Because of its natural wealth, Roumania was frequently in political turmoil. Once ruled by the Ottoman Empire, it was involved in numerous skirmishes with its neighbours, the Poles, Austrians, Bulgarians and Russians. Turbulence and corruption seemed to be a way of life. In spite of all this the country flourished. More than half of the arable land was held by the "boyars", or absentee landlords, and a feudal system of land tenure prevailed.
The Jews who were expelled from Spain in the 15th century gravitated to Roumania by way of Russia, Germany and Poland. Because of their skills and education, and knowledge of trade and commerce, they were welcomed and prospered until 1869. Then a cloud of antisemitism appeared and the Jews were disenfranchised. By 1900 the situation became intolerable. Bigotry was rampant, and fear became a way of life for the ordinary Jews.
Our family were among the fortunate few. Father was employed as an overseer for the estate of an absentee landowner whose property was quite extensive. There were farms, gardens, orchards, forests and a winery. The workers were mostly peasants, known as "moujiks", who lived together with their families on the property. Whole families worked, men, women and children, for there were no schools. They were illiterate, servile, humble, but good workers. My father was the only boss they knew and they had tremendous respect for him. As he walked among them, they would call out "Boona diminiatza, domnuli" - Good morning, master. Often he was called upon to settled their disputes, and the moujiks would be so grateful for his assistance they would bow and kiss his hand.
I was born in Roumania in 1896, and the first home I remember clearly was in a small town called Ploiesti pronounced "Ployesht". We were a large family but very closely knit. Besides my parents there were five boys, Harry, Jacob, Abraham, Samuel and myself Joseph, and three girls, Annie, Mary and Molly. Mother and father were gentle, loving people who enjoyed their family life. We respected them, of course, but they also respected us. They seemed to understand each of us, as individuals and as an integral part of the family. We were disciplined when necessary, but my parents always maintained a warm and happy home. When we did things, we did them together. If we had things, we shared them.
Father was an imposing man, with a heavy crop of dark curly hair and bushy sidewhiskers. Although he was in his forties when I was born, he was always full of energy. A deeply religious man, he believed that Cod and life were things of great joy, things to be savoured and appreciated. I remember, for instance, celebrating Yom Kippur with my parents. This is a holy Jewish festival which requires us to enter the synagogue at sunrise and stay inside until sundown. Many parents forced their children to sit there the entire day, and of course there was endless squirming and fidgeting. Our father had a far better understanding of children. He would take one of us into the synagogue for an hour while the rest of us played outside, then he would send that one out with instructions for the next son to go in for an hour, and so on all day. My mother followed the same procedure with my sisters.
In this quiet way, we came to have a deeper understanding of our religion, and a greater respect for its traditions. They were never, for us, simply boring rituals we were forced to tolerate. They had meaning and purpose, as my father intended they should.
I remember harvesting as a particularly busy time. After the grapes were picked, three or four men, and often women, would climb into the big vats and trample the grapes with their bare feet - the first step in making wine. When other fruits ripened - plums, apricots, raisin grapes - they would be spread out on the roofs of low sheds to dry in the hot summer sun. Later they were boxed and taken to market.
The town of Ploiesti itself was a fairly progressive one. Electric lights illuminated its streets, and the power for these lights was turned on every evening by a man who came at dusk, walked to the kiosk in the town square and pushed the switch. The switching on of the lights was a miraculous event to the children, and drew us out to watch it every night.
There were no automobiles in Ploiesti then, but there were many carriages drawn by a well-groomed horse or two. The status of the owner was easy to define by the look of the carriage, the driver and the horses.
Traffic in Ploiesti was heaviest on market days. Carts, wagons, and democrats, as well as carriages, crowded the streets. The town square was the centre of activity, with farmers selling their produce in open stalls: live chickens, geese, rabbits and ducks, vegetables, and cottage cheese. Butter was sold in open tubs and dispensed with a ladle into the customer's own jar or pail. Brinza (goat cheese) was a favourite because it was easily digested by the old and sick.
Customarily, the farmers' wives conducted all the business in the marketplace. The husbands would drive the carts to market, hitch their horses to the backs of the carts, then wander off to the local tavern. At dusk they would return, in various stages of drunkenness!
Market days held something for everyone, even the children. The candy store was a great attraction. Sweets were displayed in open boxes and sold by the handful. We always sent in the biggest boys since they had the largest hands and got the most for our few coppers.
Sometimes when my father took us to the market he would buy peanuts as a treat. To us, the outline of the inside of a split peanut looked like the face of "Uncle Sam", for even in Ploiesti this American symbol was well-known. So naturally we dubbed peanuts "American Nuts" and enjoyed them all the more.
In Ploiesti we lived in a big white house facing a courtyard. We had a very good life, and enjoyed a comfortable standard of living. There was always enough money for little extras, and plenty of chores to do. We had many friendly neighbours, one of whom was also employed by the landowner. He lived with his family on the other side of the courtyard. A stout iron fence surrounded both homes. At the back of our house stood an old stable, where we kept horses, cows, sheep and goats, and it was great fun chasing the chickens, geese and ducks that wandered into the yard.
Directly in front of our stable was always a large puddle of black muck that bubbled from the ground. Mothers warned their children not to go near it because it could not be cleaned from their clothes. Peasant farmers would scoop it up in their hands and use it to grease the wheels of their carts. But mostly we ignored it.
That black puddle was to drastically change our lives and end our carefree life in Ploiesti.
It was a warm summer day. The farm had just been sold to another boyar, but work was carrying on as usual. Two strangers came, probably sent by the new owner, and began scooping up jarsful of the black muck and loading them in a wagon. They refused to speak to anyone. My father was afraid; he did not know what it all meant.
Not long after that, a man in uniform arrived at our door with instructions that we were to move out immediately. The black muck was oil!
My father was no longer needed to run the farm, and he found himself out of a job at fifty years of age, with a wife, eight children and his mother to support. We had to move to the Jewish section of Ploiesti, and our standard of living lowered drastically.
Father had been an overseer without a special skill or trade. He knew about farming, but had no training that would be of use to him in our new circumstances. With my father unemployed, we were hard pressed financially. We lived in a small house that was very cramped with our large family. There seemed always to be just enough food to go around. Mother was ingenious at making a little go a long way, but our savings gradually dwindled, and we sorely missed the happier life we had led before.
We spent nearly four years in that situation, and each of us did what we could to ease the burden of poverty. My sister Annie became a seamstress, making fine garments for the townspeople. Two of my brothers were apprenticed to tradesmen, Abe to a jeweler and Jack to a dry goods merchant. In those days an apprentice was not paid anything, but lived with the tradesman's family and ate at their table. This meant two fewer eating and sleeping in our small house. But still we had very little.
My father never found work. But in time, two things happened that would change the course of our lives. Posters and bulletins began to arrive from America, offering free land to farmers, high-paying work on the railroads, and a chance to help in the building of a new country. And at the same time, the strong tide of antisemitism was rolling over Roumania.
Many business and professional men were disenfranchised and repressed by an increasingly anti-semitic government. One of these was Beresh Abramovitch, my mother's uncle. He was a successful general merchant in Ploiesti who also ran a flour mill and other interests.
For years Uncle Beresh sold his flour through trusted agents who would take his product to markets some distance away, sell it, and return immediately with the cash. But these agents were Jewish; soon they too were forced out of business, to be replaced by other, less honest men. The new agents cheated and stole from Uncle Beresh. And the authorities would do nothing about it.
It wasn't long before Uncle Beresh's business began to fail. He realized he would soon be unable to meet his bills - and Roumanian law was very harsh on debtors, especially if they were Jewish. So he didn't wait for it to happen. Instead he gathered all his liquid assets, and in 1903 took his family of four to America - or, to be exact, Winnipeg.
He chose Winnipeg because he knew about the immigration boom western Canada was going through. Since Winnipeg was so well advertised as the "Gateway to the West", he figured it was the perfect place to start a business.
At the time, my oldest brother Harry attended school in Bucharest. My father had bought Harry an exemption from compulsory military service - a common practice in those days for people with money and influence (something my father had before he lost his job). As a result Harry was able to acquire a university education.
He decided to go with Uncle Beresh to Winnipeg. With his training as an accountant, and his knowledge of several languages, Harry had little trouble finding a job as a clerk, foreign correspondent and interpreter for a Winnipeg bank.
As for Uncle Beresh, he was right about the boom in western Canada. He set himself up as a general merchant and did very well.
We had a few other relatives scattered over America, and received a steady stream of letters and beautifully illustrated pamphlets, all praising this new land and telling us of its unlimited opportunities. "Why don't you come?" they pleaded.
To us there was no distinction between Canada and the United States - it was all America, the land across the sea, full of hope, freedom, and the opportunity for a better life. It was of little importance where you went in America, we thought, because there was opportunity everywhere. Winnipeg attracted us simply because Harry and Uncle Beresh were already established there.
In our own country, we were becoming more and more uneasy. Hatred and bigotry against the Jews grew in intensity, and became unbearable for those who were forced to endure it.
Our neighbourhood, the Jewish district of Ploiesti, was frequently harassed by roving bands of vagabonds bent on theft and vandalism. Occasionally, an army patrol would tramp into the area, making great sport of terrorizing anybody unlucky enough to be in their path.
As children we were often afraid coming home from school. I can remember walking home with my brothers one day, absent-mindedly kicking pebbles down the road. Suddenly one of my older brothers shouted, "Joe, Sam-run home The Goyim are in the bushes" We knew what that meant - a shout of "Zhidan!" (Jew), and a volley of stones and obscenities.
Sam and I ran home as fast as we could, shut the front gates and dashed into the house. Mother came running, asking, "What happened? What's the matter? Where are your brothers)'' We explained, and she watched anxiously out the front window until they appeared, bruised, beaten and torn.
We were taught never to fight back, not even consider it. To do so was asking for more trouble. So we avoided the Goyim, and ran if they ever found us. We were ever fearful of being attacked.
It was a bad time for all Jewish children, for the hatred crept into the schools, turning teachers and fellow classmates into tormentors. We children were fortunate in this respect since we went to an all-Jewish school, where we were happy and did well. The only exception was my sister Mary, who had been a bright and eager enough student to gain admittance to a Gentile school. She read a great deal, and whenever the teacher would ask a question, Mary's hand would be up first. She could never understand why the teacher would never ask for her answer. Finally one day, her teacher turned on her angrily and snapped, "I don't want any answers from you, Jew!" Mary came home in tears, and never attended school again.
Meanwhile, cards, letters and pictures kept arriving from America. We would spend long evenings going over and over them. It became a land of dreams; we talked of little else. No one ever said, "Let's go to America"; the idea just grew to be a part of all of us.
Or most of us, anyway. My grandmother, who lived with us, hated America because she knew she would never be able to go. She said terrible things about it, hoping we would not go either. She was bedridden and very old. I can still remember seeing her-a tiny, frail old woman, sunk into a huge feather bed, with just a small wrinkled face showing and smoke curling from the pipe that was always between her lips. I have always believed that our decision to go to America hastened her death, but we put off our departure until after it happened.
About this time, a severe impetigo epidemic swept through the children of Ploiesti. Many had sores about their noses and mouths which formed ugly scabs. It was painful, infectious and running rampant. All children had to report to a special clinic set up in the town square. A doctor from Bucharest came to examine us. I can still remember the smell of the awful salve he gave us. It smelled so bad that few people used it. My mother made her own concoction of goose fat, coal oil and vaseline which cleared up our skin long before the Goyishi kids.
But even in this medical crisis, there was fear of antisemitism. Before we went to the clinic my mother instructed us not to give our real names. Instead, we were to use typical Slavic names like Stefan, Ivan or Gregory. Had we not done so, we feared we would be pushed aside and abused.
It was a fear we had come to know well. Jews no longer had any rights in Roumania. We were not allowed to vote, we could not enter college, we could not own property, and debts owed to us were declared null and void. Truly we were citizens no longer; we had no home.
America was our hope. Harry was doing well in Winnipeg, working for the firm of Alloway and Champion, and for the Law Courts as well. His letters were full of praise for his new home, and my parents discussed moving more often. They wanted the best for their children, and America seemed to have everything Roumania lacked - good schooling for all, freedom of religion, and plenty of opportunity to improve one's lot. But they were sad, too, at the thought of leaving dear friends and family.
For me, though, it was one of the happiest and most exciting times of my life. I thought about America all the time; I could hardly think of anything else. And how vividly do I recall the day my father announced, "I have the tickets for America!"
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