A Life To Live...

by Israel Kipen

  That public lecture, however, enhanced my reputation throughout the school among students and staff alike. This became clear in different ways. For instance, after one parent-teacher evening, Father returned home beaming in patent satisfaction, something particularly unusual for him. It had happened that my teacher Zabludowski, upon meeting Father in the corridor, had praised me with a compliment in the form of a Hebrew aphorism: “Such as he should multiply in Israel”. I had never seen Father, who ordinarily held tight rein on his emotions, so euphoric. For myself, unaccustomed to compliments and not knowing how to take this one, I was both pleased and embarrassed. Nonetheless, that compliment became a private treasure stored deep within my consciousness to be evoked whenever my fortunes took a downward turn.

  That was the year in which we moved to our Kupiecka No. 19 home to take up a more normal private life. I now felt more at ease about inviting my peers to our home instead of my going repeatedly to theirs.

  Year six saw a major change in the direction of the curriculum, with senior teachers now taking over a number of the subjects and setting a new tone to the studies overall. At that time, the mood among Jews was a downcast one. Hitler had come to power three years before and daily events made it clear that something potentially cataclysmic lay in store for us, though nobody could imagine its likely nature. One day, Dr Schepper who taught Polish history and geography entered the class without his customary books. Some event that had just taken place cast a deep pall upon us all and we could not concentrate on learning. Instead of a usual lesson, Dr Schepper chose to talk instead about the outlook for Polish Jews in the light of recent developments. His subject never touched on Jewish issues; I had often felt that he deliberately avoided them. Unlike many of the other teachers, he was not a Zionist and may have been the most assimilated member of staff. But on that occasion, he made compensation for all previous opportunities he had permitted to pass by. His despair on behalf of the Jewish people brought tears to his own eyes and left us in an abysmally depressed mood. Nothing in our earlier experience compared with this coming face to face with such a steep descent in our fortunes both as individual Jews and collectively. We had certainly learnt about the abnormality of Jewish existence in the lands of the dispersion. We understood the unhealthy structure of the social stratification that characterised Jewish society. We knew of the Jews’ sometimes precarious dependence upon the whim of the rulers and people in the countries in which they lived, such whim leading variously to discriminatory legislation, expulsions and pogroms. In the pogroms of Kishinev and Bialystok in 1903 and 1905, violence was confined to a given community at one particular time. But now, without precedent, there were mounting indications of a catastrophe about to befall Jewry on a continental scale where they were most populous in number. As I recall, that was the year Vladimir Jabotinsky pleaded with Polish Jewry that one million of their number should leave Poland without delay. He counted on the Polish government, out of self-interest, to facilitate such an exodus. The Bund excoriated him for as much proposing the idea, undermining as it did the very fundaments of its belief that there was a future for Jews in Poland. But gloom prevailed, and in the face of this, I found it hard, as a sixteen-year-old with a zest for living and a belief in the goodness of humanity, to square the seeming realities with my own ambitions, plans and dreams for the future. My studies overall progressed well; I was elected School Chairman of the student self-help committee; it was the year Father entered into partnership in the production of watoline and cotton wool.

  During the following summer vacation we stayed home. I was encouraged by Father to help him in his new enterprise which I gladly did. He wanted someone to represent him while he himself was absent. He felt too that there was room for improvement and he charged me to look for weak spots in the running of the new business. It was not long before I learnt how disorganised and unreliable was the whole administrative operation, particularly in that buyers were being advised that orders could not be filled for lack of goods where those very items were in fact sitting on the shelves awaiting despatch. Father’s partner, did not possess the necessary competence to manage a business with the efficiency required and as the time drew near for me to return to school, Father discussed the factory with me and made it clear that he wanted me to forego my studies to take over its running which, if left to continue in the same way, would surely lead to the loss of his investment. I was distraught by this sudden turn of events, but in the end I conceded. He was placing a heavy burden upon my young shoulders but, against this, I could not take upon myself the responsibility, by denying him, for the failure of the business towards which it was in fact clearly heading.

  When the school year resumed, my sister returned; I did not. We did not give the school notice. I simply was not there.

  Starting out in the business, I involved myself immediately in all its activities, took over control of orders and deliveries, and very soon the enterprise took an upward turn. I became increasingly absorbed in the work and had virtually put out of mind my intentions to complete my schooling. It happened some six months after I had been with the factory that Father went to the school to settle my sister’s fees and while there he took the opportunity to visit a number of the teachers. One of them, having listened to Father’s explanation for my leaving school, became irate to the point of telling Father he had no right to deny me my education. Father became defensive, arguing that, while he could see that he may have been wrong in withdrawing me, the present situation had become a fact of life and that I had lost too much of the crucial seventh year to return to school so late. Whereupon the teacher replied that my standing at the school was good; that Father should simply send me back; and that the teachers would take over from that point. That evening, at home, Father was tense and ill at ease, but putting on his best face, he asked whether I would be interested in returning to school. I had thought the matter resolved long before and saw it as no longer pertinent. Father’s question came as a surprise and I raised the objection that I had already missed too much to resume now. But Father recounted the incident, reassured me about my credit at the school and left the decision to me. I faced a difficult choice. Certainly, on the one hand, I wanted to pursue further study; on the other, however, I would be at considerable disadvantage with a potentially detrimental effect on my final results, while in the business, I was playing a key role. If I turned my back on it, what might it cost the family?

  In the end, it was Father himself who made my decision easier for me. He assured me that now that more systems had been established in running the business, he was more hopeful about its further prospects and that it would continue well without my presence. Free from this responsibility and weight upon my conscience, I opted for a return to school and did return the very next day to a warm reception from my friends.

  The year proved a highly significant one for me. Inevitably, the seriousness with which the subjects were taught was at a still higher plane than in preceding years. But the lessons I most looked forward to were the fascinating ones of Dr Welger in world history, a highly regarded subject free of parochial limits covering the most important events in world history. We possessed appropriate Hebrew texts but Dr Welger dispensed with these, preferring to lecture, university-style, as we took notes throughout. He was by nature a rather phlegmatic man who spoke very slowly and in a monotone, but transcending these were the insights he offered into the socio-economic context of historic events that he taught about as distinct from a mere dry disjointed listing of dates, places and names to be committed to memory without logic or cohesiveness. One lesson I recall in particular was one on Adam Smith and his thesis about the basic laws of the market economy. By the end of the hour, I was affected less by the physical and mental exertions required to record and understand all he told us than by the realisation that we had reached a level of educational sophistication in which we were ready to see into the fundamentals of the workings of the world and have a tool with which to understand events
of history past and present. I found that history was beginning to compete with literature for attention and immersion. I continued to savour the issues that emerged from Hebrew literature. Whether they were Bialik’s poems castigating his people for their other-worldliness and humbleness or praising them for their steadfastness to religious sources and observances as the means of their survival in dispersion, or Saul Tchemichowski’s iconoclastic poem “Opposite the Statue of Apollo” or his socialist-inspired aspirations for a better tomorrow, or the logic, clarity and subtlety of Ahad Ha’Am’s essays – I loved and identified with them all. But Dr Welger brought me to a different plane. I came to realise that there were issues of world dimension calling to be seen from universal perspectives, against which my earlier outlooks, so strongly Jewishly national, now appeared as considerably parochial. I felt increasingly drawn to issues and concerns of wider human interest which in no way contradicted or effaced, however, my earlier preoccupation with the Jewish problem. Indeed, Dr Welger’s lessons led me to understand the origins and forces that underlay that very problem.

  I passed my seventh year creditably enough, though not as well as formerly, but my horizons had expanded, I felt more challenged, my curiosity had been stirred and I looked forward, after a holiday, to my last year at school, the crucial year eight with matriculation as its reward.

  During those months in which I was at school in year seven catching up for time lost, Father’s business declined again. His partners had had financial interests and investments in other businesses as well, these collapsing and leading to their bankruptcy. The upshot of the matter was that this latest enterprise had to be terminated at the very time when Father wound up his knitting concern. The concurrence of these two events placed considerable strain upon Father who had a family of eight to support, with five of those eight being taught at private schools. He did, however, have one outlet. The partnership, short-lived as it was, had indicated that prospects for the production of watoline and cotton wool were still good. What he had to do was to gather together his resources and proceed independently.

  That summer he disclosed to me his plans for re-establishing the business machinery bought from his partners in new premises that he had rented. But its future hinged on me again. The work of installing new machinery, setting production into motion, establishing a distribution network was beyond his capacity on his own. He also needed the experience that I had gained the preceding year.

  This time, the situation was more serious still than it had been before and, though it hurt me to have to forego my last year of education, I could not in all conscience under the circumstances decline Father’s request. Accordingly, with my answer in the affirmative, we proceeded at high speed to execute his plan. Once again, when school resumed, my sister returned while I was fully immersed in the setting up of the new plant. The pace was feverish and everything fell progressively into place. Some six to seven weeks into the school year, however, Father received a call from the school seeking explanation why I had not returned. As before, Father explained the circumstances. The response from the other end of the phone was most direct, even aggressive: “How dare you do this to your son?” They were hard, bitter and challenging words that must have bitten deeply into Father’s already troubled conscience. He was distraught to be made to feel – by strangers, what’s more – that they cared more about his son’s education than he himself appeared to be. Again, we faced the dilemma we had wrestled with the previous year, but, with the pros and cons being this time even more acute, a resolution was commensurately harder to reach. Father remained uneasy for days. In the end, having most likely taken counsel from Mother, Bobe and perhaps his brother, he resolved to have me return to school, no matter the state of the embryonic business. I wavered, afraid that I might not succeed, having already lost a quarter of my eighth, and crucial, year. I harboured serious doubts. Father, encouraged by the school’s confidence in me, assuaged my doubts. Still I debated the issue, but when the die was cast and I returned, I threw myself into my studies with total frenzy. We were by then in the new apartment. My den became a self-imposed cell. Returning from school, I worked long hours each day until, slowly, surely, by the time the “100 days” – that is, 100 days before the final examination – came around to be marked by a traditional social celebration at school, I had gained abreast of the rest of the class and feeling confident.

  The “100 days” celebration took the form of a dinner attended also by the principal and entire teaching staff of the matriculation year. It was an occasion with a dual aspect. On the one hand, it represented a moment for pause, for catching one’s breath, and for forgetting one’s worries and uncertainties; on the other, it was a moment for reflection that the most precious years of our lives were about to end. For most students, completion of gymnasium marked the realisation of their educational aims; few planned to proceed to university; even fewer would in fact get there. So the celebration was an occasion for farewelling our youth and the mood was one of tempered joy. A suitable address was delivered by Pinek Adler, our representative and older son of our Polish literature teacher, others also expressed sentiments appropriate to the occasion, while at supper I too gave an impromptu address, having been prevailed by a delegation of students to do so.

  The examinations, when they came, consisted of three-hour written papers in six subjects and oral assessments in eleven. By the time the written examinations were over, I felt reasonably at ease over my effort. At the subsequent orals in the presence of a government educational representative, students were admitted into the examination hall in groups. My turn came at five o’clock in the afternoon; it was eleven at night by the time I finished. Hebrew and Bible were among the eleven subjects tested, but for these, non-governmental examiners were brought in. These subjects were endowed with special importance and candidates were generally tested by some outstanding personality. In 1936, the poet Saul Tchemichowski had been brought out from Palestine for the occasion.

  In the event, I passed the examinations satisfactorily, though not brilliantly, and returned to the family fold and Father’s business which awaited me.

  Matriculation class 1937; author bottom row right next to school building.

  4

  Living in the 1930s

  My parents married in 1917, in the year of the Russian Revolution. I was conceived while the world was still at war and born four months after Armistice Day.

  Nineteen-seventeen was a watershed year in both modern world history generally and in Jewish history more particularly. The consequences flowing from events of that year continue to this day.

  Throughout the centuries, the Jewish condition was such that whenever history afforded an altered circumstance whereby Jews might better their lot, they were in the forefront of those who strove, laboured and argued for change. In the 16th and 17th centuries, they followed messiahs who proved to be false. Coming to question religiously conventional notions of messianism and redemption at the End of Days, the Jews of Western Europe later vested their hopes in the liberty, equality and fraternity promised by the French Revolution. In the 19th Century, they continued to follow every false start, and, in the process, threw away their lives at the altar of expected deliverance, only to see it undelivered, themselves the while being left, at best, unaccepted and remaining on the periphery of events.

  In the East, on the other hand, in the Pale of Settlement along the western frontier of the Russian empire that was home to pogroms, poverty and degradation, the aspirations of the frustrated and increasingly secularised segments of Jewry found outlet in the thrust that led some ultimately to their identification with the reorientation of a society towards the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the creation of a Communist order. This was a momentous event in its own right for the world at large, and more specifically, for the Jew. It is scarcely to be wondered at that many who had been victims and scapegoats under the older order, and all the more so as that order was increasingly beset by internal rumblings o
f change fanned from the west, that they embraced the new with intense and committed ardour. The Jews had always had an over-abundance of dreamers; and given its history, it is not difficult to understand why. In my parents’ time, this was no different, and it was clear that the further the process of secularisation of life in general and Jewish life in particular progressed, the less were young Jews ready to wait for the messianic End of Days and believed it was their historical duty to unite their hopes with the hopes of the many invested in the establishment of any new order. The Revolution of 1917 seemed to promise such hopes to those who were prepared to believe in it.

  The second event in 1917 that was to prove decisive in the history of Jewry’s modern-day deliverance was James Balfour’s letter to Lord Rothschild in which he expressed the British government’s position, viewing with favour the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. This was balm to those Jews who did not accept the premise that emancipation of society at large would necessarily secure their own eventual deliverance. The Balfour Declaration spoke specifically to the Jews and was in full and sensitive accord with their own needs.

  This declaration, rather than the Revolution, captured my parents’ imagination. Mother had been brought up in a Zionist spirit and nurtured on modern Hebrew literature that expressed hopes for the restoration of a Jewish nation. Father, who daily prayed for the coming of the Messiah, was sufficiently progressive to see no contradiction between that religious hope and the very practical terrestrial implications of the document. Here lay the basic difference between modern Zionism and age-old messianism. It was against this background that my parents married, together fusing their religious beliefs and their national aspirations which were to be my inheritance, as also of their other children.