My early years
To the best of my knowledge I was born in February 1905. I am not sure about the exact date of birth but that is the date that was given in 1917 when my mother registered me for public school when we were living as refugees in Czechoslavkia. I had no birth certificate for in those days parents didn’t register a child’s birth immediately, often waiting until they had a chance to do so. Many times it did not happen until other children were born and registered. I remember my birthday was before Pesach. The date maybe the 15th .
I didn’t attend public school, because Jewish boys didn’t go to non-Jewish schools. So I went to Cheder, which was held in a private home.
I was born in Stofchan a large village in a province of Austria in 1905. Kotzman was the big city that was close by. The records were kept there. At that point we were part of the larger Austrian-Hungary empire. We stayed in that town from the time I was born until we became refugees during World War I. We had a house that we were starting to build before the war with the help of an uncle Victor, who was a carpenter. He made money and in fact he used to lend out money to the farmers with interest, so he helped us pay for the house.
The town was mainly agricultural. Some people made money in horse trading and other work related to agriculture.
I was the oldest son, but I had three older sisters, Ida, Paya and Leah, and two younger brothers Isaac and Nissim. There was another sister, Hannah who died before I was born. There were four girls before me. I was the first boy and there were other boys after me. It was really a terrific occasion for the family when I was born.
My father (whose name was Leo or Leib) had a little grocery store. We struggled. He sold flour, a little sugar, cereal, things that people in the village needed. Kerosene was a big item because people needed it to light their lamps. Mostly he sold things through barter. Someone would bring a chicken and in exchange get flour. It was really a tough time. We would dry and use the dung of animals for heating the houses.
My mother ( Pepe, Pese) kept house for a large family. Altogether we were 6 children.
My mother did all the cooking and baking, washing and cleaning. It was a big job and that was all she did. She baked the bread for the family on Friday, baking for the whole week. I remember it was a real treat to buy what they called Kaiser rolls. We would buy milk from the farmer.
To help the family out, we would go around gathering potatoes in the fall. We kept about one-third of what we gathered. ( Presumably they got paid for it in potatoes)
The village was close knit and we knew almost all the people. Everyone was observant and prayed in the morning and the evening. You’d be an outcast if you weren’t Orthodox. Most people lived in small homes with straw roofs. There was one public school, a city hall, and a couple of stores.
The town had two shuls. The old one and the new one. We belonged to the new one because it was on the highway which was close to our home. The other one was out of the way. We didn’t have a hazzan, a rabbi or cantor. Anyone able to conducted the service. On the high holidays we got someone who knew how to daven. He would probably get some payment to perform the services.
The new shul was wooden with a wooden shingle roof. We had 2 -3 rooms and we had chickens in the building. We would let them in at night when it was cold and sometimes they would stay there for days. Women had their own section which had a window which was high up so you couldn’t see in.
The family in Europe
There were two older sisters between me and Ida. Their names were Paya and Leah. I sent money to my family in Europe. In fact my older sister needed a dowry as in Europe at that time a woman needed a dowry to get married. I had saved $500 that I sent. My father invested it, and the value of the dollar fell. She got married but it was not a successful marriage. She came back to the parents and when the war broke out and she died with the others.
There was another sister before her but she died of the black plague( typhoid or typhus) 1918 or 1919. I also helped the next older sister to me, with money, but nothing came out of it. She married a tinsmith, who made pots and pans. The mother-in-law was running the business and she kept my sister like a slave. The husband was a mother’s boy. My sister couldn’t take it so after several years she left him and went back home to my parents. She didn’t have any children.
When I was growing up, I remember only my grandmother. (my mother’s mother – her name was Malke) She used to come to our village in the winter months and buy up a lot of fish. She sold fish wholesale to peddlers or merchants who would sell fish in the market. She lived with my mother’s sister in Snetna (Snoten?)in Galicia. Most of my father’s family lived in the town where I was born. There was Yankel, (mom’s father?) my father’s sister, Victor – his brother, and another sister.
We used to go to Snetna (?), where my grandmother lived to get outfitted for clothing for Pesach. You had to have new clothing for Pesach. We’d go there by horse and wagon, which we hired, for merchandise, which we didn’t have in our town.
I kept in contact with my family until the outbreak of the second world war.
When I left, Isaac was about 9 years old. He was born in 1913, on May 30th, a year before the war broke out. My sister Ida left for America in the spring of 1913. And I had a younger brother, Nissin. He was a youngster. I remember that because he had a car that he used to play with and when I left he insisted that I couldn’t take the car with me. He died along with the others.
Schooling in Europe
All of my schooling in Europe was in a Heder where I learned Hebrew as well as secular subjects like German. I didn’t attend a public school until we were refugees in Czechoslovkia where I went to a public school and then to gymnasium, which is equivalent to an American high school. The language of instruction was German. When I came to the United States I took German and got one year’s credit for my German. My friend Joe Kessler and I took some tests and we got credit for what we knew. German was a three year course and we took it in two years.
We didn’t have a gymnasium in our small town in Czechoslovakia so I had to go to Brunn, (Brent?) the capital of Morovia for school. It was probably an hour trip from the city where we lived to the capital of Morovia. The first movie I saw there ( NB: couldn’t catch the name). There was a movie house there. It was a great thing to see a movie.
The language of instruction in the gymnasium was German. In fact, German was the language of Austria. In different states they had different accents when they spoke German. Morovia, Czechoslovakia, Serbia all belonged to Austria. They were like states.
We had a lot of different teachers in school. They would send whoever they could get because most of the young men were in the army.
They had religious instruction in the schools, and you went to special classes depending on whether you were Jewish, Catholic, Protestant. Once a week we would go to Hebrew class. Sometimes the other students would taunt us, saying Yude, Yude and other words that were not nice. In the classroom the students behaved.
During the time was I was in the gymnasium, I lived in a private house with a Jewish family. My father paid them. We did have a little money by then. As a student I used to get a free meal once a week which was provided by the Jewish community. The Jewish community in Austria (Austrian-Hungary empire) had charge of Jewish affairs. They had a building and Jews needing something would get help from the community. I lived there and went to school for about a year (1917 – 1918) and when the war was over we decided to go back home.
I first learned German in Heder. We used to take a German story book and translate it into Yiddish. That’s why my Yiddish has the same umglats as the German. I never went to a public school until we got to Czechoslovakia.
In Austria, schooling was compulsory. In fact if a Jewish boy didn’t go to Heder he was fined. You had to go to a school. The Heder was a private Jewish school. We used to get a teacher from somewhere else. We had to feed him and pay him some money. Most of the time they were single men. Most of them had no home and we had to provide them with housing. They would go to a different house every week for room and board. I remember one time we had a teacher who was married, though he didn’t have any children so he had a house. We learned in a one room school house but children were grouped by age. The Heder was held in the synagogue, or sometimes if the rabbi had a room it was held there. In summer, we would have a class outside.
Hardly any girls went to Heder. I remember there was one girl, she wasn’t a normal girl. She was backward. Otherwise I don’t remember any girls in Heder.
My sister had private lessons. In Czechoslovakia we paid a teacher and she took shorthand writing. I don’t remember that they went to a Heder.
Europe during WWI
Our hometown
In 1914 the Russian army invaded us. I remember before they invaded that the people, mainly the children said they had horns in the middle of their foreheads. When the army entered our area I went to the highway to see the soldiers with horns. They were mainly calvary, soldiers on horses.
On Fridays I would go with my father to the saloon to buy a quarter liter of whiskey. One time, we were there and a soldier came into the saloon on his horse. He came right into the saloon on his horse.
The Russians stayed for a few months and they plundered and they robbed, and they hit and they kidnapped. They bothered the Jewish people very much. After several months they were driven out of our province and it was occupied by the Austrian and German army. Germany was an ally of Austria. It didn’t take very long and the Russians drove out this army again. In 1916 they invaded again. We tried to flee because we remembered the suffering we experienced under them earlier. But we didn’t get very far, and they overtook us and we had to return home and we suffered with them again, and again they were driven out.
The Russians would come into Jewish homes. The gentiles would put a cross on their gate, so they knew it was a gentile family. They would come into Jewish homes and ask for money. One time we heard that there were Russians around and mother made the house very smoky so it would be uncomfortable for anyone. We used to run outside and hide in the garden or the cornfield. The soldier came in and took my mother by the throat and said, “Jew, give me money or I’ll kill you”, so mother just stepped back and started yelling. She yelled and he let her go. This was during 1914 and 1915. In 1916, we didn’t wait for the Russians
During the time of the Russian occupation, we used to hide ourselves in some gardens during the day. We didn’t stay home at nights. We used to huddle ourselves in one room on some side street. Our house was on the main street and we felt that wasn’t safe. So we would stay at night on some of the back or side streets. We thought that was safer. This was during the time of the Russian occupation The Russians thought the Jews had money, and they disliked the Jews so this was a good chance for them to get even.
We used to buy off the lieutenant so that we wouldn’t bother the people too much. The lieutenant was the big shot in the village and was in charge of the soldiers there. We tried to buy him off so he would tell the soldiers to leave the people alone.
The family as refugees
In 1916 the same battle started again and the Russians tried to invade us but this time we fled. I remember it was shavous and we were in shul and someone from the next village came and said the Austrian army was withdrawing, and the Russian army was chasing them. It didn’t take us any time, we took off our talesim and the people started to run. We went home, and the parents wanted to take things along so they started to get things loaded on the wagon. While this was happening, we were noisy and restless, the girls were crying and the parents said you know what, there is the river called the Prut, and in the past invasions (in 1914 they did cross but not in 1915) the Russian army did not cross this river. So the parents said go across the Prut and wait for us in the town across the river. So we took a chaleh, since it was yom tov, and we took a knife and five kronen (about 50cents). So we (the two boys and my older sister Leah and I) went out and we were supposed to meet our parents. My younger brother was maybe two or three years old. We walked part of the way, then we met a public school teacher from our village who took us on his wagon. He took us some distance and left us off.
We crossed the river. And when we got there, there were thousands and thousands of people fleeing with the army. And we were afraid to wait for our parents so we started on our own. And we never met our parents for almost a month. All we had was the chaleh, a knife and 50 cents. That didn’t last very long, and the only food we had was what people gave us. We were in summer clothing because it was spring, and the weather started to get cold. . The roads were horrible, cut up gravel and the shoes tore in no time. And we kept walking days with swollen feet. People who knew us and some who didn’t gave us food, and if people didn’t give us something to eat we had nothing. We used to go around farm houses as we walked (we walked most of the way) and stopped at the farm houses and they would sometimes give us something. I was probably about 12 years old at this point.
We walked for about three – four weeks and we ended up on the border with Hungary. The route through the Carpathian mountains was not normally used. So during the war to have a road, they cut down stones and broke them into smaller pieces, and the stones were so sharp. I had one pair of shoes which I wore out. At night it was so cold. And they told us they might be bears there, so we used to make fires to keep warm and keep the bears away.
We walked along with other people. These were not people that we knew. We just walked along with them as they walked. Mostly Jewish people. It was mostly Jews who were fleeing as they were afraid of the Russian army. The Russians abused Jews. We walked for about a month until we met up with our father. We walked during the day and would find someplace to sleep at night, often outside. We would make fires at night to keep the wild animals away and also to keep warm. Part of the time we were walking through the mountains and there were bears and other animals.
One week, before we met our father in Hungary, a butcher (Jewish) took us in and kept us for about a week. After about a week we went further into Hungary and were sent to a camp. There we met our father who had been separated from our mother.
Once we met our father, he had a little money and so it was already a little better. My father had also been separated from my mother and he didn’t know where the rest of the family was. We met our father in a camp, just by accident. We recognized him. There were no registries or anything, the Austrian army was fleeing from the Russian army which was invading our province, so it was all by chance.
They sent us to a camp in Czechoslovakia, and fortunately we met our mother there with our sister and our family was reunited. We stayed there about a week or so. The food was practically nothing. We used to go to the kitchen in the morning and hang around until it opened. They served some bread and a little sugared tea..
We got to the camp before it became really overcrowded and we were fortunate to leave the camp or barracks after a short time, because there were all kinds of sicknesses and disease among the people. People were dying there in the hundreds from lice, malnutrition, lack of proper clothing. Some of these barracks were closed up because sicknesses spread there.
After several weeks they sent us finally to a city “Idenscitz” in Moravia, where we spent two years The government or the Jews in that city provided us with living quarters. We had only one room. There was another d family that had to go through our room to their bedroom. The Austrian government gave us support especially when my father went into the army.
When we got to that city the government gave us an apartment and they gave us food, ration cards, and a small allowance. Food was rationed and we were allowed 3 ozs of meat a week. Flour and sugar were also rationed. Because my father was in the army my mother got extra meat which she cooked in separate pots because it wasn’t kosher. We also ate the meat off tin plates. But we were glad to get the meat. People were catching mice and eating them, there was such a shortage of food.
My sisters worked in a leather factory and for that they got extra meat. Mother used to cook it in a separate pot and we ate it on separate plates. We were glad to get some meat. So they worked in that factory that produced leather so the government gave extra portions of meat.
I remember they gave us clothing made out of woven paper instead of wool or cotton. The government didn’t have any material. It all went to the army. I remember I had a suit that was dark blue. When it got really wet it fell apart The shoes had wooden soles, and the leather was nailed down to the wood. In the winter when the snow piled up on the soles, you walked like a horse. We managed to struggle through. Also we had an allowance because my father was in the army and they gave him a small pension. We lived there for two years.
My father went into the army in 1917. He was not included in the first mobilization which included men up to the age of 42. In the second mobilization, he was not sent to the front because he was passed the fighting age, which was 42. He was passed 42 so he was sent to an army hospital to attend to the sick.
After we were in Czechoslovakia for a year or so, my father was drafted into the Austrian army. He was not sent to the front. He did some other work there. Then the family got a government subsidy because he was in the army, which really helped us along. We stayed two years in Czechoslovakia. It was nice. We had left the camps by then. Sickness had broken out. We were among the early arrivals to the camps. People who came later on were really crowded together and there was a lot of sickness. I used to stand in line by the gate to get my sugared tea with a piece of bread. The government provided food for the people. In Czechoslovakia we used to have tickets (ration coupons) for everything.
The government sent you to cities. The local government took care of you. They put up or got housing for you. We were in a two or three room apartment with a kitchen. There was another family there. They had to go though our room to get to their room. They were two families in one room. The living room was our second bedroom, and the cooking was done in a communal kitchen. We had to pump our water. There was a pump in the courtyard. The bathrooms were outside.
The courtyard ( the apartment?) belonged to a nice Jewish man who was a bachelor .He was a very nice man and he was very nice to us. He was in the leather goods business, leather for shoes; the store was facing the market. I don’t know whether the government paid him or the community paid him. I don’t think we did. We stayed there for about two years. My father was in the army during this time.
There were several dozens of refugees in that city. There was a nice Temple (shul?) in the city and I was bar mitzvahed there.
Returning home after the war
When the war was over we went back home. My father came later after he was released from the army. We were already in our home. We went home by cattle train, packed in. There was only standing room. We were already in a better condition. We had saved up a little money, especially since my father had been in the army and he sent the money to us. We came home with a little money and we were able to do something. We were in a better condition financially when we came home then when we went. My father had worked in a hospital as an orderly and was able to earn extra money which he had saved up. It gave us extra money to do things with.
We went back to Bukovina, which was now part of Romania. Romania just went and took it, and took part of the Ukraine too. There was no one there to stop them.
We were living in an old house and with the help of an uncle, who was childless, we built a house. We started building the house in 1913. He was a carpenter and he made windows for us and he made doors for us. I think he also subsidized the household. But when we left during the war it was not completed, as we didn’t have the money to finish it. We left the house in 1916 and didn’t return until the fall of 1918. While we were away, our house was used as officer’s quarters and so when we returned we found our house in better condition than when we left. The officers fixed up the house as living quarters, they put down a floor and also put in windows. We had three rooms. (dad recalled the wood floor in his house when we were in an outdoor museum in Bucharest, which showed the different housing types in Romania. He pointed to one house and said it was just like the house he lived in, but he had wooden floors). The old houses had earthen floors, but the new ones had wooden floors. We were comfortable in the best way that we knew how. The heating consisted of a large stove which we brought from Czechoslavkia when we returned home. We hired a man to install it and put cement around it.
The village was not very different as there had not been much fighting there. It was not the site of a battle.
I was back in my home three years before I left for America. I went back to school to Heder and also started to look for some trade. There was no work. There wasn’t even agriculture because my parents didn’t own any land. There were luftmenshen…traders, horse traders. I saw that was not for me.
The other thing I could do was teach small children. When I was in Heder I did teach a few boys. I suppose their fathers didn’t have money to send them to Heder. I earned small pocket change, that’s all.
Leaving for America
In about 1920, I finished going to Heder and was going to start to earn money and I couldn’t find anything that I could do. We were living in Romania at the time, in a province that was taken from Austria after the WWI. We had been living in Romania for about five years. I never learned the language because I knew I wasn’t going to use it.
I tried to work for a man who sold horses and I brought him a customer who tried out the horse. I don’t know whether the deal went through but I didn’t get any money. I saw there was no future. There was no way to earn a living. Also I thought I would avoid going into the army at the age of 21. If I was closer to army age they may not have even permitted me to leave. I also had a sister living in America who encouraged me to come so I decided to join her. I thought there were opportunities in America for a young man which was not the case in Europe. There were a lot of young men from my village that were leaving for America. I hoped to make a better future for myself. I had an older sister in America, and I contacted Ida and she said yes. She would lay out the money for me, and she sent me the ticket and some extra money and so I started getting documents together.
It took about a year to get the documents together. You had to go to the American consulate and you had to get all your papers in order, and they gave me a number. I got my pass (visa) in September 1921. The consulate was in Bucharest. I went there with a cousin, a man from my village (Charles Goodman’s brother). We had to wait there about a week. I could have gone right away but I wasn’t in a hurry. My parents said you’re going away to America and who knows when we will meet again, so I should spend more time there. During the High Holidays I got the OK from the consulate that I had a number. I thought that once you got your number you could come in at any time.
My parents weren’t so happy that I was leaving but they didn’t have any objections especially since I had a sister here. I had an aunt married to my uncle Victor and they didn’t have any children. Someone told me they didn’t want me to leave. I said that if they would give me their house (put their house in my name) I would stay on because I just didn’t see a future for myself. When I left there were no plans or expectations that other members of the family would later join me in America. I had only one sister living near them and my parents said they wouldn’t send her to America. They only had one daughter near them. Isaac, was studying in high school in Czernowitz; my little brother was in Hungary in a Yeshiva. It was a very Orthodox yeshiva and when he came home he wouldn’t sit down without washing his hands. It was too Orthodox for him/them.?
In those days they allowed in so many Jewish people from each country. I wasn’t in a hurry to leave because I got the OK in the fall and I thought I would wait until the spring. (Charles Goodman’s brother left right away) But in February I decided I am going to leave. It was a bitter cold winter. The winters in Europe were bitter.
It took about a month to travel from Romania to America. I came to America in March. I left from my town (Stolchin) with another man from my village (Hersh Block) who was also going to America by himself. He was leaving his family and going by himself so I went with him. Within a year he brought his family over. He didn’t have a trade. He used to live with a comfortable aunt and he took care of her. She has some farmland and he used to work on the farm. But he also saw there was no future for him. My father knew that man and felt I could trust him, so I went with him.
We went to Czenrowitz (sp??), and then Bucharest by train. I stayed with Hersh Block for about a week and got our documents in order and then we went to the port city, Constanza on the Black Sea by train. ( note: Myrna, Julie, Jonathan and Jesse and the parents visited Constanza with Isaac – dad’s brother during our trip to Romania in 1975). In fact the day we were supposed to go on the boat the immigration in Romania found that there was something wrong with our papers, or the orders. The agent or someone working on our behalf called the Ministry in Romania who cleared it and we were able to board.
From Constanza we went by boat making stops in Turkey, Greece, and Italy before leaving for America. It took four weeks because the ship made many stops. The name of the ship was the Constantinople. That was in March, 1922. The only thing I took with me was some clothing. I also took some money but by the time I got to New York I had five dollars left. I remember I took a haircut on the ship to look presentable when I arrived. The ticket was sent to me by my sister so I didn’t have to pay for it so I don’t know what it cost.
The conditions on the boat were poor. I think it was a freighter or cargo ship. I remembered they loaded nuts from Romania. I traveled steerage. Maybe I even slept on the floor. I really can’t remember. I remember though that there were days that I couldn’t eat. I would suck on a piece of lemon so I wouldn’t throw up. There were lots of different people on the ship. I remember there were Italians who had worked on roads. And people got on in Greece. A Turkish Jew who got on the boat knew Hebrew so I was able to converse a little with him.
I arrived in Ellis Island on the 21st of March. I traveled in second class. I don’t remember what the accommodations were like. When I arrived I found that the quota was filled (it was the following year). I didn’t know. It was the first year that had quotas. They put in the quota in 1921, but we didn’t know what it really meant.
I thought that once I had a number they would be waiting for me here, they would keep the doors open for me. They put me in Castle garden and they were going to send me back. My brother-in-law had an uncle here who was a politician. He knew a lawyer and my brother-in law hired him. He took me for a hearing and I went before a judge. I spoke in Yiddish and he (the lawyer) translated for me. The judge asked me why I took all this time. So I told him that after the war all the trains were broken, the windows were broken and it was very cold so I waited for a little warmer weather. That was my excuse. The lawyer didn’t prompt me to say that. I was in Ellis Island for about a week. They kept me in detention quarters in Castle Garden for about 10 days. The lawyer cost $150.
I didn’t have any health or financial problems. My sister Ida was my sponsor and they gave you a thorough health examination. Hersh Block didn’t have the problem that I did. I think maybe his quota was filled later. Mother came about a year before me and she came from Poland. She came from a different port. She didn’t wait after she got her number.
Arriving in America
I was about 16 or 17 when I arrived and went to live with my sister. They lived in a three room apartment on First Street in lower Manhattan. Victor was about three years old. I slept in the living room. A week after I arrived I went to work in a hardware store, which was on the next block. My brother-in-law got me the job. I worked for $10 a week, from 8 to 8, 72 hours a week, Sunday to Friday. I worked there for about a year or two. I didn’t know any English and when people spoke to me in English I thought I was hard of hearing. I couldn’t remember the words. People would say, get me this and this and that and when I went to get the items I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to get. The owners were Jewish and the help was Jewish.
My name when I came to America was Chaim in Yiddish or Karl in German. I was listed as Karl on the passenger list when I came to America. (note: actually he was listed as Chaim). When I went to work on my first job the boss asked me my name. I told him Karl. He said that was a German name and he asked my Yiddish name and I told him Chaim. So he said your American name is Hyman. I never liked that name. It was so close to Haman. In fact I seldom used my full name. Mostly used my initial H, or Hy.
I went to public night school (elementary school) at Hester and Ludlow Streets. A number of years ago I looked up that school and it was still there. After I graduated I went to high school ( Seward Park) which was at Hester Street at night. Then they moved the school to an old building that had been a jail on Ludlow, Essex and Grant, but I went to the old building. I took American history and other subjects (geometry) .One summer I took some private courses. I went to school at least three evenings. The high school started at 8’oclock, so I left work at 7:30 and grabbed a bite. I took four courses. I found it too hard and then dropped it down to two or three. I didn’t have time to do any homework. Many times I sneaked out of work. I kept my clothes in the basement. After I came home, I had dinner. That was 10:30.at night. I was supposed to work from 8 to 8 and I had to work extra on Sundays in exchange for leaving work at 7:30. I left school six months before graduation, because that is when I opened my first store.
I worked Sunday nights until closing time, until10 or 10:30. Customers kept coming in and I was there until it closed. I was there all day on Sunday from 8 AM until 10 or 10:30. This permitted me to take off a half an hour early. It they wouldn’t have let me do this I couldn’t have taken subjects at school that were given at 8 o’clock. It was tough.
I learned the hardware business by working in the store. It was a big business, the largest one in the lower East Side. They had 15 men working for them, and there were two partners. Unfortunately, they didn’t have good management and didn’t make any money. I worked there about seven years. They sold both wholesale and retail. There was no protection for anybody. An item might have been $1.20 a dozen. A man came in to buy one item it was ten cents. If he bought a dozen he paid $1.20. At time I felt it wasn’t right. But this is how they ran the business.
I lived with Ida until I got married in 1933. I arrived in 1922 and lived there until 1933, so it was 10 or 11 years. They lived on First Street and after a couple of years they moved into a larger improved apartment. The first apartment had cold water and no heat. The second one already had steam heat, and it was a larger apartment – four rooms.
I saved up $500 and sent that money back to my family in Europe. In fact my boss told me that I was doing too much and I told him that in the Humash it said that Jacob crossed the Jordan with his walking stick (?). That I came to America with $5. and now that I had $500. I gladly sent it back to my family as a dowry for my sister. In those days a single girl needed a dowry. I also helped support my younger brother Isaac who was studying in high school in Czernowitz.
World War II
Isaac joined the Romanian army during the war. That’s how he survived. Romanian Jews were protected more or less in during the war. They put them to work on roads, etc but they didn’t send them out of the country. In the annexed countries like Bukovenia and Hungary, they left the Jews. Bukovenia is now part of Romania and part of Russia.
Nissim, in order to get some food, would do some work, any kind of work for people. He would do anything. They were not permitted to go out of the camp (labor camp?) but he used to sneak out. He used to hide himself in a hollow wall. And once they caught him and they beat the hell out of him. That affected his lungs and he died.
They (the Romanians) marched the family and the Jews from one camp to another, probably under German orders. They marched them to Russia and when they got to Russia, the Russians said we don’t want them and so they marched them back. They marched them back and forth. It was in the fall, it was cold, they were hungry, they got sick and so they perished one by one. The parents died first, then the sister.
Your mother and I
I first met your mother when she and her family came to visit our family. She was a cute little girl with blond hair. I thought when I need a “kalla” I want to get a girl like her. So I went to Heder and when I came back home I had an apple for her, but when I got home she was no longer there. I was terribly disappointed.
My wish that your mother would be my bride was fulfilled after many years. She went with a number of fellows but my prophecy came true. It was like having stocks and bonds which you live long enough to redeem (??). It’s one of those things like saying I want a girl just like her. You know she was engaged to another guy. He was a barber, good looking and tall. And after she broke off with him she belonged to a society, the Bukovina society and there was a fellow who came from a Latin American country, Cuba or so and he said that I should introduce him to Pauline. And so I did.
You know I was working at a job that was hard work, long hours and abuse. You know he was very rough and to call you names was nothing with that man (boss), even hitting you. I wasn’t the one who was hit, but once a fellow was bringing in some things on a hand truck and the boss said, “go faster” and the guy answered that he was going as fast as he could, and the man slapped him on the face for talking back to him. And he lost his job. And we all instigated him that he should sue. And he did, but by the time his case came up, the judge asked where were his bruises, and since he had none to show because they had healed, the case was dismissed. And I thought to myself, I am not going to get married so long as I work in a job like that. I couldn’t take the abuse, even seeing it. And I was treated well, because I complained. There wasn’t a union then so the employee had no one who would protect him. The boss could be a slave driver. Also I didn’t see a future for myself.
Getting married during the depression
I waited until I got into business for myself to get married. When I left the job in 1929 to go into business for myself I was earning $45 a week. I advanced myself from $25 which I earned on my first job.
So I told mother that I am on a five year plan. So mother waited. She didn’t wait at that time, but she didn’t like the guy I introduced her to. He was rough. So I think Minnie spoke to her and she agreed she would go with me. I always liked her. I told her I am not in a position to get married. She went out with other fellows. She met them at Grossingers but nothing materialized. She went out for a good time, and that’s all. So we decided to get married.
When we got married I had $800 in the bank . Roosevelt had been sworn in on Saturday ( I think it was the second or third of March). ( the parents were married on the 5th). It was during the depression. There were runs on the banks. We were going to go on our honeymoon so I took out $800 to leave with mom’s parents to pay for bedroom furniture we had ordered. Before the bank gave me the money the manager came over to talk to me and asked why I wanted to take the money out. There were runs on the banks so the banks didn’t hand out money so fast. So I told him we bought furniture and we needed the money to pay for it, so he gave it to me. A few days later the banks closed up. (the federal bank holidays?) We were away in Lakewood on our honeymoon and the banks closed up. There was no money available. You couldn’t get money out from the banks. My brother-in law stayed in the store while I was gone, but I could only get away for a few days because he was a strict Sabbath observer and he wouldn’t work in the store on Saturday. I didn’t want the store to be closed on Saturday, because I could take in a few dollars.
When I got married ( 1933) I asked mother whether she could get along on $25 a week. We paid rent. We took a nice three room apartment in an apartment house in Bensonhurst ( Brooklyn). We paid $38 a month rent. There was no possibility to save money then. I had no savings. I was glad to make ends meet. You thought about how to get along daily. I used to draw $25 a week, but I couldn’t draw the full amount at one time. I would draw some money on Saturday night and the rest during the week. When I had the month’s rent for the store that’s when I would feel that I could stay in the store for another month.
Professional people stayed in the streets selling apples. The city gave people the permission to peddle so they could earn a little money. There was the WPA ( Works Progress Administration) to provide work for people. There were professional people like lawyers, architects taking any kind of work they could get, shoveling snow, planting trees just to earn some money. I knew a big builder who jumped out the window from the disgrace of seeing his life savings fall apart.
You didn’t snap out of the effect of the depression at once. Gradually as things got better you gained some confidence. The outbreak of the war (1940/41) helped my business.
Minnie (Pauline’s sister) lived in the Bronx at that time. But it was during the depression and Max (Minnie’s husband) for the most part had no work. It was hard for them to pay their rent. So we decided to live together and we took a private house. We had the whole floor, something like 6 rooms. There was a hallway that separated the apartments. We lived on one side. They had the side with a porch and we had the other side. We shared the house with them when Sam was a baby.
This arrangement lasted for about a year or so. Sam used to crawl and they had a dog and if there was moisture on the floor, right away they blamed Sam. He was a kid, still crawling and he wanted to be where there were people. So we had to feel him to see if he was wet. The kids got along but Charlotte was a rough girl. Momma and Minnie would cook together and many times there was little food left for me as I came home for dinner. Momma would have to put food away, otherwise there wouldn’t be anything left. So after awhile we separated.
We then moved into the house where Vicka lived ( she was the daughter of grandpa’s brother Avrom). We lived there for a couple of years. They lived on the ground floor and we lived on the first floor. That was when I was in business on Coney Island Avenue. It was a hard time so families moved together into apartments to share the living costs. There was no possibility of saving money. You were glad if you could meet your expenses.
When Dan was born in 1943 I tried to save enough money each month to pay the hospital bill for mom’s confinement. I put money aside but when Dan was born I already had some extra money that I could take out of the business so I didn’t have to resort to the money I had saved. The doctor charged $75 ( or maybe more). Dan was the expensive baby. I was taken care of by a specialist, a gynecologist because I didn’t have a normal pregnancy. His brother was a movie producer who had been married to Norma Taldmadge, a big star during the silent movie days.
Establishing a Business
I worked in the hardware business as an employee for 7 years and then went into business for myself when I was 24/25. I actually bought a business from a man that used to work with me. My brother-in-law helped me financially and he was supposed to be a quiet partner. He came into the store from time to time, but basically I ran the business myself. In fact I told many people I was married because they would have more respect for me. We were on Flatbush Avenue at that time. It was Flatbush between 5th and 4th Avenues (note: not far from the later store location at Dean St near Flatbush). It was a good neighborhood and there was a subway stop at Atlantic Avenue. But the subway had just been extended to Brighton Beach and fewer people got off at that stop. But is was good yet to make a living. From there we moved to Flatbush Avenue between Atlantic Ave and Pacific St. We stayed there for a few years but then when prohibition ended and liquor became legal they wanted to open a saloon, and they wanted to charge a lot more rent. They fixed it up, laid tile floors. That’s when we moved to Coney Island, because the store didn’t pay enough to cover the increased rent. I was in the Coney Island store just about a year. My brother-in-law joined me in that store and there just wasn’t enough for both of us.
Things didn’t go good. We moved across the street from a big store, which had a local trade. We thought we were going to get some of that business. In fact I hired a salesman to go around digging up business for us. We paid him by commission, five or ten percent of the business he brought in. He used to give us a list every night of who he had seen, but no business. He lasted for a week or two and quit. And then I started to go out occasionally, but there just wasn’t the business there. We couldn’t compete. It was a local business. The janitors saw me. They liked me but each house on Ocean Avenue had an account with that store. Then my brother-in law and I split up and I moved back to Flatbush Avenue.
We split up because we thought it would be easier for us to earn a living if we worked separately, had separate stores. He was an uncultured person. He couldn’t talk to people. For certain customers I had to go out. He would go out and sit in the park, just to show me that he was going out. We used to try and sell to other stores. We bought sufficient so that we would be able to sell to other stores, but it just didn’t pay. He didn’t bring enough business, so we separated. He went into wholesale. I gave him part of my store on Flatbush Avenue for wholesale but he didn’t make a go of it, and went to work for someone else. I hung onto the business with him for awhile because I didn’t want my sister to suffer. But I knew he was not a good person to be in business with. My sister felt it was my fault when we split up. He said, “I have enough. I don’t have to kill myself.” He only had one child to support.
We were on the verge of bankruptcy and I spoke to a lawyer and he told me don’t pay anyone any bills and then you offer people a settlement. You tell them you’re on the verge of bankruptcy and you offer them whatever you think you can pay. I owe you a hundred dollars, but I can pay you 33 dollars. But I couldn’t do it. People would come in and say Hy you didn’t pay last month’s bill. So I had to make a payment. So I couldn’t make enough money. The landlord also realized that I can’t pay, and he let us stay one month, it was before Christmas. We paid him every week. And then we moved back to Flatbush Avenue. 144 Flatbush Avenue was the last store before Dean. We were facing Long Island railroad. I started the store on Dean Street in 1939. When I came back to Dean Street I had debts from the business in Coney Island.
It was really hard to establish a business during the depression. When I sold merchandise and got my cost out of it I was happy because I needed the money to circulate and something to live on. Everything was cheap and I worked on pennies. A pound of nails used to sell for 5 cents; plaster for 2 cents a lb. You had to but it by the barrel and sold it loose. You would get dirty like a pig. There was a very small profit on each item.
Most of my businesses were in the area of 5th and Dean. But I really struggled. The war helped us. I sold a lot of fire prevention equipment, a pump, a pail a shovel and I made a little money on these things and that helped. I had a trade there. I had accounts with some of the apartment houses. There were some people who liked me so much. There were superintendents who used to come from Coney Island, but just a few, two or three. Then they got tired, it was far to travel and inconvenient. They had to travel at least a half an hour by car.
During the war I received certificates from the government which were permits to buy certain merchandise. We had the Navy Yard. We also had some schools, an optical school. We also had other concerns that had preference during the war. That helped me to buy the merchandise and also to sell it.