(Author: Hazel Frankel, Vol. 67, No. 3, Chanukah 2012)
- Feature image: Pre-war bochrim of the Baranovitch Yeshiva
Hazel Frankel is a Johannesburg-based novelist, poet and educator. She has recently completed a PhD on the South African Yiddish poet David Fram.
Sarah Levine, née Polonetski, was born in 1924 in Alte Baranovitch (Old Baranovitch), the Jewish ghetto that was separate from gentile Naie Baranovitch (New Baranovitch) and from the outlying White Russian farming area. Her birth certificate shows it as part of Poland. She was one of four children.
Rochel, Sarah’s mother, had her own small shop at the age of sixteen. It was in her parents’ house in the town centre. There she baked bread and sold cigarettes, cold drinks and matches. Sarah’s maternal grandfather looked like an angel with a big white beard. He swam and fished in the Niemen River near the one horse town where he grew up. Sarah’s paternal grandmother died in childbirth when her father, Shlomo (Shleimke), and his sister were very young. Her grandfather, a tailor, remarried and had five more children. When his second wife passed away, he married her sister and had another two children; Shlomo was neglected and then abandoned. He told Sarah about visiting cousins in another shtetl and returning through the forest at night alone, where, between two trees, he found the remains of a fire with some potatoes left by shepherds. He ate them though they were soggy with rainwater and did not wash, even in a puddle before going home – no one worried about where he was, let alone whether he was clean or not.
Shlomo was conscripted and trained for four years in the Russian army in Yeremitch, Siberia. He was one of the first to be called up in the 1914-1918 war. With other young soldiers from the shtetlach he was stationed near Baranovitch, where he spent Shabbos with various families. This was how he met Sarah’s mother. It was a love match even though her mother was frum. They became secretly engaged when he went off to fight. He was a prisoner of war in Germanie per Elbe, where her mother wrote warning him of the intensification of antisemitism in Poland. His army service and imprisonment are memorialised in a siddur that he had with him and her mother copied the inscription and sewed the logo design of the POW war camp in cross-stitch onto a cushion cover. Sarah later completed and framed it.
Sarah’s parents built their own home from wooden logs that they selected individually at the market place. It was a house with a veranda, from where they sat and watched the comings and goings on the street. It was not a heif (a courtyard with little flatlets opening into a yard). The entrance was at the side of the house. There they took off their snowshoes, galoshes, coats and umbrellas that were useless in a snowstorm: the coats not warm enough and the umbrellas were not strong enough. Underneath all that paraphernalia, they wore their nice clothes – they had to get undressed to be dressed nicely.
The family grew most of its own produce and pickled their cucumber crop for the winter. A poyer came to plough the yard and Sarah walked behind him planting potatoes. He would return to re-plough when it was time to pick the potatoes. These were stored in the dark sklep that was reached by a wooden ladder. They kept their own hens and had enough chickens and eggs to eat. The staple Russian diet was rosheve bread, the darkest black bread, with pickled or shmaltz herring and raw onions. The villagers congregated at the well as no one had their own water supply and Sarah helped her little brother shlepping wasser (carrying water) from the brunen, the well by lowering their bucket on a hook. They then heated the water on a stove and poured it into a galvanised tub to bath. The outhouse was a moveable structure over a hole in the ground that would be covered with the sand. They then dug a new one and moved the cubicle over it. Some wealthier families did have inside sewage.
Their home was the last in the street next to the forest where they picked yagdis that stained their fingers. They played hide and seek in the cornfields nearby and walked everywhere, visiting friends on Shabbos.
The children were involved with their mother in the running of the home. They hung the washing up on the beidim but Sarah couldn’t go up as she was afraid of heights. The shirts froze stiff like dolls and had to be carried downstairs, the ice melted off and they were then hung up again to dry. They did the washing up with sand and ash in boiling water. Their neighbours were part of the family; they all helped each other with their problems. Her uncle had a bicycle and electrical goods shop. The Rov boarded with her mother’s aunt.
Sarah said, “It was a life in which there were no choices. We were committed Jews and we knew what you did and didn’t do. My mother had a special relationship with the Chofetz Chaim, who came from Baranovitch. We made a brocha for everything, even the tiniest sip of water.”
Government schools were closed to Jews and there were quotas at Polish universities. Baranovitch was a big enough shtetl to warrant a Beis Yaankev school and that was where they went. Although it was very expensive, their mother regarded this as a priority.
They did all their subjects in Yiddish, learned Hebrew as a separate subject and also had to learn Polish, possibly because the school received a subsidy. They did not have a school uniform but wore a skirt and shirt or a dress. These were bought, not homemade.
Sarah knew her maternal grandparents. Her Bobba would ‘lay hands’ on the poyerim on market days, knew various prayers for healing and was paid for her services. The villagers swore by her and Sarah always wished her mother had known those prayers.
The Jewish population was terrified of the non-Yidden. One day while Sarah was sitting on the veranda, a Polack threw a brick at her. She ran inside to her mother, her face covered in blood. In another incident one Sunday, Sarah was carrying her little school case containing her black bread sandwich. As she walked, she watched the moving icicles clinging to the hair on her forehead that made delicate moving pictures. A Polish girl skid up and asked her where she was going so early. Sarah answered in Polish that she was going to school. The Pole said, “Sunday morning, you’re going to school?” Sarah realised immediately that she was not Jewish and said nothing more; the girl ski-d away.
Her mother’s uncle lived in the backyard of a heif (courtyard) near to the centre of town. When a gallach stole a baby before Pesach and killed it, he threw the baby into her uncle’s flat. The maid went out to pick it up and the priest stabbed her. The uncle then went to help and got blood on his clothes. After the priest inflamed the locals with stories of the blood libel, the poyerim gave evidence that they had seen the murder and her uncle went to jail.
As a tailor, Shlomo was unable to make a living in Baranovitch. He left to try and make good in South Africa. Her mother was then known as Rochel der Afrikaner because her husband was in Africa.
Sarah’s brother Leibl was still a baby when he left. When asked where his tate was, Leibl pointed to the picture their mother kept in her cupboard and said, “in almer.” Once a month, Shlomo sent Rochel a five-pound draft and sometimes even a gold sovereign because South Africa was not yet off the gold standard. This translated into a lot of zlotys, which her mother drew on as needed.
Sarah’s father had been in South Africa for four years when the family got permits to join him. They left Baranovitch on 23 December 1932 when Sarah was eight years old. It was the first time she’d been to the station. The train was not level with the platform and it was difficult for her to climb up into the carriage. The Polonetskis travelled third class in the last carriages and the four children ran up and down the passages, past the second-class plush carriages where a huge fat German lay sleeping on a chaise longue.
In Warsaw, Sarah lived in a flat for the first time when they stayed with a landsfroi (someone from their home shtetl). At night, far above the city, she could see fires travelling fast down below. Her mother explained to her that these were trams. Once their papers had been organised at the British Consulate they could leave for Germany. The shops were full of beautiful things, and Sarah particularly remembers the beautiful lialkes. She went for a walk around the block, window-shopping on her own just before they were due to leave one Saturday night. When she returned, her mother was angry with her as she had almost caused them to miss the train. At the border, they watched fearfully as the Polish conductors handed the train over to the Germans.
The family travelled for three days and nights across Germany, passing through Berlin. They did not get off the train there because antisemitism was rife. Hitler was a wonderful orator: at his rallies his tears for the youth who were without jobs convinced them of his sympathy. From Ostend, they crossed the Channel in a small boat, lying down on bunks to try to counteract the seasickness and making frequent use of the brown paper bags they’d been given. They docked at Southampton and spent a week at the Jewish Temporary Shelter, running up and down the stairs and playing with the children, even though they could not communicate in English.
The family boarded the Arundel Castle on a Friday and were welcomed on deck, but Sarah’s mother thought they had been called together because the ship was drowning. Everyone was given life jackets but had no idea what to do with them. The Bilchik family, the parents, two grown up sons and daughter, travelled with them and they helped Sarah’s mother who was totally responsible for her brood. It was a great opkoemenisch.
When Beryl Bilchik’s shlappe flew into the water, he expected the ship to turn back for it. Sarah’s brother, six year old Leibl, swung back and forwards on the deck above the ocean and they were all afraid he would fall in until old man Bilchik threatened to smack him. Sarah warned him that the disconnected voice from the radio was telling him to stop because he had been seen! At a party on board they were all given ice cream, cake and sweets. It was there that Sarah first saw a black man.
They ate only kosher food. They also collected nuts off each table after dinner and stored in old man Bilchik’s pockets. When the ship docked at Cape Town, they tossed what was left of the packets of rusks, sweet and flavoured with cinnamon, brought from der heim, into the sea.
They settled in Johannesburg where they were not well off. Shlomo worked for Maxims. He had brought with his own sewing machine as well as his iron that had to be filled with hot coals and so he also did bespoke tailoring. He did every task himself, not even giving out buttons or buttonholes to anyone else to complete.
He was paid £4.10 for a bespoke suit that required measuring, cutting and shaping. The suits he made fitted like parmunitste barg arop (like the slop water as it pours down a hill, taking the shape of the earth). For relaxation he read the Forverts, in which Sarah enjoyed the Episodden, i.e. stories that people sent in.
The children continued to speak Yiddish at home so Rochel could understand them. Shlomo went shopping on Shabbos, but their mother remained frum. As a Jewish education was a priority, the children went to Doornforntein cheder. There the pupils cross-examined Sarah on the brochas. She soon realised that they themselves did not know the answers – when she made a mistake, they never corrected her.
When Sarah asked her father for a lialke, he replied, “You’re already a kallemeidel and you want a lialke?” (You’re ready to be a bride and you want a doll!) He bought Sarah’s sister a Little Boy Blue Doll made of celluloid that held a basket with its rigid arms and legs. Sarah dressed it in coloured capes made with fur collected through the mesh fence of a nearby factory.
Sarah went to Jeppe Junior and Middle Schools and then to Malvern High where she learned English, Afrikaans and Maths. She went on to the Johannesburg Technical College, which she left at sixteen without completing her commercial matric. She worked in a clothing factory owned by Wolpe and Berger; the former was the buyer, the latter was in charge of the machines. Sarah wore a ribbon in her hair, slipslop sandals and a button-through dress and the workers thought she was the owner’s daughter. When she put on nail polish, her parents said nothing but the bosses picked her out. Later she did the books for a Mr Hechter who had branches of his shop in Heilbron, Standerton, Vrede and Lobatsi in Bechuanaland.
Sarah said, “We knew we were poor but we accepted it. It didn’t hurt us that we went without cakes and toys. There is nothing wrong in doing without. We always gave charity and our mother brought us up to ask whether a toy for ourselves was more important than to give to those who didn’t have enough food. Because I came here with my parents, I was taken care of, I was not afraid. I knew everything was in order and all would be well. Had I come alone to an aunt or grandparent as many others had to, it would have been a different story.”
Her marriage was a love match. They spoke Yiddish to each other and to both sets of parents. They also spoke gibberish while waiting in line for cinema tickets. They had four children, Lynette (Liebele), Vernon, Ronald and Desmond.
Sarah’s mother’s family had remained in Poland. All of them perished. Sarah will never return to Europe and refuses to give money to Poles or Russians. Her parents spoke about how those who were kind and sympathetic were few and far between and said that no one was a friend of the Jews – not English, not French – because it stated in the Bible that the Jews killed their god.
Sarah read the Yiddish-English, EnglishYiddish dictionary and enjoyed finding words and expressions that she had not used for a long time. She practised by translating the chumash into Yiddish and continued to read and spoke her mame-loshn at every opportunity.
Sarah’s generation became the accountants, doctors, income tax experts and interpreters for their parents who spoke only a broken English. She says, “Many immigrants believed that they should have nothing to do with Yiddish so that they could learn English. I wanted to eradicate Polish and Russian from my mind but did not want to forget Yiddish, its literature and its jokes. Yiddish is our heritage and we must keep the memories of an ander velt (another world) alive.”
Editor’s Note: Sarah Levine passed away in August 2012. She attended weekly Yiddish classes at the Great Park Synagogue under the auspices of the Yiddish Academy until the end of her life, and always remained passionate about her mame-loshn and her cultural roots. A rich source of knowledge, she enjoyed sharing her experiences with the class, and will be sorely missed. The following article is adapted from the collection of narratives, Memoirs: Our Stories; Our Lives by Hazel Frankel that was published by the Chevrah Kadisha in 2010.
