Bubbe's Place: Stories

Uncle Maurice's Unveiling

"Mama, look over there! See those young people? I think they are picnicking in the cemetery."

"Oi vey, good grief," replied Mama. "Young people nowadays...I suspect they came for an unveiling. And with no Rabbi, no bubbe or zayde to guide them they are misbehaving. They don't know what is correct. Seh passich nisht, it is innappropriate, to have a picnic in a cemetery. It is in poor taste to eat or drink here. It is a misuse of the cemetery and reflects shame upon the deceased."

"Listen," I said. "I hear them singing 'Molei Rachamim,' so it must be an unveiling."

Papa spoke up, " Veis vos, know what? I'm a little hungry, myself. Let's join them. Surely they'll offer an old man a bisl zu essen und trinken, a bit to eat and drink?"

"Papa! You can't go to them and say, 'I am old and I am hungry, give me a little something--you don't even know them!" "What are you talking about? Of course I know them! They are here in the Koshovoto Cemetery, aren't they? So they must be my landsleitl

"Come! Nochgeyn mir, follow me!" and off tramped Papa.

Mama and I followed sheepishly, muttering, "Oi vey, Papa! seh passich nisht, Good grief, Papa, it isn't right."

The Grobein Cousins' Club had assembled to unveil their Uncle Maurice's stone. As Sean-named for his zayde Solomon-explained to us, "We thought we would combine the unveiling with a Cousins' Club meeting. Since Uncle Maurice loved to eat and to tell stories, we thought it would be a nice gesture to have his favorite foods and to reminisce. We know the Molei Rachamim and Kaddish so we didn't really need a rabbi."

Papa by this time was munching happily on a bagel with lox and a schmear of cream cheese. Mama and I each accepted a chair and some cherry soda.

"You want stories?" asked Papa, around a cheekful of bagel. "My wife and I were raised in Koshovoto. We can tell you stories about der alter heym, the old home. What do you already know?"

With one loud voice all the cousins replied, "Nothing! "We couldn't ask our bubbes and zaydes. They didn't speak English so well- and to tell the truth, we were too young to be interested. Later, when we asked our parents-they didn't know anything. Either they left Koshovoto too young, or they were too busy making a living to ask their parents about the old country. Now we're curious, but have no one left to ask. "So please-tell us everything you can."

Papa was in Heaven. He had so much to tell them! He swallowed another bit of bagel to fortify himself, beamed, and began: "Do you know where Koshovato was?"

Morgan-named for her bubbe Malke (Angel), replied "Sure.lt was in Eastern Europe." "Eastern Europe... Eastern Europe...Could you get a little closer?" Robert, named for his alter fetter, great uncle, Reuven, said, "Russia?"

Papa shrugged. "It was in Ukraine, about one hundred miles south of Kiev and west of the Dneiper River."

"And you can't imagine how hard life was for us," Mama put in. "We had no running water. Women and girls carried buckets of water from the town wells to fill a barrel in the kitchen. The streets were unpaved, rivers of mud after rain. We had no bathtubs in our homes. Before the Sabbath, Jewish people went to the mikveh, ritual community bath, to bathe. We washed our clothes in the icy river water just outside of town. "Our house had four rooms. There was a kitchen with two work- tables—one for milk dishes and one for meat preparation. In the kitchen was a fireplace for cooking and of course the water barrel stood there. The biggest room was a combination dining room and living room, with a big fireplace. There was Mama and Papa's bedroom. It always had a crib in it for the newest baby. There was a second bedroom for the girls with two beds that all of us shared. The boys slept in the living-room-dining room."

Now I interrupted. "Mama, tell them how you washed a dirt floor."

"Washed a dirt floor?" one of the girls giggled incredulously.

Mama drew herself up to her full five foot and snapped, "We were poor, but not dirty! And these were hard clay floors, not dirt like here in the cemetery. Every day we swept our floors clean. On Fridays, to prepare for Shabbat, I made a paste from clay and water to smear over the floor. I applied this with my hands, all the strokes going in the same direction, very carefully. When the floor dried I made a border design with different color clay paste. Like a Persian rug."

"The life of a housewife was very difficult. We couldn't buy bread, milk and eggs in a store. My Mama baked her own bread and raised chickens and geese. We ate the eggs they laid and eventually we ate them, too. From their feathers and down we stuffed our mattresses, pillows and quilts. We got our milk from goats we owned and Mama made cheese from this milk. Instead of a refrigerator we had a root cellar."

Papa continued, "The walls were made of thick sod~they must have been one and a half, two feet thick to keep out the cold. The roof was thatch. The toilets were outhouses, far from the house. Yes, all our houses had dirt floors, just like my Sonia says. Her father was a barrel maker but still he had dirt floors, too. Because, although we were surrounded by forest, the land belonged to the pan, lord, and timber was too expensive for us to buy just for a floor. "All our houses also had gardens. We grew cabbages, beans, potatoes and cucumbers. We ate a lot of borscht, a soup fun red beets. We had apple, plum, pear and cherry trees. Not far away they grew watermelons."

Mama added, "We rarely had cake. Our sugar came from beets. We were so hungry that we enjoyed a piece of black bread smeared with chicken schmalz, fat, more than you enjoy cake. If a person was near death, he might get an orange to eat. Oranges were so expensive and rare, we believed they had great medicinal value."

Papa interrupted, "I had to come to America to taste cream cheese like we are eating here. When I first arrived my brother, who had come earlier, treated me to a banana. I was afraid to eat it: I didn't know if it was kosher! "The winters were very long and cold in Koshovoto. So at night we crowded close to the fireplace. The men sorted beans, the women fluffed feathers. The light was too dim to read by-and anyway who had books? There was also no radio, no phonograph, no television, and especially no computers! For entertainment we told stories, like we are doing right now. That's why so many people of that generation were great storytellers."

Now Mama interrupted, "Life in the early years of the twentieth century was primitive and physically difficult, but we expected no more and we were happy. So why did so many of our Koshovoters run away? Only because of the pogroms]"

"A pogrom," said Papa, "is an organized attack of Russian peasants and military against unarmed Jews. "Whenever there was government trouble or failure, the government distracted the Russian people with a pogrom against the "wicked" Jews. All Jews were considered wicked. After the Russian army was crushed by the Japanese in 1905, Russian officials organized pogroms against Ukrainian Jews. Koshovoto was in the heart of Ukraine."

"My family," Mama put in, "was attacked so often my father arranged for us to sleep in the fields of a friendly Christian farmer. The farmer was afraid to let us sleep in his barn. And we had to wait until dark, so we wouldn't be seen. Under cover of darkness, he let us sleep in his fields. "One night the Cossacks attacked. They were furious to find empty Jewish houses. They wanted to kill! So they began to search for victims. I will never forget that night. The group I hid with in the field saw them approach. "A baby began to whimper. All of us were all terrified. What if the Cossacks heard the baby and turned towards us? The mother could not silence her baby. Finally she jumped up and raced toward the creek, to drown the baby and herself. The community would not let this happen. Two boys tackled her. By some miracle, the Cossacks heard only themselves. We Jews survived that long night.

"During the Russian revolution, General Petlura led the White Russian Army in the Ukraine. They marched through the Ukraine, fighting the Bolsheviks. Along the way they practiced killing Jews. Things were so dangerous the Jews of Koshovoto moved to a larger town called Boguslav, with a larger Jewish community. Here they thought they would be safe. I moved there with my family, too."

"As for me," added Papa, "I had had enough. When everyone else went to Boguslav, I left for the border. I had no papers but anyway I started my journey west, to America."

"And you were wise," put in Mama. "Petlura had an officer named Ostrovsky. In May, 1919, this Ostrovsky was busy making speeches. According to him, Jews were the main supporters of the Bolsheviks. He demanded the townspeople kill all Boguslav Jews. One thousand Jews crowded into the main synagogue. The synagogue was fired. All those souls perished. "Of the five to six thousand Jews in Boguslav, perhaps one-third escaped. My sisters and I fled, to the larger, safer city of Tarashta.

"Tarashta had a Jewish population of seventy-five hundred. But even here, on June 16, 1919, a terrible pogrom occurred, led by Yatzenko. The Soviets drove Yatzenko out and controlled Tarashta for one month. Then they moved on. The Jews fled north to Kiev, we among them. But in 1922, I also, like Menashe, left for America. My brothers and sisters were supposed to follow. Unfortunately, before they could leave, the doors to America were closed..."

And now Papa took his final turn. "In 1975 we celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary. We decided to visit U.S.S.R. Although the government wasn't friendly to Jews, still Stalin was dead and there were no overt pogroms. Both of us had brothers living in Kiev. We wanted to see them, and our nieces and nephews. "Once there, we told my wife's brother, Yusserl, that we wanted to visit Koshovoto, especially the Jewish cemetery. I really wanted to see Mama's grave. " 'Don't go there,' Yusserl told us. But we wouldn't listen. We hired a car and driver. "Poor little town. It was even shabbier than we remembered. The church was there, but the three synagogues of our youth had vanished. No Jews remained.

"We went to the cemetery - terrible. It was all a bramble. The stones-gone. The graves-overgrown. We couldn't walk anywhere, for fear of trampling someone's grave..."

Papa took Mama's arm and after thanking the Grobein Cousins' Club they began to walk away.

Suddenly Mama turned and said, "Kinder, children, if you are looking for Koshovoto, don't bother going to Russia. Look in our memories instead." I thanked the cousins for Papa's nosh and our drinks, and bustled after my parents.