A Life To Live...

by Israel Kipen

  The Beth Din, that is, the Rabbinical Court, played a major social role over and above the religious functions associated with the institution. Apart from exercising exclusive rights in rulings concerning religious issues, as also marriage, divorce, family law and other related matters, the Beth Din was often called upon to act as mediator, arbitrator or judge in purely commercial disputes. This was in keeping with the established tendency for Jews living in the Diaspora to seek solutions to their disputes within their own community. It was rare for aggrieved Jewish parties to seek redress through civil courts of law.

  In commercial disputes, as an alternative to the Beth Din, there were also renowned and trusted individuals within the community who were recognised for their analytical abilities in discerning the validity of claims and counter-claims, and who were accordingly approached to adjudicate in complex matters. These individuals, called Borerim, generally men of business, were the secular counterparts of the Beth Din which was often glad to give over its judicial functions and responsibilities to arbitrators with more expertise in concerns such as these. Their decisions and judgements, once made, were binding.

  Inevitably, given its network of political, educational and religious vibrancy and diversity, Bialystok was also culturally well-endowed. At the hub of that cultural life was the Yiddish theatre, well-equipped and host to local theatre groups and visiting troupes, individual actors, singers and other performers. The spacious hall of the Bet-Am (the People’s House), Bialystok’s central Zionist address, was often home to frequent lectures, discussions, literary readings and addresses by overseas speakers, while another mainstay of the town’s cultural activity was the Sholom Aleichem Library which housed tens of thousands of volumes in Yiddish, Hebrew and Polish to serve a wide readership. A local serious daily Yiddish newspaper was published under the editorship of Pesach Kaplan. Although there was no symphony orchestra in Bialystok, small musical groups did exist, and music lessons were not rare among those who could afford it.

  An age-old Jewish tenet runs thus: “All in the house of Israel are responsible for one another”. In keeping with the spirit of this dictum, social and medical facilities in Bialystok were particularly well organised.

  There existed a fully-equipped Jewish hospital, an out-patients’ clinic run by OSE (a Russian acronym meaning Society for the Protection of the Health of Jews), sick-visiting societies, an old people’s home, and an institution called Linas-Hatzedek, which ran a pharmacy for the disadvantaged and an interest-free loan society, and which provided financial support for the needy. Other assistance was provided by loan societies, self-help organisations and a particularly noteworthy institution known as Help Anonymous (Matan Beseiser). When hearing of individuals or families who had come upon bad times, this self-effacing body would, through discreet and sensitive means, render assistance to those who had fallen into need, but had for an assortment of reasons not ventured to solicit help.

  Governing the social, and even the commercial, life of the town was the Jewish calendar. In pre-War Continental Europe, as indeed in many parts of the world, a sixday working week was the norm. Making ends meet was difficult, and the need to do so obliged each individual to work hard and long throughout the week. What remained of either time or energy at the end of each day to enjoy life’s other offerings was very little. It was scarcely surprising, therefore, that the Sabbath was ever anticipated with delight. Not only was the Sabbath a day of rest, but for the observant it was still more a day for spiritual uplift. A well-known maxim has it that the Jew lives the whole week by the Sabbath; until mid-week, he continues to enjoy the glow of the Sabbath just past, while thereafter he lives in the anticipation of the coming one. This was certainly not far from the truth in Bialystok.

  Fridays were for all, but more particularly for the Jews, exceedingly busy days. People completed their purchases on that day; women prepared hot meals for the following day; shop-keepers did brisk trade, being urged by the more observant to close their shops in time for the Sabbath. Some zealots would spy on those who drew their shutters but remained inside. By late afternoon, the town came to a standstill. Even in Bialystok, where the degree of observance was more moderate than in the towns and villages of Central and Southern Poland, publicly at least the strictures of the Sabbath were observed. It took a very courageous man to smoke a cigarette in the street on that day. However, for many, particularly the young, the Sabbath was a day for strolling along a certain stretch of one or two streets in the centre of town. Along those same streets where Jews thronged and met and talked on their day of rest, the non-Jews did the same on Sundays. On Friday nights, picture-theatres were open. The less observant flocked to them. What also attracted the enthusiasm of the non-religious, much to the consternation and frowning disapproval of the devout, were the football matches between Jewish teams played on the Sabbath. On this matter, in my own early teens, I confronted a dilemma. I was still accompanying my father to a modest Chassidic shtibl where, for reasons of family tradition, he and his brother continued to pray on Sabbath mornings even though they were not themselves Chassidim. After the midday meal, my father would usually test me on my weekly Talmud learning, an experience which I did not relish but could not avoid. But no sooner did he relax or close his eyes awhile than, taking my chance, I would sneak out and make my way to the outskirts of town to attend a match. This was not so easy. To enter, one had to buy a ticket; but to carry money on the Sabbath, even if one had any, was out of the question. So one would burrow under the fence and squeeze through, provided the mounted policeman patrolling the perimeter did not come to the scene too soon. On those few occasions when I proved successful, my suit told the full story of my escapade, much to my mother’s chagrin and with more than mere displeasure on my father’s part.

  For most of Bialystok’s Jews, then, the cycle of the week revolved around the Sabbath, while the High Holy Days, at least for me, left an altogether indelible impression. For those two days of the Jewish New Year, succeeded by Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, were more than a time to down all tools in a general state of civic paralysis; they led to a totally altered state of mind and heightened awareness, and young and old, observant and non-observant alike flocked both to the customary and to makeshift houses of prayer.

  This notwithstanding, one cannot but tell of the deliberately assimilationist tendencies held by a few, even alongside the vibrant self-generating and highly consciously Jewish majority. The outward manifestations of this assimilationism were at first linguistic. As Yiddish was the language of the Jewish masses, distancing oneself from the community at large took the form of adopting Polish as one’s language. Doctors and lawyers in Bialystok, for instance, all fully understood Yiddish, but frequently chose not to use it. Others followed suit in their everyday transactions, seeing nothing untoward in doing so but simply a normal process of life. Many, indeed, did not deliberately go beyond this. But they did inadvertently set the pattern for their offspring for whom Polish in due course became their mother tongue, and Polish manners and concerns their way of life. While assimilation was one of the results of that process – or, perhaps more correctly, of that progression –, at the extreme there came to exist a fringe group, albeit very small compared to those in places further west, which suffered from self-hatred and a deliberate bending backwards to escape their Jewishness, whether of identity or sense of belonging.

  Bialystok Jewry, then, into which I was born and in whose midst I spent the first twenty years of my life until the outbreak of the Second World War, presented a complexity of attitudes, expressions, idiosyncrasies, attractions, religious, political and cultural nuances, and copious strengths and weaknesses. But despite all social, economic and ideological differences that were at play within it, that Jewry, moving towards ultimate destruction on the conveyor-belt of history, in my time by and large constituted a vital, vibrant and close-knit nationally-committed community.

  2

  Home

  To my earliest recoll
ection, our family unit consisted of three adults, namely, Father, Mother and my paternal grandmother, and, ultimately, five children of whom I was the eldest.

  Father, whose name was Yudel, was tall and lean. He sported a reddish moustache beneath a finely chiselled aquiline nose and had a penetrating gaze. He was reserved and stubborn by nature, forthright in manner and had not a trace of deviousness in him. His honesty was not negotiable, nor was his simplistic religious faith. Logic was his driving force and he was careful not to permit his sentimental self, which was unmistakably present in him, to come to the surface. His father had died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-three when Father was himself three years old and too young to remember him. He received his formal education in the traditional cheder, but was forced by family circumstances to go out to work early. His only brother, Abraham-Dov, whom we referred to as Avrom-Ber, was three years older than Father, somewhat taller, had a pronounced black moustache, and wore a pince-nez on his nose. He looked the brainy man he was. Self-educated, he was an accountant by profession.

  Grandmother, whose name was Malka but whom we called Bobe (Yiddish for Grandma), was a typical old-fashioned lady whose life was sadly disrupted by the early death of her husband, my grandfather, which left her with two young children and no means of support. She opened a food shop in a poorer part of town and struggled against all odds to rear her two sons. Tending to the shop was shared between herself and her children who would amuse themselves while waiting for customers by solving mathematical problems on wrapping paper. From early on, Bobe was father, mother, breadwinner and protector, the while securing for them a traditional Jewish household which, normally, was patriarchal in structure. In the event, she acquitted herself most admirably, and when her younger son – my father – married, she moved into his family home to remain there to the last day of its existence.

  My mother Sheindl, née Marantz, was born in Horodok, a small town not far from Bialystok. Hers was a larger family. She was good-looking, remarkably poised, sensitive, serene and caring. She was also proud and self-assured, a fine conversationalist with a strong liking for company, and a well-educated and nationally conscious Jewess. She lost her mother when she was in her teens and grew to adulthood in the home of her uncle Chaim Goldman, a textile manufacturer in Bialystok. She subscribed to Hebrew periodicals such as Hamelitz and others at the time, something rather uncommon in those days, and all the more so in a small town. Her knowledge of Hebrew was good and her retentive capacity could still astound me when at eighty she corresponded in Hebrew with relatives in Israel.

  My parents married in 1918. The First World War was nearing its end, the Bolshevik Revolution was scarcely a year old, and in their wake economic dislocation was quite considerable and the political future uncertain. By that time, Father had accumulated sufficient funds to venture out on his own and bought a set of spinning frames with the intention of becoming a textile mill owner. He lost everything in the enterprise and turned to knitwear. The decision was a logical one. Knitting was a new industry, promising in its potential. The capital outlay was not great. Unlike the huge spinning frames for which sizable factory premises were required, a knitting machine of the flat-bed hand-driven prototype could be placed in the corner of any room in one’s home. That was how Father started.

  My earliest recollections date back to the age of two. We lived then on the second floor of an apartment-house at the comer of Rozanska and Kupiecka Streets. It was a solid three-story brick structure with a respectable staircase and two apartments per floor. Our apartment was to the right on the top landing. It was a moderate-sized apartment. The front chamber served as the dining room and parallel with it was the main bedroom. Off the dining room to the right was a very long room where the knitting machines stood, and this led on to another bedroom and the kitchen. On the same floor lived a family called Banczewski who came to Australia before the war. Their daughter, Rachel Banczewski, who was a playmate of mine at the time, is today a prominent member of the Melbourne Jewish community.

  I believe I was about five years old when we moved to a larger apartment at Kupiecka Street No. 7, only half a block from the Rozanska corner. The move was necessary because business had developed and larger premises were required. Our new home was in a two-storey building which contained four apartments and two shop fronts facing the street. The larger of the two shops was a foodstore backing on to a dwelling behind; the other had a succession of occupants, the last of which was a barber. The second of the ground-floor apartments was occupied by a carpenter and his family and incorporated a carpentry workshop. This faced an outer yard. Above this was another residential apartment which also housed a buttons and sewing-cotton business, while our own, which stood opposite, faced the street and sported a double-length balcony which spanned the entire front of the building. It consisted of five rooms and a kitchen, but had no internal toilet or bath facilities. The front room was big and served the dual purpose of dining room and retail shop for which Father’s business had become renowned. From this room, an entrance led to another very spacious sunny one where the knitting machines were installed. This entrance, however, was blocked by a two-tiered buffet which could be placed against no other wall. Hence, the entrance to the work section led through the children’s bedroom which separated the workshop from my parents’ bedroom. There was also a room for Bobe. The White Russian live-in slept in the kitchen. Each of the rooms designated as living quarters, like the large front room, fulfilled a double function. The children’s bedroom, for instance, doubled as the sewing room, and it was here that the first overlocking machine was installed. My parent’s bedroom served also as a storeroom for yarn. At the time, industrial knitting yarn was sold in hanks and packed loosely in bundles. Each factory rewound the yarn on to spools, a process that, early on, one performed by hand, by turning a large wheel connected to a smaller one by means of a cord, on the axis of which a spool was placed for winding of the yarn. Some time later, a motor-driven 12-spindle winder was installed, it too being squeezed into the room occupied by the knitting machines. Even Bobe’s little bedroom was put to other use, a big industrial wardrobe being built into it, whether for storage of yarn when my parents’ bedroom could hold no more or alternatively for keeping edibles there for the duration of the winter.

  The kitchen had a large country-style stove for all major cooking and a primus burner for quick and simple meals. In winter, the stove was not frequently used, for the wall ovens that heated the house had cooking facilities built into them. For years, a big iron-ringed keg containing sauerkraut, was placed in the kitchen in winter, while in summer, smaller vessels of fermenting cucumbers were put there, these filling the kitchen with piquantly pungent and appetising smells in addition to the more customary pervasive ones of daily cooking.

  Knitting in its earlier days was a slow and tedious process. Each stage was performed by hand, with each part of the garment being knitted separately and the correct trunk and sleeve lengths and sizes of arm holes being arrived at by the piecemeal stopping of the machine every couple of rows and transferring the outermost stitches as required. It was the early equivalent of what, in the 1960s and 1970s, became known as fully-fashioned knitwear. Because of the slowness of production, the machines were in use day and night. This meant that we had to sleep nearly constantly to the accompaniment of the clatter of operating machines. We were so used to the noise that on Friday nights when all work was ceased, we actually missed it. In those earlier days, the sewing together of the garments was performed by contract workers who would collect the knitted parts and bring them back completed. Because of the way the individual pieces were manufactured, the garment was not cut at all and could thus be re-used simply by unpicking the seams and unravelling the part, much as a person using hand-knitting needles still does today. It was not uncommon, therefore, for people who had worn a garment for a season or two to have it re-knitted when, for instance, it went out of shape.

  The big revolution that took plac
e in the knitting industry was the development of the overlocker. It performed two functions at once: it both cut the material and sewed the parts firmly together, these processes obviating the need to spend as much time as before on the separate shaping of each piece by hand on the machine. It was worth wasting a little bit of yarn by cutting some away in the making of an armhole out of a square piece of knitted material rather than lose so much time shaping it on the machine. Once this was comprehended, the entire mode of production changed, the result being an increase both in the tempo of manufacturing and in the output achieved. The new technique did, however, introduce cutting as part of the whole knitting process and led to a garment having a single life-span only.

  In time, Father acquired another machine of a still more revolutionary nature: a power-driven pattern-making machine which produced continuous material rather than individual pieces and was cut like woven cloth, thereby further enhancing the efficiency of knitting process – although it did nearly cause our house to be burnt down when one day it sparked and ignited the dust on the wall around it. The machine was in time sold to a Mr Fink who had it shipped in a heavy wooden crate to his sons in Australia, those sons being none other than the Fink brothers of United Carpet Mills fame in Melbourne. Noone in my family had then considered that Melbourne would in time become our home as well. After arrival in Australia in 1946, I traced that machine to Sydney where it was still in use. I offered to buy it from its owner, but he declined the offer. Meanwhile that same Mr Fink Senior who had bought the machine from Father in Bialystok, and his wife, had left Europe before the war and I subsequently met him in Melbourne.