Heishke was nearly bar mitzva when his family had to leave their small town. * Under unbearable conditions, the family fought to survive and to lead a Jewish-Chassidic life.
SEEKING A CURE FOR MY FATHER
At the end of the 30’s, my father’s health deteriorated. The doctors in Krolevets said that he needed to consult with bigger doctors and had to be treated in a proper hospital. This meant traveling to Moscow.
However, in those days it was impossible to go and live in Moscow. The Soviet regime would not allow such “chaos” in which any individual could decide to take up residence in a city like Moscow. Every sector had a person in charge of it and one had to register with him. This was one of the ways that the government was able to keep tabs on everyone. A person who simply showed up could not be registered as a resident.
Furthermore, in our town it was impossible to obtain a ticket for the train to Moscow. You needed protektzia or money to pass under the table to the person who sold tickets. But thanks to the official documents from the doctors that stated that my father needed to travel with his family to Moscow for a cure, we all got tickets easily.
This meant that we had permission to travel to Moscow, but not to live there. The medical documents were not enough for that. They allowed us to live in a distant suburb outside the capitol. My mother’s sister, Chana Shapiro, lived in Moscow. Her tiny apartment was on the small street of the big shul in Moscow. They called the street – don’t be frightened by the long, difficult name – Sposogileniveshtzesky.
My mother managed to travel ahead of us, and with the help of her sister she found an “apartment” in Dorokhova, about thirty kilometers outside of Moscow.
A NEW “APARTMENT”
Moving from Krolevets to a suburb of Moscow was a difficult experience, as one could understand, but we children approached the preparations for the trip with childish excitement. First, was traveling to and near Moscow a small thing? Boarding a train and traveling were an experience! Who could imagine the long awaited moment in which we saw and heard the locomotive with the rest of the train coming into the station.
Of our old broken furniture my parents sold three or four items for a little bit of money. The truth is, I have no idea from where we had the money to exist, since my father had not been working for a long time and Zeide-Rav received very little money from the Jews of the town. It seemed almost certain to me that our relatives in Leningrad and Moscow helped us.
I am not embarrassed to say that I greatly enjoyed the trip to Moscow and then the trip in a taxi for the first time in my life. We first went to Aunt Chana in Moscow, and a few days later we went to our home in Dorokhova, a small town on the edge of a huge forest which extended for dozens of kilometers.
Our apartment in Dorokhova – if it can be called an apartment – had one room that was not large, in which six people crowded in. How? I don’t remember how we managed to do this.
We had no kitchen. Between our room and the room that the gentile landlord lived in, was a sort of kitchen-hall with two stoves that were attached to the two rooms. These stoves were used for cooking and for warming us during the cold winters. This is how my father described the benefit we had from them: In the summer they were not in operation since we rarely had what to cook and in the winter they did not warm us since they were worth “Kaparos” (i.e. ineffective).
THE LANDLORD AND HIS HORSES
The landlord was a clever man. Like everyone in Soviet Russia, he was scared to breathe a word that might indicate his dissatisfaction with the government. But he wasn’t afraid of my father and grandfather, and so he poured fire and brimstone and death wishes on Stalin. He was an engineer in a local glass factory. For his good service to the Motherland he received a cash bonus. With this money he bought two horses, with the plan of earning a bit of money.
He had a large yard which was empty and desolate and did not even have a fence around it. He bought the horses at the end of the summer and they walked around the yard. They had no stable. In the cold winter days (and in Moscow, winters are very cold), the horses shivered in the cold and wind and one of them collapsed and nearly froze to death. The landlord preempted its death by killing it. At least he and his family had horse meat for a long time.
He sought ways of saving the second horse and came up with an idea. I entered the corridor one day and stood there transfixed. The horse was standing there in the middle of the hall, filling the length and barely leaving any space on the sides. We children were afraid of passing through to our apartment, but the gentile assured us that the horse had the nature of a docile lamb. We were afraid nonetheless.
A few days later, the gentile called my father over and showed him what a Soviet engineer can make. Even back then, long before perestroika, I heard the words ostroika and perestroika which meant that he had attached a pail to the front of the horse and behind the horse and other additions so that the hallway would no longer be dirty.
In the end, he saw that it was pointless and one winter day he decided to do the same to the second horse as he did to the first horse. Once again, he and his wife had plenty to eat for a while.
FOR THE LOVE OF A CHILD
It was astonishing to see how respectful he and his wife were to our family. As was customary among many Russians, he liked his liquor, and like many such as he, he would occasionally lift his hand to his wife. His wife, though, was a healthy specimen and she hit him back. They would usually conclude their “argument” with wounds and swollen faces.
They once fought in the hall. Of course, none of us intervened, but amidst the screams my mother heard the cry of a child. That was something that she could not bear. She went to the hall and saw something which caused her heart to tremble.
The two of them were beating each other up, but she could see how he was holding the child with one hand as he was trying to protect himself from her fists with his other hand, while she tried wresting the child from him. It wasn’t a Jewish child, said my mother with tears in her eyes, but her warm, motherly heart was pained when she saw how he held the child close to him, upside-down.
I went out to the hall and witnessed my mother’s compassion and heroism. In the midst of the brawl between the two inflamed gentiles, she approached the man and screamed, “Azi, give me the child immediately! You are choking him! Pity! Give me the child!”
Incredibly, he gave her the child which she brought into our apartment. The child’s mother did not even utter the slightest protest as my mother took the boy. As my mother took the child and brought him into our apartment, she mumbled towards the pair: “Now you can hit one another gezunterheit.”
We heard the fight slowly die down until the two of them knocked on our door and with pleading eyes they held out their hands and said: “Thank you, dear neighbor…Vasili, our little boy …”
My mother said that of course she would return the child, but only after they promised to make peace amongst themselves. With a smile, she gave the child back to his mother.
Late on we heard the story. The landlord and his wife had had a big fight and she grabbed the child and wanted to run away to her parents in town. He said she could run where she pleased but not with the child.
SARDINES OR EGGS – WHICH IS MORE PRECIOUS?
When we were first living in Dorokhova, it was possible to buy as much white bread as we wanted, but from where we had the money to buy one kilogram of bread, I don’t know. My father was sick; my grandfather had no income. Shortly after we arrived in Dorokhova, my mother got a job in Moscow where she went every day, but I remember that her salary was not enough for “water for porridge.”
From the following somewhat far-out episode, you will see how limited our paltry income was.
One summer day, Uncle Moshe Chaim Dubrawsky, who lived in Leningrad, came to pay us a visit. What a guest! My mother was at work in Moscow and my father was in the hospital in Moscow. Only Zeide-Rav was at home with us children. Our daily fare was bread, potatoes and onions, but when a dear guest arrived, he needed to be honored with some better food, something tastier than mere potatoes. Zeide found an egg or maybe two, and prepared it for the guest.
In those days, we ate an egg once in a blue moon. On the rare occasion that we did procure an egg, my mother would save it for Shabbos.
But then we heard things from our guest that amazed us. We children, who stood near the table, heard how Uncle Moshe Chaim was talking to Zeide about how Zeide had revived him with the hot fried egg, since for days he had been eating canned sardines and he couldn’t take it anymore.
I remember looking at my sisters and saw their wide-open eyes: He was sick and tired of sardines! We knew that sardines were the food of kings. We had never seen them before. We heard that in some faraway place in some imaginary expensive stores there were nice boxes of sardines that were so delicious, and yet our uncle was saying that he was disgusted by them!
But my uncle heard none of this and had no idea how poor we were.
LOGS FOR FIREWOOD
Another Lubavitcher family came to Dorokhova, Shmuel Dovid Belinov, his wife, and child. His young wife Chava would come over occasionally to get help in some matter. Shmuel Dovid would also come to “invite” us to go to the forest and collect logs for the stoves.
Although our yard bordered on the huge forest, we were required by law to buy logs in the market which were sold by the meter. Shmuel Dovid said that all the “red officials” could go to purgatory, those who forbade us from cutting even one branch. We were only allowed to collect branches that had fallen from the trees and were half rotten. Shmuel Dovid looked this way and that and quickly cut some thick branches for himself and for me. He had a thick rope and he tied the bundle of branches together and the forest watchman did not catch us.
On Shabbos we had no minyan in Dorokhova. On Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur we barely managed to arrange a minyan. For my bar mitzva in Shevat, two Lubavitchers who lived in Dorokhova attended, but even these two guests could barely enter the “hall” where my bar mitzva was held (this was described in a previous chapter).
I YEARNED FOR A FARBRENGEN
I would like to go back and say a good word about myself.
I have no idea how I came by such a thing, but in my early childhood, I had a strong desire for farbrengens, Chassidishe farbrengens, despite not quite knowing what this entailed. In a warm corner of my memory is my experience of participating in my first farbrengen.
In my overdeveloped sense of curiosity, I once listened to a conversation between my father and grandfather in which they spoke about having a farbrengen in the house. I think it was the week before a Chassidishe Yom Tov (Yud-Tes Kislev). I needed no more than that; hearing that sudden good news made my heart pound. In my tremendous anticipation I counted not only the days but also the hours.
Since I was “blessed” with a pessimistic nature, I was plagued by a fear that something would happen to make me miss the farbrengen. By day, thoughts and fears besieged me, and at night I had nightmares. Day after day I felt nervous, but at the same time, I was as excited as usual.
Two days before the farbrengen, I woke up in the morning with a bad headache. Oy! It was all because of my fears. Aside from the headache, I felt feverish too. I tried to control myself and not tell my mother and get dressed. Forget about it! I fell right back into bed.
Then began the usual routine. My mother took my temperature and it was high. And then Dr. Orlov came. He listened to me, felt me, and said that I had the flu or bronchitis, I don’t remember exactly. He wrote a prescription and said to put bankes (cupping, a treatment in which vacuumed cups are applied to the skin to draw blood through the surface). I remember pleading with my mother to ask the doctor whether I would be able to attend the farbrengen the following day. She said something to him and he smiled, mumbled something, and I burst into tears.
I did everything the doctor said, the bankes, cough syrup, and all the rest, hoping he would have mercy and let me attend the farbrengen. I had a hard night, but the next day I felt better than the day before.
My mother took my temperature and … ah! I had an idea. As soon as my mother turned her head, I took the thermometer and turned it over, in the hopes that it would make my situation easier. It did not help. It still showed that I had fever.
AN UNFORGETTABLE MOMENT
It’s odd, but I do not remember how the day itself (Yud-Tes Kislev) went. My head felt a lot better. I napped a lot throughout the day and with rare optimism I looked forward to the farbrengen. Towards evening, probably in the middle of Mincha, I fell into a deep sleep. I woke up late at night from the sound of a joyous Chassidic niggun that came from the dining room where the farbrengen was held.
Along with the niggun, a ray of light also came into the room through the open door. I sat up in my bed.
“Mama, mama,” I called. When my parents came quickly, I said with uncharacteristic firmness: I want to go to the farbrengen! My mother was pleasantly surprised, but said, “What are you talking about …” My father said, “Well, why not?” He wrapped me in a blanket and brought me to the dining room where all the Chassidim in town were sitting, along with a few yeshiva bachurim.
I cannot forget the unusual emotions I felt when my father brought me into the dining room. A single electric light was lit, but I saw a clear halo of light. The Chassidic niggun flooded me with a tremendously inspiring feeling that I had never felt before (or maybe since). The faces of the Chassidim who sat around the table looked like rays of light to me.