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Home and Family

Understanding the learning processes, applying it to reading comprehension in general

Pa's Story
by Sudy Rosengarten

Part II

Synopsis: The writer visits her widower father-in-law nightly and exhausts channels of conversation very quickly. Suddenly she hits upon an idea: getting him to speak about the alte heim. This ignites interest in the old man. He begins telling about his problems with the army draft.

*

"I knew that in the big cities, people bought army exemption cards with money.

"The only problem was that money we didn't have.

"My sister Henna sold the down quilts that she'd put away for her dowry. With the money, she bought me a forged passport. Once I had that, I was free. But I still wasn't safe. At the train station, a suspicious officer called me over. My heart was pounding in my ears. So long as I kept my mouth shut, my foreign passport looked O.K. But once I'd be questioned, I was a goner.

"But Hashem had pity on me. Some shikses came over and started to flirt with the officer. But because I was there, he couldn't respond.

"`What are you standing here for?' he yelled at me in anger. `Make it fast and move on before I arrest you for loitering!'

"I was always a pachdon by nature," he said to me. "I knew that I wouldn't be able to live in constant fear. Until the war ended sixteen months later, I hid in the sub-cellar of a shul in Crakow."

"Is that when you came to Canada?" I asked.

"Not yet, not so fast." Pa didn't like to be rushed.

"So, when the war ended, you went back to the shtetl?" I prompted.

"No, no!" Pa exclaimed, annoyed at my impatience.

He leaned back in his arm chair and stroked his beard.

"Crakow was a big city, teeming with life, abundant with wares. Once my father had taken me along to spend the Yomim Noroim there with his Rebbe. For three days and three nights we traveled by horse and wagon. Who could afford to take the train? I was only a child, maybe eight at the time, but I will never forget that feeling of exhiliration when we got to Crakow.

"The city was full of food, goods, boots, bolts of cloth. People wore fancy clothing, the streets were wide, lined with mansions. I trembled with excitement with each step that I took. I couldn't sate myself on all the sights and smells. Even now, I can remember the moment that I decided that the first chance I got, I'd escape the shtetl and the poverty-stricken existence that had stripped its people of all hope. So when the war ended and I could come out of hiding, I stayed on in Cracow and continued to study together with R' Duvid Meilech, the rabbi who had hidden me, and ten other draft dodgers, for sixteen months in the sub- cellar of his shul."

Pa straightened his back and sat up tall.

"Reb Duvid Meilech had three children. The youngest, Moshe Shea, was frail and always sick. The Rebbetzin's sister often came to help out with the child. We were introduced."

A deep groan shook his whole body. His voice turned staccato.

"We were married on a Friday morning in my father-in- law's lumberyard. It was Rosh Chodesh Nissan. A fresh snow had fallen. All the guests wore the new boots they had ordered for Pesach. At night, I was accorded the honor of leading the Shabbos prayers. Afterwards, the whole shtetl joined us for the wedding feast. Everyone brought something along to eat: a jar of jellied galle, a spiced honey cake, a kugel, shnaps...

"Everyone in Bobov loved my father-in-law. Reb Itchele. He was a tzaddik with the voice of an angel. When he prayed before the omud, he could melt the most stubborn heart. Though poor himself, it was to him that the townfolk went in time of sorrow and need. Strangers also knew that if they were in need of a kind word, a caring heart, a warm meal and a place to sleep, the man to go to was Reb Itchele.

"Although I could boast no famous lineage like Reb Duvid Meilech who had arranged the match, I was considered a `catch.' Most young men at the time were an unsteady lot. Emancipation was the slogan. Theories of evolution and Zionism went hand in hand. The shuls were full of apikorsim who by day studied gemora and at night, the treife philosophies of Plato and Kant. Even those who studied in great Lithuanian yeshivos were not immune to the Haskalah that was spreading through the Jewish streets like a contagious epidemic. So when Reb Duvid Meilech found someone who still lived with a simple faith, it was like a breath of fresh air in an atmosphere already polluted with heresy and I was a welcome suitor.

"As for me, I was ripe for marriage, already sick of hiding and longing for the safety and security of a home of my own.

"When the week of sheva brochos was over, the dowry, which consisted of my in-laws' old bedroom set and sewing machine, was tied to a horse and wagon, which transported us to Cracow where I had rented a flat."

*

Something was happening to Pa as he recalled his younger years. His eyes sparkled, his voice was alive. In the middle of a narrative, he would suddenly stop to marvel that after so many years, he had remembered a trivial detail.

Pa looked at the wall clock. "What?" he exclaimed in surprise. "It's already eleven!" and he got up to escort me to the steps.

I stood up reluctantly. I hated to leave, because as Pa remembered the past, he had again become the vibrant young man that he described.

I stood across from the Home, waiting for the bus. Pa stood on the terrace outside his room, waiting to see me get on safely. As the groan of the bus got louder and it turned into our street, Pa lifted his arm and went back into his room.

*

The next time I came, Pa was sitting in his chair, with one leg elevated on a small stool. That was the leg that always gave him trouble. He didn't talk about it much, only noted that it had become infected many years before and without a doctor around, it had never healed properly. He didn't complain about it and never even showed it to a doctor. He knew that it was nothing and if he kept his foot up, the pain would subside.

I pulled over a stool and reminded him, "So you got married and moved to Cracow and you lived happily ever after."

He looked at me, stared at me, really, shook his head back and forth as though thinking that I must be pretty stupid to make such a remark, but what better could you expect from a girl who'd been born in America and grown up in the Kingdom of the Child, where suffering was equated with wanting another ice cream and not getting it...

"Happy?" There was scorn in his voice. " `Happy,' " he mimicked with a sneer. "Who knew of happiness in those days? Sure, we were also happy when we had a piece of bread to eat, when we weren't running for our lives. But today that's reason to be happy? Today..."

"Oh, Pa, I'm sorry. I was just joking. Please go on. You were up to taking a flat in Crakow after you got married."

Though Pa was appeased, I was worried. He was never like that, or rather, the only time he was bitter and irritable was when he didn't feel well. It must be his foot. I realized that it was probably killing him and he wouldn't tell anyone. In the past, Ma would figure out when something hurt him... I'd better get my husband to look at it. Now that Ma wasn't around, the only one who Pa might confide in, the only one Pa might allow to inspect the red angry patch of skin between his knee and his ankle would be his son, Meyer.

Pa leaned back again.

"The years passed. I was still learning with Duvid Elimelech and Ma supported us by sewing. Hashem helped. Babies started coming and Ma's sewing wasn't enough. I took a larger flat and we ran a little hotel for Jews who came to Cracow on business. Everything would have been fine, had not a new war broken out.

"This time I was determined not to go into hiding. It was more than my not being able to live in constant fear. There was great unrest in all of Europe. Borders were always changing and Jews were being forced to swear allegience to homelands that they neither believed in or were ready to die for. One's allegience in the morning had to, very often, be switched to an enemy country by nightfall. Jews, desperate to escape military service in armies from which few Jews returned, were leaving Europe by boatloads to seek a better life across the ocean, where the threat of forced military service did not exist.

"Ma took all of our savings and bought another passport. In the middle of a stormy night, I crossed the Polish border. My plan was to trek across Europe to Italy or France and from there, sail to America. As soon as things settled down in Europe, I'd come back home. Everyone knew that a man couldn't take his family along to America. Though the streets were paved with gold, the stones were all treife. It was no place to bring up Jewish children."

(to be continued)

 

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