MARLENE HAIT ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY:So, this is Christa Whitney, and today is March 11th, 2013.  I'm at the Courtyard Marriott in Boca Raton, Florida with Marlene Hait, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project.  Do I have your permission to record this interview?

MARLENE HAIT:  Yes.

CW:  Thank you.  So, to start, could you tell me a little bit about your family background?

MH:  My family came from Poland.  My parents were Holocaust survivors.  I was born in the displaced persons camp in Landsberg am Lech, Germany, and I grew up in a very Yiddish milieu.  My parents -- my mother was a sole survivor.  My 1:00father had two brothers.  We spoke Yiddish at home, although my two siblings do not speak Yiddish.  They understand it, they kind of try, but my brother, especially, was totally not interested. 

CW:  What do you know about their -- your parents' life before the war, if anything?

MH:  My mother was one of eight children, my father one of five.  My mother was the only one who survived.  They were in the camps in Skarzysko and Częstochowa.  And their friends, for the most part, were people who survived with them, whether they came from their town of Chmielnik or someplace else.  But my father, especially, was very involved with the landsmanshaft [association 2:00of immigrants originally from the same region].  My mother later became involved and they were presidents for life.  The town that my parents came from had ten thousand people, eight thousand of which were Jews, three hundred of which survived the war, some of whom had escaped previously.  My mother, very interestingly, was a member of Betar.  My father, a member of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir.  So, right and left came together.  While they didn't have a large or a long academic career, my father read voraciously.  We always had Yiddish papers in the house: "Der tog," "Der algemeyner zshurnal," not a big "Forward" reader, which is very interesting coming from the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir leftist background.  And, for example, when I was studying Russian literature in 3:00university, my father had read Dostoevsky in Yiddish.  So, we could have very interesting discussions.  So, as I said, we were involved in the community.  My parents raised money for ambulances and Hadassah, and send packages to Israel.  We're very Zionistic, and my mother still is, as is our family, and -- but Yiddish was the language for me and my parents and with my parents' friends, who were really my surrogate family.  And I went to the Peretz Shule.  My brother went to a Talmud Torah, 'cause he had to be the kaddish -- and still a European sense of -- and I had two wonderful teachers.

CW:  Before we -- I do want to hear about the shule [secular Yiddish school].  4:00If you don't mind, I'll ask a little bit about your home first.  I'm curious about -- what were the Jewish aspects of your home growing up?  You mentioned the Yiddish papers and Zionism --

MH:  Well, we had a kosher home.  We had a Yiddish library.  One of my favorite poems was from Dora Teitelboim, and my mind is just going blank.  It's about the broken oak.  And when we were in Prague, it was very interesting to find a place dedicated to her, 'cause she'd always existed only in the book.  As I said, my parents were blatantly Yiddish.  (laughter) And we lived in an area that was primarily Yiddish.  I went to schools where Jewish holidays, the 5:00schools emptied out, although they were public schools.  And it wasn't so much that the people who came after the war ghettoized themselves, but there was a very distinct -- I wouldn't say a break between the people who came before the Second World War and the people who came after.  And we were very fortunate, in that my mother's family -- two aunts had migrated to Canada.  Took very good care of us.  Not monetarily, but sort of getting us on our feet.  Other people did not have that good fortune, and were really left on their own or the family said, "We can't do anything."  For example, when we came over, we stayed with 6:00the poorest of my aunts, Damina Chapnik and Fetta Fumval, who had three rooms, and they had room for three of us.  My aunt could make an apple feed ten people, literally, and I've seen it happen.  Other people did not have that kind of a welcome.  And my father worked in -- first for somebody in a stocking factory, where all the workers were Jewish, and then he set up a chicken business in the Kensington Market, which at that time was the Jewish market.  And he wholesaled and retailed chickens, and most of the business was in Yiddish.  And he also spoke Polish and Ukrainian, because of where he came from.  So, he had a few words of everything.  And my mother, a bit, too.  My mother came involved with Hadassah, with the Pioneer Women, which became 7:00NA'AMAT.  But they were always looking to keep -- in a Jewish milieu.  And also, we came to Canada with twenty dollars and an UNRRA blanket.  So, as my father said, I'm glad to pay taxes.

CW:  And you -- were there -- I mean, did -- was the war something or pre-- the life before the war something that was discussed in the home?

MH:  All the time, and especially -- people came, and our home was the reception area for anybody who came from anywhere in the world.  From Argentina -- 'cause people had left Chmielnik before the war.  Some went after, through Cypress, to Israel -- or before.  So, our home became the gathering place for that.  Didn't matter if I had exams the next day.  Somebody called, they're 8:00here, impromptu party, (laughs) but -- so, it was discussed.  It was discussed.  Friday night -- but especially Passover, because my -- Passover is a very special holiday in our family, because over the years, my father always looked at Passover as a reminder of his own yetsies mitsrayim [Exodus] out from the camps.  And there'd always be discussion and parallel things.  And my kids heard it.  How much they digested, I don't know.  But, I mean, my kids were lucky enough that my father lived through their teenage years, so there's a concrete memory.  But they talked about it.  And my father had started to 9:00write his memoirs, which is part of the reason why I've been going through some of the "Hed ha'irgun," because in the 1930s -- late 1930s, as the war was starting, he went to work in Lwów, to work on the railways, and -- because of the gauge between Russia and Western Europe -- so, they had to open the trestles.  And I want my kids to have some of that, to understand.  They have a Yizkor book, which is also, I think, in YIVO, and I think the Yiddish Book Center has it.  So, I'm finding it emotionally very difficult to translate some of it, but it'll come.  I have some of these things, but as I'm going through the "Hed ha'irgun" -- which I had always looked at, very briefly.  But, for 10:00example, in some of the issues that I have here -- are personal accounts of witnessing the Kielce Pogrom, the before and after.  There's one I brought to the Yiddish Book Center -- I'm coming back in April -- of somebody recounting their trip to Birobidzhan in 1920, "The Idealistic Communist."  And what he found and going back, and the words of wisdom from his father at the end: we had Sabbatai Zevi, we had Lenin, we had Marx.  Young people think the world is just for them.  Things happen and the world carries on.  So, I thought it'd be an interesting piece for people to read, 'cause it's short enough.  But there are a lot of memoirs.  There are memoirs of people who left before the war.  This particular person went on to Argentina, and from hardcore communist became a 11:00capitalist leather manufacturer whose children are now in Israel.  But there's -- it's just a lot of -- I'm a history major, so I find this very interesting.  And my kids are realizing how much of their history has been abbreviated.  So, I'm hoping to pick up on some of that, my --

CW:  What do you mean when -- the history's been abbreviated?  Meaning in their education, or what do you mean by that?

MH:  Because they can't really look back and say, I knew a lot of aunts, I knew a lot of this.  They knew some of my parents' friends, and they knew a little bit -- was very interesting.  My -- the aunt that we stayed with had seven kids, and my mother was really treated very well by them.  But that's where it ended.  My brother and sister and I were never invited to any functions or -- 12:00'cause -- because you had to cut it off someplace.  But my mother was really the only survivor from that whole family of several hundred people.  And so, we were abbreviated.  So, we found our friendships with our parents' friends.  I have a group of friends who are Yiddish speakers, 'cause our parents were friends and we speak, but several of their siblings down the road don't speak any Yiddish.  And so, you feel that abbreviation, especially as your own family is growing.  And they see the -- the grandchildren see -- "Oh, look at all these first cousins I have, and look at this," and it's a widening circle.

CW:  So, through your reading from the -- and involvement in stories, did you 13:00get a sense of this town that your parents grew up in?  What were the -- all of these people that came through your house after the war, too?

MH:  Well, it's very interesting, because this was a typical Galician town in southern Poland.  As I said, there were ten thousand people in Chmielnik.  But you had Mizrahi, you had the linke [left-wing] Po'ale Tsiyon, the rekhte [right-wing] Po'ale Tsiyon.  You had Maccabi, you had Betar.  You had Bais Yaakov school, which, in the '20s, was a revolutionary thing, to have a school for girls.  And there are pictures in many of the publications.  And also, just -- the thing that comes through very strongly in all of this is names.  As 14:00they're recounting, because so much was lost, you have names, like in one of the issues, there was a very prominent rabbi in Toronto who came from Chmielnik, Rabbi Avraham Price.  And he was recounting -- he came over before the war -- but he was recounting who davened in the different places, just so the memory of the people would not be lost.  And there was a great obligation about that.  And that's what -- I find it interesting, so -- and just what people saw and what people heard, which was largely discounted by the organized community -- as I was growing up, and I think up until very recently.  Not too many towns -- I 15:00think there are about a half a dozen towns that put out a publication like "Hed ha'irgun," but what makes it interesting is all these communities contributed about a thousand dollars to Israel.  There was somebody there who was publishing it.  So, you would get news briefs from Melbourne, Australia, Brazil, Boston, New York, Paris, France, Israel, Toronto, Montreal.  It was like a global fraternity, and they put in things like "Mazel Tov to Faye Goldlist on the birth of her grandchild" and all this.  And also, sorrowful things and obituaries and -- of losses.  But it was a very cohesive group, and 16:00there was a sense of obligation not to forget, but not to get buried.  The other thing that came out of it was just the sheer will of people to move forward, to show -- not, as I say, not so much material things, but we've succeeded.  We succeeded in overcoming.  And I just find that very, very interesting.

CW:  And going back to language, you said you spoke Yiddish in the home, and also that your father sometimes spoke some of these other languages at work or --

MH:  Only in the store.

CW:  Yeah.

MH:  Only in the store.

CW:  And was -- so, was -- when did English come into your life, and what were 17:00the languages at play for you as a young person?

MH:  Well, I -- English came into my life when I came to Canada, and I went to a preschool at St. Christopher's House, because my mother would go to the store Thursday and Friday, 'cause she had to get ready for Wednesday and Thursday, 'cause she had to get ready for Shabbos and the Jewish customers, which my father delivered to on his bicycle, up and down the city.

CW:  The chickens?

MH:  The chickens.  There was Zalman Shoykhet, who -- I mean, these people were in our lives a long time.  And so, Engl-- when I went to school -- but I -- my mother went to night school, but I was basically the translator for my parents for many years, with documents, with dealing with lawyers, with -- for a 18:00while, my parents made investments in mortgages.  They never invested in the stock market, didn't understand it -- and dealing with those kinds of things.  So, I became the translator, the interpreter.  And as I got older -- my father never -- well, I shouldn't say never, but for a long time was uncomfortable with English.  And he didn't really need a lot of it, but I remember, in the summers, when my mother would go out to the cottage, which she rented also, in a community where everybody spoke Yiddish and could play -- and they could play Kaluki and all those games in Yiddish.  I became an expert kibitzer and earned 19:00a nickel for just standing around.  (laughs) But in the evening, I would take some early textbooks that I had and work with my father.  Canadian history, sort of -- and some reading.  And that -- we would do that several evenings a week.  I mean, the alphabet, he knew.  He wasn't totally illiterate.  It was just a comfort level.  So, that -- and so, that also became probably -- right through high school, pretty well, into university, and -- but he always looked to the Yiddish papers for the interpretation, and he kept on -- they both kept a large dialogue and correspondence with friends in Israel and elsewhere.  New York, primarily.

CW:  And you mentioned that there -- you were sort of the reception for international visitors or visitors.

MH:  Yeah.

CW:  Were there any people that -- or visits that really stand out in your memory?

MH:  Well, my father's best friend had been his madrich [Hebrew: counselor] in Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir, and they came.  That was [Yaakov Rote?], who had actually been -- became mayor of Rishon LeZion in Israel for a time.  And he was my father's closest friend, even though they lived thousands of miles apart.  But one interesting visitor, came erev [Hebrew: eve of] Rosh Hashanah, and we lived near the synagogue.  We get a call; we had just finished eating.  And his friend Nukhem Maler said, "I'm here in Toronto with my wife!"  (laughs) Now, 21:00these are friends from Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir who translated back into -- in Israel.  And my father said, "I'm going to shul, you want to come?"  And he said, "What do you mean you're going into a shul?"  (laughs) But my father went, picked him up, and, of course, they stayed with us through the holidays.  And then, after the holidays, my parents made a party and everybody came.  Nukhem and Rivke Maler are here, and people just come, and they had other people that they knew.  His brother had actually died in the 1948 war.  He threw himself on a landmine for Kibbutz Negba.  So, they had always honored him and done things.  But that was a very interesting -- (laughs) he couldn't 22:00comprehend that this left-winger from Poland was going to a shul.  (laughs) And -- but my father had lots of friends and he did a lot of -- he was not one to want his name on things.  And when he died, we couldn't get over -- there were a thousand people at his funeral.  We are not talking a prominent person, you know, his name is in the paper.  And when people came to the shivah [seven-day mourning period], they would say, "I didn't have a nickel, your father gave me a chicken for a quarter."  And that was just how we were brought up.  And I like to give charity that way, too.  I don't need the pin.  My mother needs the pin.  (laughs) But we tend to -- try not to be on lists, anything that we're 23:00listed in is a mistake.  (laughs) And -- but we're the anonymous.  When you see the anonymous, that's us.

CW:  And, I mean, why -- what is that for you?  I mean, what is it about giving anonymously that you like?  How is that different for you?

MH:  I still get the letters, okay?  But I don't need to show how much or how little I give.  And we are a very superstitious family.  I wear my 'nehore [no evil eye] bracelet all the time, and people have big eyes.  And, I mean, it's not that we're fabulously wealthy.  We are comfortable.  But we work very 24:00hard.  Just recently -- senior moment -- somebody, we just heard, that the -- oh, it was Saturday in shul, Rabbi Steinhardt was saying to the bar mitzvah boy, "The things that you work at for yourself have the greatest meaning for you," and that's how we feel.  We've worked very hard.  My husband came from the Lower East Side.  Took us ten years to pay off his student loans.  Took us years to pay off our kids', so that they could start the world with less hassles than we had.  But that's just who we are. 

CW:  And looking back on your -- the way that you were raised, what were some 25:00-- any values or practices that you sort of felt that your parents were actively trying to pass on to you?

MH:  Well, I can say it in Yiddish and in English.  "M' makht zikh nisht groys bay makhn yenem klayn -- you don't make yourself big by belittling other people."  These are my mother's aphorisms.  "Hayb mikh nisht of, varf mikh nisht arop -- don't lift me up and don't throw me down."  Just things like that, little sayings that -- just remember who you are.  You remember what you were.  And do unto others.  You're not expecting a reward.  And in the corporate world, you certainly know that.  (laughs)

CW:  Right.  (laughs) So, then, as an adult, sort of how has Yiddish played a role in your life?  I know you've given me some hints, but I'm curious, just --

MH:  Well, it's my first language.  I quite often think in Yiddish, and phrases sort of come to mind.  As I said, I had two wonderful teachers at the Peretz Shule, [Miriam and Avraham Reinhardt?], and it sticks with you.  I went to Peretz Shule from first grade right through high school, in a time when you didn't get a credit, so -- (laughs) but I learned.  At the same time as I would be studying world history in public high school, I was getting a lesson of what 27:00was going on in the Jewish world at the same time.  And it gives you a perspective.  So, it's always been there.  Looking -- my father-in-law spoke Yiddish.  We -- he was very excited.  We listened to -- when we would come, we'd listen to the Yiddish station on the radio in New York.  But it's always been there, and the phrase -- listen, as I say, I have a number of friends who speak -- I mean, we were in Machu Picchu, speaking Yiddish, okay?  (laughs)

CW:  Really?

MH:  Really.  (laughs) It just comes, because there are turns of phrase that you can't replicate in English, and I don't mean curses.  I mean just the feelings and the turns of phrase.  And actually, Friday, the Yiddish club ran 28:00"A brivele der mamen [A letter to my mother]," which -- real melodrama, tearjerker.  But there were lots of people who were left behind, and we know of families where the first family was left behind, and the ultimate results for some of them.  But it was a pleasure listening to a broad, Polish Yiddish, 'cause when I went to Peretz Shule, there were Litvaks who taught, so it was a whole "twist your tongue around," and then you go into Galitsyaner [Galician] Yiddish.  But it was good --

CW:  So, was it imposed?  You spoke Galitsyaner at home, and then at school you had to try to do the klal [standard dialect] -- or Litvak Yiddish, or --

MH:  Yeah, after a while, you just turn inside outside.  It's a -- it's not a big deal.  Kids are -- I think are very malleable.  And, as I said, they were 29:00wonderful teachers.  An anomaly for my teaching -- it was only much, much later that I realized what kind of an anomaly it was -- was in the summers I went to a Mizrahi camp, because the counselor lived down the street from us.  I was five when I was sent to overnight camp.

CW:  Really?

MH:  So, I went to a Mizrahi camp, and in Mizrahi camps, you daven three times a day.  Well, I knew bubkes.  So, I asked my parents -- I said, "I love this camp."  It was a Zionist camp and it was great.

CW:  And what was it called?

MH:  Camp Galil.

CW:  Galil, okay.

MH:  And it was very interesting.  The music director of the camp, who was the brother of my counselor, is Willy Pasternak.  Now, Velvel Pasternak, the composer and compiler --

CW:  Publisher.

MH:  -- and publisher of Yiddish music -- and Mr. Reinhardt, who you have to 30:00know -- the Peretz Shule -- very left-wing socialist, sat with a Tikn Meir to teach me shakhres [Jewish morning prayers] after school, for a -- after the Hebrew class, 'cause I went after school.  We would spend -- and it was four days a week and Sunday morning.  So, we spent an hour so I could learn to daven -- not so much translate, 'cause if you look at the old Tikn Meir, there's no English translation on the side.  I still have that book.

CW:  Oh.

MH:  But the poetry -- and the other thing that has made a lasting impression on me is Peretz's story of "Oyb nisht hekher [If not higher]," because I know he was anti-religious, and I know he used some of these allegorical things.  But I have always found that there is form and function to everything.  And the idea 31:00that just giving lip service to prayer because you have to do it doesn't do it for me.  There has to be an ethical component.  And that probably has to be the most profound piece of literature for me, not because it's a complex story, but because of the lesson of life and rote.  And I've seen that in a number of instances, where people just follow the rote and there isn't the heart to it.

CW:  I know the story very well, but I'm wondering if you might give -- abbreviated version for -- just for our audience?

MH:  Oh, this is the story of the rabbi who leaves every erev Yom Kippur, and nobody knows where he goes.  It's the holiest day of the year and they're all, "Where's the rebbe going, and what's happening?"  So, one year, somebody 32:00follows him out of town, and they see he goes to a widow.  And what does he do, the whole of Yom Kippur?  He's chopping wood, he's getting her ready for the winter, he's doing all kinds of things for her, all the while reciting the prayers.  And he comes back and he's appalled and the whole bit.  But the comment and the lesson is there's prayer, but there's a higher obligation to your fellow man, and I think that's one of the beauties of Judaism, is that importance of remembering the world here and now.  It's not that you're earning brownie points for Heaven.  So, that had a -- I must have learned that story when I was about nine or ten years old, and it has left a very profound message, and I've tried to convey that message to my kids, because we know a lot of holy 33:00rollers.  (laughs) And the human dimension -- and I think the sense of community and how Jewish communities organize themselves around that dimension of people is what's helped Judaism survive, 'cause we've always debated, we've always doubted, we've always had diversity.  But there's that human thread, I think, that keeps it going.  And you see that in the Yiddish literature. 

CW:  It sounds like, in your youth, you had -- you touched on so many different aspects of Jewish culture with some -- with the leftist and then this Mizrahi camp, and -- so, what was it like to sort of be the Yiddish speaker in Mizrahi camp, or --

MH:  There were other Yiddish speakers.  One of my oldest friends was my 34:00bunkmate.  (laughs) And Ruth and I can't believe we were five years old and sent away.  (laughs) But we had a great time, and every Sunday, the parents came out to visit.  I think it was a big mistake -- and I think in Israel, they're coming around to teaching and learning a little more about Yiddish -- to throw it away, because they threw away a thousand-year culture.  And if you read Sholem Aleichem, for example, the sociology that you could study and the complexity -- I think "Fiddler on the Roof" did us all a disservice, (laughs) because that's not the town -- like, when I look at Chmielnik, already in the 35:00'20s you had all these political parties.  You had sophisticated thinking.  I mean, things were terrible.  You still faced pogroms, you still faced restrictions in going to school, but there were workarounds and there were workarounds and -- I mean, we had a cousin who went to Israel in 1922 on a bicycle from Poland.  And we met him when we were in Israel, a number of years ago.  So, there -- but all of these stories are in the journals.  I don't know if they've been -- and then, you have the whole picture of European Jewry marching to its slaughter, without a sense of ways of resistance, in many ways.

CW:  So, what, in terms of the image of Eastern Europe -- what do you think the prevalent sort of conception is of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the war?

MH:  Anatevka.  I really think it's an Anatevka.  You have writers like I.B. Singer -- although I think I.J. Singer was a better writer -- who wrote very sophisticated, bawdy, sexy writings, the few that have been translated into English -- but giving a sense of the diversity of life there.  You could have almost made the movie "Cabaret" in Warsaw.  That, primarily, is lost -- and I 37:00think, also, as you read different things at different stages of your life, or you see films and different things, given your life experience, you put a different interpretation.  So, my brother-in-law actually went down to meet I.B. Singer in Surfside when he was still alive.  My brother-in-law's also a bit of a Yiddishist.  But also, his parents were Holocaust survivors, and he's the oldest in his family.  So, a lot of us did that same thing, and I don't feel I'm unique.  But I feel it's a component of our experience in North America that needs to be recognized.  I almost feel like I'm part of this secret fraternity of Holocaust survivor children, 'cause we tend to find each other in -- and my son, in fifth grade -- my kids all went through a day school 38:00system -- had to interview Holocaust -- two Holocaust survivors.  So, he interviewed my father and one of my two uncles that had survived.  My father had been in the camps, and my uncle had been hidden under floorboards and then went out to scavenge.  And my uncle Harry's story would make a good movie, just the -- because it's unbelievable.  It's not the partisans in the forest, but it's scavenging in Polish villages, living with Polish anti-Semitism.  The Philo-Judaism that you see in Poland now is hard for me to comprehend, because, I mean, the sense from my parents and their friends and -- in the days before 39:00dishwashers, when my parents had -- I was the dishwasher in the kitchen while they were talking and listening -- was no great love, because they felt there had been so much collusion, and the anti-Semitism was there.  Although now, in Junes, from Israel, the town has sort of a -- they send young kids, I guess descendants of the people, to Chmielnik for a Jewish festival where they're played klezmer music and -- looking for money.  A cousin of mine went, and they had done this book about Chmielnik, all in English -- very badly written, 'cause you could see the translation was not so good.  And these high school students interviewed their grandparents, who would have been alive at that time.  And 40:00so, you have these essays at the back.  There was the history of the town and all the different -- and you get comments, "We knew they were cheating us in the market every Thursday."  (laughs) So, I mean -- but that was their generation, and passing it down.  So, I mean, it wasn't a surprise, but --

CW:  Have you ever been to Europe or Eastern Europe?

MH:  I've been to Europe.  I went back to where I was born, because I needed a birth certificate.  We were in Holland.  My husband had a conference, was about 1989.  And so, we drove down through Germany to Landsberg, and stopping in different places.  The thing that made the most impression on me is we went 41:00to Dachau, 'cause it was on the way, and they were building condos overlooking it.  Landsberg was a lovely town.  It's an old medieval town from the thirteenth century, still walled, on what's called the "Romantische Straße [German: Romantic Road]."  And we were treated very nicely, but I had this -- we were in Germany, I think, three days, but I had this visceral reaction.  Totally -- I mean, the mayor was my age, but for three days, I couldn't eat and I couldn't wait -- we had a little Ford Fiesta.  I had to drive it out -- we had to get out of Germany.  And it was not a rational thing, it's not anything I could intellectualize.  It was just visceral.  And so, we've been there, we've been to Russia.  I've not gone back to Poland.  For a long time, I just 42:00didn't want to.  I may.  But my parents went back, in 1983, because the Poles had opened up Treblinka, and the landsmanshaftn wanted to build a matseyve [tombstone] in Israel and in Toronto and in other places, and the rabbinic ruling was you had to have remains.  You can't just put up a matseyve.  And they got a ruling that if you bring the earth from Treblinka, it has so much blood and bone in it that you could put bags of earth and build the matseyve.  So, my parents went back with another friend, David Kraftshik, and then they went on to Israel from there.  We were very nervous, because we didn't know 43:00how, emotionally, they would function.  And, I mean, they came back to nothing, really.  But it worked out okay, and then there's a big matseyve in the cemetery where the Chmielniker are, and they raised money.  People put the names of people and family where nobody in the family survived, that they knew, so at least there'd be a remembrance that -- again, it's like that -- names.  These people existed, they had value, and so on, so -- but, no, I haven't been back to Poland.  My husband's family came from the Ukraine and Belarus, and we're kidding around that they're offering river cruises down the river.  And 44:00one of the events is a Cossack thing, and Sam says, "You know, my family ran away from the Cossacks."  (laughs) So, I don't know.  It's -- we'll see.  Not this year.

CW:  Not this year, yeah.  So, what is sort of the -- when you connect with other children of survivors, is -- what is the sense of what that has given you, a different perspective in the world, as being a child of survivors, if anything -- that comes to mind?

MH:  Well, an appreciation for the human spirit, that you can come -- I mean, some people manage better than others, but for the most part, people went on.  45:00They built families.  They built homes.  Some became very well-to-do, others did not.  But invariably, we'd run into each other at university, because in my day, if you could -- at least in Toronto, the only reason you went away to school was if you couldn't get into school in Toronto.  And the idea of sending you away was very alien to Holocaust parents, (laughs) if you didn't have to go.  So, you just run into each other.  But it's the attitude of -- and some of it was defensive, because -- I mean, here were people whose families may have come in the '30s, probably from worse conditions, but just happened to be lucky, looking down on people who came after.  And it wasn't really a lot of -- not a 46:00lot.  A number of Holocaust survivors became prominent developers in Toronto, and it wasn't until the Holocaust survivors made money that the community looked to them.  I mean, the landsmanshaft always did the UJA donations, and the things -- and there'd be a luncheon, but it was never -- they were never seen as important, 'cause they were the Greenies.  There's the "grine [Greenhorns]."  The "geyle [Yellows]" -- the geyle came before the war, so they had -- but it wasn't until their kids, who had gone to university and become lawyers and become all kinds of things, started to be welcomed into the community hierarchies that the Holocaust survivors were appreciated in any way.  In 1964, 47:00in Toronto, there was a Neo-Nazi named Beattie.  And I was in high school at the time, and they were going to have a big rally in one of the downtown parks.  Now, you're less than twenty years from the Holocaust.  And my father made it onto the front page of the paper.  My mother was appalled, the rest of the community was appalled, because a bunch of Greenies went down to fight back and to drive them out of the park.  We didn't have -- Canada doesn't have all this free speech amendment thing, but they still -- I don't think it would be permitted here.  It's like the Klan marching in Skokie kind of thing.  But we never had another rally in Toronto.  And the community said, "Oh, you're going to embarrass us!  Look at all the Poles and Ukrainians we have!  And he -- it 48:00wasn't like a Polish/Ukrainian thing.  It was a neo-Nazi kind of thing.  Don't make waves."  Well, that was what the community had done during the war, in an era of -- none is too many to -- it was only a group of hysterical Orthodox rabbis who the community was looking to run away from who had raised any fuss.  But after that, wasn't another rally.  But they were not going to let -- and then they started to make their voices known: we're not going to let this happen again.  And like with any group of people, some people became religious and some people just wanted nothing to do with Judaism.  But that was their choice.  One can't judge that.  If you don't live through what happened, you can't make a judgment.  You can't make people believe and you can't make people love you, so --

CW:  And -- but for your father, he became more frum [religiously observant] when he -- after the war?

MH:  He wasn't frum.  My father believed in the tradition.  My father, as a child, had been sent to a yeshivah.  Hated it.  At the age of nine -- 'cause he got kicked out.  He made a point of letting one of the teachers see him eat khazer [pork].  (laughs) He wanted to get out.  He came back, tail between his legs, so to speak, and -- but, like I said, we always kept a kosher home.  And that wasn't to say that we didn't eat out.  We just didn't eat out certain things.  My father kept his store open on Saturday, and when he left the store, he went to shul.  Very pragmatic.  But there was a sense that there was a 50:00value to Judaism.  And, as I said, he really had a sense that, like the Jews in Egypt, he'd had his yetsies mitsrayim, and he conveyed that to us, that there was a pride in what we did, a pride in the town, a pride in the achievements.  Until I was looking for some of my father's writings, some of the things that these landslayt [fellow countrypeople] did were incredible.  For example, they raised money so somebody's daughter could go to university in Israel, and she became a professor at the Weitzman Institute.  And it was not done with, "Hey, look at my check!"  It was, "We got word from the committee they need some money."  So, you make a few phone calls or you send a money order.  You -- and 51:00it wasn't like, how -- it's not like you stand up in shul and, "How much are you giving?"  It was whatever somebody could give, because some people really couldn't give very much.  And it was just that there's a need, there's a call, and that's the values that we grew up with.

CW:  Well, I'd like to ask some questions now sort of about the Yiddish cultural aspects that you knew.  We've mentioned already some about books and newspapers and radio, but just starting with Yiddish literature, do you have -- do you remember the Yiddish books in the home or things that were read?

MH:  We had Yiddish books.  We read Sholem Aleichem, "Motl peyse dem khazns [Motl Peysi the cantor's son]," and that whole, rich panoply of culture that 52:00could be studied in so many -- we had Avrom Reyzen, Dora Teitelboim.  I had the books from the Peretz Shule that we studied, which were anthologies.  As I said, the newspapers and the inserts.  I also performed on the burlesque stage as a student, because the Peretz Shule would have an annual concert, and it was at the Victory Theatre, then on Spadina Avenue, which later became -- before and after -- it was the Yiddish theater.  It was the Second Avenue of Toronto, next to Shopsy's Delicatessen.  And you'd perform, you'd sing songs, you'd do a play, you'd recite poetry.  And it was very nice.  And people would come, and there was an audience for it, and they'd bring in Yiddish performers.  I think, 53:00actually, people like Dzigan and Shumacher, Menasha Skulnik -- I mean, it was -- it wasn't like Montreal, which at that time was the center of the Yiddish culture.  But it wasn't bad.  It was sort of a circuit, and so I remember that.  I remember being on the stage, I remember getting a silver dollar from Mr. Green, who was a big developer, 'cause everybody got a silver dollar after the performance.  (laughs) And how old was I, six?  Probably until I was about ten years old, they did that every year.  And there'd be singing.  I, of course, had to mouth the words.  I cannot sing to save my life, and I was told, "Malka, just mouth the words, you're spoiling the melody."  My fifth grade 54:00teacher, Miss Breckenridge told me the same thing in public school.  But no, it was a very lively thing.  And the other thing with Yiddish culture was Sundays, because Sundays you went on a walk on College Street or you went visiting, and you ran into everybody and you heard Yiddish on the street.  And they would talk to you and you would talk to them and they'd be going with the kids.  And that was a -- very much a cultural kind of thing, 'cause it was on every Sunday, 'cause most people had Sunday off.  Many people had to work on Saturday, and they were not regular shul-goers.  But you saw everybody on Sunday, on College Street, and that's what you did.

CW:  So, what -- were there specific Jewish businesses or delis on College 55:00Street that --

MH:  Oh, there were all kinds of businesses on College Street.  My father had a chicken store in Kensington, and my job, from the time I was six years old, was to take the carpetbag, after school, with pots for his dinner, and I would walk probably two or three miles, 'cause we lived -- what is now Little Italy -- along College Street, past Bathurst to Spadina, turn and then walk, and -- about another half mile down to Baldwin Street, where my father's store was.  I never felt unsafe, because all along, whether it was the shoemaker, the grocer, the this -- they knew, I'm here, like clockwork.  So, there were eyes on the street, the Jane Jacobs thing, all the way down.  It -- and so people knew.  56:00They were all little businesses.  There was the place where you had your coats made, all these kind of things.  Wasn't restaurant row, as it is now.  But people knew, and they'd say, Hello, Malkele, gayst tsum tatn [going to visit your father]?  "Yeah."  (laughter) And that was -- and nobody thought twice about it.  Now you're afraid to let your kids go a half a block.  And if it got bad, I got a nickel for a streetcar to come home.  But that was -- and in the market, I knew everybody, and everybody knew me.  And my brother used to help on the holidays, 'cause he'd have live chickens that you got to take to the shoykhet [ritual slaughterer].

CW:  So, I'm just wondering, if you kind of -- for someone who didn't grow up there, if you sort of close your eyes and take yourself back there and describe 57:00-- you've mentioned some of the businesses, but if you can paint a picture of what it looked like, smelled like --

MH:  Well, there was the fish store, and you learned that you washed your hands with lemons from the fishmonger.  There was the cheese store, there was the treyf [not kosher] meat store.  There was the grocer, who had canned goods, but had sacks of beans and lentils and olives, all of these things.  There was -- the people who sold eggs, just on a stand, that they would get from a wholesaler.  There was the clothing stores.  There was -- what else?  Clothing st-- hardware stores.  I still have my five-dollar salad bowl that I got as a gift.  What else?  Wonderful bakeries.  Wonderful bakeries.  And 58:00you know, the --

CW:  What would you get from the bakeries?

MH:  Oh, best rye bread.  You can't get rye bread like that here.  (laughs) You absolutely can't.  Only Publix makes a so-so rye bread.  And just Jewish things.  The cheese store.  There was a store that sold only bananas.  Secondhand clothes.  Bunch of fish stores.  Several chicken stores, and you had the chickens in the front with the crates.  The shekht-hoz [slaughter house] down the corner, and people lived above the stores.  And for the longest time, it was the Jewish market.  And now it's -- it became a Portuguese market after that, and now it's sort of a hippy-dippy kind of thing.  Lots of 59:00restaurants and -- it's very funny.  We have a cousin who's a lovely girl, who comes from a very well-to-do family who has moved back onto Kensington, in a two-room flat.  Her grandmother, when they came to Canada, lived two houses up.  I can't believe that she's moving into this dump.  (laughter) But it's like going back to the Village in New York, or -- which is now so ritzy-pitzy, too, but sort of stayed in the '60s and '70s.  But it was a cultural hub.  I went to St. Christopher House in the corner, there are several synagogues there that are now more -- one is more -- the Kiever is a more -- sort of a historical monument.  The Minsker -- there's a rabbi there who's doing a lot of good outreach to -- 'cause there's the artsy community, there's unfortunately the druggie community, and then along Spadina now, it's like China-- one of the five 60:00Chinatowns in Toronto.  So, you can go and have a good time and pick up something for -- we were in China last fall, and things were cheaper on Spadina.  (laughter) I -- in the summer, we bring our two grandsons from Boston to Toronto for Camp Zeydie with the two grandsons, in Toronto, and I always get them t-shirts, 'cause if we take them someplace, I want to see the bright t-shirt.  So, last year, we got them bright green t-shirts with a Canada thing.  Five bucks, the guy made them.  (laughs) But so, we -- the market has changed a lot.  The Labor Lyceum is now a Chinese grocery store.  But I remember performing in the Labor Lyceum, because that's where all the unionists came and they would have Yiddish things, and that's all gone.

CW:  No more people like your father with bicycles and chickens and delivery?

MH:  No.  First of all, they passed a law after a while that you couldn't have live chickens in the market.  And then -- and most people live downtown or could take a streetcar or a bus, and they built a huge parking garage.  And now they're building condos.  So, it sort of takes away a lot of the flavor.  You have a lot of bicyclists, because they're building bicycle lanes.  But that whole era went, and the community moved up -- Bathurst Street is the Jewish corridor in Toronto, and it's moved north, into Thornhill.

CW:  So --

MH:  And the days -- and the schools stopped teaching the Yiddish, and there was the focus on Israel and Hebrew.  And they really didn't take the literature 62:00or the Yiddish culture.  They just sort of denigrated it completely, and it gets lost.  Sort of skipped a generation.  The Bialik School still teaches Yiddish.

CW:  So, when you were creating your own family with your husband, you said, from the Lower East Side, what type of Jewish home did you want to create for your children, and what traditions -- how did you go about doing that?

MH:  Well, we both came from sort of Conservative homes.  I knew that I would keep kosher.  It's actually become easier over the years to keep kosher.

CW:  How so?

MH:  Because there are many more products available all year.  Kosher meat is 63:00still expensive, and makes it hard for young families.  I really -- but down here, there are many more products than in Canada, 'cause we have those French-English laws, so people say it doesn't pay to -- for the packaging.  But we knew we wanted that.  We went to my parents' every Friday, I mean, whether we wanted to or not.  We kept the holidays.  That was something that was important to us, and actually, we always had a sense of self, and when my husband was in the Navy, we lived in San Clemente.  There were four Jews in San Clemente at the time: us and another naval couple.  And Sam, right away, said -- and we had family in Los Angeles, which at that time was only an hour away.  64:00Now it's four on the freeway.  So, I was able to get my meat from Los Angeles, in the cooler.  We'd call Morris the butcher on Pico Boulevard, drive up, see my cousin and my aunt and come down.  But Sam, right away, volunteered for Christmas duty, and we got the Jewish holidays off.  He said, "These are my holidays," and we would go up to LA to be with my family.  And the other couple did not, and it was very interesting, because the Marine Corps was a very Southern-based military group.  So, people knew their Bible.  And so, when 65:00this other fellow would come on Passover with a sandwich, they'd say, "Are you supposed to" -- and anyway, one year, he wanted to take the holidays off and they said, "No, you never did it before.  You didn't observe any of them."  But we got Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, first two days of Passover, last two days of Passover, any time we -- and so, if you have a sense -- and that was something that we've taught the kids, as well.  You have to have a sense of who you are, and there's a lot to be proud of in this five-thousand-year tradition.  And they went to day school and they went to a community high school, and my premise was if you ever -- if you leave, you leave from a base of knowledge.  But we're very, very fortunate.  All of our kids are married Jewish, all of our grandchildren go to day school.  Not yeshivas, but day 66:00schools, so -- and it was always a sense of -- whether we did it consciously or not, but we lost so many that you're not going to break the chain.  And they have that sense.  My father made a big impression on them.  They all have kosher homes, more or less.  But it's good.  Whatever they do is good, and they're also instilling in their kids a sense that it's fun and it's good to be Jewish, and there are values.  And they didn't take up Jewish studies in university.  But there's that sense.

CW:  What do --

MH:  And they were all in Israel, and at one point, my -- one of my daughters worked on the ambulances.  My son and my son-in-law studied at the Technion, so --

CW:  And what do you see that's different in your -- in the next generations in 67:00terms of Jewish identity than, say, yours or your parents'?

MH:  Well, we're first generation immigrants, so there's still a greater tie -- not to any particular place as much as to the values and the time.  My kids and grandkids live in a much freer society, with much more opportunity for them.  The quotas now may be a little more subtle, with diversity and equal opportunity and affirmative action everywhere.  But they don't live in the same sense of fear that I think my parents -- never left my parents.  My father's concern was -- he says, "If the economy ever gets really bad, even here, the Jews will be scapegoats."  And we've seen a little bit of that.  But I think they're very 68:00comfortable with who they are, and they don't have to feel that they have to be inside-outside.  They're soccer players and hockey players and part of the greater -- dancers.  My granddaughter Emma says, "Bobe [Grandmother], I just want to be famous in a good way."  (laughs) She's seven.  And she probably will be.  (laughs) But -- so, I think they -- they're able to assimilate but still keep who they are -- and the fact that they do do Friday night.  One of my daughters is shomer Shabbos [Jew who observes Shabbos], but they're Conservadox.  Doesn't wear a wig.  Wears pants.  Works five days a week for a bank.  And her husband works.  She's not supporting him in yeshiva.  So, I 69:00think they're quite comfortable with who we are, and that's what we tried to instill.  They have a sense of Jewish history, they have a sense of the importance of the State of Israel.  They pick up a few Yiddish words, still, from my mother.  I think they're very comfortable, and I think as they're getting older, they have a greater appreciation as their families are growing -- at how hard it is to keep the values, 'cause I think Judaism -- I've never stopped studying, so I have some wonderful, ethical values and some learnings that -- building community.  Last -- the portion where they -- in the last couple of weeks, where everybody has to contribute something to the building of the mishkan [Hebrew: tabernacle], so that nobody feels it's theirs, not mine.  70:00So, there are many things that can still be taught.  And we try and do it by example.

CW:  And you mentioned a little bit of this earlier, but when do you get to speak Yiddish now?

MH:  Oh, I speak to my mother every morning.  (laughs) Not much.  We sort of lapse in and out.  Well, here, there's the Yiddish Club.  So, that's once a week.  At home, when I see certain of my friends.  With my brother-in-law.  He likes to -- he's a Litvak.  (laughs) It's enough, but you still find that you lose words, 'cause -- not the everyday -- like, listening to this movie, and some of the turns of phrase that were wonderful, that I used to hear all the 71:00time, and they're metaphors and similes, and that I don't hear all that often.  But that's why I look to keep it, and teach my kids a word or two.

CW:  What words do you teach them?  What are the important words for you?

MH:  "Derekh-erets [respect]," which is a Hebrew word, but my kids grew up with (laughs), "Derekh-erets!"  (laughter) "Koved."

CW:  And can you just sort of explain what those mean?  I mean, I know, but for the audience, what those words mean?

MH:  "Derekh-erets" is "respect," and teaching them respect for themselves and for other people.  And if they got mouthy, "Derekh-erets!"  (laughter) 72:00"Koved," to me, is "honor," that you have to honor people.  And, from their Hebrew -- and they know words like "mame [mother]," "tate [father]."  "Hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik [Don't bother me, lit. "Don't bang me a teakettle]."

CW:  Which -- how do you translate?  No one knows.  (laughter)

MH:  Well, don't bang my teakettle.  But it's basically don't give me a headache, don't bug me.  A whole bunch.  Off the top of my head, I -- when they occur, they occur kind of things, and then you're surprised when you hear them say something.  (laughs)

CW:  Yeah.

MH:  But they're words that -- "Hayb mikh nisht of, varf mikh nisht arop."  Don't teach them curse words.  (laughter) And that's one of the beauties, also, of Yiddish.  You never hear anybody cursing in the sense -- with that 73:00bitterness of an English curse word.

CW:  Right.  So, I'm -- I have a couple more questions, but I'm wondering if there's anything else that you'd like to say?  I know you wanted to talk about how Yiddish has enhanced your life and we've done some of that, but is there anything else you --

MH:  I have gotten by around the world in Yiddish.  I have shopped in Rio de Janeiro.  I have shopped in Argentina.  I have shopped in Paris.  Yiddish has been a lingua franca for me everywhere.  Looking for directions -- I found the kosher restaurant in Kowloon, speaking Yiddish, by tracking somebody down with a kippah.  I've found it's been a door-opener in many, many ways, primarily with 74:00people my age.  I think for my kids, it would be Hebrew, because that's where the next generation has gone.  But I have met very interesting people.  We were, for example, on a cruise, and there were -- whole family from Costa Rica, and they all spoke Spanish.  I do not speak Spanish.  Whoops.  And I went into the ladies' room and there are all these women speaking Yiddish.  Outside Spanish, inside -- it was Christmas a few years ago, and it was when they bring the whole family.  And so, we got to talking, 'cause evidently Costa -- my parents had a friend who came to Costa Rica in the '30s 'cause they let some 75:00Jews in.  And they knew Mr. Mendelvitch, and they were in the shoe business, moving it to Brazil.  It was getting too expensive.  And it was very interesting.  They said they had two sons who were doctors.  One was a pediatrician and one was something else, I don't remember at this point.  In the morning, one went to his kabinet [office] and looked after the patients.  In the afternoon, he went to the shoe factory, and vice-versa.  And then, from the cruise, they were going to New York 'cause they had to buy dresses for the bar mitzvah.  But it was like -- such a fascinating -- they talked about life in Costa Rica and the community.  Just opened the door.  And I'm pretty gregarious, so I just find people all over.  And, as I say, it's -- being a 76:00history major, I've always looked to find the lessons and the interest, 'cause I think history is this fascinating story of people, not just dates and facts.  And that's what makes this course I take FAU so interesting.

CW:  Have you ever met anyone that had your accent in Yiddish or your parents' accent?

MH:  Oh, yeah.  (laughs) Oh, yeah.  Well, first of all, all the landslayt, and then there are people whose parents come from towns near my parents', and I think it's Menasha Skulnik who actually came from my parents' town of Chmielnik.  And then, you listen to people like -- my brother-in-law has this whole collection of Dzigan and Shumacher.  Well, they speak what's called "A braytn yidish [a wide Yiddish]."  So, lots of people who speak like we do.  77:00Some of the writing becomes interesting because there are a lot of Polish and Russian and Hebrew words.  The Hebrew words are not so difficult.  But, for example, in -- when my parents talked about when the Jews were removed from Chmielnik, they always talked about "wysiedlenia [Polish: deportations]."  That's a Polish word.  When it's in the booklet, it's the "oyszidlungen fun di yidn [deportations of the Jews]" in Chmielnik.  So, you get your head around the different areas.  And some of the Polish/Russian words, you know because you've used them, but you never realize they were Polish/Russian words.  So, it's -- and the -- some of the old writings, where they add the German (making the shape of the Hebrew letter "hey") hey, and you're going, "Huh?"  But no, in 78:00terms of speaking -- and my brother-in-law kibbitzes, 'cause his parents were from Lithuania.  But you know what?  He's speaking a more Polish Yiddish every year.  (laughter)

CW:  Well, you're infiltrating, maybe.  (laughs)

MH:  Oh, yeah.  Oh, yeah.  Subversive.  (laughter) Very subversive.

CW:  So, how does your connection -- we've mostly been talking about Yiddish.  How does -- and your connection to Yiddish, Yiddishkayt, Eastern European Jewish heritage fit into your broader sense of Jewish identity?

MH:  Yeah, that's who I am.  That's where I come from.  The values of the town are very human values that you can apply anywhere.  My parents never had 79:00pretensions.  That's just who I am.  I don't look at people by what they have.  Again, one of the values that came across and that I've drummed into my kids is somebody will have a bigger house, somebody will have more money, somebody will have a fancier car.  Learn to be happy with what you have, and zay tsufridn [be content] and be grateful.  And they've been pretty good that way.  They've been pretty good.  They're not shvitsy.

CW:  (laughs) And where do you think Yiddish is going?  What do you think the future of Yiddish is?

MH:  Well, I don't want to see it become Latin.  I studied Latin in ninth 80:00grade.  I found it very helpful for what I needed to do.  My son cursed me for making him take it.  I'd like to see inroads to where it's living, like into the Orthodox community.  I'd like to see more of the literature and the values translated into Hebrew, into a sense of values.  Is it going to become as widely spoken?  I don't think so.  I was very, very disappointed in the -- we went to a concert recently at FAU, which has a wonderful archive of Yiddish music.  And we went because it was titled "Second Avenue," which is the area -- 81:00and knowing some of the wonderful Yiddish music and songs and -- besides the old chestnuts like "Mamele" -- we thought, wow, you don't hear that often.  Should've read the "Jewish Journal."  Every single piece had been adapted.  Even songs that you know like "Mayn grine kuzine [My Greenhorn cousin]" -- the conductor kept saying, "And this is what I've adapted the arrangement" -- so, the whole flavor and tone -- the orchestra was very good.  Couldn't complain about that.  The second half was a gospel choir.  So, as my husband said, "I never realized 'Second Avenue' went into Harlem."  I found that -- so, that kind of bastardization, in my eyes -- not that you have to keep it exactly 82:00original, but this bore no resemblance to songs that even I knew, but --

CW:  Yeah.

MH:  So -- and some of the klezmer adaptations are really interesting, because you see the different cultural influences, of the Romanian and the Bulgarian, and where we took everything, even our food.  (laughter) So, I'd like to see it not just be an academic thing but a -- a sense also for Jews to be able to come back and say, "We're proud of where we came from.  We're moving along."  That's it.  I mean, I would write to my parents in Yiddish, like we -- I don't know if they kept any of the letters -- they would write to me in Yiddish.  I don't do that anymore.  I don't have anybody to do that with.  But that's why 83:00I'm doing some of the translation.  But it has totally enriched my life, and I think it's enriched my kids' life.  And trying to instill a little bit into my grandchildren.  So, hopefully, we'll live long enough that they can remember us well and not just (UNCLEAR) the way my father is remembered by my kids.  And my mother.  All my kids are -- I'm going home for Passover.  My mother is still around.  Physically great, mentally so-so.  But my kids know that they're not coming down here for Passover.  They have to see their bobe.  And that's something I'm proud of.  I'm not making them do it.  I'm not -- it's just they have that feel that goes -- that derekh-erets.  And so, that's where I'm at.

CW:  So, last question, just -- what advice do you have to future generations?

MH:  Be proud of who you are, learn some of the lessons, and don't think you're unique, because life goes on.  And there's a lot to learn from the past that you can take forward into the future.  And Yiddish is a wonderful repository of knowledge and humor and music and joy.  And stay free.

CW:  Great.  Well, a sheynem dank -- thank you so much for sharing -- for taking this time and sharing these stories with me, and also with the Yiddish Book Center.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

MH:  Okay, so these are my parents, Oresh and Chana Goldlist.  And my father died in 1990, very suddenly.  My mother is still around in Toronto.

CW:  Biz hundert un tsvantsik [May she live to be 120].

MH:  Biz hinder un tsvantsik.  We miss my father greatly.   He was a great influence on my children and on all of us. 

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

MH:  -- the Jews of Poland came to in confidence, in America.  The issues 86:00always came out in time for Rosh Hashanah, for the new year.  Here in English is a letter to Lech Wałęsa, president of Poland, from the Chmielniker Society.  Would never have thought to do that.  (pause) And then there are a couple of second generation stories that come in.  And then you have a number of stories -- like, this is from the Chmielniker Society in Toronto, and children wrote -- who couldn't write in Yiddish, so -- but there are all these remembrances, and there are lots of pictures.  And then, these are people from all over the world, and this was my father, who had just died that year.  So, 87:00there was -- people who wrote -- by the '90s -- and then, there are all the greetings that came.  And this was always -- but -- and then they talked about the landsmanshaft in Yisroel, and here you had -- so, here you see "Argentine, frankraykh, kanade, ostralye [Argentina, France, Canada, Australia]."

CW:  And would you go to meetings with your father, or would he go --

MH:  Sometime-- and "Faraynikte shtatn," which is the US.  And Boston, New Jersey, New York, Detroit, Los Angeles.  Ostralye, I think, was pretty -- well, Melbourne, Pariz [Paris].

CW:  So, these are updates from --

MH:  Updates, the annual updates.  And there would be pictures -- there's my parents at -- "in der kinderheym in beys-dagan, etabliyot fun di landsleyt in toronto [at a children's home in Bayt Dajan, the establishment of landsmen from Toronto], Oresh and Chana Goldlist, Tammy Goldlist" -- her name was Wolfowitz, but she was maiden -- Goldlist -- and Nukhem Male.  This was the guy who came erev Rosh Hashanah.  And you had the committee people, the accounts, and then this is the Chmielniker matseyve that they put up in Israel after Treblinka.  And then, you'd have -- and then somebody wrote, "Mayn vendung tsum prezident 89:00lekh valesa [My appeal to President Lech Walesa," letter -- and then, this is the attacks in Tel Aviv in 1991, somebody wrote -- I happened to be there then.  So, there are things like this, "Zikhroynes fun mayne yinge yorn un shpeyter [Memories from my young years and later]."  This is a woman who was in Montreal.  So, there's a whole -- and this is somebody -- talked about being hidden af di aryishe zayt [on the Aryan side] from '42.  And then, whoops --

CW:  Can put it there.

MH:  Okay.  And this, for example, is the picture of the Jews being herded out of Chmielnik.  So, this is "di tsveyte oyszidlung fun yidn in khmelnik [the second deportation of Jews in Chmelnik]."  And I just knew it as "wysiedlenia," 90:00so -- and then, you see again just some of the things -- "Yakov royt [Jacob Royt]" -- so people sent those from different places. 

CW:  And you said this was published until 2000?

MH:  Till 2000.

CW:  Wow.

MH:  This is -- it's a manual thing.  Here's one of our cousins.  He sent in a bar mitzvah picture.  So, you had -- and here, "fun ester-rushke un hertske -- hersh likovitsh fun melburn [from Esther-Rushke and Hertske -- Hersh Likovitsh from Melbourne]."  Malke un meyer nirenberg [Malka and Meyer Nerinberg] wrote from Buenos Aires.

CW:  Wow.

MH:  Itzhak un rukhl sametband fun [Itzhak and Rukhl Sametband from] Buenos Aires -- Itzhak was the one who went to Birobidzhan in 1920.  And this is a 91:00picture -- I have a color picture of this.  This is my parents' landsmanshaft in Toronto.  They took a picture, with their kids.  I am not in this picture because -- I can't remember where we were.  In Toront-- they have an annual haskarah [Hebrew: memorial service for the dead].  And then we have Chicago, Florida, and one thing else that -- there was a family in Detroit, the Garfinkles, who hired somebody from Orlando to write their family history and the history of the Jews in Poland, and it's called "Sara's Children," and my mother is quoted in there.  But my mother never got over her loss.  We could never compensate for her loss.  And I think that's comm-- either some Holocaust 92:00survivors overcompensated with their children -- and others -- we just were never enough.  So, this talks about: "we're continuing our work," the charitable work.  And this is somebody who went to Chmielnik, "A bazukh in khmelnik fun brazil [A visit to Chmielnik from Brazil]."

CW:  Wow.

MH:  And this is the piece from Itzhak Sametband, and the end piece, when his -- and he says, "Un mir hobn gelebt in poyln azoy fil yorn tsvishn velf.  Ikh hob a mol gefregt mayn futer, 'Far vos iz dos lebn azoy groyzem? [We lived in Poland among wolves.  I once asked my father, 'Why is life so cruel?]" -- so, unhappy.  "Un er hot mir geentfert, 'Di vest di velt nit ibermakhn.  Di zelbe 93:00fragn hobn zikh gefregt dem foter fun sore blank un zayn entfer iz geven, "Itsikl, nisht mit dir hot di velt zikh ongehoybn, un di vest zi nisht iberarbetn.  Shoyn geven far dir gresere kep un hobn dos nisht bavisn, vi yehashue ha-novi, lenin, marks, shabetay-tsvi, shpinoza, moyshe-rabeynu un nokh ver kenen zey oysrekhenen."' [And he answered me, 'You won't change the world.  Sarah Blank's father asked the same thing and his answer was, "Little Isaac, it didn't start with you, and you won't fix it.  Greater minds have come before you and haven't been able to figure it out, like Joshua the Prophet, Lenin, Marx, Shabbetai Tzvi, Spinoza, Moses our Teacher, and I could name others."']."  So, it's -- but a lot of that gets lost.  And here's the memory of the Kielce Pogrom by two people, 'cause some people from Chmielnik were there.  And this is the burial.  And, I mean, this is -- and one of these was 94:00from -- later went to Chicago, Isroel Bagodne.  But -- and this is a Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir in 1932.  So, when you talk about small town Poland -- and this is somebody who moved to New Jersey, talks about Chmielniker in pre-war Paris.  So, it's living history that -- here are Chmielniker Jews in Cypress, in 1947.  So, it's --

CW:  You really get to see where everyone went.  I mean, you get to see so many different parts of the Jewish story --

MH:  Right.

CW:  -- through this landsmanshaft, it's great.

MH:  And here, on the -- "oyfn veg keyn isroel [on the way to Israel]," 1945 to '48.  And where did she live?  In Ramat Gan.  So, there's a lot -- there -- 95:00tons of these, and there's the book, so -- but my father wrote in many of the earlier ones, and I'm trying to pull that together and translate that for my kids so that they have more of a family history --

CW:  Yeah.

MH:  -- and it's not such a -- amputated history.

CW:  Yeah, that's wonderful.

MH:  Because, he -- well, it's not so wonderful.  I haven't done much --

CW:  Well, I mean -- (laughs)

MH:  -- with it.  I've barely catalogued some of it, because I find it just emotionally too wrenching.  Sometimes, when you know the end of the story -- kind of sucks.

CW:  But bislvays [little by little].  (laughs)

MH:  Tsu bislekh, tsu bislekh s'zet tsumane'kime' [Little by little, little by little it will come together].

CW:  Right.

MH:  Or as we say in litvish, Es vet zikh tsuzamenkumen. [Lithuanian Yiddish, 96:00It will come together].

CW:  (laughs) That's great, to hear some breyte Yiddish, actually, because so much of the world that I am in is klal [standardized] now, because that's what people are learning in school if you don't learn it from your family.

MH:  Oh, that's what you have to learn.

CW:  Yeah.

MH:  You have to learn the -- and sort of a misnagdish yidish [dry Yiddish, lit. "the Yiddish of non-Hasidic Orthodox Jews"].  (laughter) But you can't take it out.  And as I say, the history and the sociology and the issues about fair wages and Sholem Aleichem, and some of the poetry and -- I mean, these guys worked in shops and wrote poetry at night.

CW:  Right.

MH:  Di Yunge, the whole bit.

CW:  Right.  Well, thank you again, so much.

[END OF INTERVIEW]