HELENE SHAFRAN ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY:This is Christa Whitney, and today is March 13th, 2013. I'm here in Boca Raton, Florida with Helene Shafran and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Helene, do I have your permission to record this?

HELENE SHAFRAN:Yes, you do.

CW:Thank you. So, I'd like to start to hear a little bit about your background. Can you tell me what you know about your family background?

HS:Well, my parents came from Warsaw, Poland. My mother came in 1921, my father came in 1928. My father was a cantor, although he didn't work as a cantor, but he did have smikhe [rabbinical ordination]. And his father was a cantor in 1:00Warsaw. And his mother -- his sister, rather, was called a "khaznte [female cantor]," because women weren't really in the circle. (laughs) But she had her own choir, and she used to also entertain for women, you know, liturgical things, so -- and she -- her name was Khave. She and her -- and my grandfather, who was eighty-four at the time, were killed in the Shoah. We don't know whether it was in the ghetto or -- taken away. And my mother's family came to America -- she came with her father, and four brothers previously had come, and a sister. And one brother came in 1939, and there wasn't enough money to take his wife and 2:00children. So, they also perished in Warsaw. And one uncle couldn't come to America, so he went to Argentina. And so, they remained alive. But they all spoke Yiddish amongst themselves. My parents spoke English usually, 'cause we lived in a town where there were very few Jews. And they just -- they spoke Yiddish. I understood what they were talking about. If they didn't want me to know anything, they spoke Polish. But when my mother got together with her family, they always spoke Yiddish. And when my uncle came from Argentina, he hadn't seen them in forty years, 'cause travel wasn't as prevalent. This was 1948 that he came for a visit. And a lot of time, Yiddish words -- English words are Yiddish-ized. So, my aunt -- I remember saying -- when you lived in the 3:00Bronx, in New York, to go to Manhattan, you didn't say the city, you said downtown, going downtown. So, she says, "Mir geyen donton [We're going downtown]." So, he said, "Vos is 'donton' [What is 'donton']?" She says, "Donton!" "Oh, der untershte kheylek fun shtut [the lower part of the city]," he said. (laughs) You know? So, it's interesting, because he spoke Yiddish with a lot of Spanish words interposed. But that was -- growing up, I was the only Jewish person in my class.

CW:Before we get there --

HS:Yeah.

CW:-- which I do want to hear about -- let me make sure this is on, since I have a little audio recorder. Did you get a sense from your parents and family of what life was like for them before the war?

HS:Yes. Well, they came after the war, but they -- they came after the First 4:00World War, and my father had fond memories of Poland. "The food was so good" and this was so good -- and my mother would cut him down immediately. She said, "It was terrible for Jews." She says, "If gentiles walked on the street, you had to get into the gutter part," at that time. They lived in Praga, which was like a suburb of Warsaw, like Brooklyn is to Manhattan. And she said, "It was terrible for Jews there. Terrible." So, she had no fond memories. My father had fond memories, so -- and he didn't find anti-Semitism. For some reason, he didn't. But anyway, growing up in --

CW:Yeah, could you tell me a little about what it was like to be one of the few --

HS:One of the only.

CW:-- the only Jewish families in that town.

HS:Yeah. Well, no, there were quite a few families. We had a synagogue. My father was a part-time cantor there. But there were no young people my age. They were either two or three years older, two or three years younger -- and when you're ten, you didn't hang around with a twelve-year-old or an eight-year-old, you know? So, all my friends, until after high school, really, until college -- I never had a Jewish girlfriend and I never overtly ran into any -- ever -- any anti-Semitism. There was one Girl Scout troop in Willimantic, Connecticut, and that was in the Congregational church, and everybody belonged. You know, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish. And there was a cooking class that was at the Catholic church. So, it was really ecumenical. It was good. And I still have 6:00kindergarten friends that I'm close with. And when I went to college, I was rushed by a Jewish sorority and (laughs) they were very materialistic and I really -- I didn't join for that reason. (laughs) I felt out of place, I guess, a little bit. And I met my husband on Yom Kippur in temple. I had come home from college and I was only in my first year and he asked somebody who I was. He was -- he had bought a chicken farm with his father. His aunt had given him money and there was a Jewish agricultural society that gave mortgages interest-free so survivors were able to buy chicken farms, and this was in Connecticut. And so, he asked someone who I was and they told him. And so, he called me for a date but I was already back at school. But I used to sing with a band in a supper 7:00club in New London. And I got twenty-five dollars a night, more if I got my own rides, 'cause my parents didn't have a car. So, he said, "Can I take you?" And I said, "Sure," and that was it. Courtship, and we married a year later. And we were married -- he died December 1st of 2012, and we were married fifty-nine years. So, we became as one, and that's why I know all his stories. He used to speak in schools to young people, and they used to have to write essays after they heard him. And we have a lot of those essays. And there was a common thread running through them. These were kids -- I think first year -- junior high school. And there were three words that were interspersed in almost every one of them: "It isn't fair" -- that your mother and sisters were killed, that you had 8:00to hide out in the woods -- and so, he's -- really spoke extensively, with a very strong accent. In fact, he spoke -- when my oldest grandson was, I think, eleven or twelve, he spoke in the school, in his school. And before my husband came in, the teacher told the children, "Mr. Shafran has a very strong accent, so you'll have to listen carefully." And my grandson said, "He doesn't have an accent." He was -- that was his grandpa. That was the way he spoke, but -- and that was it.

CW:So, what was your first impression of him when you --

HS:He was adorable. (laughs) He was adorable, but he had this really heavy accent which he never lost, and -- but he really spoke English -- we never spoke 9:00Yiddish, really. Hardly ever. I didn't speak any Yiddish, as a matter of fact, 'cause I always answered my parents in English if they spoke Yiddish. But I understood everything. And we went to Israel, very often. In fact, he went fifty-one times. I went forty-eight times. He used to take missions of politicians or leaders, non-Jews, for Israel bonds, as a volunteer. He and some other crazy men -- usually men -- and they used to leave on the El Al flight, the redeye flight, on Thursday night, like one o'clock in the morning. And they'd come back on the redeye Sunday morning. Sunday night, rather. So, they'd get back Monday morning and go to work. You -- the --

CW:So, what were --

HS:They would take them to Israel to see -- to show them what a small country -- the advances that they made. They'd take them to Hadassah Hospital, they would 10:00take them to see what a productive, thriving country it was. It wasn't a country where they needed handouts, they -- it was -- and how they treated Arabs, like at Hadassah Hospital. Everyone is treated the same. Everyone is treated the same. So, it was a labor of love, and he really loved to do that.

CW:And you'd often go with him on these trips?

HS:Yeah. Well, not really. We'd go every Christmastime. It would -- sometimes, it would turn out to be Hanukkah. But we would go -- friends and friends. In other words, we would try to get people -- for the first time -- who had never been to Israel before. They were virgins. We called them the virgins. And we would go for ten days, and -- 'cause I couldn't go for three days. I'd have -- 11:00be jetlagged back and forth. But we really had a good time. We always stayed at the Hilton in Jerusalem, on the hill. It's now the Crown Plaza. And they knew us. I mean, we came in, it was like old home week. It was wonderful. And I think that my husband always felt that he should have gone to Israel, or he should have done more for the State of Israel, because he was in training to go there. But his sister survived in Siberia with her husband, and they had two children by this point. And they came to America, to Brooklyn, in 1947. Reuben's aunt, his father's sister, had come here in the '20s. So, she sent them papers, and when my sister-in-law found out that her father and brother survived, she begged them in letters to please come before they got killed, in Israel, to come and 12:00see that they had -- his father had grandchildren, whatever. So, they did, with the thought of probably going back, 'cause they used to help ships get from Naples to Palestine, at the time. So, he was always involved with bonds and with Hadassah, even, through me -- always with Jewish causes, temples. So, he wanted to give back, and I think that if I had been more Zionistic, we probably had -- would have made aliyah. But anyway, I didn't know any Yiddish. So, when we went to Israel -- first time was in 1973 -- he had landsmen [fellow countrymen] who survived, mostly in Siberia. And he hadn't seen them before the war. But they 13:00were -- he and his father were in the woods around their town, so they knew what was happening in the town. And so, they were able to tell -- he was able to tell them their parents' yortsayts [anniversaries of death] or when -- just the day that they were killed. And he had a terrific memory, so -- and they were speaking Yiddish, and they knew only Hebrew and Yiddish. I didn't know any Hebrew. So, I sat there like a dummy and I smiled. They probably thought I was some kind of an idiot. And then, I realized, I really had to learn. And it was hard for me. I -- in my mind, I knew what to say, but I couldn't bring out the phrasing and the accent and whatever. And then, over the years --

CW:So, how'd you go about it, learning it?

HS:Just listening. Listening. I told Reuben to -- I said, "You have to speak Yiddish to me and I'll try to answer." And first, he laughed -- oh, the way I 14:00was pronouncing it. I said, "You pronounce English the same way, so don't laugh." (laughs) We had a good relationship. Really, we did have a -- really, a wonderful, wonderful marriage. Throughout it, though, I always felt -- we really didn't have very many arguments. But in the back of my mind, I always felt he went through such terrible times that I couldn't add to it. So, that was an overshadowing for me, that I had to bring as much pleasure to his life -- and he did -- we have three sons who really are very, very good people. Raised good people. And he always had a wonderful relationship -- there were over six hundred people at his funeral, and this was in a small town. And then, we had a 15:00memorial service here in our country club. And it was packed. They were outside, standing outside. And this is for a man with very little education. Came here with the suit that he wore and some cameos from Italy that -- presents for his sister and his aunt. And just worked very hard.

CW:So, let's go back and talk a little bit about his life, if you --

HS:In his town, yeah.

CW:Yeah.

HS:His town -- he came from a small town called Uchanie, and in Yiddish it was Nakhan. U-C-H-A-N-I-E. And it was in Lublin, the town of Lublin. And the next biggest town was Hrubieszów. And it was a small town. We went back with one of our sons and his wife and our partner and his wife. The other two wanted to come, but they couldn't get away and this was this, this was that. He said, "We're going. If you can't make it" -- so --

CW:What year was that when you --

HS:That was 1996, 1996. He had gone on the March of the Living twice, as a sponsor, and -- but he never wanted to go to his hometown. But our boys wanted to see where he grew up, so we did -- hired a car and a driver, and the driver didn't speak English. So, he's -- jabbered away in Polish, and Ru would -- make, like, one sentence in English for us, 'cause we didn't understand it. But anyway, was a very small town. It was mostly Jews, the surrounding areas. It was a -- they -- they're -- it was a farming area, but they had a lot of orchards. That was the main industry. And his father had a shoe store. And his father was 17:00one of four sons and two daughters. And his grandfather had a mill. They milled grain and whatever. And Shafrans were -- preponderance of people there. Shafrans married other Shafrans, and there were just -- everybody in the background had a grandmother whose maiden name was Shafran and whatever. And he was one of seven Reuben -- Revens -- Shafrans -- probably named after the same great-grandfather, and -- but he was the oldest, so he had a special relationship with his grandfather. And he got into mischief. He was very (laughs) precocious as a child. And he didn't like the rabbi that they had in the heder [traditional religious school]. So, the rabbi used to listen to them recite and he would nod off. And he had a candle in front of him. Reuben pushed the candle over. Beard. 18:00And the rabbi threw a big chunk of wood at him. He ran out of the window. He jumped out of the window and he had to go straight to his grandfather's house 'cause he knew his father would probably (laughs) kill him. And so, he went to a different heder after that. But (laughs) he was very gregarious, he had a lot of friends. But the shtetl [small town in Eastern Europe with a Jewish community] itself had a big square, and around it were all the Jewish stores. And his father had a shoe store, but they lived behind the shoe store. And I think the other brothers were -- two of them were in the mill business, and the other one -- I don't know just what he did. He never mentioned it. But the year that he started regular school, Polish school, was the year that they built a school. 19:00So, it was a brand-new school. So, when we went there, my son was very interested. He says, "Where's the basketball court?" Said, "We didn't play basketball." And then, there was an outhouse. Still very provincial. But on Sundays -- I think it was Sundays or maybe Friday -- Fridays, the gentiles would come from the farms with their produce and they would have a market in the center of town and they would sell their produce. But there was a lot of anti-Semitism, because -- his father had a shoe store, so if people came to buy shoes for their children -- and a lot of times, in the summer, the kids went barefoot if they were on farms. So, they'd buy shoes for Easter, but they didn't have money because they were sharecroppers, for the most part. There was what they called a "graf," which was like a lord, and he owned all that land. So, 20:00they were tenant farmers. So, he would take it in barter. In other words, in eggs or chickens or whatever. He wouldn't get money from a lot of people. So, by the time they finished paying for the shoes, they needed another pair of shoes. So (UNCLEAR) -- so, a lot of their profits from the farm went to his father or other merchants, and it really -- they were very, very bitter because the Jew was taking their money. The Jew had to make a living, you know what I'm saying? So, I think that was probably one of the things that fanned hatred and anti-Semitism. You can see their point and you can see the Jewish point. But in the summertime -- oh, and they were -- they always -- holidays, that particular Shafran family got together and they would have to have a tent because it was just so many people. But in the summertime, his brother-in-law -- who became his 21:00brother-in-law -- rented an orchard, and he had to harvest the fruit and everything. So, Reuben used to be his helper. I think he was ten or something, and he'd have to drive the wagon, with the horse. And so, his summers were spent -- I said, "Did you -- he pay you?" "No!" He'd say, "I got all the apples I wanted." And, in fact, his sister and brother-in-law -- this was a very interesting story -- the Russians came into their town before -- with the pact with Stalin. And when Hitler broke the pact, the Russians retreated but they 22:00told them that, It's not gonna be good for you, because Germany -- the anti-Semitism in Germany after Kristallnacht and everything" -- they said, "Come to Russia." And they were on the border. Their town was on the border. There was a river called the Bug, B-U-G. And so, they just had to cross the river. So, his sister came to his father and her father, too, and she said, "I want to -- we're engaged and I want to go with Gus, because times are gonna be bad." And his father said, "No, no, just like in the First World War, it's gonna be over and that's it. And somebody's going to take our land and whatever." So, a couple of days later, they got a letter that one of the rabbis from their town -- they had a million little shtibls [Hasidic houses of prayer] there -- had gotten sick and was in Russia, in -- right over the border. So, his father said, "If you go, you 23:00have to promise me that you'll get married immediately. This rabbi is there, he'll marry you." And so, they did and I think thirty couples got married, and -- lot of them survived in -- they were sent to Siberia, 'cause they wouldn't take citizenship. So, they -- on trains, they transported over a million people in one night. They put them on the trains and they were -- in Siberia, and they worked. They weren't in danger of their lives, but they didn't have that much nourishment or anything. So, some of them died of illnesses, but they weren't killed, they weren't murdered, so -- and a lot of them did survive. And they all settled in Brooklyn, New York. And so, they all had the same anniversary, which was something. But at least they were alive, and -- but he had a -- his mother 24:00came from another city, another town, called Komarów. And Reuben's father's brother was engaged to her. It was a shidekh [arranged marriage]. She was seventeen, I think, and his brother was probably twenty-five or twenty-four. And so, he -- his brother had to bring something to her in that town, and Reuben's father, he was nineteen at the time, had to be around there to buy shoes. So, he gave him whatever he had to give him to give to -- her name was Henshe -- Heneh, H-E-N-E-H. And so, they immediately fell in love. Immediately. And he came back and he said, "I'm gonna marry her." And his brother didn't talk to him for two years. It was like -- he was nineteen, she was seventeen, and they did get married. But her parents lived in Komarów. Her -- they had a farm, but his -- 25:00her grandmother -- her mother had a -- a candy store, a luncheonette, a bar. And she had -- his mother had two sisters, and they were all killed in the Shoah, as was his mother and sisters, in Sobibór. But he would spend the summer there, with his other grandparents. He was closer with the grandparents that he lived in the same town with. But he remembers -- he said -- he would have ice cream every day in Europe -- and even when I was a child growing up, you didn't have ice cream in the winter. And in the summer, you had it maybe once a week. It was a treat. It wasn't -- you didn't keep it in the freezer. They didn't have freezers anyhow. So, he remembers the ice cream, basically. And --

CW:Did you talk very often about these memories of before?

HS:Oh, all the time.

CW:Yeah?

HS:All the time, yeah. And his sister never talked about that. She said, "I don't want to remember them. They were not good." Not good memories. So, she has four kids. She's deceased, also. She was ten years older. But her children are very -- they got everything about their mother, basically, from Reuben, so -- and they're involved, also -- in fact, my second son -- last Sunday, there was a Second Generation -- he's active in the Second Generation. And two of my nieces are, also, but -- about his life. Oh, we went back -- we went to Nakhan and we came up in a -- we came there in a white van with a driver and the guide. And as 27:00we came into the town, he said, "This doesn't look like my town," because when he was a kid, the square -- there was a regular square with grass and everything -- it wasn't there anymore. A tiny town, very tiny town. No electricity. And this was 1996. And a young man came up to him and he said to him in Polish, he said, "Are you from America?" And he said, "Yes." He said, "Why did you come here?" He said, "'Cause I was from here." And when he said his name, the young man said, he said, "My father hid a couple of Jews in the barn," and it was Reuben and his father. When they were taken -- when they were going to Sobibór, 28:00there was a selection. And his mother and two sisters -- one sister -- they took women and young children to Sobibór. But women who could work, they kept for labor. So, his -- oh, one of his sisters was eighteen, and they put her in another line. And she begged them, "No, I want to stay with my mother." And she was killed. But Reuben and his father were taken back to town to -- as a clean-up detail with other men. The clean-up detail was -- they had to go in people's houses, the Jewish houses, and take out anything of value, almost everything, and it was shipped to Germany. And Reuben was very canny. He was a 29:00very good judge of character, and he really thought ahead. If he had had the education, he really probably would have been a lawyer or a -- honest politician. (laughs) But he said to his father, he said, "The minute we're finished with this work, they're gonna kill us. They'll either take us somewhere or they'll just kill us on the spot," 'cause they killed his grandfather that way, his favorite grandfather, yeah. They cut off his beard and shot him, and -- was the first Jew that they actually killed, the Nazis. So --

CW:In his town? Was he there for that? He --

HS:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, he said to his father, "We have to run away." His father said, "They'll shoot us." He said, "They're gonna shoot us anyhow. We have to take a chance." And they did. And they went to this farmer who had dealt 30:00with them, and he was very nice. And his son had gone to school with Reuben. And he took them in for two weeks. And he said the neighbors were starting to realize that he was hiding Jews and he couldn't endanger his family. And it's a very interesting thing when you think about it: I know I would give my life if I felt it was very, very necessary. I'm not sure if I would put my children's lives in jeopardy like that. It was a very thin line. But anyway, they were hidden for those two weeks. But the -- his -- the man's father was in Warsaw at the time, so he couldn't see them. But meanwhile -- small town -- all these other men started to gather, too. And Reuben recognized a few of them, and they were scruffy. I mean, really, they needed a bath or something. There was no 31:00electricity, so they probably couldn't shower every day. And he pointed out one -- and I have this on film. I was taking movies, old-time movie. And they spoke in Polish, but I did -- I filmed it. And he looked at it and he said, "Your name is" whatever name it was. And he said, "How do you know?" He says, "'Cause I'm Reuben Shafran." He didn't ask what happened during the war, who was alive, who wasn't. He said, "You can't -- you're not Reuben Shafran." And Reuben said, "Of course I'm Reuben Shafran." He said, "Are you Baruch's son?" He said, "Yes." He said, "Well, you can't be. Your father was so tall and you're so short." (laughs) Figures, right? But they all -- he knew a lot of them because they were his age. They were retirees and nobody asked what happened to him during the 32:00war. It was really interesting. There were about eight or nine of them, and there was one store, and we were starving. So, we -- he went into the store and he bought some breads -- we were six people. And for those of us who were not kosher, brought sausages and fruit and some drinks. And then, we went to the cemetery. But it was all overgrown and there -- most of the headstones were missing. And I wanted to -- and some of the houses were still standing, because -- wasn't bombed or anything. His house wasn't -- but it was fifty years, and things deteriorate. But his grandfather's house was still standing. And he -- 33:00after the war, though, when they were freed in 1944, he and his father went back to the town. And one of the fellows that he knew, one of the non-Jewish fellows, said, "You better get out of here because people are gonna think you want to claim your property and they're gonna kill you." So, they did. They left right away, to Lublin. And from there -- in Lublin, that was like the melting pot of survivors from a lot of that area in Poland. And there was one big café, and everybody gathered there 'cause they weren't working, whatever, and they got provisions from the Jewish Welfare Board so they were able to eat. And they did odd jobs, too. So, they were able to have a little bit of money. But everybody 34:00came to find out, "Where are you from? Did anybody survive?" Relatives and whatever. And that's how he found out his sister survived. So, one evening, he was sitting at this café and -- with a few of his friends, and a fellow came over and he said, "Would you like to go to Palestine?" And he said, "Yes!" He said, "Well," he said, "we're going to have a wedding" -- 'cause they couldn't congregate, a lot of people. "We're going to have a wedding. You'll come as a guest." And he took his father. "And we'll tell you all the details." So, when they got there -- 'cause the Polish authorities didn't want any -- it was communists at the time, they didn't want any rebels. And they told them they would give them fake passports and they would provide transportation through 35:00Czechoslovakia and whatever to Italy. And from there, they would go to Palestine. So, they were given fake names at each stop, and they weren't -- and one of the fellows who survived, who now lives in Tel Aviv, he didn't want to go to Italy or anything. He wanted to go straight to Palestine. So, when -- the night that Reuben and his father -- they transported them on trucks, with no headlights or anything. They would cross the borders -- so, the night that that they got in, there was a truck that was passing by, like a cross street in -- I think it was in Venice -- that was the first place that they went, I think, through Switzerland. But the flap was open, and who did he see sitting there? 36:00His friend, Moshe, Moshe Opatowski, and he did go to Palestine, and he was pretty high up in the social security office there. He lived in Haifa.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

HS:His name is Moshe Opatowski. And his name was Moniek, which was the Polish -- and his family lived in Lublin, and his father was a banker. To be a Jewish banker was very unusual in Poland, but they were very, very wealthy. And when the Nazis came in, they were all herded together and sent to small towns where they could form a ghetto. And Moshe's father had a sister in Nakhan. So, they went to Nakhan and he was Reuben's age, so they became friends and then they hid in the forest and everything. And when they came to Lublin, a little boy saw 37:00them and he said, in Hebrew, "Are you Jewish?" And they said, "Yes." He said, "Come with me and I'll give you some -- my mother will give you some soup or whatever." And so, they came to this house. It was a widow, a mother, and a daughter. And they gave her the -- she said, "What is your name?" And he said, "Moshe Opatowski." She says, "Well, there's an Opatowski living down the street with his wife and his daughter." He said, "It couldn't be," because his father had escaped to Russia, and he used to send money. He had hidden, I think, either in the floorboards or he had hidden it in the ground -- over a million dollars in dollars, in 1939. Can you imagine? That would be like thirty million now, right? And so, he would send money through a courier to them in the woods. And 38:00Moshe and his sisters were part of this group in the bunker, his two sisters, the -- Caroline -- Carolina was one and I don't remember the other name. But anyway -- and they went to meet this courier, and they got lost in the woods and froze to death. So, I had to tell you this and -- apropos. So, Moshe said, "It couldn't be. My sisters were frozen, killed -- dead, and my mother was taken to Sobibór." So, she said, "Well, no, this Opatowski has a wife and a daughter." So, Reuben said, "Look, we have to go and see who it is. It might be a relative, an uncle. Anybody who can help us, any relative is important." So, they went there and Reuben said, "Don't say anything." And they saw it was his father. So, Reuben went up to him and he says, "I have regards" -- (tears up) pretty broken 39:00up -- "I have regards from your son." He says, "No, my son is dead." He said, "No, no, your son is alive and your daughters froze to death." And he gave the names and everything. And Moshe, Reuben said, was a boy of thirteen at the time his father saw him. Short and chubby. Well, he was tall and skinny now, and he just fell on his father. So, PS, the authorities found the money. He had taken the money and was dealing in dollars, and they caught him. They took the million dollars and put him in jail for six -- for nine years, in the Polish jail. Meanwhile, Moshe went to Palestine and married. And then he sent for his father, where -- he died in Israel. So, I mean, it was -- these stories are just unbelievable, the coincidences that happened. If they hadn't been in Lublin that 40:00day with that little boy, they would have never known. And his friend, Moshe, they call each other every month. One calls one month, one calls the other month. And Reuben died on a Saturday, December 1st, and that was when Moshe would have called. Well, he called two days before. Reuben was still alive. In the hospital, though. And he called and -- he didn't know any Yiddish. That was what I was trying to -- because they just spoke Polish at home. They were like the intelligentsia and they didn't speak Yiddish, and so -- but when he was in the woods, he had to speak Yiddish because -- I mean, they knew Polish, but they weren't comfortable speaking Polish 'cause Yiddish was their first language. So, he learned Yiddish that way. So, his Yiddish wasn't that great and mine isn't 41:00perfect, either. So, when I talked to him, he said, "Where's Reuben?" And I said, "He's in the hospital." And he said, "Well, he's gonna get better." And I said, "No." I said, "The doctor said maybe a day or so." So, I was -- I told Reuben, when I came to the hospital, and he said, "He knows I'm dying. That's why he called early." So, he knew he was dying, and I didn't realize -- I'm not that well-versed in the Jewish religion. I mean, I'm Jewish, but I -- there are certain aspects that I never knew. The rabbi came every day, the rabbi from down here that we know. And he gave him his last rites. I didn't know that there was some -- so, there -- did you know? There's something -- it has a name, but it's 42:00like a confession, like on Yom Kippur. But not a personal confession. Just like you'd say (lightly beats her chest) the al-khet [prayer of confessions recited on Yom Kippur while beating one's chest], the confession that you'd say for the whole -- for all the people. And Reuben was able to say it with him, which was very unusual. And that night -- that morning, after the rabbi left, three of -- the pulmonologist, the gastroenterologist, and the cardiologist came to me. They tried everything. Everything. He had had two bypasses, a pacemaker. He had hepatitis C. He had a prolapsed valve. I mean, he just had everything but housemaid's knee, really, and he always had -- was in good spirits, and he'd have episodes and he'd come out of it. And I figured he would come out of it. 43:00They said, "Mrs. Shafran, we can't do anything more." I said, "There must be something." They had tried dialysis, everything, and they said, "I'm afraid not." They said, "He should -- really should be in hospice, or he could stay here. But he might have a -- just a few hours." Boys had flown down. This was on a Friday morning. They were down here for a week, and Wednesday he rallied. Tuesday, he had yortsayt for his father, and he always went to temple. So, I said, "You know what? You're going to say it here, with a minyan. I asked the nurse, the charge nurse, and he had also MRSA, so we had to wear gowns. So, I got some of our friends and they went to the temple, got books, and we all wore these blue gowns -- and surrounding him. And we have pictures of that. And he conducted the whole service and told a little bit about his father's life 44:00afterwards. So, the boys went home Thursday morning, 'cause he seemed to be rallying. And then Friday, he got the news, so they flew down Friday evening. And he was already in hospice, Hospice by the Sea, which is very nice. And it was a room -- it was a suite, with French doors leading out to a terrace. And then, the other part was a couch that opened up, and they brought in two cots. So, we were there, and they made him comfortable. He'd also fallen and broken -- couple of ribs, so he was not a happy camper. But he knew he was dying, and he said, "I'm not coming out of this." He said, "I really -- I know I'm dying, and I'm ready." So, his breathing came further and further apart and my son Jonathan said, "Mom," he says, "I don't think he's breathing anymore." So, he called -- the nurses said to call them. And one of the nurses said -- this was around 45:00noontime -- we didn't think he would even last that long, Saturday -- and one of the nurses said, "No, he still has one breath left." And as he took that breath, the French doors swung open -- not just a crack -- with a blast, and all this sun came in. Now, there was no other door open. There was no reason. The nurse was Catholic, I guess. She crossed herself. She says, "I've been a nurse for thirty-five years. I've never seen this happen." And the rabbis explained it -- not -- they couldn't say definitely, but they said sometimes there's a curtain that moves or whatever. They had never heard of anything that -- quite that drastic, and they said that his soul had just left his body. And so, I feel that 46:00he's doing good without any constraints -- now. But anyway, that was with Moshe. But getting back to his hometown and --

CW:Well, I'd like to ask you what it was like for you to go back with him to the town as his wife and having heard all these stories and being there with the family.

HS:Well, it was somewhat of a disappointment, because I pictured it as a bustling town. It was almost all Jewish in town. There were gentiles in the outlying section, and as I say, many of them were related, even distantly, so -- and I think he said there were seven little shuls. The carpenter shul, the Russians -- they were all Orthodox. And his -- they were part of -- they were 47:00Hasidim, but very -- I don't even remember the name. It was not a popular name, but they followed this certain rabbi. And so, I pictured it like a marketplace, bustling, whatever. But it was -- we went in -- we coincided with the March of the Living, so we met up with some of the March of the Living things at Birkenau. We went to the camps and everything that time. But I couldn't picture it the way he described it. But -- and I said to him -- I said, "It's fifty years later," more than fifty years later. The town that I grew up -- has changed. Boca has changed. I said, "You can't remember it the way it was. It can't be the same as it was." But I could see where it was so close, because all 48:00these houses were in such close proximity. And, of course, I saw the school. There were no synagogues left. And he did speak with these people that he knew. In fact, one of them -- his sister was a teacher, and he said, "I remember your" -- his sister was a teacher. He says, "How can you remember? I don't even remember (laughs) that she was a teacher." But it was, I think, a letdown for me. I pictured a little New England town with a town square. But it wasn't. And again, in 1996, not to have electricity, it was sad. But that was it. But getting back to the Yiddish part, he always enjoyed speaking Yiddish, but he was 49:00always -- have arguments. We have a very good friend who's American. In fact, he was dean of education at Fordham, and he's religious, which is a little interesting. But he -- his parents were Litvaks, so he pronounces everything differently. And he and Reuben and another fellow, Murray Sheer -- I go to temple also, but not -- now I go every week, but every Saturday, each one of them would drive, in turn. They live in the country club where we live. And whatever anybody said, he always corrected the pronunciation. The other two are American. And he always used to argue with Reuben. He says, "You don't know how to speak Yiddish. You don't -- you're supposed to say it this way." And Reuben says, "And you know Yiddish." He says, "I grew up speaking only Yiddish." So, this was always -- and, in fact, I saw him last night and I said something, and 50:00he says, "You know, Reuben pronounced it wrong." He said, "You should know better. You're pronouncing it wrong!" So, he -- 'cause my parents always said, for bread, "broyt." He says "breyt." There's -- basically, it's the same -- it's like New Orleans English and California English. It's the same words, but it's completely different. So, they had arguments every single week about the pronunciation of different words, and he'd always say to Reuben, "You're so old and you're still saying it wrong." (laughs) But he really enjoyed speaking Yiddish. And we didn't speak Yiddish, but when he met other survivors, they would always lapse into Yiddish.

CW:And I think it's interesting that you say you sort of learned Yiddish to be able to communicate in -- on your visits to Israel.

HS:Yes.

CW:Because we hear about sort of suppression of Yiddish in Israel, and --

HS:Well, these were survivors, though. So, their first language was Yiddish, so -- although Reuben has a second cousin that we're close to. She's almost like a sister to both of us. And so, we would always see them, and they used to come here. But her mother was born in Poland but came to Palestine, I think, in 1931, one of the first aliyahs. So, she grew up speaking Hebrew, but she speaks a good Yiddish also, so whenever we'd go to Israel -- and she speaks English, too. Her husband speaks some English, but she's very good. She speaks almost without an accent. But she and Reuben, the minute we'd get off the plane, they'd always meet us at the plane, when there was a tarmac, and -- with flowers. And right 52:00away, she'd speak Yiddish. That's one of the reasons that I really started to learn, 'cause I really liked her. And even though she spoke English, I thought she was more comfortable in Yiddish. But I think -- the young people, her children, don't know any Yiddish. And my parents, when they came here -- and as I say, my mother hated Poland, and she wanted to be an American, so -- and she was twenty-one when she came. It wasn't that she was a child. But she also spoke very good English, so with very -- a hint of an accent. Father had a little stronger accent. But she said, "We're Americans now. We have to talk English." So, I think -- and my kids -- as I say, my son, Peter, can speak some Yiddish. 53:00He speaks Hebrew 'cause he went to yeshiva, but they -- he went to a yeshiva that was -- taught Hebrew from Hebrew, so -- and the Sephardic Hebrew. But he took Yiddish courses at Binghamton, and he picked it up from my mother, and more so 'cause he's the oldest. And as I say, my second son has a terrific accent, and he knows some Yiddish. And my third son really doesn't -- he tries, but he wasn't exposed as much.

CW:Yeah.

HS:And it's a shame, 'cause it's such a beautiful language. It's -- and very expressive. Very expressive.

CW:So, when you were creating your own family, what traditions did you decide to create together, and how did you create your Jewish home with Reuben?

HS:Well, we always belonged to a synagogue, and I always lit candles. And I wasn't always kosher. When we got married, we bought a chicken farm because it would keep Reuben out of the army. He wasn't thrilled to go to the army. And we bought a chicken farm in Massachusetts. Actually, we -- in North Dartmouth, between New Bedford and Fall River. I think UMass has a campus on that land now. And, PS, he was drafted. And, I mean, it was -- there were no wars. It was 1954, '55, '56, and he was stationed in Hawaii, so we lived in Hawaii, which was not too bad. He became a citizen in Hawaii. You didn't have to be a citizen to become -- to be in the army, because when you came -- when he came, in order to apply for citizenship when you first entered the country, you had to sign something that you would serve your country if you were called. So, you had to 55:00go. Oh, he had a great time in the army. He was a carpenter. He built bars for the mess halls and whatever, and we lived off-post. We lived in Waikiki. Was not bad, (laughs) not bad.

CW:And were your children born there or --

HS:No, if my oldest son were born there, he would have had a Hawaiian name. I think that's why we held off. (laughs) But there, it -- my parents kept a kosher home, although my mother wasn't religious. My mother felt -- she talked to God every day in her kitchen, over a cup of coffee. She said, "I don't need a middle man to pray for me." I mean, she would go on the holidays, whatever. My father was very Orthodox. I mean, she kept kosher and all that, but when we were in Hawaii, you couldn't keep kosher. And I was asked by the -- we had a terrific -- we -- the Aloha Chapel in Pearl Harbor, and it was for all the servicemen. And 56:00it was a Quonset hut, with an Ark that we used Friday nights. Seventh Day Adventists used it Saturday. So, you just turned the Ark around, and it was a cross and then there was a star. So, I mean, it was great. But a lot of the Air Force pilots -- Hickam Field was right near there. Was an Air Force base. They would fly in bagels and cream cheese. No lox. And so, we'd have a feast as a kiddush afterwards, and the fellas came in from ships, the navy, and they could get out of duty. No matter what, if they were going to services -- and there was a big 4th Battalion marine base was there. So, it was packed every Friday night, so -- and the chaplain was a commander in the navy. His name was Sam Soble. And he was terrific, really terrific, and he asked me one night if I would do the 57:00kiddush. And I said, "If I've eaten treyf [not kosher], I really don't feel comfortable." And he said, "My dear," he said -- I was all of nineteen. He said, "There are 613 mitzvot [Hebrew: commandments]." He said, "If you do one, it's better than none. And if you do two, it's better than one." He said, "Think of it that way. Very few people can do the whole 613. Whatever you do is better than nothing," so -- and I've lived my Jewish life that way, really. But I light candles, and we use -- we always -- when the kids were growing up, we always had a Shabbos meal, traditional Shabbos meal. And --

CW:Would you have a specific -- would you make yoykh [soup] or have a specific (UNCLEAR) --

HS:Yeah, or my parents would say "yoakh." (laughs)

CW:Yoakh, yeah. (laughter)

HS:Yeah. Yeah, chicken soup, sometimes matzah balls, sometimes noodles, and 58:00roast chicken, vegetables or potato. I'm not a fussy cook, so it was simple. And a lot of times, for dessert, compote, different fruits and whatever. And we did that until we sold our house. We sold our house in -- we lived in Middletown, New York, and we had bought a condo -- well, a house down here, and -- but the time that we lived up there --

CW:What about --

HS:-- every Friday night, the kids came, the ones who lived the closest. And we had both seders by the time -- we always had both seders. But by the time our sons got married, they wanted to stay one night with their wives' parents, and they could never seem to get it together. So, we would have two big seders, and 59:00the last two seders we had -- because we'd have our in-laws and the in-laws' kids and friends and whatever, and strays. We had forty-five one of the last years, each night. And I had three in help, and it was just getting too much. So, I was sort of happy -- so, we sold the house, and now they took over the Jewish holiday. But Passover was very, very important to us, but -- and Friday night -- Reuben always went to shul on Saturday. We never went on Friday night. And Saturdays, the kids knew, we never -- we rode to shul, 'cause we never lived that close to temple. But we never shopped, we never really did anything other than -- it was a day of rest, for me, especially. We had the leftover cold chicken and whatever. And so, I've lived my life in that way. But Reuben was not 60:00kosher. He ate anything that moved. I think, from being deprived for two and a half years of living -- stealing potatoes or a chicken or -- shooting a cow or something, and they were in the woods, and they were in bunkers. So, he had to eat what was there. And he felt -- he didn't feel strongly about the food part. He said, "It's the stomach." But one of my sons is kosher, but when we moved -- came back from Hawaii, we lived in Forest Hills, New York, and my parents lived about three hours away. And if they were coming to my house, it would -- had to be certainly overnight or three days. My father would never eat in my house if 61:00it weren't kosher. So, then I really was strict about it. And to this day -- and we have friends who are not kosher. Most of our friends are not kosher. But when I come to dinner, when they -- we came to dinner, for the most part, most of them eith-- they made fish or they bought kosher meat, and I ate -- I eat on treyf plates, because I'm not that -- I just don't eat meat or chicken or anything, or shellfish. But Reuben did. Reuben felt it wasn't so important. But when he was in the army, (laughs) his -- in Hawaii, he was in charge of the company at night, and he used to write letters in Yiddish to his father. Now, this whole 25th Division, in the infantry, had come from Korea, as -- in the end of the Korean War. Many of them had Korean girlfriends. So, when they saw Reuben 62:00writing, they had no clue as to what Yiddish was. They thought he was writing in Korean. So, he said to Reuben -- one of the fellas was sitting with him. He says, "You write Korean?" "Yeah," Reuben said. (laughter) Yeah. Wasn't going to argue and start explaining what Yiddish is. This fellow lived in the hills somewhere, he probably never saw a Jew. And he says, "Oh," he says, "because I get letters from my girlfriend. Could you translate them?" "Yeah." So, he -- a few people -- he really changed people's lives, which -- he thought he was doing good, but he would say they -- this girl found somebody else, she wasn't interested in coming over to see him and this and that. So, he -- they ended up not, you know -- but this one young man was very talented. He was seventeen, and he had to join the army. He was from Maui. Maui, at that time, had one traffic 63:00light in the whole street, in the whole main street. And he used to drag race with friends. And one time, a child darted out, little girl darted out, and she was killed. At the time, it was a territory. Hawaii was a territory. So, the judge said, "You can either go to jail" -- I mean, it wasn't intentional -- "or you can join the army." Joined the army. But he was a loner. He was a very quiet, very introverted -- and the company commander called Reuben in and he said, "You're a little older than some of the other boys. Would you sort of take him under your wing?" And so, Reuben started talking to him. Turns out he was a terrific carpenter and a plumber and an electrician. His father was a carpenter. 64:00I think his uncles -- one was a plumber, one was an electrician, so -- and he says, "I'm a better carpenter than you and I can do plumbing and electric work." So Reuben said to himself, Great, less work from other -- so, he started to work with him. And, I mean, it was -- wonderful relationship. And one day, also, he saw Reuben writing to his father and he says, "What are you writing?" He hadn't been to Korea. And Reuben said, "I'm writing Yiddish." He said, "What's Yiddish?" He said, "It's Jewish." He says, "Why would you be writing Jewish?" Reuben says, "'Cause I'm Jewish." He says, "You're not Jewish." "What do you mean? Of course I'm Jewish." And he felt Reuben's forehead. He says, "You're supposed to have horns." Reuben says, "Did you ever see horns on my head? They don't retract. They're -- you know, no horns." He says, "Well, my father and grandmother -- grandfather told me that all Jews have horns." He says, "Well, 65:00they were wrong." So, this is -- course, this was 1955. It was not -- I think the Jewish culture, like in TV, was not -- we have Yiddish shtik, Yiddish things. But he really -- he had never met a Jew before, in his life. In fact, we went back to Hawaii about fifteen years later, and then again about thirty years -- he became a big developer. He built all the hotels in Maui and everything. So, we were there on business and Reuben said, "I wonder if Paul lives in Maui." So, I said, "Look, he was in Maui and then he was sent somewhere else after Hawaii." He left his gun, his carbine, on a tree when they were on a hike and couldn't find it, and that's almost treason. Wasn't wartime or anything. So, 66:00they sent him to Korea. No war, but they sent -- to Korea, and we just lost touch with him. So, I said, "He's been different places. Maui's so tiny. He probably settled -- maybe in California, whatever." He says, "Look in the phone book." Sure enough, that was his -- there was his name: builder and developer. He says, "That can't be him." I said, "Call him." Was a Sunday morning and he called and he said, "Is this Paul" -- his last name, Ferrero, and he said, "Yes." And he said, "Did you live in Company H" or whatever it was? He says, "Ruby!" You know, 'cause the accent. He's, "Oh, my God!" He says, "And where are you living?" 'Cause he knew we were from Connecticut. He said, "New York." He said, "I'm in New York on business all the time." So, we formed a relationship again. But a lot of people who were not from the New York -- from urban areas in 67:00the United States had no contact with Jews, and Yiddish was -- speaking of Yiddish, the Hasidim -- we live near Kiryat Joel, which is a Satmar community in Monroe, New York. And they've grown from seven thousand homes to about twenty thousand now, and they're a village, an incorporated village with their own mayor, their own government, actually. But they do share some of our school things. They have a lot of intermarriage, and -- with cousins and whatever. So, there are a lot of children who are -- have problems. So, they use the Monroe schools to -- they transport their kids to the Monroe schools for these programs, which they can do. But the drivers sometimes have seniority, and this 68:00was after school, so they got paid overtime or double time. Many of them were women. They wouldn't send the kids, the boys, on the bus because there was a woman driver. So, this got a lot of publicity in the newspaper, and was a court case. The union -- the women won. But it's the bad press -- but anyway -- but they speak only Yiddish, so -- and there aren't -- there isn't a prototype of who looks Jewish and who doesn't look Jewish, and I was always a blonde 'til I decided not to, but I was a blonde as a kid, too. And many people didn't realize I was Jewish, so they'd be talking and haking a tshaynik [being loud, lit. "banging a teakettle"] in Yiddish in the supermarkets or something, two women, let's say. And whatever they said, I would chime in. (laughs)

CW:What was their reaction?

HS:Shock. Shock, because not too many people speak Yiddish anymore. So, they were -- but even now, and living there so long -- but these little three-year-olds with peyes [sidelocks] and everything, and, "Mame, ikh vil redn mit [Mom, I want to speak with] --" you know, with -- it's still a little strange. But they really don't speak much English at all, and the English that they speak is very accented, so -- but they don't mingle anyhow, so it doesn't really matter for the most part.

CW:I want to ask a couple questions about Yiddish, if that's okay.

HS:Yeah?

CW:Where do you think Yiddish stands in American Jewish culture these days?

HS:On a scale of one to ten?

CW:Well, just its role in --

HS:Oh, I think that there is more interest in Yiddish now, and I wonder if it's because -- I know I, personally, feel a little threatened. I feel that the world, in terms of Israel -- ever country is poised to denigrate anything that Israel -- whatever Israel does is wrong. Whether it's right or wrong, it's always wrong. And if this were 1938 or '39, we could be facing a Holocaust. Let's face it, it's -- there's no one watching our backs, for the most part. And I think that some people are beginning to realize this, and Yiddish is the only language that would keep us together if anything ever happened, because wherever 71:00you are, there's always somebody who can speak Yiddish, it seems. And now, people like you, people -- younger people are embracing it. And, in fact, one of my grandsons, I think, is gonna be interested in it. But I think the role is better than it's been, but everyone says it's a dead language, and it's not. It's not a dead language. It's a rich, flourishing, poetic, beautiful language. There are things that are expressed in Yiddish that have no translation, really, and --

CW:Do you have any favorite phrases or songs or anything in Yiddish?

HS:Well, my father always used to sing a song to me when I was a kid. Oh, God, I 72:00can't think of how it goes, though. (singing) "Shluf sheyn, mayn shayn klayne yingele [Sleep well, my pretty little boy]" -- I was not a yingele [little boy], but he -- that's what he sang. He used to always sing that, and a lot of the pop-- more popular songs, my mother used to sing a lot of them: "Di grine kuzine [The Greenhorn cousin]" -- it's funny, I haven't heard them in a long time, but I have tapes of a lot of Yiddish songs. But it's funny -- losing it -- but I can't really think of any particular song that I would sing to myself. But I used to be a singer, and I had a bluesy type of voice. But Reuben thought he was a wonderful singer. Flat and tone-deaf. But the kids -- he used to sing all the 73:00Yiddish songs to him -- to them, and the grandchildren, too. He carried them around and sang to them, put them to sleep, and there's one that he used to sing about a fireman with little outfits that he told me -- and these were phrases that I didn't know. But he would always sing to them in Yiddish, and that's what they remember. They remember all these Yiddish songs. He would also sing in Polish, too, to them. But they thought it was wonderful. (laughs) I think that, in my generation, our parents who were immigrants wanted to be Americans. So, they didn't push Yiddish. If anything, it was Hebrew. We all went to Hebrew school. In some of the urban centers, like my cousins who grew up in New York, 74:00my uncles were socialists and they belonged to the Arbeter Ring, Workmen's Circle, and they had schools that were traditional schools. They never went to shul or anything. But they always celebrated the holidays, and the -- my cousins -- I'm sorry to say I didn't, but they all read and wrote Yiddish, and Yiddish was very important to them. And my uncle in Argentina, too. Culturally, Jews always spoke Yiddish together, more so than America. So, I think that -- and what your organization is doing, I know -- when we get the magazine, "Pakn Treger", I'm the first one who reads. I pull it out from Reuben's hands. And I think in the back, it's Yiddish, right? He would read the Yiddish. I don't read Yiddish. And I -- we pass it on to friends of ours who are too cheap to -- 75:00(laughs) to contribute. I think a few of them have because of this, but -- or sometimes -- I hate to throw anything away, so I'll take it to -- Reuben was going to doctors almost every day for years. So, I would bring them to doctor's offices, because people have nothing else to do, so maybe it'll catch on. But I think that the -- just this young man who started -- what's his name?

CW:Aaron.

HS:Aaron. Aaron Lansky? Just the fact that he thought enough of it to do it, to start something like this shows that there's an interest, because everyone said it was a dying language a hundred years ago, so -- and we get the Jewish "Forward", also the English version. But I remember that as a kid. That's one of my memories. It used to be mailed, and it was the Jewish "Daily Forward" then. 76:00My father would come home for work -- from work, and we had a mailbox on the road. He'd go to the mailbox, take out the paper, come home. My mother would ask him how his day was, and he would read that paper from cover to cover. And my mother had poor eyesight. He would read her the recipes. They always had recipes in it. And the ones she liked, he'd cut out. And Sundays, they had a rotogravure section in sepia tone. And my mother's niece, my uncle's daughter, Lucy, was a beautiful child. And they had a contest, a beautiful child contest, and she was one of the finalists in it. She was just like a Dresden doll. She was a stunning little girl and a stunning woman as she got older, too. But my uncle in 77:00Argentina who -- his brother's daughter got the same forward, but in Spanish. Well, you know, a Spanish version, but in Yiddish. And he opens it up and their name in Poland was Stokfisz, S-T-O-K-F-I-S-Z, my mother's maiden name. When my uncle, my first uncle, came over, you know, they always changed names when -- the agents at the -- Ellis Island, although he came in in Galveston, which was a little different. So, they changed it to Stokes, S-T-O-K-E-S. So, he always said he dropped the fish in the ocean. But he always maintained his first name, Moishe. So, he's Moishe Stokes. But anyway, so my uncle in Argentina saw the picture and he knew the face, because he received the picture from my uncle originally, the original picture. So, he looks at it and he sees Lucille Stokes. 78:00He says, "Vos far a Lucille Stokes? Ir nomen iz Stokfisz. [What is this Lucille Stokes? Her name is Stokfisz.]" And he got crazy, because he said, "Here it's published and it's not the right name." He always kept Stokfisz, he never changed it to Stokes. So, that was the anglicization of the name.

CW:Well, I have just a couple more questions.

HS:Yeah?

CW:Looking back on this long, lovely life with Reuben, what do you think you -- what were the delights, challenges of having a survivor as a life partner?

HS:Well, one of the challenges was that in our particular marriage -- that he 79:00was always interested in -- he always read books about the Holocaust and politics. Those two were his main targets. And Zionism. I was a Zionist, but I was more into music and the arts. I like ballet, opera, and whatever. So, we had two separate lives on that level. And so, it was a challenge, because I felt -- I wanted to do things together, but if he came to the opera, he'd fall asleep and snore, so it was no fun and I'd be poking him all the time. And it was expensive to have him sleep there, so he -- I didn't urge him to go. And, yeah, and I wasn't that interested in politics. He was very interested in background of politicians and always, in his mind, Were they good to Israel? That was his 80:00first -- and to the Jews? And a lot of people, like in our club, feel they're Americans. They're American Jews, not Jewish Americans. And so, they feel what's good for the country is the most important thing. He always felt what's good for the Jews is the most important thing. And the delights were that he was so devoted. Devoted to the family. He loved me very, very -- we loved each other, but he was totally, totally -- whatever I did, for the most part, was fine, really. Fine. And he was fun to be with. He really had a terrific sense of humor, and he was a goer. And I wasn't crazy about travel, 'cause I always did 81:00the packing and whatever. But he always liked to travel, and mostly we would go to Israel. But we would also go somewhere else. In other words, we would go to England and then Israel. We would go to Czechoslovakia. He was bar mitzvahed in 1956, by the way. When he became president of our temple in Middletown, Temple Sinai, we had a lawyer who died suddenly this summer. He was Reuben's best friend, and his wife is my best friend, and they moved to Florida to be near us. And he just died very suddenly. But he was the eager beaver, going to Israel all the time. So -- oh, God, I lost my train of thought. What were -- the --

CW:You were talking about -- sorry, I was just listening --

HS:(laughs) Yeah.

CW:-- and I got carried away.

HS:Yeah --

CW:You were talking about the delights of --

HS:Yeah.

CW:-- being married to him and --

HS:Oh, yeah, he would always want to go places. And a lot -- oh, so he was bar mitzvahed. So, this Donald Tershwell, our dear, dear friend -- they're up there having fun and telling God what to do, I think. (laughs) Up there. But they would -- what was I going to say? Oh, he said, "You can't be president of your temple. You were never bar mitzvahed." I mean, kiddingly. In fact, his was principal of the Hebrew Day School high school here. But anyway, he said, "You can't be president." He says, "We're going to go to -- we're going to -- you're going to be bar mitzvahed in Prague." Reuben said, "Prague?" He said, "Well, you don't want to go to Poland to be bar mitzvahed." He says, "Oh, you're crazy." 83:00And this was a communist -- it was under the Soviet Union then. So, he did all the background work, he got visas, and it turned out we were twenty-eight people, plus a reporter from the "Jewish Week", plus a rabbi. Our rabbi couldn't go. A rabbi from Rochester, New York, who used to be a standup comic. You can picture this crew. And from there, we went to Israel. So, he was bar mitzvahed in the Alte-Neue shul. We went there on a Thursday. We got there, and we have a Hasidic friend who -- he and his wife came. And so, he's -- and he's also -- he's a builder and a baker. They have a big bakery. So, he baked, I think, 120 little challahs, like little rolls, and gefilte fish, tins of gefilte fish, and brisket that -- there was a kosher kitchen that had just opened next to the 84:00Alte-Neue shul, like a little Jewish center, but it was kosher and Hasidim could eat there. So, he brought all these fixings for kiddush -- for a Shabbos dinner after services. All this on the plane and everything, so -- and his name is Yehuda and his wife's name is Gila -- have to also tell you --- and we all went -- and on Pan Am. And I think we had to change for a Polish airline. No, Prague airline. But anyway, we all get on it at Kennedy, in the plane, and Yehuda and Gila aren't there. And we were, like, twenty-five people. And he was coming from Muncie, New York, which is a -- they're New Square Hasidim. Youngish people. And finally, they come on, and I was sitting toward the front. And I said, "Yehuda, did you run into a lot of traffic?" "No." I says, "Well, they almost -- we 85:00almost took off." Oh, and he comes in with a big cake. So, the stewardess says -- a big sheet cake. She says, "You can't bring that on." He said, "Well, you have to make room for it. It's this man's birthday, and we're having a big party." And she made room for it. So, anyway, he -- real gutsy man. And so, I said, "Well, why are you so late?" He said, "Yeah, there was no traffic. I just couldn't get away in time." So, I said, "Well, you probably had a hard time parking." He said, "No, no, I parked" -- it was before all the security -- "I parked right in front of the doors." I said, "They're going to tow the car away." He said, "Yeah." He said, "I'm gonna be in Israel for two weeks. It's cheaper to have them tow it than to pay for parking." (laughs) He -- really something. And so, anyway, we got to Prague and this government sent a guide. 86:00She was a young lawyer, actually, and spoke very fluent English. And she said, "If you're gonna change money, you can only change it at the hotel or a money changing place. Can't change money on the street." And so, who changed money on the street? Yehuda. He felt he was mainstream. Pinned his peyes back. He wore a leather jacket, the little tsitses [tassels on the prayer shawl or undergarment worn by Orthodox Jews] hanging out, but he -- and the leather cap, so he figured he would blend in. (laughs) But he was the one who changed money. But anyway, we went -- we -- our congressman, Ben [Gilman?], came with us, too. So, he got us -- some of us an audience with -- not an audience, but a meeting with the ambassador, in his house, which was this mansion. It was a ridge right outside 87:00of Prague. Well, it was in Prague, but sort of on the outskirts with these three mansions on that ridge. And his wife was there, she gave us a little guided tour of the house. It was magnificent. It was built in the early 1930s, and it had a pneumatic door. There was a stream running under the house, so the pneumatic door swung up like a garage door, in the house, it was glass, so they could go into the water from the house. It was amazing. And the dining room was huge, and that was the time when I had forty, forty-five people for Passover. This was March 26th, it was just before Passover, and I said to one of my friends who came on the trip, I said, "Boy, I could use this table for Passover." And she said, "Well, if you notice, there are holes where mezuzah were." She said, "This 88:00was a Jewish house." It was three brothers who were car dealers in Prague, and one sister-in-law wanted to outdo the other, so they bought this ridge, and each one bought -- had a house built. So, then, after the war, the United States took one and -- as their home, and I think Britain took the other, and Russia, the other. So, it was really -- it was a Jewish house, but the ambassador said to them, he said, "Why are you here?" It was a delegation, actually, from Israel Bonds, was -- we went under their umbrella. So, he said, "Well, it's this man's bar mitzvah." He said, "He's too old for a bar mitzvah," and he explained the story. And he said, "You didn't invite me." He said, "You're invited." So, he came with his whole staff and his wife, Saturday, and we were told the rabbi -- 89:00that was the first bar mitzvah that was done in the Alte-Neue shul since the war started, and the Soviets had a rabbi who was trained in Hungary, a young man, to be a rabbi. And he led the services. And our rabbi, he said, "Don't make any mention of Israel or anything, 'cause there are spies in the congregation." There were these two tall, very goyish-looking young men. Really different looking. Good-looking young men, very young. So, we figured they were the spies, right, so -- but our rabbi led some of the service, too, and he led one of the songs -- instead of using the traditional melody, he used the "HaTikvah" melody, and everybody walked around and everything. So, the women sat in the back, it was an Orthodox shul. So, one of the women said to me, in Yiddish, because she 90:00figured we were Jewish and I was able to answer -- she says, "Vi iz di bar-mitsve yingl [Where is the bar mitzvah boy]?" I said, "Right there, iz do [he's here]." "No, no, no, dos iz d'tate [that's the father]. Vi iz di yinge-man [Where is the young man]?" I said, "No," and then I explained to her what happened. So then, the ambassador was walking around with all his staff, and then we went for lunch with the meat and the gefilte fish and the challahs and whatever. But the congregation -- and it was a small congregation -- they couldn't sit at the tables with us. We wanted them to, but the officials, they said they can't mix. God forbid we should convert them to Western civilization. But anyway, we found out two years later -- who was the spy? The rabbi! And we 91:00went back again, quite a few years later, and one of these young men was the president -- was the, yeah, the president of the temple at that point. They were truly -- they had -- they were converts. And so -- but speaking Yiddish, I was able to converse. But we had a very interesting life, I think, and I took on a lot of his coloration, which, if I had married an American man, I would not have. I might have pursued things more to my interest, but he was so energetic and so positive about his ideas and feelings that I also did, and really, I think it was an idyllic marriage, and I think we set an example for our kids and grandkids. And our grandsons, all our grandson-- we have five grandsons and a 92:00step-grandson and two granddaughters. But the three oldest ones came in January. They were coming anyhow, but they came -- one from Kearney, Nebraska, and the other two from college. They had a break, and I was -- I said to them, "Grandpa has all these clothes, I -- probably give them to some kind of a shelter or whatever." And all of them said, No! Don't give any of grandpa's clothes until we look through them. And so, they took -- the three of them took almost all of his sweaters and a good number of his shirts, button-down shirts, and some of his Polos. And they came to shul with me that Saturday, and each one of them wore one of Reuben's shirts and a sweater. And they felt that he was enveloping them. So, he had to do something right to have that feeling.

CW:Yeah.

HS:And I wear his ring, 'cause he took it off just before he died, and I always 93:00wear it, next to my heart. So, he was the love of my life, but he introduced me to a different culture than I grew up with, different Jewish culture. And that's -- it's the end of an era, but it's also the beginning of an era, because hopefully, my grandkids will find a lot of joy in Yiddish and continuing the religion. None of them are religious, but they all belong to temples, and I hope that whoever they marry will hopefully be Jewish, but if not will go along with what they think, in their backgrounds. But that's it. Anything else?

CW:No, well, a hartsikn dank, thank you so much for --

HS:Yeah.

CW:-- for taking the time and sharing the memory of Reuben and also all these stories. Been wonderful.

HS:Well, I have a lot of pictures at home, in New York. So, I'll scan them --

CW:Great.

HS:-- if you could use them, and -- of -- in fact, if you want a copy of the one where he went back to his hometown, it's in Polish, but --

CW:Sure.

HS:-- you would see the town, basically the way it looks now, and -- from being a Yiddish town and a Yiddish-speaking town --

CW:It's very interesting.

HS:Yeah.

CW:So, it's been very interesting --

HS:Yeah.

CW:-- so thanks for --

HS:Oh, you're welcome.

CW:-- sharing with me and also with the Yiddish Book Center.

HS:Well, I just felt that, because he's not here, that this would perpetuate what his feelings and what his memories were.

CW:Yeah.

HS:And --

CW:Thanks.

[END OF INTERVIEW]