A Life To Live...

by Israel Kipen

  Fronting the street at that address was a three-storied apartment block through which one entered a deeper complex of buildings extending back on both left and right of an inner courtyard at the back of which was another three-storied apartment block. Our apartment was on the first floor of this building. Having been used to living in a home that faced upon the street, it took me time to adjust to the relative isolation of a rear location, removed as it was from the current and rhythm and movement of vehicles and people that were street fare, always there to be watched, studied and followed whenever I had felt hemmed in by the overcrowding of my former home. However, the improvements in our conditions were such that in the end it proved not too difficult to accept the loss of the one for the gains of the other.

  Our new apartment contained a den to the left of the entrance hall, a well-proportioned room with a window looking out upon the full length of the inner courtyard. From this den which served as my bedroom and study, a door led to the dining-room which also had a separate door to the hallway. This room was large and rather dark as it had only a single window at one corner to admit the light. The furniture which had seemed to fill our previous dining-room was totally dwarfed here; so much so that Mother bought two wide tall plants to reduce the emptiness. Those plants were a welcome substitute for the two shelves our previous dining room had contained. The dining-room table, meanwhile, liberated from its multiple purposes, now regained its rightful uses and remained at all times covered with a table-cloth as if a perpetual Sabbath had entered into the house. The buffet, likewise, regained its originally designated splendour. Its glass insets and its central mirror continually sparkled in their cleanliness. They were no longer strewn with those odds and ends of garments as in the past; their shelves were no longer the place for buckles and buttons. Instead, they were used to display whatever ornaments Mother bought to brighten the room. The large divan which had earlier served as my bed stood with its high padded back against the wall that separated the dining-room from my den. It continued to bear the marks of long abuse, having during the day also found utility as a display counter or storing bench for Father’s knitwear. Overhead, the big and solid ceiling light with eight separate bulbs around a central frosted plate drew deserved attention and shone majestically, particularly during the winter months. Where, previously, in our old home we had seemed to be intruders seeking to snatch moments of privacy from surrounds not designed for privacy, here we could consider ourselves welcome and truly at home in an ambience of spaciousness, repose, orderliness and peace.

  To the left of the dining-room was another hallway which led to the kitchen, the bathroom and a toilet. The bathroom contained a full-size cast-iron bath and a water-heating facility heated with firewood. To the right of the dining-room were three moderately spacious bedrooms. The one nearest the entrance had three beds for my three younger brothers; the middle one was my parents’; the third was for Bobe and my sister.

  The other tenants on our landing were an elderly couple and two young blonde girls from Krinki. These girls survived the war in Russia and came to Melbourne. One was to marry Jack Liberman, a prominent Melbourne businessman, and the other married a Garkawe. On the landing above us lived two families in their respective apartments: the Belochs, husband, wife and only son, a university student, and the Eisenstats, a chassidic family. Mr Eisenstat involved himself deeply and influentially in communal affairs and was much respected. On Saturdays and holidays, the singing of festival songs that reached us from their apartment blended well with the spirit of our own home.

  Beneath us, there were also two apartments, these separated by a wide thoroughfare through which carts would carry firewood to the storage area that stood at the very back. These apartments were both occupied by the same family. One served as a home, the other as a sweets factory. There were two adolescents in that household. The sweets factory was but one of a number of enterprises operating on the ground floor of that quadrangle of buildings that made up Kupiecka No. 21, among them a candle factory, a clothing firm and a wholesale cloth business. The total effect was one of industry and quickened tempo. What I found hard to accept was the communal garbage disposal container into which refuse would be thrown unwrapped and remained uncleared for longer periods than our sense of smell was prepared to tolerate. Together with the adjoining out-houses in the courtyard, it stood as a reminder that while our lot had been bettered, there was still considerable room for improvement.

  Our move had an impact on all the family, but on none was it as telling as on the women. Mother, freed from her earlier role as Father’s saleswoman in the knitting firm, finally came into her own as housewife and mother to her great satisfaction. She now gained more composure, she became more deliberate in everything she did, she was certainly more attentive and relaxed and bore herself with increased gracefulness, clearly enjoying the new circumstances. She gladly took over some of the duties earlier left to Bobe. Father was now out of the house for most of the day – something she had to get used to – and she anticipated his return with gladness. Bobe, for her part, who was by then well into middle age, also appreciated the quiet and the slowing of the pace of daily living, and had more time to herself.

  For the household in general, new issues rose to the top of the family agenda. Suddenly, new contingencies became evident, relating less to my parents’ life than to the older two children. My younger sister Shifra, having entered her teens, required special attention and consideration. Visits by school-mates coming ostensibly on business or socially alerted my parents, and Bobe in particular, to the march of time and to the need to view things differently now and to understand and make allowances for adolescence. Bobe on one occasion floored me by suggesting that I should learn to dance. What overwhelmed me was not the suggestion itself though it was symptomatic of a turning-point in my elders’ way of thinking, but the fact that it should have come from Bobe of all people whom we, as children, perceived as old and as a model of piety. Yet she was sufficiently wise and bold to take the initiative in the tendering of such advice ahead of Mother from whom I would more likely have expected it.

  Father’s factory was located at the other end of Kupiecka Street, across the bridge over the Biala River (White River) from which the city took its name and which was polluted with the effluent from the dye-houses and tanneries that operated in town. Just past the bridge on the left, approaching it from home, stood a three-storied factory occupied by the Spoleczna Gymnasium. Past this edifice stood another cluster of factories, two of whose buildings Father rented for his enterprise. It was here that he engaged in the manufacture of watoline.

  Watoline was essentially a knitted material, a continuous length of woollen fabric held together by cotton netting, but leaving the woollen yarn sufficiently exposed for brushing. The brushing yielded a very bulky product which served as a form of artificial fur placed in winter overcoats between the outer cloth and inner lining for added warmth. The ability to manufacture it was a consequence of improvements made in knitting machinery. The particular machine used to produce it was a cross between a loom and a knitting machine, called Raschel, which carried two beams of woollen yarn and one of cotton which fed the machine during operation. These beams had to be loaded and wound, a tedious and complex procedure involving the simultaneous use of dozens of spools of yarn and requiring much space. The final product was usually black and therefore had to be kept apart from the manufacture of industrial cotton wool which was a sister production line to watoline, however different they were in their nature.

  This cotton wool was manufactured in the other, smaller building rented by Father. Its raw material was cotton imported into Poland in water-pressed bales from India via the Baltic Sea. They weighed 400 kg each and were ordered in quantities that filled a goods rail truck. The tightness of the bales was such that if set on fire, the cotton would only be singed on the outside; despite the flammability of the material, no fire could penetrate any more deeply. However, when the metal bands holding
the bale together were cut, the compressed material came apart to occupy its more natural space. I recall finding from time to time some Indian bus-tickets in the cotton. This gave an air of the exotic to the bales that came in.

  Compared to the manufacture of watoline, the production of cotton wool was rather simple. A single large combing machine used in the process of yarn-spinning performed the whole operation, combing the semi-compressed cotton fed into it at one end into a smooth, even and fluffy cotton mass emerging from the other. After it came off the machine, the cotton wool was packed in bales, compressed by hand into a wooden crate lined by sheets of paper inside and wound around the outside by second-hand jute cloth sewn together with a long industrial needle and string by the packer. By the time the bale was packed, it was still very bulky but not particularly heavy. The material produced was used extensively in bed quilts needed against the cold northern winters. The most striking characteristic of the whole process was its dustiness. The combing caused flying fibres to settle everywhere. The walls were perpetually covered in fine dust, as were the machines and everything else in the building. The machinist and packer worked with kerchiefs tied around their faces, and it was inadvisable to visit the premises dressed in black.

  Both of our products were sold widely along the eastern border of pre-War Poland. Cotton wool was an easily saleable commodity; there was no unused accumulation of stock; nor was there room to store such bulky bales in any quantity. Small orders of one or two bales were dealt with by a foot-carrier. With impressive agility, he would load the bales on to his back, tie them around his trunk, form loopholes for his arms, and then make off with them, only the lower parts of his legs being visible under his load.

  In the main building to the left of the entrance, a spacious office had been installed with two desks and a telephone. Its interior was wallpapered. It took time for Father to adjust to the luxury of having an office, feeling ill at ease in the role of management separated from the manufacturing floor beyond his wall, and he would often gravitate to the noisy machines and to the scenes of action, treating his paper work as a cumbersome if necessary inconvenience. Such a change from the familiar, however, was inevitable. His supplies could no longer be obtained by means of a brown postcard with a brief message written in Yiddish. He had now to deal with agents, determining credit ratings, establishing letters of credit, planning cash flow, organising production and directing sales representatives. These administrative activities absorbed him fully; they extended him financially; but they also instilled in him a renewed sense of self-worth, permitted him more time with his family, and afforded him the opportunity to follow unfolding developments within it with more interest and objectivity.

  3

  Family and Education

  Father’s origins were not in Bialystok. Most of his paternal family lived in Pinsk and its environs which were due south of Bialystok. I never received satisfactory explanation how it came about that Father lived apart from the other Kipens. My guess has always been that it was in some way connected with my grandfather’s early death and the fact that Bobe’s brother lived in Bialystok.

  Another mystery that intrigued me was the origin of our name Kipen. It was an unusual name among Jews. Although himself uncertain of it, Father suggested that it may have been related to the Russian word kipiatok which meant boiling water. Family legend had it that one of my great grandfathers, a scholar, would rise from sleep in the middle of the night, set the samovar boiling to make himself tea, and proceed with his study of the Talmud until the hour of morning prayer. This explanation did not satisfy me.

  In the late ‘fifties or early ‘sixties, I read an account of the later stages of the Russian-German war which emphasised the tactical manoeuvres of the Russian army after the turning of the tide in its favour. One such offensive was a pincer-like northward advance of two columns moving from Leningrad and Tzarskeye-Sielo respectively to meet at a point named Kipen near the Russo-Finnish border. As a general rule in the etymology of surnames, it is axiomatic that if a name corresponded to an actual location, then in all probability its bearer hailed from that place. However, the more I contemplated the matter, the less persuaded I was that the rule applied in our case. There was never any indication that our family had lived so far north. All other Kipens and their associated branches had lived around the marshlands of Pinsk well to the south. Furthermore, our name, written in Russian, was spelt with a soft ‘n’, which further complicating matters. I have also learned since of a place called Kipen in Scotland, but any ties of our family with Scotland are all but improbable.

  Of all our relatives, my strongest affinity was for Father’s brother Avrom-Ber and his family. The reasons were manifold. The fact that they were Kipens made that closeness particularly natural. The regular Sabbath meetings at the prayer-house in the mornings and Uncle and Aunt’s visits to Bobe in the afternoon cemented it. Further, their eldest son was, like myself, named after Grandfather Israel Chaim, while their daughter Miriam had been a classmate of mine in the last four years of high-school. When we came together on a Saturday afternoon, Uncle would sometimes entertain us by posing mathematical problems for us to solve in our heads. My cousin, who was younger than I, would solve them without difficulty; as for me, they were generally beyond my capacity.

  Uncle Avrom-Ber was a tall and imposing man with a high forehead and strong intellect. Stories would circulate about his mental dexterity. An accountant, he would multiply sums in roubles and kopeks by four-figure numbers and produce the answer in a blinking, or similarly add four-digit columns of numbers at a glance. Against this, in manual matters, however, he could not as much as hammer a nail into a wall.

  Aunt Sarah-Dina was a squat plump woman who wore her wavy hair pulled tightly back to her nape. She came originally from the town of Suvalki where her two brothers, the Zylbersteins, were stocking manufacturers and highly respected people. Separated from her family, I suspect she was a lonely person. Once a year, during Passover, we visited her and Uncle in their home. I looked forward to that visit. Being our family’s only combined outing for the year, it was a major social event and, for my part, I looked forward to the variety of Passover sweets that were served then. Uncle and Aunt had four children. They had lost their first-born daughter at eight. Their second daughter, Miriam, was tall and had her father’s features and large eyes. She and I graduated together from high-school in 1937 and, immediately, her mother set about finding a match for her. Their two sons were both red-headed; the older was a mathematician in the genius class. He cruised effortlessly through his secondary education and in 1939 went to Lublin to pursue university studies. He never saw his family again. The younger son, Hillel, was of average ability. The whole family, together with Bobe, perished during the liquidation of the Bialystok ghetto.

  The family on Mother’s side was more numerous, though also more distant. Mother had three brothers, one of whom lived in Grodno where he was the administrator of the local yeshiva. I have no recollection of him. The other brothers lived in Bialystok. The older of these, Aaron Marantz, was a moderately successful textile manufacturer. His wife owned a crockery shop. They had three daughters and a son. At one stage of my youth, I went daily to Uncle Aaron’s house where my maternal grandfather gave me lessons in Talmud. Mother’s third brother, Raphael, had a speech impediment which he fully exploited for our amusement. He was married but childless and owned a weaving loom, taking in commission work.

  The other major branch of Mother’s family was that of her mother’s brother Chaim Goldman, his wife Sorka, and their seven daughters and one son. As indicated earlier, Mother practically grew up in her uncle’s house after her mother died. There was a patent affinity between her and those Goldmans. It so happened that members of that same family had some effect on my own life early on. One of the Goldman daughters, Naomi, was both my class teacher and natural science teacher at the Hebrew Gymnasium. She left in 1935 for Palestine and the class presented her with an album containing the
photographs of every pupil in the class. Naomi today lives in Haifa and still possesses that album. Three other sisters – Yaffa, Yehudith and Malkah – also moved to Palestine before the War. Of these, Yaffa is no longer alive; the other two live on kibbutzim. A fifth sister, Rivkah, who had made for Palestine left subsequently for Melbourne with her husband, Moshe Dorevitch. It was these Dorevitches who obtained an immigrant permit for me after the War and brought me to Australia, thereby introducing the Kipen line to the Australian continent. The sixth Goldman daughter, Leike, lived in Bialystok married to an accountant by the name of Boyarski and had one son, while the seventh girl, Rachel, married an Eisen and lived a happy and comfortable life in Sokolky not far removed from Bialystok. The only Goldman son, David, became a successful textile manufacturer in Bialystok where he married the daughter of a well-known identity, a Mr Gertz. At the outbreak of war, they escaped from Bialystok to Vilna. Shortly before my departure from Vilna for Japan in February 1941, they came to see me. They had not sought visas for themselves, believing that they could see out the war in Vilna. By this time, all possibility of obtaining necessary papers for evacuation had run out and the Goldmans were gloomy about their future. Rachel, still very attractive and dignified, broke down when they farewelled me. They were later to perish.

  Further towards the periphery of Father’s family were the numerous Goldsteins, among them Father’s uncle and his four sons and their families. Apart from meeting with the menfolk on Sabbaths at the prayer-house, we had no social contact with any of Father’s cousins. We did however conduct business with one of them whose name was Aryeh and who ran a carrying concern, handling the despatch of Father’s goods. Unlike his brothers who were red-headed, he was tall, dark and very handsome and had beautiful handwriting which I greatly admired. A part of our production was also given to another young man surnamed Daiksel for despatch, one who hailed from Bobe’s family and had come from Pinsk. He survived the war and today lives as a successful building contractor in fashionable Savyon in Israel.