Mommy’s Story

My grandparents lived in a large timber double-story house in the centre of the shtetl off the market place. On the ground floor were the shop and a separate entrance to the reception rooms. The first floor contained the bedrooms and a drawing room, which was furnished in the most extraordinary style – red plush upholstery in silvered ornate frames. The table and occasional tables were all executed in this metal filigree. To us children, it was the last word in elegance. There was a succah at the back which was operated by opening panels in the roof, and the attic built into the steep pitch of the roof, which was our favourite retreat, particularly during a storm when the raindrops came thundering down onto the roof.

The garden was at the back: a flower patch full of dahlias (I recall we used to pick the last faded blooms of autumn – sweetpeas, nasturtiums and pansies — to decorate the succah); an apology for an orchard – a little pear tree, an apple tree and some red currant bushes; a storeroom and beyond that the vegetable patch – sunflowers, cucumbers, radishes, spring onions. Then the ground fell away through fields covered with clover to the river, which wound its way through the meadows of the valley.

Usually, it was a clear and sparkling little stream running over pebbles. Tiny fishes would disport themselves in the water with little jerky swimming movements and we used to try to catch them in a strainer. When the mill was working, however, and the weir was running, the current was quite strong, and the river ran high. On one such occasion, when I had waded too far, I was knocked down by the swiftly running water. I clearly remember myself on hands and knees on the river bed – dizzy, confused, with the water rushing over me – not struggling or making any attempt to save myself during that brief moment, till my mother pulled me out.

Sometimes aunts and cousins would join us during the summer months and on such occasions, the upstairs the upstairs rooms were turned into dormitories with beds and mattresses. We used to try to sleep during the hot summer nights tingling with the unfamiliar sensation of sunburn.

The shtetl was built-up along the lines of a medieval village – an agglomeration of little dwellings and shops nestling below and dominated by the church and its spire. This was situated on the hill in its own grounds surrounded by a sturdy, battered perimeter wall.

The Lithuanians were devout Catholics and staunch church-goers. They brought gifts and flowers to the church and lovingly maintained many holy shrines scattered along roads and farms. At Easter time they walked to and from church with burning censors; at Christmas time they enacted the nativity in the church. At such times Jews felt very conscious of their hostility – Jews and Christ-killer were synonymous to them.

Below the church was the market place, divided by bollards down the centre used for tethering horses. On market days the horses and carts laden with dairy produce, vegetables, seasonal fruits, chickens, livestock, etc. filled the market place. There was butter wrapped in cabbage leaves, eggs in wicker baskets.

After trading, the farmers shopped, drank and visited friends. Most Jewish families had their stalwart Lithuanian friends and customers, who came to chat and joke. But already an uneasy antisemitism made itself felt and there was a movement about to encourage farmers to patronize Lithuanian rather than Jewish shops. Sometimes young people were set upon by antisemitic youths, though no one was seriously hurt.

Some market days several times a year were like fairs. They attracted farmers from far and wide in all the most outlying districts. On those days, kiosks would spring up and there would be side shows and beggars and blind people, in addition to the agricultural produce. This was for us a most exciting happening. My mother used to keep us out of the way lest we should be bitten by a horse, something she had suffered as a child. On such days there was often rowdy drinking, fighting and feuding among the peasants and farmers.

I do not recall exactly when my father left – I remember printing my name laboriously in Hebrew — — at the end of my mother’s letters to him, but during that time we remained with my grandparents.

There was much poverty and hardship among the Jews of the shtetl; in the large families with many children malnutrition and T.B. Most people were religious but some were really ultra-orthodox. Erev Shabbat, the old frail rabbi would walk through the shtetl and people would know it was time to close their shops.

In summer, during the long Shabbat afternoons, young people, including my mother’s younger brothers and sisters, would walk out to the woods, while the older set slept or learned. One Saturday afternoon, a fire swept the village; fanned by a strong breeze, the flames leaped from one timber house to the next. It had all started with the one-horse fire brigade. The impudent fire-chief had been cleaning the engine and smoking a cigarette, when a flying spark ignited the petrol. By the time the fire engine from a neighbouring shtetl was brought in, there was nothing left to save. People tried to salvage what they could by throwing furniture, clothes, featherbeds into the street. The young people came rushing back to witness the destruction of the village and to help. It was hopeless. My mother took us out of the heat and smoke and pungent smell of burning wood to a sparsely wooded copse by a stream and from there we watched each home with a lifetime’s work, investments and belongings falling to ashes. My sister and I waded in the brook, not understanding the full import of the tragedy before our eyes.

Years later in school in South Africa I was to write an essay on “A Fire” on “An Adventure” and I wrote about the above experience. My teacher, thinking it was an exaggerated figment of my imagination, made fun of it in front of the class – hoped we had not “caught old” wading in the stream etc. I did not defend myself but I was deeply hurt and I never mentioned the episode again!

For medical or dental care and even shopping, my mother would take us to the neighboring town of Telz, which was a world renowned seat of Talmudic learning and yeshivot. To me it seemed like a very big city; the shops were so pretty; red blood oranges displayed in the fruit shops and so much traffic in the streets.

To get there we would take the one and only taxi from the shtetl, a large six-seater car with a canvas roof that was folded down. The roads were not suited to motor traffic and we always used to get car sick from all the movement and bouncing. Memory is a strange phenomenon. Much of what I have written must have been absorbed into my being to become a part of me, unlocked by an unexpected key doors suddenly open onto long lost vistas. When I saw the film ‘Dr Zhivago’ I saw again the scenic beauty I had seen as a very small child; the deciduous trees, the lilacs, the dappled meadows.

My grandfather had the toboggan made for us by a blacksmith – a mild steel frame with a timber slated seat. Above the seat was a hard steel guard rail to prevent us from falling off. I remember the woolly boots we wore and jelly bag caps with pompoms at the end – the warm mittens and scarves and red noses! Darkness fell early and as the village lamps were lit one by one – we used to return home to the warm chimney piece and hot cocoa.

Pesach time and spring was the most exhilarating and exciting time of year. However, the thick, slippery mud churned up by the horse- drawn traffic on the unpaved streets was a constant nightmare, in spite of stepping stones, sand and other make-shift remedies.

Before we left to join my father, we moved to a near-by town where my mother’s elder sister lived. Her husband, my uncle, was a bank manager and my aunt was a great socialite and hostess, full of joie de vivre. She was always in demand for all community work, functions, fund raising, entertainment. Much later we learned that during the Holocaust, disguised as a Lithuanian peasant-woman, she would go into the town for provisions and to obtain provisions for the whole community. From one such expedition, she and her youngest daughter never returned. Her two elder daughters returned from their work to an empty house.

The Jewish community here was a young vibrant, active one – very Zionist- orientated. There were always meetings of different factions, which my mother often attended, and which we often left hurriedly when tempers ran high and people became abusive. Many chalutzim were leaving for Palestine …

Antisemitism was more pronounced here too, and one night we experienced a pogrom. Lithuanian youth beat up Jewish youths, ran through the streets with iron bars, breaking windows and battering doors. All night long our family remained apprehensively behind locked doors, waiting for daylight. I am ashamed to admit that I slept through it all. My uncle, who was a very nervous man, kept on insisting that I be awakened lest we had to flee, but tucked away in a small internal room I heard nothing and slept the sleep of a child. My mother was loath to wake me unless it became imperative. I think I have lived all my life with guilt feelings over sleeping though such a horror.

The following morning everyone was haggard, weary, subdued with sleeplessness and worry. Charges were laid and police conducted a pro forma enquiry calling for evidence. The more public spirited ones came forward to accuse – in the vanguard my aunt.

When they did not visit my grandparents, my aunt, uncle and family would take a house in the country for the summer – like the Russian dacha. From there my uncle would commute to his work and only take a few days’ holiday. But for the women and children it was one blissful time of leisure and pleasure, picnics in the woods, inhaling the health-giving aroma of the coniferous pine forests; mushroom picking, blackberries, wild strawberries, cranberries.

We would bathe in the clear running streams, fringed by weeping willows or gather sour-leaves in clearings surrounded by birch trees and maples. Sometimes the rented farmhouse would have an apple orchard, gooseberry and red or black currant bushes and superb raspberries. Surrounding farmers would come selling baskets of red or yellow cherries and little yellow mushrooms, used for an excellent soup.

I don’t remember the parting, when we left the Old Country. It must have been traumatic, since partings then were forever. I just remember my aunt’s tear-stained but composed face at the window. I think the train took us to Kovno and thence onward through Europe. I must have been hard for a young woman to leave her whole family and past life and to travel with two small children through a troubled Europe to a distant strange land. I remember how nervous she was when we passed through Germany. At the station buffet, we saw three young schoolboys give the Hitler salute. My mother insisted we stay in the compartment. Finally the train pulled out of Germany, and we heaved a sigh of relief.

The trip was long – train, channel-boat, castle-liner. Finally, we arrived in Cape Town and were reunited with my father. His family had settled in South Africa before I was born. When we arrived, we learned that my paternal grandfather and passed away. I had never met him.

Reunited, we all started a new life with a new challenge, hardships and modest triumphs. Who would have dreamed then that our whole family back in Lithuania would be all but wiped out? My mother never got over the loss. Only the two nieces were saved; they settled in the United States. We never traced any other member of our family. They must have all perished.

For ourselves, we tried hard to push our past into the background, to adapt to the dress and manners of South African school girls and conform to local customs. We grew up. But we were like cut flowers with no roots. Could we call ourselves Lithuanians — we were never really part of its culture — or South Africans? Essentially, we were like all Jews born in the Diaspora.