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Jewish ways of earning a living in Markuszow cannot be described without a mention of the orchard leasing business. The orchard market began right after Erev-Pesach. As soon as the first blossoms appeared on the trees, people set off for the villages to examine the blooming trees like a doctor examining a patient. They visually appraised the bounty, listened to the asking price, negotiated sometimes for an hour or two, sometimes for several weeks, until the transaction was concluded. Then the Jew would put down a big deposit for leasing the orchard, accept the best wishes of the farmer, and travel back to the shtetl with a prayer on his lips that a windstorm, or strong rains, or thunder shouldn't harm the blossoming, that the orchard should be abundant, because his livelihood depended on it. It meant survival itself for dozens of Jewish families in Markuszow.

If the orchard had cherry trees or sour cherries (Morellos), then the orchard leaser, or sadovnik as he was called, swiftly moved himself and his family to the orchard, and there, they established themselves for the weeks it took until the last fruits were taken from the trees. The new dwelling consisted of a tent or hut, covered with woven straw where they kept their meager possessions, and laid their weary bones at night. Food was cooked outdoors. A pot was hung on a tripod over a fire of twigs. The main job of such a family of sadovnikes

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consisted of guarding the fruit against theft, picking the fruit, packing it in crates, and transporting it to Lublin, to the surrounding shtetls, or to the Markuszow market. If he was a wealthier sadovnik, he would send his merchandise to Warsaw.

The life of a sadovnik was hard enough. It was also a supplemental form of income to the existing jobs which were a means of support for only one or two days a week, whereas you needed to eat seven days a week. Where do you get the rest from? So, turning to this source was the city melamed or shoemaker, the storekeeper or carpenter, the pious scholar or the market wholesaler. In general, coming up with a few zlotys to pay the farmer was for these Jews a Herculean effort. They ended up investing in a thing that did not always return the amount invested. Sometimes damage occurred during the blossoming. Natural catastrophes made a mockery of the optimistic projections and hopes of a little income.

The real hard life began with the moving over to the orchard. As mentioned, such a family lived in their tent and always had to protect the trees from bird pecking, passersby or the village boys who considered it a righteous thing to eat their fill of Jewish fruit, even when the trees in their own orchards were sagging from the abundance of fruit. And if you made it to see a harvest, then the work began of climbing the trees, with a ladder or without, to collect the fruit. The work was associated with the danger of falling from the tree when the wind made it sway strongly, or when a branch broke. More than once, news reached the shtetl of a tragedy affecting a sadovnik.

The picked fruit was packed in crates, and around three in the morning, the sadovnik would harness the borrowed horses and wagon (if the farmer entrusted him with one) and ride off to the city, or the shtetls to sell the merchandise. Happy was the sadovnik who collected on his first sale. Then he forgot all the troubles and vexations he had had to endure. Happy, full of confidence, he travelled back to the orchard, told his wife the great news, passed out candies he had bought in the shtetl to his children, ate the prepared snack, had a little nap–and back again to the boring work.

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Sadovnik families in apple or pear orchards had to be there during the holidays.^[1] The days grew shorter, the nights longer, but above all, the cold and rain of autumn ate into the bones. It was hard to get up at dawn, and crawl into your winter clothes, and transport the produce to the buyers. But they forgot about all these hardships if the season was a successful one, and the merchandise was sold without damages. Then you could prepare for winter with the hope that some zlotys would be left for after Pesach in order to rent an orchard again.

There were several categories of sadovnikes connected to the produce business, but about 90 percent of them were shtetl businessmen. Exporting produce to the big cities like Danzig, and especially Warsaw was the business of the Gothelf brothers, Yechiel Fishbein, and Itzchak Teitelboim.

The fact that dozens of Jewish families spent long months in the orchards, carried on their family life and religious observance, helped more than a little to break down the artificially erected barrier of racial separation and hatred between two peoples. The farmer saw that the life of the sadovnik was exactly as hardworking, stressful, and all-consuming as his life. There were many cases where they would help each other out. When it was time to cut the wheat in the fields, the sadovnikes helped with the cutting from dawn to dusk, lived alongside the farmer, ate out of one bowl (if he was not so strongly observant of the commands of the Shulchan Aruch), and spoke the same farmer's language. The farmer knew how to value such contributions, and tried to help out the sadovnikes. The Jewish tenant farmers did not complain about antisemitic manifestations from the older generation of farmers. On the contrary, healthy, friendly relations existed (with certain small exceptions) between the Jewish population and the Polish population, both in the shtetl and in the surrounding villages. It did not seem strange in the eyes of the farmer, to see one of our sadovnikes, stand by his tent in his tallis, saying his prayers, and carrying out the rituals of a Shabbes meal. He did not make fun of the zmiress^[2] which later carried from the tents, just as he had respect for all the religious behavior of his, now very near, Jewish neighbor.

1. Presumably the High Holidays in the fall. Return
2. Religious festive songs Return

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A saying about Markuszow used to go around: “When a wagon arrives there, the head of the horse is in one end of the shtetl, and the back wheels are at the other end.” But as small as the shtetl was, it was nevertheless famous for its girls and their industriousness. They were called, “Yunge balebustes,” and it could not be otherwise. Their mothers were always occupied with worries about a livelihood, with pregnancy, birth, and the raising of children. As a result, the whole burden of the household chores fell on the young daughters who never took their aprons off all day, occupied continuously primarily with peeling potatoes, the most popular, famous, and cheapest meal of the folk. They would sit for hours around the bowl and joke that potatoes grew so that paupers would also have the opportunity to skin someone.

A real trial for our young balebustes was cleaning and washing the pots. They would scrape the dirt with their fingernails and curse their lives while doing this kind of work. Although washing clothes was much harder and took longer than cleaning pots, they were happy when they went to the little river outside the shtetl, and rinsed and pounded the clothes. This was an opportunity to get out of the house, spend a few hours in the fresh air, and gossip about news in the shtetl, or the world.

In general, Markuszow girls had to obey their parents in everything, be quiet and obedient, give respect to the parents, and follow the commandments. As a result, after Shabbes, they had the right to read the Tseneh Reneh.^[1] Our shtetl daughters were renowned for their beauty as well, especially for the rosiness of their complexions. The sun in Markuszow was not prevented by tall buildings from reaching everyone's face and tanning it brown or red. Since people used wood for cooking, which was wet most of the time, the young girls would spend a lot of time at the stove blowing

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on the fire with all their strength. The husband who had a sense of humor would joke, “Thanks to the wet wood, my food gets cooked, the wood is not all consumed, and my wife is always pretty, because of her rosy cheeks.”

This was not the end of the entire hard burden of the Markuszow balebustes. As soon as a daughter was born, the parents began to think about a trousseau, and a dowry. As soon as she was a little older, she would have to pluck feathers for her own bedding, as if the groom was already at the door, and was only waiting for the bedspread. Twelve and thirteen year old girls would sit around until late at night until they were almost transformed into a bunch of feathers themselves. And if one of them were tempted to go outside, or to a friend, her mother would remonstrate that she had to help get her ready to become a bride.

This is how our girls lived in the shtetl. It's true that their hard work did not bring any money into the house, but their work was no less stressful and exhausting than the jobs of their husbands or fathers.

1. A Yiddish collection of stories from the bible ostensibly written for women who generally did not study Hebrew. Return

Before the outbreak of WWI, the social composition of the Jews in the shtetl was as follows:

Trade (stores, market buyers, middlemen, and others)–40 percent; artisans–30 percent; village traders–20 percent; employed in the larger cities–5 percent; religious functionaries and others–5 percent.

I can't provide an exact number of Jews in that period, but at the beginning of this century their number was estimated at around 700-800. How did they earn a living?

The first thing you saw in Markuszow were the two rows of stores which stretched along both sides of the main road to Lublin, a sign that small business was one of the most important sources of livelihood in the shtetl. What else could a just-married

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young man do than invest his dowry in a small shop that was managed by his young wife, while he studied day and night, and remained a stranger to money matters. When children were born, the good student had to become a storekeeper, even though he didn't know any Polish, and understood little about business. (A lot of curious stories were told about this). Nevertheless, such a young man slowly grew to learn about business, and began to care for himself, his wife, and the growing children. So you could see the freshly minted merchants in the stores, selling herring or a piece of cake for a groshen to a mother who would first chew it herself before giving it to the child.

As small and pitiful as these stores were, as poor a businessman as he was, they nevertheless drew a living from it, and married off their children (in whom they wanted to see the same merchants).

There was another category of merchants–the market sellers (women) who sold produce in summer, and hot beans or pickled apples in winter.

The shtetl also had various tradesmen such as shoemakers, tailors, hat makers, harness makers, boot makers, carpenters, cabinetmakers, locksmiths and all the rest of the trades for Markuszow itself and the surrounding area. I can recall several Jewish podriatchikes (purveyors) who supplied meat for the czarist military that was stationed in the Markuszow area, Nowa Alexandria (Pulawy), Ivangrod Fortress (Deblin), Lublin and Lodz. About 60 animals a week were slaughtered in Markuszow, and many Jewish families made a living from it. The main purveyors were: Michale Heshil's, Shloime Heshil's, Yomi Yankl's, and Pinchas and Kalman-Itzik.

The Jewish carriage drivers bringing in and taking out the merchandise played an especially important role in the economic development of the shtetl. They would be on the road from early in the morning until late at night, and struggled mightily to help push the loaded wagons up every hill, and had the onerous responsibility to ensure that the merchandise arrived on time, and undamaged. They also used to bring the newcomers who wanted to settle in the shtetl, and transport the youth who went off to the wider world in search of good fortune and a better livelihood.

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