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If a city can earn the name “a true Jewish city,” it is the city of Lublin that has earned a premier place among the titleholders, and I am not qualified, and I am not capable of describing my dear home city. However, I will attempt to provide everything from the depths of my memory, all of the crumbs from my childhood up to the 1920s of our century, to fulfill on my part the duty my landsleit [people from the same town] have laid out for me.

When I was three years old, my mother, a young widow of Reb Yankele Herszenhorn (a well-known personality in Lublin in the 1860-1880s, whom I did not know. He died when I was a year-and-a-half old), carried me to kheder [religious primary school]. Later, I learned that my teacher was named Netl Melamed [Netl the teacher]. This was a pious Jew with a wide and long yellow beard and blue eyes, who appeared sterner than he truly was. We children caused more mischief than we learned. Therefore, our assistant teacher was stern, but neither hit us. I cannot say this about a few of my later teachers.

One of the last ones has especially remained in my memories: Noakh Modzhitzer (from Modzhits [Dęblin]). He was just the opposite of Netl Melamed. He appeared (also with a yellow, but not as vast and beautiful a beard) completely innocent, but he was one Lublin child-beater!

I stop here at the two because all of Lublin knew them as good teachers who received their so-called “small clients” from the best middle-class circles. A third person I remember well was Avraham Zawichoster (we called him Avraham Zawichwoster). This Jew was in his forties with a greyish, wide, and long beard. He did not torment us strongly with learning. He would disappear for an entire hour because he loved a little whiskey. He left us alone to repeat the Talmudic lesson by ourselves. Understand that we children had no heartache because of this and would either help the teacher's wife a little or simply fool around.

At this time, the Lublin Rabbi, Reb Hilel Lipszic, issued an edict that the teachers must receive a kind of ordination from him. This ordination consisted of sending the children to the rabbi or to his son, Reb Layzerke, to be examined [as to what they had learned].

I met the Lublin Rabbi for the first time at such an examination. This was a tall Jew with a stately appearance: a long, wide, white beard, a beautiful, high forehead, and blue eyes. As I later learned, he was a famous scholar and polyglot.

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I was then seven years old and just had begun to study Gemora [commentaries on the Torah] with the traditional Hamakfid [Talmudic reasoning and language]. The Rabbi only asked me one question: to give him a case where a borrower was in a better situation than an unpaid watchman. Not thinking, I answered: [if he] died because of work [performed for the borrower]. This so pleased him that he said that I should be given 36 walnuts. My joy was unlimited because the other children at this examination had received only up to 18 nuts. By the way, it was characteristic that an opponent of studying Gemora with children before a certain age did not refrain from posing such a question to a 7-year-old.

As long as I am writing about rabbis, I will remember two more with whom I became acquainted during the later years. One was the Rabbi Kliaczkin (his son was the famous philosopher); the second was Rabbi Szapiro. I was close to the first one briefly when I was already a medical doctor. Rabbi Kliaczkin was interested in medicine and would even read my medical periodicals. Our acquaintance ended, however, at the moment when I accepted the mandate of the Bund at the Jewish kehila [organized Jewish community] in 1924.^[1]

I met Rabbi Szapiro face to face once at a conference about the Jewish hospital. In general, Rabbi Szapiro avoided contact with me, so much so that he did not send a supervisor to the TOZ [Towarzystwo Ochrony Zdrowia Ludności żydowskiej – Society to Protect the Health of the Jews] colony, having, it seems, trusted that I was not an enemy…

The Revolution of 1905 was imminent. The teacher of secular things came to the kheder. My mother, a young widow, herself a devout woman, whose ideal was a doctor wearing Rabbeinu Tam's tefillin^[2], brought me a teacher who would come to us (to me and my brother, Dovid, later a well-known Zionist for the group, Et Livnot [Time to Build]) and give us lessons. Among my teachers was a Russian, an exiled political activist.

After the Kishinev pogrom in 1904, he secretly gave me a proclamation from the Bund, about the Kishinev pogrom. This proclamation made an enormous impression on me, and from then on, I began to draw closer to the Bundist groups.

There was a distinguished Bundist movement in Lublin then that was led by Khanin and Sura Szweber.

The dramatic episode, in short, consisted of this: I had to leave Lublin. The episode, in short, consisted of this: being in a secret room (a small attic room on the fourth floor at Zamojska Street) and hearing that a proclamation had to be printed, but that there was no place to print, I proposed to make use of my mother's print shop.

This printing shop in Lublin was Print Shop of the widow Nekhama, wife of Reb Yakov, may his memory be blessed, Herszenhorn and Reb Moishe Sznajdmeser. The group agreed, and I helped, and as the police had begun an investigation and the watchman began to talk too much, it was believed in my mother's house that it was more sensible for me to leave Lublin. I will not stop here to explain further phases of my journey, such as my entry into a gymnazie [secondary school], later, in a university, because all this took place outside Lublin. I would only come home for a short time (on vacation), and I know very little about what took place in Lublin.

The First World War began. I was then a student at the surgical clinic in Prague and returned to Lublin (for a short time) in 1916. However, the idea arose among the so-called intelligent young people to found an organization to fight for equal Jewish rights.

As I remember, there was an incredible drive then among the young for communal and political activity, and an initiative commission for this purpose was called together that mainly consisted of all kinds of students, both concerning their political opinions and specialties:

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assimilated, Bundists, Zionists, doctors, jurists, philologues, and so on.

In addition to me, taking part in this commission as I remember were the following people: Lewinson, Goldberg, Cigelman (later well-known as a lawyer) the first – known specialist of the penal court (died in Osh, Kyrgyz Soviet Socialist Republic), the second – a well-known civilist [civil law specialist], living now in New York, the third – a capable lawyer in Zamość (tragically perished during the occupation), Kornblit (later Left Poalei Zionist [Marxist Zionist], living at the end in Paris).

We wrangled for a long time until we agreed on one point for our program: equal rights for the Jewish population. This remained the only point of our program.

The first convened general recruitment meeting was stormy enough (the meeting was secret, because it was challenging to receive permission from the Austrian occupation regime; later, it was easier).

The meeting elected a managing committee that included almost the same people whom I have enumerated above. The editor of the organization's publication, Myśl Zydowska [Jewish Thought], was the lawyer, Ludwik Rechtszaft. Rechtszaft was an exceptional journalist with a sharp pen, but very uncrystallized political opinions, which, with the diverse composition of the organization for a specific time, was not a disadvantage…

A so-called “rescue committee” existed in Lublin at that time. It was founded in 1915, right after the Austrians' entry. This committee consisted almost entirely of the assimilated (Moshe Rabbeinu's Poles [Moses' Poles]) and a few of their middle-class blind followers.

And I was sent to this rescue committee as a delegate from our organization, but immediately, at the first meeting, a storm began when I had the chance to speak and began speaking in Yiddish. One after another: Dr. Kaufman, from the Lodz bank, the head of the Lublin community kehila for many years, the lawyer Warman, later the chairman of the Lublin kehila council for many years, A.M. Kantor, later city alderman, the lawyer, Hilzberg and even Shaul Wohlman, a Jew, a merchant who, alas, had difficulty pronouncing Polish and used this language very rarely, all came out of the woodwork and searched for all kinds of arguments that Yiddish, if one cannot do otherwise, is permitted when speaking among themselves, but at official meetings, God forbid. Jews spoke with such fervor as if this concerned – lehavdil [word used to separate sacred matters from secular] – a desecration. After everyone was finished, I again asked Chairman Kaufman: Can I now speak? – “Nie” (No!) – was the answer I received.

I left the meeting as a protest and described the incident to the youth organization. The youth organization tolerated the language question in a sweeping and far-reaching manner. However, there were very few advocates of Yiddish there. And who could talk about beginning a fight with the rescue committee where there were such complainers, where there certainly was no enthusiasm? I resigned my mandate, and, in my place, the student Goldberg was elected, and with that, the incident ended. This incident reverberated in the Jewish neighborhood.

Since I immediately received a post as an assistant in Brno, Moravia, and left Lublin, I do not know the future course of the youth organization or the rescue committee's activities.

Before my departure, I was assigned a mission that I needed to complete in Vienna.

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The trade in whatever product was almost entirely dependent on permits, which could be obtained from the commandants of the various Austrian offices.

Moving around every such commandant would be a so-called komendantikhes [female diminutive of commandant]. Most of these individuals were “middle class” and Hasidic daughters who, for reasons unknown to me, were to receive various permits, although I do not know at what price.

The corruption extended so far that in certain circles, they began to think about how to get rid of this plague. With the full effort of my brain, I cannot remember which organization, but I received the assignment to deal with this question in Vienna. I had to talk with the then-Ukrainian deputy, Krilovitch, and the Zionist (later Revisionist leader of Austria), Herman Stricker, about this issue.^[3]

I carried out my mission perfectly, but I think nothing came of it. Krilovitch (I think that was his name) barely understood what was said to him; for the matter to be understandable, we had to devote a considerable time. Stricker, however, understood everything, and he deserved pity when he had to again and again knock the simple matter into Krilovitch's head.

The thing is, I think, it became tedious for him. I say, I think, because I could not wait for the end and traveled to my post.

1. The mandate refers to the designation of a person as a member of a political slate. Rabbi Kliaczkin probably ended his acquaintance with the author because the Bund is a secular, socialist organization. Return
2. There are two kinds of tefillin (phylacteries), Rashi's and Rabbeinu Tam's. At the end of the prayers, some worshippers don Rabbeinu Tam's tefillin after removing the Rashi tefillin. Return
3. The Stricker to whom the author referred was probably Robert Stricker, not Herman Stricker. Return

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