A Lithuanian Boyhood

Editor’s Note: The following is taken from the memoirs of Solly Per, a Lithuanian immigrant who arrived in South Africa in 1929, as compiled by his daughter-in-law, Lindy Per in 1992. It takes the narrator’s story from his birth in Pasvertin through to his departure for South Africa. Per went on to become Director of Light Metal Engineering and various companies and was Chairman of the Industrial Council (Light Metal Engineering Industry) from 1966-7.

In the Jewish communal service field, he served as Co-Treasurer of the S.A. Jewish Appeal, as an Honorary Officer of the Israel United Appeal and as member of its Migrants’ Committee.Honorary 

I was born in 1911 in Pasvertin, Lithuania. The birth certificate was made out in Joniskis – maybe because Joniskis was a bigger place. Pasvertin was too small to get certificates in. Immediately after birth, I was placed next to an open window. Being May, I suppose it was cool but not too chilly outside. Apparently I turned blue. My poor mother became very distressed, but my father responded in a strictly pragmatic way. I must be left to make up my own mind, he said – either I would stay or I would go.

I was named Zundel Avraham after my two grandfathers. Zundel was my father’s father. I don’t know much about him. He came from Pasvertin, as did my father. My father’s mother was Peshah. A woman of outstanding generosity, I know a story about her. My grandfather had two sets of underclothes, one for during the week, the other for the Sabbath. Came one Friday night, he couldn’t find his second set of underclothes. Peshah had given them away to a poor man. “Where are my underclothes?” he said. “I can’t find them, they must have been stolen.” “So what of it!” said my grandmother, “the thief must have needed them.” This generosity was a fault in my father as well. The only argument my parents ever had was over his giving away his money.

About my mother’s family, the Blochs, I know more. They came from an area on the border of Latvia and Germany, later moving to Shavil because it was a bigger town. My mother’s father was Avraham. He is buried in Braamfontein, in the first Jewish cemetery. He came to South Africa to try and make a living as a teacher of Hebrew. He couldn’t make a living as a teacher, so he opened a shop, but this didn’t work either because he was not prepared to keep open on the Sabbath. He died here a relatively young man in his fifties. My mother remained behind in Shavil with her mother and three sisters.

My father – Herz – was born in Pasvertin in 1875. He had two brothers, one older called Oray, and a younger brother, Yisroel, a Hebrew teacher who died in Port Elizabeth. He had two sisters, Hinde and Mary. My father dealt, traded, in provisions, agricultural goods, in the markets of the small towns like Pasvertin and Shavil. He traded in flax, which he bought from the local farmers. He met my mother, Hannah, in Shavil. When they discussed marriage, my father said he would first go to Africa. He was there for seven years, so for seven years they were betrothed.

At the turn of the century people didn’t talk of South Africa – they just referred to it as ‘Africa’. My father arrived in Cape Town and went to the docks to seek work. He was always a heavy smoker. Because he was smoking while waiting in the hiring queue the overseer told him to step out of the line. “Any man who has money for cigarettes does not need a job” he said. Unable to find work, he decided to go to Johannesburg to seek his fortune, making the journey there by ox-wagon. In the beginning he had a stall in Market Street. He traded with the Portuguese Government, selling wares to the country farmer, and would go into the country to trade by ox-wagon. Of the Afrikaners he said he always had a good reception. As a Jew they welcomed him as being a man of the Book. This was not true of the English. My father did well, and returned to Lithuania with a £1000 (a fortune – Herz the Millionaire!) He married my mother and bought a farm near Joniskis. As well as this, he owned a house in the town. My sister, Sarah, was born a year later. Four years after this, I was born.

My mother was a lovely woman – cultivated. She loved to sing, and spoke a very good German. My earliest memory was of her holding me aloft in her arms to look at the ‘big silver bird’ in the sky. In those days, the planes were small and flew quite low. It must have been a German plane. It was 1914 [World War I], and the Germans had moved into Lithuania. They requisitioned our farm, house and all our livestock – my father was left with nothing. They told us we were refugees, and as refugees they put us on a train. We were taken to Russia and stayed in Romney in the Ukraine, near Kiev, staying there for four years. At the end of that time I spoke pretty good Russian. My father worked as a night-watchman at an oil factory. He wasn’t paid wages but in kind, in cooking-oil, which he had to barter for our daily provisions. My sister and I went to Cheder. I still have a memory of my father carrying me there on his shoulders, because the streets were so muddy.

The war came to an end, the Russian Revolution began. We returned to Lithuania, to Joniskis. Things were bad – it was so very hard on my father. The first year [1918] the Germans still occupied Lithuania. Instead of the many cows and oxen we had had previously on our farm, we had only one cow. My mother was milking it to give a little milk to us, her children, when a German officer came past. She had not declared the cow to the Germans, so he took out his whip and hit her – her arm was all swollen. There was so little to eat. My mother could not get food, except for a type of barley, coarse millet; it tasted bad. I had no clothes. My mother made me a suit out of the uniform of a German soldier which was left behind after the occupation. That is how she turned her hand to things.

My father opened a kind of bottle store/bar. In the next town was a brewery which gave him credit. He sold beer, vodka, and brandy to the peasants. He did not like this trade and so later turned to ironmongery, selling steel. But the peasants were so very poor – there was much unemployment.

Joniskis was not a big town, but there was a direct connection to Latvia – it was on the main rail-line from Germany to Russia. The population consisted of about three hundred families. Ninety percent of the Jewish population lived in the town itself. Jews and Gentiles tolerated each other. Certainly, when I was older, I remember street-fights between Jewish and Gentile youths, but these outbreaks – involving throwing things, hurling insults – were more typical of teenagers than representative of deep racial hatred.

People who remember the town will remember a particularly nice church in the middle of it. In the town square was not just an ordinary well with bucket for drawing water, but a pump. This was very modern, so everybody wanted nice, cool fresh water from the pump. Every Monday, there was an open-air market in the square. I remember vividly how the Jews of the town would sell pots, pans and calico-lining to the peasants from the farms, who in turn would bring their hens, turkeys and wooden pegs to market. Jews needed chickens for their pots. Peasants needed ports for their chickens. Poultry was expensive – more expensive than meat. It was a special treat, perhaps for a Friday night, so having bought the chicken on Monday (it was not put into the deep-freeze – there were no deep-freezes), it was kept alive in the yard till Friday, whereupon we, the children, would take it to the Shochet for kosher-killing, and bring it back – dead, but hardly ready to eat – for plucking.

Surrounding the square, were shops. There was a hardware-shop, a men’s-outfitter, a haberdashery where women bought the materials to make their clothes and, of course, a chemist (a pharmacist, rather, a Gentile by the name of Zastaskis). Joniskis was a town of shuls, rabbis and traders. One or two Jews were reasonably prosperous; the rest, like ourselves, managed somehow. For example there was Dr. Abrahamson, believe it or not, a lady-doctor, who had built the very building we lived in when we first returned to Joniskis. There was also a fairly well-established advocate by the name of Per – no relation, strangely enough, since even then, back home, it was an uncommon name. Our apartment block consisted of two flats and a shop in which my father worked with his partner, Segal, who had been a Rabbi back in Romney. A very well-to-do Jew, one of a small minority, who lived in our building had a gramophone. This was a source of amazement to my childish mind. I was convinced that there was a very small person sitting inside the machine making the music.

There were three shuls in Joniskis. My father went to service every morning. I, at home, was expected to put on my tallis, and lay tefillin. I was not very keen. “If I come back and see that the tefillin have not been used:’ my father would say, there will be no breakfast for you”. I had to have breakfast, so I cheated, disturbing the packing of the tefillin without actually using them. We would break from school to come home for lunch, which generally would be chicken soup with farfel, and maybe some liver or herring. When school was over in the afternoon, we would enjoy ourselves – the boys played football, of which I was very fond. For supper, we might have fish for a very special treat, potatoes were often on the menu – we were, after all, in potato-country – and milk, cheese and bread.

On Friday, school closed earlier for the Shabbath. We were just four at home, but invariably one or two alms-collectors would be invited as well – in fact there would often be a fight with neighbours over who would have this honour of feeding the poor. I only remember that they were not very clean, and that the ritual washing of their hands made little impression on the dirt and grime of their fingers. This is why it became custom to cut rather than break the bread. I certainly did not fancy eating bread pawed by filthy hands. After service on Saturday, we would rest, and then sometimes walk in the nearby forests. It was so beautiful there – fresh, quiet and still, the only noise, just the beautiful singing of the birds. Sometimes, my mother, sister and I would visit my granny and my mother’s sisters in Shavil, which was always enjoyable.

My parents were gentle people, non-aggressive. They didn’t believe for instance, in physical punishment. Like most young boys I had mischief in me. Once this mischief focussed upon forbidden fruit, on the tree on the other side of the wall. It was not that I desperately needed the fruit – it was the risk, the adventure. As I got to the fruit, I heard the voice of the owner – a priest. A kindly man, he told me that if I was so desperate for the fruit, I could have asked, but I should not steal.

When I was ten, a younger sister – Peshah – was born. I did not like the arrival of Peshah. If there was going to be another baby, then it should have been a boy – I already had a sister and wanted a brother. At this time, my mother must have already been suffering from the cancer that killed her two years later. She and my father made a journey to Konigsberg to consult a specialist. They were gone for a month. Little did I know the reason for this sudden journey. Like most young children, I thought mainly of myself, and in fact nagged my father to bring me back a football from Konigsberg. My poor father hardly had the inclination to deal with such a project, even if he had had the money, which he did not – the money he had was being used up by my poor mother’s treatment. My older sister Sarah looked after us.

My mother became bedridden. She must have suffered for at least eighteen months, but she never complained. Sometimes, I would go to the spring outside the town, fill a jug with fresh cool water, and bring it home for her. My sister took over the house, looking after Peshah and myself. Shortly before she died my mother spoke to us. She said she was going and that we must not visit her grave more than once a year – visiting the cemetery too often would upset us. She died when I was twelve. Out of respect, the town was draped in black and the shops were closed. I followed her coffin, feeling sad and lost. I was drawing attention as an object of sympathy, but I hated this kind of attention. Soon after this I had my barmitzvah – no celebration, I just went up and read my part. I felt my loss, my deprivation, and angry against a G-d who could take away my dear, good mother.

I had lessons until I was fifteen. There were high schools – in fact there was one near our house – but Jews were not admitted. In any event, Christian religious education was compulsory, and we could not have participated. To take my exams for the high school certificate, I had to be tutored in Hebrew and other subjects. For German, I didn’t need a tutor, as my mother had taught me. My mother really wanted me to study Talmud. Her grandfather had been a rabbi and I suppose she wanted me to follow in his footsteps. To please her, I took special instruction for about six months, but actually I had other plans.

After my mother died we got our old house back, – the one taken from my father by the Germans when I was a small child. In fact, they had improved it for us. When we left it, it was a fine house in the town with a thatched roof. When we got it back the thatch had been replaced with shingles. When you entered the house – No. 34 Daukanto G-ve Joniskis – there was an entrance hall with an earthen floor. As you entered there was a container, which if you pressed the bottom, would fill with water. There were three bedrooms. One was let to an old and childless couple, who were devoted to one another, one was for my sister and the last for my father and step-mother – he had remarried by then. I slept on a divan in the hall. I always got on well with my stepmother. She was always nice to me, and in time I came to have a half-brother and sister. The house was very cosy; a stove or furnace would heat up the tiles. I think we had about three acres, really quite a huge garden, with fruit, vegetables and, of course in those days, an outside toilet.

When I was about fifteen or sixteen, it became a matter of necessity that I begin to work. I suppose that I had got about half way through school by then, standard five or six. My father suggested a trade, something useful for my future. I was apprenticed to a carpenter, for a day or two that is. I had little aptitude for carpentry, in fact for any work with my hands. I worked for the Men’s Outfitter – the shop on the square. They were very happy with me, but when I was sixteen I decided that a better opportunity lay in working at the Yiddischevolksbank, as one of my tutors was a manager there. I worked at the bank for two years, doing mainly filing and clerical work, and earning the princely sum of £3 a month. All of this I gave to my sister, and then would ‘borrow’ back some of it to go to the Kino, the Cinema, to watch silent comedies like Charlie Chaplin.

Young Jews in those times were very taken with the idea if being pioneers – going to Palestine. My sister belonged to Hashomer Hatzair – the Young Guard. I did not belong. I did not know much about Palestine. What I did know a great deal about though, was Africa – “Wilde Africa” as my mother used to call it. My father was always talking about Africa. So did my aunts – after all my grandfather had been there, I had cousins there. I heard that compared to my £3 a month, somebody who earned £10 a month. I could help everyone I knew with such a sum. My father’s talk of Africa always fascinated me. It was a nice warm country, a land of opportunity.

I worked hard, but we had good times as well. In a much more innocent way than today, we young people partied a great deal, pooling our resources – each would contribute something and we would gather in someone’s home. We would sing, hold hands, play games, go on outings, even cuddle-up – a bit. One Friday night, I was visiting home of a young girl who quite fancied me. We were cuddling up – so much so, that the Friday night candlesticks got knocked over. More than the actual cuddling, did the knocking over of the candles earn the stern disapproval of her mother. I was in love. Not with anyone in Joniskis, or anyone else in Lithuania, but with ‘Monica’. At sixteen, Monica had everything I could ever want in a woman. She was beautiful, vivacious, good-looking and clever. I idolised her. If only she could be with me and not remain a character in a book.

My father started corresponding with relatives in South Africa, the Segals, who were cousins. To get to South Africa, one had to sail from Hamburg, but first one had to get to Hamburg, so one caught a train to Kaunas, previously the capital of Lithuania before Vilnius. The cost of the journey was £39, a fortune. My father didn’t have such money, so borrowed it from a non-Jew, in fact from the village chemist. It was such a lot of money, but I suppose it was like an investment for the family to send me somewhere where things might be better. I had exactly £5 spending money to get me from Lithuania to South Africa and to get me started there, but I was young, full of energy and ready for adventure. Our boat was a ten thousand-tonne German passenger and cargo boat called the Watusi, and the journey to Cape Town took thirty days.