitz, Talmudic scholar

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and Hebrew teacher, willy-nilly turned merchant, was trying his luck at a shipping enterprise centred in Libau, the port of the Baltic province of Kurland, in which my grandfather and my uncle Zadick were involved. This took him away from home for a large part of the year and made the task of my mother – a shy, modest and quiet person and least qualified for merchandizing, all the harder.

I recall my mother, her comely features and eyes expressive of continual good nature, often clouded by anxiety, making hurried trips to the Sirk homestead to see if all was well with the offspring placed in the care of her elderly parents. In my memory, the stern almost forbidding image of my father, his clear-cut features framed in a heavy black beard, his penetrating dark eyes shadowed by bushy brows, is softened by the recollection of his habitual humming of ritual melodies in a low and musical voice. There is a fading out of my father's image, for our family was on the verge of immigration and my remembrance of him reappears in vivid form several years later, in the very different settings provided by the New World.

Both my elder brothers, Leibe and Sachna and my sister Rochele, who was the youngest, were at frequent intervals sheltered and cared for in the old, rather bare but warm and cheerful Sirk domicile. Our grandparents must have often deprived themselves but they always saw to it that the grandchildren were well fed – only the domestic animals had higher priority' – and that the boys were sent off to cheder well protected against hunger and cold.

Vacations from cheder were limited to Sabbaths and holy days. On these days, except for some of the lesser festivals, we could not enter into the strenuous exercises that would come under the ban of forbidden labour. But, in the summer, the longer afternoons would afford opportunities for all kinds of excursions and adventures. We would weave baskets out of fresh twigs, fashion willow whistles from willow branches, pick wild berries in the woods, roam and romp in distant and forbidden territory and worry our parents and guardians by our lateness in returning. The older boys, of course, scorned the Smilga which at times, during the hot weather, shrank to a mere brook that one could cross by stepping about on stones. The first boast of any boy who had attained the status of bar mitzvah was that he could swim the Navyaza, the large river crossing the upper part of town to which the Smilga was a tributary. But to us smaller children, the Smilga was a boon; an endless source of amusement and diversion. We would float boats, build miniature bridges, collect pebbles and wade and splash to our hearts' content.

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Dwindling in the summer time, swelling in the spring and fall seasons and furnishing a fine skating spot in the winter, the Smilga invited all kinds of play activity and these required varied contrivances for building, spanning and navigating the stream. Only the crudes implements were at our disposal and the little homemade shovels and picks were poor instruments for bridge building and canal dredging just as the store-bought pen knives with wooden handles and iron blades always at odds, hindered the efforts to carve and float our small boats and sailing vessels. In the face of this frustration we were able to score at least one great achievement when the youngest of my maternal uncles, Schneer Zalman, produced a ferry boat that, for a long time, remained the wonder of all the boys on the Smilga Gass.

With a stout and substantial pen knife having several sharp blades which must have been brought to him from a large city – perhaps Libau – my uncle was able to carve and build a ferry that surpassed anything we had ever seen in our town. Propellers, a main deck surrounded by railings and gates, a cabin with windows and doors, a captain's bridge with awning and flag flying above – all these combined to fill us youngsters with awe and amazement. We had never even seen a picture of such a vessel. Looking back at this incident, I can only surmise that the builder, a young yeshiva student, had somehow caught a glimpse of a print that had found its way to our town. When the ferry boat, attached to a cord, floated down the Smilga, a shout of joy and excitement went up from the boys on the shore which was heard all over the street.

Beyond the construction and floating of the ferry boat, I have only the dimmest recollection of my uncle Schneer Zalman. He was named after a great rabbi, the founder of the Habad or the rational branch of Hasidism, to which my grandfather gave allegiance, but he did not live to fulfil the promise of that great name or of his own angelic face and almost unearthly sweetness and kindness. For all his gentleness, he was strangely elusive and aloof. I remember him sitting and whittling and carving for hours, totally absorbed in his inventions and contrivances. Whether I was too young to comprehend or was shielded from the fact, I did not realize when we no longer saw him that he had died and I did not know until many years later that he was one of three or four children lost in their youth by my grandfather and grandmother Sirk.

The meek and unobtrusive Smilga which in the dry and hot weather was content to assume the form of a rivulet, babbling quietly over its pebbly

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bottom, was not so modest when the cold and rainy season arrived. Then, it would swell and spread and encroach upon the land, cultivated or not, belonging to the homesteads on our street. In the spring when the heavy piles of snow and ice covering the countryside would suddenly melt, the little river would become a torrent, inundating all our backyards and garden plots, even threatening our houses. It was usually during Passover week that, instead of our having to go down the river for buckets of water, it would come to us, flowing right into the house. My grandfather's house and that of his brother-in-law, Baruch Kamber, next door, were situated on lower plots of ground and were more exposed to the onrush of water than any of the other houses on the street. I have recollections of some exciting adventures when both houses were flooded up to the windowsills.

One Passover, my brother Leibe and some other big boys rigged up rafts and waded into the water in high boots to rescue the matzoth and other provisions. That year, our grandfather's house was so badly flooded that we were taken in by our neighbours across the road on the hill opposite our house and celebrated the holiday with them. Our host, Yudel the brazier, and his wife and two grown daughters made room not only for us but for the cow and the chickens and, of course, Spitzka the dog, always welcome everywhere on the Gass. It was said and rather awkward to be observing the joyous festival of Pesach as temporary lodgers but these good neighbours did everything possible to cheer us up and make us comfortable. We children tended to treat the event as something of a lark. The waters would recede in a few days and we would return to our home but this could not happen until after my zaide, with the help of the Shabbos goy, Adamowitz had cleaned out the mud and debris brought by the flood and Chone the plasterer had repaired the damaged walls. Only then could we all come back, tired and sleepy as if returning from a long and tedious journey.

The floods did not come every spring and when they did come they did not always interrupt the Passover but from time to time they imposed a serious hardship upon my grandparents and other residents of the lower section of Smilga Gass.

But the real scourge of the old-time Jewish settlements in Lithuania, largely made up of wooden houses, their shingled or thatched roofs dried out by the hot summer sun and as inflammable as tinder was the fire. Fire-fighting provisions and appliances were, of course, unknown. The destruction of their house by sudden outbreaks of flame would often leave a family destitute and

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reduce them to a state of beggardom. Indeed, the mendicants who came from distant points and appeared at our doors in Keidan, waiting for a penny or a slice of bread, were in many cases the victims of fires that had occurred in their home towns. They were called nishrofim (“burnt ones”) and within the limits of the means of their poverty-stricken benefactors, they were given special consideration.

The great conflagration that occurred in Keidan shortly before my departure for the New World remains one of my most vivid memories. Almost the whole of Keidan, or at least the largest part of the houses on the Smilga Gass and two side streets, burned down. The fire broke out late in the evening and by midnight, many houses were in flames and the town was in a panic; as a scarlet, threatening sky truck greater and greater fear into the hearts of the residents. It was in the fall of the year and a brisk wind was driving the flames from the upper end of the Smilga Gass closer and closer to my grandfather's house and the houses of his immediate neighbours. The wind and flames were threatening the shulhauf, or synagogue grounds, with the Great Synagogue (Grosse Shul) and the auxiliary place of worship known as the Klaus. On the big military training fields at the foot of the street, we and all our neighbours assembled with our packs and bundles of belongings, the women praying aloud in their traditional mournful sing-song, asking God to spare from the fiery blast at least the houses of prayer.

It appeared to us as if their supplications were answered for the wind finally subsided, removing the danger to the sacred buildings and nearby houses and giving the volunteer rescue teams an opportunity to check the fire and salvage some of the household wares. With no equipment or experience, these amateur firemen accomplished much, reducing the suffering and the losses that their townsmen might otherwise have sustained. These were surely brave and stalwart men, among them the professional tregers, or carriers accustomed to bearing heavy burdens of grain, flour and vegetables from farmers' wagons to stores and mills. They carried the furniture and household goods from many homes to empty fields lifting the heaviest objects with what seemed to us children amazing ease. In no time, the drill ground was covered with furniture, furnishings and other belongings of many houses of our street. The whole area filled with families sitting on their piles of goods and pieces of furniture, all hugging their belongings like refugees. There we stayed until the small hours of the morning, the children huddled up against their mothers, the mothers trying to comfort them and all of us falling off

[Page XVIII]

to sleep after we knew that the worst of the calamity was over. The houses of about one quarter of our long street were spared. Wearily, we dragged ourselves back the next morning. The giant-like treggers again rendering yeoman's service in carrying all belongings back to the houses. The upper part of our street and another section of the town were in ruins or entirely bereft of houses with only foundation stones visible and tall chimneys standing like monuments of desolation. Some of the householders had insurance on their homes attached to little stores or places of business, and others may have had nest-eggs or kniplach put away; in any case, the rapidity with which most of the victims of the fire put up flimsy board shanties, especially for stores and then built more solidly constructed houses than they had before – the way all this happened was another evidence of the perpetual resilience and recuperative powers of the ghetto.

In the early morning hours, my grandfather's cronies and fellow-traders, followers of the market caravans of the farmers bringing their products to town, would come in to snatch a bite of breakfast and rush out again to the creaking of the lumbering wagons. There was the tall and burly Leibe Kamber, son of Baruch, who would always linger a little longer an, though protesting that he had had his breakfast, would ravenously devour a beigal or a slice of bread before he suddenly disappeared. Leibe had married and settled in a large city in Russia proper, where he was presumed to have been prospering as a merchant. But now, he and his family were back in Keidan and he had returned to the onerous occupation of following the perambulating market. Tough, his aged father and invalid mother Neche lived next door. He would come to my grandfather's house for cheer and recreation, being satisfied merely to inquire about his parents whose house, at this early hour, showed no signs of activity. I could not fully understand the stream of talk of Leibe and my zaide about events in the great outside world but I caught some words and phrases that were as fascinating as they were mysterious, reflecting as they did rumoured great events abroad.

Somewhat later, Leibe left Keidan and returned to the large Russian city

[Page XIX]

Of his former sojourn and to a more successful career and there was a day when his eldest son, Yitzchak came back to visit his grandparents wearing the colourful uniform of a Russian university student; an extraordinary and stirring sight to us children of Keidan.

My grandfather, advancing in years and suffering from occasional attacks of rheumatism, was no longer active in business. Retirement was an unknown concept in those days and regions. He now depended for his modest needs upon his two sons and on periodic earnings of his own. In general, he belonged to the class of traders, brokers or middlemen but he was exceptional in that in the heyday of his enterprises, he negotiated large transactions such as the sale of farms, woodlands or large quantities of grain or flax or the wholesale disposal of the fruit of an entire orchard. A man of handsome appearance, immaculate on his person, he was adept in the language and ways of the country and his jovial, cheerful nature as well as a flair for the jocular, assured him of easy approach to outstanding landowners of the region, even to the Polish schlachtzi, or noblemen who, clinging to their aristocratic pretensions, were still haughty and proud though often land-poor and embarrassed for ready cash. My grandfather would advise or assist them in arranging for sales of property or obtaining loans and whatever the outcome of these tangled transactions, they would always remain his friends.

Even at the time of which I write, when he was no longer able to carry on his former activities, farmers and landowners including some notables would come to his shabby little house on lower Smilga Gass to consult and converse or exchange the latest gossip or humorous anecdotes. One of the regular visitors from among the neighbouring farmers was Pan Yankevitz. I remember him as a tall, large-limbed man who had to stoop as he passed our doorpost and whose head almost touched the ceiling. The conversations would be carried out in Polish and the subjects were beyond the grasp of us youngsters, but we sensed that the talk ranged over a wide area of matters, including immigration to America and news received from the wonderful New World. If the conversation was carried on in the more involved Lithuanian language, my grandmother, who had grown up in a Lithuanian village, was called on to clarify obscure points in the conversation.

After my grandfather had partially withdrawn from following the traffic of trade, he developed the side-line of shipping vegetables and fruits to the big Baltic city of Libau in Kurland, then also under the reign of expanded Czarist Russia. This was the period of the settlement of his eldest son, Israel,

[Page XX]

in Libau and of the business journeys to that city first of another son Zadick and then of his son-in-law Sender Rubinowitz, who, though bearing the onus of being an outsider in the family, nevertheless for a number of years, carried on a business partnership with my zaide and both uncles.

Libau, a notable seaport city of ancient Teuton and Baltic origin, largely German-speaking and, compared with our provinces, modern in character, also had more and closer contacts with the broader spheres of Germany, Austria and France. Hence, Libau became our chief means of communication with the progressive trends of approaching new times. From Libau came proscilkas – packages or boxes of goodies consisting of oranges, figs, dates and other fruits and sweets either entirely unknown or unobtainable in our town. Through letters and visits of our kinsmen in Libau, we learned of important world events. From Libau we learned of the publication of journals and books outside the range of our strictly religious literatures. From Libau came my uncles with their pleasant voices, singing the latest Jewish songs, unconnected with synagogue ritual, especially the ballads and melodies of the famous folk singer, Eliakum Zunser whose simple Yiddish verses and artless native melodies were contrived to impart homely moral lessons to his people and lovingly to rebuke the arrogant, wayward and uncharitable among them. Zunser had himself journeyed to Libau from his home in Minsk to give one of his unique concerts of songs. This homespun genius, an old-time badchen or rhymester, grown to the stature of a modern Yiddish Beranger, singing or reciting his lays to the accompaniment of instrumental music, took his Libau audiences by storm as he had conquered other communities and had sent his listeners away humming his sweet melodies or repeating his satires on would-be aristocrats who sought to escape their fate as Jews.

Enthused by these recitals, my uncles would return to Keidan with Zunser's lieder on their lips. They found a ready imitator in the youngest of their nephews who had a penchant for singing and who took pride in learning by hear, second or third-hand, these long verses and intricate melodies.

Years later, I was destined to meet the poet whose songs had so deeply stirred my imagination – not anywhere in the vast empire of the Czar but in the free, new land of America where he had come, late in life but not too late to extol “Columbus and Washington” and other great American pathfinders and to admonish his own Jewish brethren to be worthy of their new destiny. I met the aged teacher and comforter of his people, now his fellow-immigrants, and his interesting family on the lower East Side. Here,

[Page XXI]

on East Broadway, the celebrated minstrel conducted a Hebrew and Yiddish printing shop and assisted younger writers and poets to become known.

Contacts and communications created with Libau after the settlement in that city of my uncle Israel led to the establishment of the small and seasonal fruit business in which my grandfather and several members of the family took part. My uncle had studied to prepare himself for a clerical position and he had married Rachel, the daughter of Beer Meshulamy the chief schokhet, or ritual slaughterer of Libau but, he departed from his original plans to take an executive position with a firm dealing in sugar and sugar products. He himself did not participate in the fruit-shipping enterprise but his advice and recommendations made the undertaking possible. While my father and uncle Zadick spent a large part of the summer in Libau and with the aid of a local partner attended to the selling of the products, my grandfather at home with some temporary assistants, handled purchasing and shipping of the fruits and such vegetables as cucumbers, beets and carrots. Farmers and fruit growers from various parts of the region, upon a given signal conveyed by the word of mouth of neighbours going back and forth, would bring into town with their products, baskets and tubs of luscious and fragrant fruits and come straight to the house of Pan Yankele. Sometimes, a whole orchard of fruit would be purchased as it stood with the tree heavily laden and the purchaser undertaking the picking and shipping of the produce.

Was my grandfather now operating under the impulse of a sort of second wind following the trading enterprises of earlier years? The new ventures seemed to have given him a fresh youthfulness and vigour. All by himself he carried on a complicated undertaking, ordering, purchasing, and superintending the packing and shipping, running all over town to obtain carting supplies and equipment. The atmosphere would become hectic and exciting as the time approached to meet the departing train and zaide, fortified by an occasional gulp from a bottle kept at the bottom of an almer, or wardrobe in a corner of the stoob, would issue commands to his helpers and loudly boast, for the benefit of passing neighbours, of prospective profits. One characteristic deal was the purchase of the entire harvest of fruits grown in the orchards of the famous estate of Count Totesleben, military leader and favourite of the Czars, whose schloss, or castle outside our town was one of the showplaces of the district. This transaction, a memorable achievement in itself, was effected by negotiation with Russian agents who had come from St. Petersburg itself: only our zaide could approach and properly impress such notables! My

[Page XXII]

brothers, Leibe and Sachna and myself then had the unlooked-for privilege and rare treat of entering the forbidden precincts of the vast grounds and beautiful orchards of the castle surrounded by a high wall of brick and stone, part of which ran for half a mile along the road to the railroad station. To see the stately, palatial structure – only occasionally occupied by the fabulous overlord – and the other imposing buildings from within the gates and to be allowed to help or to pretend to help in the picking and gathering of fruit was an unforgettable treat.

The fruit shipping season generally was a most enjoyable period of our young lives. My grandfather's house would then be encircled with boxes, baskets and wooden tubs and all manner of containers holding the fruits; great piles of apples, pears and plums on beds of straw on the ground would be found. These fruits and, earlier in the season, heaping barrels of cherries would stand there glistening in the sun while Zaide and his aides would be busily packing the produce in huge packing cases. To be a part of such activity and to have our fill of such delicious edibles was to the children like a taste of paradise.

The drab childhood of a Lithuanian shtetel, with its long hours in cheder which in the regular season even had evening sessions, was relieved and brightened in other ways during the summer months; by trips on the river Smilga outside the town, by roaming through fields that were somehow known as Kellerke's felder, by picking wild berries in the woods, by bathing upstream in the fresher and deeper stretches of the river; but the fruit-shipping period furnished our most exciting childhood preoccupations.

Alongside the fruit-shipping venture which lent zest and colour to a succession of memorable summers, my grandfather, from time-to-time, undertook other business enterprises similar to those of the other traders with whom he associated. But, though he was in the fraternity, he was not one of them. A certain consciousness of early achievements in a larger field when the stakes involved the sale of woodlands and farms seemed to have kept him aloof from the ordinary class of mekler and handler. There was also a sense of yichus, of family pride, derived from rich and influential relations in a distant city now assuming the haziness of a legend. What if these faraway haughty kinsmen spurned this rebellious and mocking young man, resented his failure to apply himself to a study and become a lamden, a Hebrew scholar, washed their hands of him, permitted him to go off and settle in an obscure corner of the land – what of all that? Somewhere in far-off Wilna or Vilkomir

[Page XXIII]

there were storied kinsmen who were moulded out of the stuff that makes rabonim and negidim, men of learning and worldly success, and even if he did not follow in their path of both spiritual and material prosperity, he would not yield one iota in pride of heritage. He was Herz Yankel Sirk and the mere independence and a challenge to parvenus and pretenders.

Allowing for a sense of humour that was bubbling over and for a spirit of playfulness that sought expression in pranks and practical jokes, there was undoubtedly something else that egged Reb Yankel on to mock and poke fun at his neighbours, to burlesque and mimic their simple and awkward manners. Was it a consciousness of his higher origin, a sense of superiority? There was also something of the daredevil in his makeup with perhaps more than a touch of recklessness. Anyway, neighbours who were the butt of his irony were all around and their homes stretched from our end of the street for some distance toward the centre of the town where the business section offered him most conspicuous targets for the stings of his satire in the persons of the two biggest merchants.

To begin, next door at the very bottom of our lane, there was Baruch Kamber – a brother-in-law and hence eligible for attack. Kamber was a man of huge bulk, heavy and ponderous, slow of thought as well as of speech, just the antithesis of the quick and volatile Sirk. My grandfather would call Reb Baruch “the mountain” and he would speak of yeshuvnikes, country people, who would not know when the Jewish holy days fell until some karabelnick, or itinerant peddler, came and told him – sometimes a week or a month too late. Out of deference to my grandmother, my grandfather would spare Reb Baruch from some of his observations but if for some reason he became wrought up, he would make the grave charge that their native villager Kamber was inhospitable and refused to sell bread to strangers. Reb Baruch had two tenants: one of them, Jon Yushkewitch occupying a little one-room apartment in the rear of the house, was accorded special and more considerate treatment as a Gentile and as our official Shabbos goy. But this was not the case with Lieutenant Zamaroff, the shoemaker who, with his workbench and his wife and young son lived in the kammer, or separate room in the front of the house. Zamaroff was a veteran of the Russian army who, whether because of his skilled shoe-mending or because of other merits, attained the rank of feldwebel, or lieutenant, a rare honour for a Jew. On the street, he would stand most erect and walk fast with a quasi-military gait. His clear reluctance to let anyone forget the grandeur of his past came in for its share of Zaide's gift for barbed mimicry.

Chapter 4

In our darkest days of want and privation, my zaide would describe the situation in the words of the Psalmist who speaks of the time when “the waters have come up to my soul”. At such times, nevertheless, he was always counting on some unexpected turn of events, some piece of business, a little commission on a sale perhaps that would tide us over the immediate crisis. He would call it a sposob, using a Slavic term unknown to me: something would turn up. Again he would invoke the Psalmist and say: “I lift mine eyes unto the mountains and ask whence comes my help”. The awaited help from heaven became mystically associated with a far-off land where, as Israel Zangwill was to say so many years later, God was “making the American”.

Our destiny gradually became interwoven with the distant and nebulous United States as one member of our family after another, without any knowledge or equipment, ventured forth, crossing unknown and frightening seas, to put his hands to the fashioning of a new life. First my father and eldest brother Leibe (hereafter Louis) entered upon the long journey after exciting preparations and tearful, choking goodbyes. Then my uncle Zadick (hereafter Simon) broke off a fragile engagement arranged by a shadchan, or marriage broker, while on a visit to Verbelova, the home of the bride-to-be; this town being conveniently close to the German frontier, he crossed the border and made his way to the seaport of Bremen, notifying his parents by letter of his fateful decision.

If not my father, at least Uncle Zadick and other kinsmen and townsmen began to establish themselves, and reports of incipient prosperity were encouraging to future prospectors. The lure of America later was felt even in the attractive port city of Libau where my uncle Israel was employed by a firm of sugar merchants. Being pressed by creditors for debts incurred to assist a friend, he left for America after a 'business' trip to Keidan which, in reality, enabled him to take leave of his aged father and mother who, being aware of another more personal source of his unhappiness, tearfully encouraged their favourite son to go and try his fortune in the New World.

It was about a year after this occurrence that my father wrote to my mother, this time quite definitely, about sending us schifskarten, or steamship tickets and money so that we could come to the United States. Shortly afterward, Isaac, the letter-carrier, appeared at my grandfather's house looking more ominous than usual. He produced a bulky envelope with letter

[Page XXV]

and draft (or omweisung), schifskarten and railroad tickets bearing pictures of the ships and trains. Thus, suddenly a vague and transient hope was transformed into a vivid reality. The receipt of the ultimate letter from America containing steamship and railroad tickets, money for traveling expenses and many instructions was the signal for a bustle of preparations and arrangements with sad thoughts of the approaching final departure clouding the happy excitement.

But, there was too much to do to leave much time for reflection. There were clothes to be bought and made for my mother and three children. There was food to be dried and baked and made durable against the prohibitions imposed by the observance of kashruth on the journey and there was so much packing to be done – clothes and bedclothes, huge pillows and featherbeds and even some cherished copper and brass cooking and other utensils, and….a samovar! How could people in America get along without a samovar? All these objects were enclosed in various containers: canvas bags, baskets and boxes and above all, one gigantic wicker-work trunk with cover and lock and an enormous capacity for holding things as well as for giving trouble to all those who tried to handle it.

Finally, one morning the big boid, or van, a conveyance on the order of the old covered wagon, hitched up to two horses, stood laden and waiting in front of my grandfather's house, ready for one of its periodic trips between Keidan and Kovno. Prolonged and sorrowful leave-taking marked the last sad and hectic hours of that morning. My grandmother's usual restraint forsook her and she wept copiously over the heads of her departing grandchildren whom she surely did not expect ever to see again. Mingled with the resounding farewells from many neighbours and friends as well as members of the family, were admonitions, guiding instructions, advice for the journey and regards to kinsmen in America – all of whom were presumably living in the narrow confines of one street in a single city.

But where was our dear old zaide all this while? Was our persistent, ardent and most devoted grandfather going to let us leave with merely an embrace and a few endearing words? No he! He insisted upon accompanying us at least part of the way to guard us against mishaps. Was there not an old custom of beleiten – accompanying the traveller part of the way to give support to his venture? In his best coat and cap, his boots freshly polished, he took his place beside us in the wagon as if he too were journeying to America. Our relations and neighbours watched and waved as the crude, creaking homemade tallyho rumbled off – not toward the north – the end of town in

[Page XXVI]

the direction of the railroad station, but toward the south through the long Smilga Gass and the big square which was the market place and across the long bridge, the Sabbath-day promenade of the elite, passing through the section colloquially known as 'the other side of the water' and on to the open country and highroads.

The long and tedious trip to Kovno took all day and the greater part of the night. Huddled up against our mother and surrounded by our bags and bundles, we children and our grandfather who sat on a bench in front of us, slept fitfully while the rickety, rattling wagon lumbered on, every now and then jolting us into full wakefulness. In Kovno, where we had our first glimpse of a larger city with wider streets and a few tall brick buildings, we had some refreshments and rested for a few hours in a krechma, or wayside inn. Then, either in accordance with previous instruction or on newly received advice, we embarked around noon on a sort of excursion and passenger boat that plied the river Nemen from Kovno to Yurberick, were we were to undertake the perilous adventure of crossing the frontier between Russia and Germany.

It was a pleasant sail on this simple, ferry-like boat despite the many excited people on board – immigrants like ourselves and other travellers, jousting with the pleasure-seeing excursionists, loud-spoken Lithuanian, Polish, Russian and Yiddish speaking travellers producing a babble, if not a Babel, of tongues. Our Zaide found some consolation at the refreshment counter on the boat which, he said, served very good beer.

After landing at Yurberick, we rested again at a china, or tea house. That evening we were to be taken across the frontier, a clandestine affair that required the darkness of the night. Arrangements had been made with the traveling agent, who was presumably also the van driver, and had perhaps one or two additional side lines. Before entering upon the tribulations of crossing the border, we faced the ordeal of parting from our beloved grandfather and all our tears and loving embraces allayed only slightly the painful wrench of leaving him behind. Zaide, after paying for our lunches and all our immediate needs, insisted upon giving my mother all the money left in his purse outside of 3 gulden (about 45 cents) for fear that we might run short. We could not deter him and we left not only disconsolate but very much worried as to how he would ever get home from that strange city without money; a trip requiring at least 10 rubble.

We boarded a diligence, a more substantial and larger equipage of the

[Page XXVII]

covered-wagon type, but built in a curious way with a loose and partly collapsible bottom, the strange purpose of which we were, to our dismay and sorrow, to learn more about later. This boid was driven and managed by a tall, formidable, red-bearded Fuhrman, or driver, who held his whip as if it were not only a threat to the horse but a menace as well to the foreign land we were about to enter. His assistant was a beardless and nimble little man who acted as if he was there to offset the gruffness of his boss and to supply politeness to the passengers. His chief task, for a consideration beyond the traveling fare, was to negotiate with the authorities at the frontier, that is, to hand out bribes in both the Russian and German language, or with no spoken words at all.

I have no notion of what legal status, if any, we possessed as we left our native land. Under the reign of the Czar, which in this respect anticipated a much later regime, the people, especially the minority groups had very few rights, certainly not the right of immigration. Once a Russian citizen, always a Russian citizen in the eyes of the law, for better or for worse, usually the latter. Therefore, prospective immigrants were subjected to all kinds of regulations and impositions. The easiest way to gain exit from the country was to grease the palms of officialdom. Right now we were dealing with a breed of go-betweens, carriers of human contraband who made the most of their opportunity, not only by charging high fees for bringing people over the boundaries from Russia to Germany.

While driving toward the fearsome grenetz, or frontier, the team repeatedly broke down. Each time, part of the floor of the carriage would fall out and passengers would be thrown pell-mell to all sides and against one another, while satchels, packages and bags fell through the open spaces of the yawning bottom of the wagon. Frightened and shocked, the unhappy travellers would raise an outcry but the driver would quickly warn them of the danger of making noise in this forbidden zone. He would curse his evil fate, his horses and his assistant, attributing all the trouble to them and would send the assistant back along the road to search for the missing pieces of luggage. The passengers too would climb out to grope and search and scour the roadside, brush and ravines for their missing belongings. The assistant would return with perhaps one or two objects recovered and report that most of the pieces of luggage were nowhere to be found. The boss driver's scraping of the ground with the butt of his whip in utter darkness would prove equally fruitless.

Stealthy accomplices in the rear, probably driving another wagon or

[Page XXVIII]

truck, certainly did much better no doubt they located every parcel or bag that fell out of the wagon. But there was no time for further reproaches and complaints. The driver of our vehicle insisted that we were losing precious time and that we would run into danger if we delayed any further. So the missing planks would be hurriedly put back – not too firmly, however! – on the floor of the wagon and all of us weary wanderers, having climbed into our seats, the journey would be continued until the next collapse. For the incident repeated itself three or four times during the night so that the diabolical inventors of the sliding wagon bottoms, base despoilers of the poor and the helpless, could complete their harvest of booty.

When we reached the frontier, the business between our contractor and the officers in charge was conducted in whispers during a few minutes stop. If the long-talked-of and awesome grenetz was something to see or to marvel at, it was too dark for us to observe any sign of it.

Fully worn out and half asleep, we finally arrived at the German city of Tilsit where, after some time spent searching and inquiring, we were given shelter in a hostel for immigrants en route and provided by a Jewish aid committee. From a window in this lodging house my brother, sister and I watched the imposing manoeuvres of a regiment of the Kaiser's soldiers fascinated by their sparkling regalia and brassy attire, so much more ornate than the accoutrements of the Czar's military that we had been used to watching at home. Little did we dream of what this display augured for the world in the ensuing years.

Throughout the troubled drive to reach German soil and the ensuing trip on the hard rattling trains through Germany to the seaport at Bremen, we were anxiously wondering how our dear grandfather, whom we had left behind practically penniless in a strange city, ever got home to Keidan. We learned only much later of the adventures that befell him. After accompanying us on the eventful trip from Keidan to Yurberick and parting from us in the latter city, our Zaide went to the shul, or synagogue. Following the evening prayer there was the usual exchange of greetings, the special “Sholom Aleichem “(Peace to thee) welcome extended to one who was obviously a stranger in town. The customary question addressed in such instance: “Fun wanent kumt a Yid?” (where do you hail from?) – led to a lengthy conversation with a man who had relatives in Keidan and therefore invited my grandfather to be his quest for the night. On learning that he wished to pay his

[Page XXIX]

respects to a distant kinsman in Taverik, a town at close range within the province, his host arranged with a friend who was traveling that way on business to give my grandfather a lift in his brizke, or buggy. Having arrived in Taverik, my Zaide rested in a tavern – those three gulden went further than himself - and then walked some distance out of town to the home of his cousin.

This was no ordinary house nor was the owner an ordinary person. Reb Yosche Zundel, the rarely used family name eludes my memory, was one of the few remaining Jewish landowning magnates of Lithuania. His nmanin, or estate, a family inheritance, covered about a thousand acres and he lived like a lord of the manor in a grand mansion surrounded by beautiful grounds, including gardens, orchards and a lake. In the spirit of the ancient patriarch Abraham who, according to legend built his house with many doors so as to make himself more readily accessible to travellers and strangers passing by, there was always open house in this sumptuous domicile.

A special dining room was set up which at all hours served food to visitors and travellers, strangers and friends and here many itinerant petitioners and beggars came seeking victuals and alms. Before the visit of which I am writing and long afterward, our Zaide told us innumerable stories of the fabulous wealth and generous benefactions of Yoshe Zundel and his progenitors.

When my grandfather arrived at the estate and made himself known to a secretary or a valet, he was at once provided with a place of rest and offered refreshments. Later, Reb Zundel himself appeared. In after days, my grandfather would often tell us what an imposing figure he made with his large head and a round black beard. Sitting tall and erect on a magnificent white mare, a young colt trailing behind, the country squire at once proceeded to greet all waiting visitors, guests and supplicants as well as persons who had come on various business errands having to do with his granaries, lumbering and farm produce. On being told of the arrival of Reb Yakov Herz Sirk from Keidan, Reb Zundel invited my grandfather into his cabinet, or private office. The two men talked at length, tracing the long and complicated family relationship between them and exchanging reminiscences. Reb Zundel invited my grandfather to stay overnight or a few days but Zaide said he had to return as soon as possible. So the next day he departed. Reb Zundel in the course of the farewell asked Reb Yankel Herz, indirectly but quite clearly,

[Page XXX]

if he could help him in any way. My zaide, swelling with pride in the re-established relationship with the great man, thanked his host profusely and with the ancient hauteur of the Sirk family operating in full force, assured him that he was in no need of any assistance. He had merely stopped on his way, he said, after having seen his daughter and grandchildren off to America, to pay his respects to his cousin and to renew a cherished and old relationship.

My Zaide was driven to the town of Taverik where he arrived very happy and full of self-confidence through he now had only 20 kopeks in his pocket. Casting anxiety to the winds and entrusting his destiny to a benign Providence, my grandfather entered a krechma in Taverik and ordered a glass of beer. At a table nearby sat two men, one quite elderly and the other in his early middle-age apparently belonging to the schlachtzi, or class of Polish noblemen. They were drinking and talking convivially in the easy-going manner of the most leisurely of the leisure class. My aide with his uncanny memory for faces and voices, thought he had recognized a resemblance between the younger man and Count Stanislav Siebetzky, a large landowner with an estate just outside Keidan whom he knew as he knew so many other notables. He stepped up to their table and, with due apology for the interruption, asked the younger Pole if he was not somehow related to Count Siebetzky of Keidan. The Pole jumped up from his seat in great excitement: “Bose moy (My God!”), he exclaimed: “you know my Uncle Stanislov?” Whereupon my grandfather invited to join the schlachtzi at their table told of his cordial relations with the great Pan and imparted to the nephew all he knew about the nobleman's agricultural enterprises and public activities. With the restricted means of communication of those days, uncle and nephew had not been in touch for years and the first-hand news now conveyed was unexpected and welcome.

After this chance meeting, there was nothing too good for Pan Sirk, the visitor from Keidan. He was wined and dined and given comfortable quarters in the same inn for the night. He was asked to deliver to Count Stanislov not only a letter and personal greetings but also a gift of a handsome imported pipe. And he was forced to accept for himself a little present of 20 rubbles –ostensibly to go toward his travelling expenses.

So my Zaide got home not only with ease but with comfort. The delivery of the letter, greetings and gift certainly enhanced my grandfather's relations with the great Pan. This led to some new business dealings, with increased commissions, and at least for a time, a better outlook for daily subsistence. This I believe should also be credited to America.

[Page XXXI]

Chapter 5

The quaint and rustic town of Keidan or Keidany as the Russians pronounced it was reputed to be of ancient origin and its residents cherished a legend of the early settlement therein of a sect of Scotch Calvinists: the time-stained church on Langer Gass, now occupied by a more recent Polish denomination, was still pointed out as a landmark. Though isolated and provincial, with only an occasional Hebrew or Russian newspaper coming to one of the more elite townsmen, Keidan nevertheless had regular contacts with the great centres of population beyond. Army officers would arrive to supervise our two brigades of Russian cavalry, police inspectors would come to look into the books and the pockets of tax collectors and merchants like my uncle Israel from Libau would visit us on business matters. Another class of visitors to this compact community of Jews were the meshulochim, or messengers who travelled in the interest of Yeshivoth, or rabbinical colleges in distant cities and maggidim, or itinerant preachers whose exhortations and condemnations delivered in the big shul would stir me to the depths of my young heart and send me home trembling for my nameless little sins.

Keidaners were a proud race of men. “I am from Keidan”, “I am a Keidaner”, they were never tired of repeating. The stereotype that ghetto raillery bestowed upon them – as it did upon the natives of every town – poked fun at their village chauvinism. The Keidaner was said to boast so much about his city, to point to himself and pound himself on the chest, that it made him round-shouldered, hence Keidaner heiker (“Keidan hunchback”).

“Stolz wie gans keidan” (proud as the whole of Keidan) wrote the Yiddish poet Morris Winchevsky – though he himself was not of our town but was, like my father, a native of Yanova, another Lithuanian enclave of old-time piety and learning. The great scholars and men of distinction that our town of Keidan produced added to the pride of the natives. There were rabbis of far-famed wisdom and sanctity. In the secular field of endeavour, there was Moshe Leb Lilienblum, precursor of Zionism and Hebrew writer whose autobiographical “Chattot Ne'urim (Sins of my youth) published in Vienna in 1876, was a sensation in its day. Isaac Levitan, one of the great landscape painters in Russia was also born in Keidan (1860) and while his townsmen could not understand why and what he was painting in far-off St. Petersburg, they were nevertheless ready to claim credit for his work. Lilienblum too had

[Page XXXII]

removed himself from our midst settling in distant Odessa but his growing fame as a leader of his people continued to shed lustre on his native village.

Among the relatives who would, on rare occasions, come to enliven the sameness of long days, none was more welcome than Yoshe Leiser, a thin gnome-like little man with a sharp-pointed beard. He was a distant cousin of my Zaide from a place near Vilkomir. He came every spring to purchase seed for the truck gardeners of his district. Genial to a fault, bubbling over with good humour, he had such a fund of amusing experiences to relate that we were all delighted to see him and eager to hear him talk. Yoshe Leiser, with a bundle of canvas bags of all sizes dangling from his back as part of his very light luggage, was our herald of spring. When he came to purchase his seeds, we knew that brighter days were ahead. His little canvas bags would be empty at first but after he had made the rounds of our local gardeners and planters, they would be bulging with seeds of all kinds. He would carry his load over his shoulder on his journey home looking for the entire world like the burden-bearing messenger of song and story. We children would cling to him every hour of his stay. In proffered compensation for several days of lodging and food, he would seek to make himself useful around the house. He would no sooner enter and dispose of the customary greetings than he would pick up two wooden buckets and go down to the river for fresh water. He would then assist with heating the samovar, bring more wood for the oven fire from the shed and carry out other chores. For an extra bed, a sheaf of fresh straw would be spread out on the floor of the main room. As a special indulgence, I would be allowed to share his sleeping quarters. I was always wanting to have a heart-to-heart talk with him, to tell him my perplexities and ask for advice.

There was a time when neither my rebbe (the principal of my Hebrew school), my zaide nor I was satisfied with the progress I was making. A certain element of uncertainty having crept into the instruction because I was regarded, and indeed thought of myself, as a future settler in America where everything was to be so different. The harsh admonitions of a magid would throw me into a panic as I remembered with qualms of conscience some deviation from observance of the Sabbath law. Intense religious emotions induced either by the burning words of the magid or by the solemn and sonorous reading from the Prophets in cheder in the fading light of the late afternoon – Isaiah, perhaps, storming against the black sheep in Israel – would create a mood of repentance and contrition. This made the thought of joining my

[Page XXXIII]

father in godless America a horrifying prospect to contemplate. With such a troubled mind, I would look forward to Yoshe Leiser's arrival, eager to unburden myself to him. I recall how on several nights when I slept beside him, I began to unfold my doubts and misgivings. But every time this happened, I fell asleep before I finished my story.

The next day there would be long cheder hours, household chores and errands to do and the diversions of the street and the alternating emotions of religious ecstasy and repentance would vanish – until somehow, a new magid had come to town. Then all by myself, without asking any questions, I would wander off either to the Beth Hamidrash or to the Grosse Shul (both located at the shulhauf, or synagogue centre of the town) for an hour or more I would revel in the emotion stirred up by the magid. I was putty in the hands of any one of these masters of admonition of intense moralizing described in Hebrew as mussor. I did not know then that this type of exhortation was the core of an ethical movement (with a distinctive literature of its own) that had taken its place in history in the middle of the nineteenth century under the leadership of a great scholar named Israel Salanter. Of course, I could not follow the magid in the theological dialectics or sophistic arguments known as pilpul, but there was enough reproof and remonstrance to make me wince and to fill me with terror at the prospect of the hereafter he conjured. His fierce words would sink deep into my being and I would resolve that never again on the Sabbath would I bite into a plum or a cherry hanging from a branch or pick a blade of sour grass with my teeth (favourite ways of attempting to evade the sin of picking fruit on the Day of Rest). Never again would I commit such transgressions. But after a time, the memory of the indictment would wear off and I would return to my evil days until either a new magid or the Day of Atonement arrived.

[Page XXXIV]

A Flag Comes Home After 16 Years

Miracles can happen even to a flag.

Recently, the flag of Gdud Maapilim, of Ken Keidani of Hashomer Hatzair, was brought to Israel; the only flag of the Lithuanian youth movement to have been saved. It was brought to Israel by Moshe Kagan, now of New York, who was a delegate of Mapam to the World Zionist Congress.

Moshe Kagan, who hails from Keidani, was a member of Hashomer Hatzair from his early youth. He writes:

“In 1940, as the Russians were entering Lithuania and the Zionist movement ordered all its branches moved underground, I succeeded in getting an exit permit for the United States via Sweden. I had only a short time to prepare for the trip. I knew that I would not return to Lithuania and that all Zionists including the Hashomer Hatzair movement would not renew their work again. I decided to save whatever I could. (I had but a small suitcase with me). I took the flag of my group, some books of the movement and the collected works of Borochov and began my journey. I decided than that I would carry the flag to Israel with my own hands”.

Now, sixteen years later, Kagan has fulfilled his vow. The meeting after twenty-five years between the members of Kibbutz Bet Zera, of the Lithuanian movement and Kagan was a moving experience. As the flag was unfurled and the date of 1933 appeared, many memories and thoughts came back to the gathering. They remembered their youth movement in Lithuania and the Jewish people there who also are no more.

The flag will be kept in Kibbutz Bet Zera as an exhibit in a room dedicated to the martyrs of Keidani.

The kibbutz has decided to plant trees in the Jewish National Fund forest in the name of Moshe Kagan for the sixteen years during which he guarded with devotion this flag.

(Israel Horizons, Dec.1956)

[Page XXXV]

I left Keidan in 1907 after my Bar Mitzvah as a student in Keidaner Yeshiva.

A short time after my arrival in the United States, I learned that there was a Keidaner Organization in existence. I did not join the Keidaner Association then because I gave all my spare time to the Zionist Course belonging to more than one Zionist Club and Organization.

But, in 1929, I took a trip to Keidan to visit with my family. There and then, I learned a great deal about Keidaner Ass. The people in charge of the Keidaner Orphans invited me to a luncheon and I was told that the Keidaner Orphans were maintained and supported by the Keidaner Ladies' Auxiliary of New York.

At that luncheon, there were a number of leading Keidaner who told me of the great strife and struggle which Keidan was living through and they requested me that upon my return to New York, I should contact the Keidaner Ass., and tell the members that Keidan could be helped by receiving a substantial sum of money for the purpose of organizing a stronger Loan Association which was already in existence. I promised them that I would do everything in my power to help them.

A few weeks after my return to New York, the Keidaner Ass. called a special meeting in order to listen to a living regard from Keidan. At that special meeting, I had the pleasure to speak to my Keidaner for the first time and it seemed that my words and analysis of Keidan made a deep impression because a committee was appointed the same evening headed by Dr. Hyman Epstein for the purpose of raising a special fund for that Loan Ass. And right there at that meeting, someone proposed me to become a member of the Keidaner Ass., and I did and ever since then, I am in active service of the Keidaner Ass., for the past 42 years.

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The Keidaner Ass.born in 1900, like many other thousands of Landsmanshaftn, was organized for the sole purpose and aim of fraternity, cooperation and assistance in case of need. The Landsmanshaftn contributed a great deal to the life of the immigrant who entered a new country, a new language and a life completely different than the little shtetl where he was born. Although the Hias was in existence and gave a great deal of assistance to every Jewish immigrant that needed help, yet it was the Fraternal Organization that gave him the warm greeting and the friendship he needed. Many, many thousands obtained jobs through the help of their organization for their livelihood.

And as the years rolled by, American Jewry grew in the millions by immigrants and otherwise. It became the world's greatest Jewish community with many thousands of organizations of a different character than the Landsmanshaftn and that kept on until the Hitler Holocaust.

To a certain extent, we knew that many thousands of our brethren were dying but no one expected that six million of our beloved were massacred.

The Keidaner Ass.during World War II realized that after the war would be over, our little Keidan would be in great financial need. I then proposed to establish a post-war relief fund so that when the war would be over, we would have a substantial amount of money for immediate help. When the war ended, to our painful regret, we found out that Keidan was completely destroyed and that there was no one to be helped. But that did not stop the Keidaner Ass.in continuing their effort by appealing to its members for more money for the post-war Relief Fund because we felt that our duty and responsibility would increase by many folds.

Instead of Keidan, we would have to think and assist our brethren in many parts of the world due to the catastrophe that had happened to our European Jewry. We did our best.

Shortly after, when the United Nations found advisable and voted for the establishment of a Jewish State in Palestine and the Declaration of Independence, once again the thoughts and responsibility of the Keidaner Ass.as well as the entire American Jewry changed. The Keidaner Ass.more than doubled its efforts to raise money through banquets and theatre benefits, etc., and as President of the Keidaner Ass., I am proud to state that we have fulfilled our responsibility to a great extent and the establishment of the Post-War Relief Fund during World War Ii was of great assistance.

[Page XXXVII]

Right after the Declaration of Independence, when the need for homes in Israel was urgent due to the great number of immigrants from all over the world, we pledged eight units amounting to $20,000 and in 1952, our pledge was fulfilled. During the years after 1952, we contributed to the UJA substantial amounts every year and since the Six-Day War in 1967, the Keidaner Ass., is contributing through the Emergency Fund of the UJA $1000 every three months.

We know that you Keidaners living in Israel are doing your share by building the country in every way both culturally as well as economically.

I want to assure you that as long as I am alive and as long as the Keidaner Ass.in New York will be in existence, we will make every effort to assist Israel.

After World War I, immediately after the liberation of Lithuania, the Lithuanian government granted the Jews certain autonomy. A Jewish National Council was set up yet all this lasted for only a short time.

The situation in Lithuania as well as in Keidan deteriorated; there was no employment and no source of income for people. A big immigration began. People would go to any place in the world. Many young people went to Palestine, many went to South America and many left for South Africa.

Those who went to South Africa and had no relatives in the foreign country could address themselves to the Keidaner Society with all their problems. The Society took an interest in the problems of each one, helped some of them to get work, assisted others with a loan and arranged for them a livelihood – others received tools and even loans in order to support the wife

[Page XXXVIII]

and the family left behind in Keidan. Medical assistance and medicaments were given to all free of charge and in this way, everyone arranged himself gradually.

In the course of time the Society increased because new townspeople arrived, yet the more townspeople came the more the situation of the Society became difficult as it became necessary to help each one and there were no funds. As soon as one person finished paying his loan, another one applied for help and the members of the committee had big difficulties in satisfying everybody.

Every Sunday, the members of the committee used to go and collect the membership fees – two shillings and six pence a months, and on Monday at the meeting, each of them brought with him the money. After the collected money was summed up at the meeting, there was great joy: it would be possible to pay the doctor, the pharmacy and it would also be possible to grant the most urgent loan which an immigrant had been expecting for so long.

At the beginning of 1930, many townspeople came because in May, the immigration was stopped and no more immigrants came from Lithuania and Keidan. The Society had, at that time, very big difficulties in helping everybody to arrange themselves. The situation in Keidan deteriorated each one received letters from his father, mother, brothers and sisters with pleas to save them and to send them help. Different institutions wrote to the Society too that they were perishing because the population could not maintain them. So, for instance, the public bath was burnt and the town remained without a bath. Meetings were arranged by there were no means to rebuild the bath. We held immediately a meeting of all the townspeople and the necessary sum was collected.

Or, a public appeal – there was a big flood which destroyed, amongst other things, the fence of the cemetery and it was necessary to fortify the hill otherwise graves would collapse and the “Chevra Kadisha” had no money. We had to save and send money. We collected again the necessary funds and sent it to Keidan.

Again, a request: the roof of the big synagogue was decaying and it rained within. The Scrolls of the Law and the holy books were being damaged. We collected the money and sent it to Keidan.

The town became poor and together with it, the people. When Passover approached, there was no possibility of collecting “Maot Chitin”. Again they appealed to us. Unfortunately, there was no unity between the public workers of Keidan. There were two institutions. One of these was the Kehila and the

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other was the “Ezra”, and both of them appealed and we did not know what to do. The result was that we sent to both institutions and they distributed according to their understanding.

We used to organize two campaigns each year: one for winter to buy timber and the other for “Maot Chitin” and we continued to do so until the big destruction of the world which befell the humanity and our beloved Keidan.

During World War II, the situation changed completely. Keidan was unfortunately closed and we heard no more from there. Here in South Africa, the townspeople already were a little established, some more, some less. We continued with our work. Some of our people still needed loans and we continued with our system of doctor and medicaments. We also used to come to meetings. We were thinking only about the fate of the Jews in Keidan. During the war, we believed that when the war came to an end, we would be able again to rebuild Keidan. We began collecting money by different means and we raised a large sum.

Unfortunately, there was already no need for funds in Keidan. Only a few townspeople in the D.P. camps in Germany were found or dispersed all over Russia and in Vilnius. We found all our townspeople and assisted them with hundreds of packages of food and clothing. Our women worked around the clock and they packed and mailed until the camps in Germany became empty, thanks to the State of Israel, where the majority of our townspeople live today.

We also assisted our townspeople in Israel. We established a loan fund in Israel which the townspeople in Israel used to their best.

Many townspeople still remained all over Russia and we mailed them packages and clothing as well as different useful articles until approximately 1970, when we were informed that they had troubles from the government and we therefore stopped mailing packages to them.

Recently, we sent aid to the new immigrants from Russia and we participated in the Memorial Book which will be an eternal monument for our Keidan.

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