SIMON DOBJENSKY ORAL HISTORY

AGNIEZSZKA ILWICKA: This is Agniezszka Ilwicka, and today is March 29th, 2017. I'm here in Berkeley, California, with Simon Dobjensky, and we are going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Simon Dobjensky, do I have your permission to record this interview?

SIMON DOBJENSKY: Definitely.

AI: Thank you very much. Can you tell me briefly about your family background?

SD: My parents are from a small town in Poland named Belchatov in Yiddish or Bełchatów in Polish. It was a small town of a few thousand people. It was a Jewish town. My father comes from a large family. His father was an Aleksander 1:00Hasid. And he was one of those that in town, they would call them "batlens." "Batlens" meaning a "bum." But in earlier years, he would be considered a lamdn [learned person]. In the 1920s he was already a bum, meaning he was sitting in bes-midrash [house of prayer] all day, studying Torah, and his wife was supporting the family. His wife, my grandmother, was -- she was going to the villages, buying eggs, and selling it in town. This is how they made a living. 2:00My father doesn't have very fond memories of his father, not very close, and he died when my father was thirteen. At that point, my father stopped going to kheyder [traditional religious school]. Until then, my father would go -- he was made to go to kheyder. He didn't like it, and he stopped going to the kheyder. So, his father took him to the Aleksander Rebbe. And the Aleksander Rebbe sat in front of him, said, "So, di vilst nisht gayn tsum kheyder [So, you don't want to go to heder]?" And my father didn't -- he was scared. He didn't answer. "Du velst gayn tsum kheyder [You will go to heder]," and he shook his hand. And since then, he went back to the kheyder. And after his father died, he went to 3:00the public school, just for a short time. Then he went to work, at the age of -- early age, as an apprentice for -- this was a textile area, in the Łódź area, so he went to work as a -- apprentice. My mother -- background is quite -- a little different. She also comes from a large family. Her father is from -- I don't remember the town where he came from, to Belchatov. But he was from a family who was -- which was better off. He was educated, meaning he went to high school. And he knew Polish perfect. He could write and read. And actually, he 4:00would write letters to the authorities. People from villages and from town would come to see him, and he would write letters. But he was a balmelukhe [craftsman]. He was making the harnesses for horses. And how he became a balmelukhe when he came from a well-to-do family, my mother doesn't know. There is some story that I'm not privy to that there was a falling-out between him and the family. So, he ended up in Belchatov. He was working as a harness maker. And he married a widow who already had a few kids. So, altogether, they had a very large family. Of their both entire families, my mother's two brothers were -- 5:00one did not survive the war, one did. And both of them were in the Polish Army. And during the war with the Soviet Union -- they were much older than she was -- they defected and escaped to the Soviet Union. And after a while, they were arrested as Polish spies, and one ended up in the gulag, and he got out when he was an old man in the -- when -- after they released the gulag prisoners. And 6:00the other one, the older one, went to the Soviet Army and was killed in the war. The rest of the family were all gone. When the Germans came, they started executing people. And my mother and father left for the Soviet Union. The rest of the family stayed, and what we heard was that they had a ghetto in Belchatov, and they liquidated it to Chełmno. But much of the town went to the Łódź 7:00Ghetto, and they were sent to Auschwitz from there. And then, my parents were in the Soviet Union. My sister was born there. They were sent to Uzbekistan, to (UNCLEAR), and spent the war there. After the war, they came back.

AI: Simon, what was the name of your grandfather from your father's side?

SD: Moshe.

AI: Moshe? And the surname?

SD: Dobjensky.

AI: So, he already had a Polish name then.

SD: He had a Polish name, yes.

AI: And from your mother's side?

SD: His name was Simon Ferbaum.

AI: How did your parents meet?

SD: Oh, well, they meet in town. They are both from the same town. They had all kinds of youth meetings, political meetings, and so on. So they met. And they never gave me much -- many details about how they got together, how they got married. From everything that I heard, I understood that my mother had a -- some relationship before that, and it didn't work out. So, this was her second 9:00relationship, where she married.

AI: And did they get married before the war?

SD: Yeah, they got married before the war.

AI: Do you think that they had traditional wedding?

SD: I would think so, yes. Yeah. It would be very unusual to have non-traditional marriage. I think that they had another baby before that. I think he was conceived already in the Soviet Union, where -- he died there, when he was one year old. I don't think that my mother was pregnant when they left.

AI: What languages they were speaking all together?

SD: Yiddish. Between them and all the friends, everybody spoke Yiddish. My 10:00mother went to elementary school, and her father knew Polish, so she was much more fluent in Polish. She could read and write well in Polish. My father not so. He could speak Polish, but his primary language was Yiddish. Yeah, they also learned some Russian when they were in the Soviet Union. When we -- well, we'll get to that. When we got to Israel, they were already -- had, I think, too much life experience, and they didn't learn the language. They learned some, but not 11:00enough. And they were, like, living in the past. When they came back from the Soviet Union, they didn't expect to see what they did. Especially my mother was very much in shock. She couldn't find any of her relatives. They didn't know that everybody was killed. And it was a very bad time from what they were telling me. It was dangerous to travel, and it was dangerous for Jews. My father 12:00went back to Belchatov to see the town. And somebody he knew before the war put him up in his house and told him not to tell anybody that he's in town, not to go out, because people took the houses, and they would kill him because of -- properties. So, he stayed there for the day and left. They were settled -- the government sent them to Dolny Śląsk, to Lower Silesia, to Wrocław -- not 13:00Wrocław, to Bielawa, a town near Dzierżoniów. Bielawa. It was a small town where I was also born. And then, when I was about four years old, we moved to Dzierżoniów, where we lived until we left in 1957.

AI: What is your first image that you remember about Dzierżoniów?

SD: Dzierżoniów -- I don't know, but I was very young when we moved in, so I don't remember much because fir-- the things that I do remember is sitting on the stairs to -- in the building and crying because I wanted to go back home, to Bielawa. But what I remember fondly is -- parks. There was a park with very old, 14:00very big chestnut trees. And in the fall it was so beautiful and fragrant, and I would pick chestnuts there. And so, this is the parts that I really wanted to go back -- I grew up -- later we moved to Israel. There is no fall in Israel. And I really wanted to see fall: big trees, parks, and forests. And this is what I expected when, after my military service, I went to Europe for a trip. So, I 15:00always longed for those trees. And other things that I remember from Dzierżoniów were -- some things you cannot avoid. The town was bombed out. It was everywhere, just -- we were -- our house was in the main square. And next to it, there was a whole building that was in ruins, and kids were running around in the ruins, and we would -- occasionally somebody came across an unexploded shell or something like that. So, around the rynek [Polish: marketplace], the 16:00main square, except for this one building, the buildings were pretty intact. And the town hall was in the center of the square, was still there. But any street that you went out of were all ruins, rows of streets -- until you went out to the outskirts, the suburbs, which had small houses, like villages. They were okay.

AI: What was the name of the square where was your home?

SD: Plac Wolności. And now it's Runek. And I'm told that "Runek" is the word 17:00for the main square of the city.

AI: Rynek.

SD: Rynek.

AI: That's the one.

SD: I'm sorry. (both laugh) Rynek.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

SD: Now you want to know about language, I would think.

AI: Of course.

SD: Yeah.

AI: Please. I would like to know about language.

SD: So, when I was a kid, my parents spoke Yiddish between themselves. Everybody who came to visit spoke Yiddish. But my parents spoke to us, to me and my sister, they spoke in Polish. So, I would talk to them back in Polish, but I could understand Yiddish perfectly because everybody around was speaking Yiddish, and there were many Jews in town. In town, there were people who came 18:00back from the Soviet Union that spent the war as refugees and people who were expelled from the Polish parts that the Soviet Union took over. So, a large part of town was Jewish. Not majority, by any means. We went to a Jewish school, where we started learning Yiddish, actually, in third grade. So, I didn't have a chance to learn Yiddish. But my sister did. And of course this was a communist government, so no Hebrew was allowed. But the Yiddish teacher, since he had to 19:00teach the Hebrew words in Yiddish, he actually taught some Hebrew. But I wasn't privileged to start yet. Yeah. And I remember that I never knew that there are -- until I don't remember which age -- probably, like, five? -- I didn't know that there are Jews and Poles or anything like that, Jews and Christians. Because it never came up. My parents assumed that we know because everybody 20:00around there is Jewish and speaks Yiddish, until my sister told me, "We are Jews." So, I said, "Oh! Okay. What are Jews?" (laughs) Yeah. So, it wasn't -- it was an issue only when I would go out, and occasionally a Polish kid, he would call me "parszywy żyd," which is "dirty Jew." And later on, I was -- I got to be more and more aware of what it means to be a Jew and a Christian. Especially our school, we were a Jewish school. And this school was just next to a church. 21:00Somehow the churches -- there was a Catholic church and a Protestant church and a synagogue in town. They were not destroyed during the war. There were houses around that were destroyed. The churches and synagogue were not. So, I don't know whether it's by chance or deliberately they didn't want to shell those buildings. And where our school, the building that our school was in, used to belong to the church. It was part of the church property. But the government 22:00confiscated it and made the Jewish school there. And there were kids going to the church to -- for Sunday school. Well, not only on Sunday; during the week. I call it Sunday school. But religious school. And occasionally, they would go out and throw bricks at us. Bricks were abundant because of the ruins around. So, that was kind of scary. There were some injuries. No death. But it was scary. Especially -- and it would happen -- the priest wouldn't let us to the grounds 23:00of the church. We were staying after school. And there was a door between our building and the churchyard. And the snow in the churchyard was undisturbed and a lot of snow. So, we would sneak in and make snowmen. And when the priest saw us, he would chase us out. And some of the kids were not very respectful to the priest. A Christian kid would be respectful; a Jewish kid sees no difference 24:00between a priest and a regular person.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

SD: I would see the kids from the religious school coming to throw rocks. I remember also a -- we had a Polish letter carrier. We were on the fourth floor, so it was hard for him to bring the letters all the way up. But he would go up, and then my mother would make a cup of tea for him, and he would sit and talk to her in Yiddish. Turns out that he was from a Jewish town -- one of these, you 25:00know, Christian families that live in Jewish towns -- and he spoke Yiddish perfectly. And he always -- he longed to speak the language with somebody. So, he would go all the way up four floors to sit and for a chance to talk Yiddish. Yeah, I remember him. He was very nice guy, actually.

AI: Do you remember his name?

SD: I don't remember his name. No. And my parents told me that they had in town a few people, Christians, who could speak -- who were just, like, part of the town, except they were not Jewish, and they spoke -- and the language spoken in town was Yiddish, and they spoke Yiddish, just like everybody else. I don't know 26:00about other towns, if it was -- I would imagine that it was the same case in other towns that were primarily Jewish.

AI: What language did you speak with your friends in the neighborhood?

SD: With my friends? Polish. In school, we spoke Polish. We learned -- you know, the classes were in Polish, except for the Jewish class (coughs) that came later. Thank you. But the thing, when we moved back -- when we moved to Israel, 27:00suddenly our parents stopped talking Polish to us. They switched to Yiddish, not to Hebrew. They didn't speak Hebrew. They switched to Yiddish. So, we spoke to them in Yiddish. At that point, my sister was twelve years old, I was nine, and she could speak Yiddish much better than I could. And since I was concentrating on a new language and was important for me to be part of the new culture, my Yiddish was never as good as hers.

AI: Simon, I would like to come back to your school a little bit.

SD: Okay.

AI: First of all, if you -- do you recall the name of your school?

SD: No.

AI: And do you remember teachers' names, maybe?

SD: I don't remember their names. I remember their faces. Yeah. Don't remember the names.

AI: Can you describe the faces?

SD: I remember one -- the name of one teacher. Jablonka was her last name. Don't remember any others.

AI: Do you remember Handel?

SD: Handel. Do you know what he was teaching?

AI: I don't, but I know that she was teaching at the Jewish school, and she had two sons.

SD: The name sounds familiar. Handel.

AI: They were from very poor family, living on [Plac Vanoshi?].

SD: The name sounds familiar, actually. And how do you know her? Is she in Poland now, or --

AI: No. I know her sons. Both sons visited Poland.

SD: Um-hm. They live in Poland?

AI: In Israel.

SD: In Israel.

AI: In Haifa.

SD: I will look it up. I will ask my sister; she may know. She probably will know.

AI: Right. In your school, who were the people who attended to the school?

SD: The kids? All the Jewish kids, actually.

AI: In your class, did you have Polish fellows or not?

SD: No. I don't remember any non-Jews. Some teachers were Polish, but no students. The principal was also Jewish.

AI: Do you remember the name of the principal?

SD: No.

AI: That's okay. How long -- your journey from home to school, how did it look like?

SD: Well, we had to -- outside the school was all this bombed-down street. Then another street, it was -- it's hard for me to evaluate the distance now. But it would probably be half a mile or maybe three-quarters of a mile. So, it was one street, which was parallel to [Plac Vanoshi?] and another street, which was 31:00leading to [Plac Vanoshi?], then I would be right there and go to my house. And it was deep in snow in the winter. I don't think it was very eventful, except on the occasions when we were pelted with stones in the streets I'm describing outside the religious school. So, we would have to go there running.

AI: What was your parents' profession in Dzierżoniów?

SD: My father -- well, they were working in a small factory, which was a co-op. 32:00My father by profession was a weaver. But he went to work in this knitting co-op. And my mother worked there also. So, he worked with the machines, knitting machines. And she with the rest of the women, they were finishing the garments that they were making by sewing, hemming, and making -- and buttons, this kind of stuff. I would visit them occasionally at work. They seemed to be 33:00having a pretty good time at work, especially the women. They were all at one big table, and they were -- they would call it, "Nemen zay ofn tish," meaning they started talking about somebody and just relentless gossip, you know, just -- took him apart. So, "Nemen zay ofn tish." And where my father worked, with the machines, they didn't have a pretty bad time there either. They were doing 34:00their work, and they were conversing and so on. So, I think it was okay. Unlike if he was to work in a weaving factory, it's probably much more unpleasant. I visited him later, when he went back to his old profession as a weaver. Those machines are so noisy that he became deaf eventually. And my mother would also go and help. She also lost her hearing later in life. He was an expert on the 35:00old machines that nobody was buying anymore. Actually, the factory that he worked in in Israel, when he retired they closed it down, 'cause nobody knew how to repair them. They would break down all the time. He never got to work on the automated machines.

AI: So, they lived this life in Dzierżoniów until 1957. And what happened in 1957?

SD: In 1957, there was -- before -- you know, in 1956 there were --

CHRISTA WHITNEY: Do you want to get some water? We can get you some --

SD: I'm still okay. Nineteen fifty-six started the events in Gdansk, and there 36:00was an uprising in Hungary; there were events in Poland; and pretty mu-- a lot of upheaval. And yeah, we were always listening to either the BBC or "Voice of America" in Polish, even though it was interrupted. My father would keep changing channels to catch the station. And then, the government changed. Gomułka came to power. I think he was in jail until then. He was released and came to power. And they decided to let all the Jews leave, whoever wanted. I 37:00don't know what brought that about, but there was a relaxation of everything. People started talking more freely in the street. But that brought about also a resurgence of anti-Semitism, and you could see it in the street, and there was even intent for -- to a pogrom in the city square. But that was suppressed very quickly by the secret police. Still active. And they came, and -- there was one guy who instigated it. What we heard later was that he was holding his child, and his child was crying, and he started screaming, "The Jews tried to kidnap -- 38:00to grab my child to make matzahs." And there was -- a few people came and started cha-- there was a Jew in the square; they started chasing him. He ran into a shop, and the shopkeeper kept the crowd out. He wouldn't let them in until the police came. And they got the instigator and beat him up on the way to the police station so everybody could see. And that was the only incident. But there were individual incidents here and there. But the Jews were scared. And people started leaving; then those who stayed didn't feel comfortable anymore. 39:00So, eventually, almost everybody left. And when we left, we were -- we went to Legnica to get on the train. So, we were sitting there waiting for the train. And there came -- you know, there are always late at night in train stations. There are somebod-- a drunk who doesn't have -- where to go. There are always places open at the train station. So, he was there, and he came and started a conversation with us. "So where are you going? Are you waiting for a train? Where are you going?" We're going to Israel. "Israel. Oh. Are you going for a visit?" No, we are leaving. So, he said, "You are leaving? You are leaving 40:00Poland? Why are you leaving Poland?" So, we said, We are Jews. We are leaving Poland. "So what? So why are you -- so why do you have to leave? It is your country. Why do you leave for good?" And my parents told him, 'Cause we are discriminated against, the kids meet people who call them names, and we don't feel safe here. So, he started crying, "How can you leave your country? It is where you are born, when you were born, where your parents were born, and so on. How can you leave your own country?" And he was actually -- he was in tears. And I was very impressed with that. (laughs)

AI: And that was your last goodbye with Poland.

SD: Yeah.

AI: How your journey to Israel look like? Because I assume that you had, like others, one-way passport, right?

SD: We had one-way passport. Yeah. And Polish citizenship was taken away.

AI: Can you explain? Because maybe the audience of our project may not understand what does it mean to have the one-way passport?

SD: Means that we could go to our destination, but we couldn't go back to Poland. You know, I was still a kid; I didn't understand what a passport is. I just was told that we are leaving, and we cannot go back. And we were given -- 42:00we were allowed to take -- I don't remember how much money it was -- not much, some money. And if you -- we sent out some furniture on a ship, was shipped out in a crate, some furniture and some belongings and our suitcases. How much money it was, I don't know, but it wasn't much, because my parents were told to bring cigarettes to sell in Italy, bring with them Polish sausage and apples to eat on 43:00the way, (laughs) 'cause there's plenty of apples in Poland. So, this is what they did. What they didn't know is that Polish cigarettes are completely worthless in Italy. (laughs) They were trying to sell them -- nobody would buy, and they just gave them away to people who didn't want to pay for cigarettes. So, our journey -- we took a train that didn't stop anywhere until we got to Vienna. Then we got to Vienna, and suddenly I see a city with neon lights, big city with big houses and shops and -- we came from a town where everything was bombed out. There was one restaurant that sold only meatballs, and there was a 44:00shoe store in the house next to us at the bot-- in the square, where maybe twice or three times a year they had a shipment of shoes --

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

AI: Simon, how did you feel during this whole time? What was this experience for you?

SD: I was happy to leave. It was very exciting. We had an adventure going to a new country. And actually, we knew -- six months before we left, we knew that we are leaving. And I stopped going to school, 'cause what's the point? And we just talked about how it's going to be and so on and so on. I was very excited. For 45:00my sister, it was -- yeah, she was happy to go, but she was more ambivalent about it. My parents -- this I heard later -- my mother didn't really want to go. My father did. 'Cause my mother is more traditional. She had much more connection to her old family and traditions, even though none of them was religious.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

SD: She would buy matzahs on Passover, but we didn't keep kosher. My father didn't care about tradition. So, my mother was also attached to the place, not 46:00just to the memories of her family. So, she was pretty sad to leave. And when we got to Israel, it was very -- it was tough. We were sent to a place, not in the Negev but near the Negev, named Kiryat Gat, which wasn't built up yet.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

AI: Where did you live originally? In what kind of buildings?

SD: In this corrugated metal shack.

AI: Which were extremely hot.

SD: It was. And when we got there, it was May. May first or the last days of 47:00April. When we left Poland, it was snowing. And we spent time in Italy and in Naples. When we got to Israel, it was May, the first of May or the last day of April, I don't remember. And they had this chamsinim, which are heat waves. It can get very hot. And it was terribly hot in that shack. We had to stay outside. And I think I got a -- not a heatstroke, but something close to it. Heat 48:00exhaustion or something like that.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

SD: So, my mother would sit there at the entrance to the shack and cry and say to my father, "Where did you bring us to?" (laughs) She didn't like it. So, on the way -- it was also the same time when -- after the suppression of the Hungarian uprising. And we had people from Hungary on the boat with us from Naples. But yeah, first we got to Naples from -- yeah, in Austria -- I started telling you about Vienna. Vienna was a shiny city. I've never seen anything like it. And they took us around in a tour -- they gave us a tour of the city in a 49:00bus. They took us around. And I was so amazed that I got -- I was exhausted in the end and just fell asleep, woke up in the hotel room. Then we went all the way to Naples, where we waited for our boat to Haifa. It was Passover. And the hotel wasn't prepared for Passover food. So, they were serving us each for dinner one matzah and chicken soup with matzah ball. So naturally, we were hungry. And almost started the riots. People started screaming that they want 50:00food. They were saying it in languages that the Italian owners couldn't understand, and the hotel owners came in and started screaming. Then there was a rabbi who was in charge of feeding the refugees. And he tried to quiet down the crowd. But we had to sell whatever we could to get some money, Italian money, and buy some food outside. Then we got on the boat, and on the boat there were people from Hungary, which were -- looked like a completely different breed, to 51:00me. They were well-clothed. They didn't speak Yiddish. And they seemed to be -- to have much better manners than our people. And we were all together sent to this place, Kiryat Gat, in Israel. We were put on trucks at night, and in the morning we woke up. We arrived in this place full of metal shacks. And the 52:00Hungarians started screaming, Auschwitz, and they wouldn't get off the trucks. The Polish Jews got off, and they started running around, looking for the best shack for (laughs) -- to place -- to take. Eventually everybody got off. And we stayed there for about a month. And then we moved to Yafo, where my father found a job as a weaver in -- he found a job in Tel Aviv, so we stayed in Yafo.

AI: How Yafo look back then in --

SD: How what?

AI: How Yafo looked back then?

SD: Well, we lived in the outskirts of Yafo. Yafo was a town that -- it used to 53:00be an Arab town, Palestinian town. It again is an Arab town now. But back in '47, '48, all the Arabs escaped from the -- from some parts of town. This was always very curious to me, why there are some parts that the population stayed and other parts that -- where everybody left. And when I looked into it, I realized that the parts where they left were the parts where the Haganah and the 54:00Lehi people advanced to. The parts where they stopped, the population stayed. So, they were running ahead of the advanced soldiers -- well, they were not actually soldiers; they were kind of militia. And those that where the Jewish forces didn't reach them, they didn't move. And actually, near my neighborhood there was one entire neighborhood that was an Arab neighborhood, and they were all there. It was pretty segregated, you know, Jewish neighborhoods and Arab 55:00neighborhoods. 'Cause they spoke Arabic; everybody else spoke Hebrew. And there was no -- much interactions. There was some. And they had orchards. There were orchards all around. And the Arabs in that neighborhood were either the owners or the people who worked the orchards, and the owners disappeared, so they became the owners. And inside the center -- do you know where -- Yafo?

AI: Um-hm.

SD: Yeah. The center of the city is where the port is. Ajami is the -- Ajami was 56:00actually mixed Jewish and Arab neighborhood. And parallel to the sea there was a street, it was called "Rechov shishim," which is Sixtieth Street. But now it became Rechov kedem. That was all Arab. Now most of the Jews left. And the Arab families -- they had their large families, and they just moved into the rest of town. And other towns outside Yafo, like Bat Yam.

AI: I wonder how Yiddish fit in this new landscape.

SD: Okay. So, my parents spoke Yiddish. My father went to work in -- there were -- there is an industrial area in Tel Aviv, Rechov Salome, which is now Rechov Shlomo, which was all small shops, small workshops. And this is where his factory was. And everybody in the street, textile, was from Poland, and they all spoke Yiddish. The only language spoken inside the shop and in much of the area 58:00was Yiddish. There were other languages spoken, which was Ladino, especially among the people who were doing transport. They were from Thessaloniki, which they called Saloniki, which is -- Thessaloniki is Greek, and they are not Greeks, they are not Turkish, they are from Saloniki, a Jewish town. So, they were speaking Ladino. In my neighborhood, most of the people were from Bulgaria. And they spoke Bulgarian and Ladino. So actually, I learned how to speak Bulgarian a little bit because they would -- they knew that I'm from Poland and 59:00that I didn't speak Hebrew yet, so they spoke to me Bulgarian. And I understood. And so, I learned a little bit. And my parents could communicate in Russian with the neighbors, with the people in the neighborhood. They all spoke Russian, and it's very close to Bulgarian, actually. Yeah. I don't know why it is that Bulgarian is probably of the -- in the Balkans, the closest Slavic language to Russian. Closer than Serbian or Croat or any other. Now, that's off the subject. (laughs) Do you know why? You don't know. Okay.

AI: We have to find out.

SD: We have to find out. Because the theory is that the Bulgarians are descendent of the Huns that settled in the Balkans, and they acquired the language from the Slavic neighbors, from Kyr-- but how is it that their language is closer to Russian than all the others? That debunks this theory. (laughs) They must have spoken it before they got there.

AI: Right. Simon, I wonder, if Yiddish was the spoken language in your home, did you have some things that were very typical to your home in Yiddish, like songs or something that you did as a family?

SD: Well, you know, the family was pretty small. We didn't celebrate religious 61:00festivals, religious holidays. So, the people who came to visit, my parents all spoke Yiddish. And they told stories. Most of them came from Soviet Union. They were telling stories about the Soviet Union, about the town and so on. And occasionally, they would sing songs in Yiddish. In Israel, again, everybody who came to visit spoke Yiddish. Where my parents worked, people were doing all their business in Yiddish. And there was -- they were listening to Yiddish 62:00programs on the radio. And those Yiddish programs had news programs and lots of songs. Much of them were songs sang by American singers, like Theodore Bikel. Some were in -- I don't think that they had any songs preserved from back in Poland, but only the same songs that were sang later, either in Israel or in America, that were recorded.

AI: Do you remember any of --

SD: But I remember. Yeah, I remember quite a few. Yeah. And there was a pretty great variety, and -- both in pronunciation and in music. Until we went to Israel, I heard only Polish accents, Polish pronunciation of Yiddish. But when you got there, there were people from Romania, for example, that I had a hard time to understand. They spoke differently. People from Ukraine that spoke -- it was easier to understand them. They sounded different. And Lithuania, we didn't 64:00have much -- we didn't meet many people from Lithuania. Yeah. But until Israel, everybody spoke -- different regions of Poland, but it was all Polish.

AI: What's the distinction between those dialects that you remember?

SD: Well, for example, in Poland, you would say -- what would be a good example? 65:00Like when proper Yiddish you would say, "skin" was "hut," and in the Polish Yiddish dialect is "hoet." There is "shuster [shoemaker]," and there is "shister." Occasionally we would hear -- the less sophisticated people would use language as "Irs [I]," "Irkh," not "Ikh," and "yuer [year]." "Yur," like my parents would say "yuer"; others would say "yur." But the Romanians would say it 66:00even differently. And the reysh, for example, in Polish Yiddish is "reysh" -- it's a throaty reysh. The Romanians would have a rolling "r." And so did the Ukrainians. I cannot tell that this is how everybody speaks. This is how the people that I came across did. I cannot think of examples to tell you, but I remember the sounds, which are very different.

AI: Do you remember some favorite songs in Yiddish?

SD: Favorite songs. I remember that song that was sang in a very -- in a colloquial pronunciation. Like (singing) "Okh in vay iz tsu mior, tsu mayne inge yoer. Ale vi ikh hob gefiort, gantse dray-firte yuer. [Alas and alack to me, to my young years. All those that I lived through, a full thirty-forty years.]" You could hear that. They don't say "yur," "yuer," "miakh [to me (dative)]," "mior [to me (accusative)]" and so on, so on. Another song that I remember was (singing) "Oyfn veg shteyt a boym,/shteyt er ayngeboygn./Furt a yid kayn erets 68:00tsu un mit bavayntike oygn. [By the road stands a tree,/it stands bent over./A Jew is off to the Land with tears in his eyes.]" And some people made the second stanza to be like, (singing) "Alts iz far alts, alts iz far alts, 'khuts fun di hoylike toyre. Furt a yid tsu erets-yisroel un gegangen tsu skhoyre. [Everything is for everyone, everything is for everyone, except for the holy Torah. A Jew goes to the Land of Israel and goes into business.]" What else? Yeah, "Rozhinkes mit mandlen [Raisins and almonds]," I would hear a lot. This was a lullaby. There was Theodore Bikel songs. "Shteyt a bukher, shteyt [A young man is standing, standing] --" (singing) "Shteyt a bukher, shteyt un trakht,/Trakht un trakht a gantse nakht [A young man is standing, standing and thinking,/thinking 69:00and thinking all night long]." And some other of his songs. There were the -- I like this Romanian singer. There was this song, "Rumania, Rumania." And it was pretty much Romanian music. So, it was a little different than the kind of music that we had. And much of the -- Mordkhe Gebirtig songs that -- most of them were to a melody that -- well, I wasn't going to synagogue, but later on my kids had 70:00bat mitzvah. So, we went to -- and I listened to some of the chanting. And it's very similar to the chantings in the synagogue, many of the Gebirtig songs. And one that was an Avrom Reyzen song -- I think it's Avrom Reyzen. (singing) "Make mashmalon der zayger, to vu-zhe gest tsu mir tsu reydn [What is the clock indicating, oh, why is it talking to me?]." And this is exactly the melody of the haftorah, the reading of the haftorah, the blessing for the reading of the haftorah. When I heard it when my daughter was studying it, this is this song, 71:00"Make mashmalon der zayger." What other songs -- that I like -- there were the Barry Sister songs. They were pretty popular. (singing) "Halevay volt ikh geven a pomerants, halevay volt ikh geven a pomerants [If only I were an orange, if only I were an orange]" and these kind of songs. But they were popular here in the US as well as in Israel among Yiddish speakers.

AI: What about songs from the streets? Did people sing on the streets in Yafo?

SD: In Yiddish?

AI: Um-hm.

SD: In Yiddish, no. Yiddish speakers -- in Yafo -- were in a minority. So, no. Well, it -- people didn't sing much in street. In Hebrew they did, you know.

AI: And in Dzierżoniów, of course the language was spoken on the street, but people were singing on the street back then or no?

SD: Not in street. They were singing when they were getting together at home. They were singing all kinds of songs. But I understand -- it's old people, funny old people. (laughs) Yeah. But they were singing.

AI: Do you remember anything from that time?

SD: Well, there was this song, (singing) "Vi bistu geveyn, ven dos gelt iz 73:00geveyn/un der nadn iz gelign oyfn tish?/Haynt bisti du, ven di hur iz shoyn gru [Where were you when there was money around/and the dowry was sitting on the table?/Now you are here, when my hair is grey] --" and I don't remember the rest. And they turned it because they had traveled in life and no money, so they were singing (singing) "Vi bistu geveyn, ven dus gelt iz geveyn, un dos lebn iz geven tsukerzis?/Haynt bisti du, ven kayn gelt iz nishdu, un dos leybn iz bitergal. [Where were you when there was money around and life was sweet as sugar?/Now you are here when there's no money anywhere, and life is bitter.]" They'd change it. So originally, it's a song of regret for not following their 74:00love and whatever. And it became a song of mild protest about the situation. Back in Poland, there was -- people were not speaking openly about the -- what the -- how they felt. But, there were these kupkes [small groups] of people in the street, Jews. They were huddling together, and they were talking politics. In Yiddish. So, I'm sure whoever wanted to understand could understand. But they felt kind of protected because they spoke a language that the authorities 75:00couldn't understand. I'm sure they could. Yeah. And there was -- I could feel that people are resentful of authorities, of the authorities. I remember one example; we went to see a movie. That was already when Khrushchev was in power in the Soviet Union. And it was after Bierut died, and there were all these people who were suddenly dying, all the old guard Stalinist rulers of the Soviet bloc. And they all died -- they all died of a cold. They all got a cold or flu, 76:00and they died. That was the pronouncement. Some of them got it when they visited the Soviet Union. So, there was -- I don't remember whose funeral it was. It could have been Bierut. And it was in Moscow. And everybody was there, without a hat. And then, there was Mao Zedong, wearing a fur hat. You know, on the movie screens, they showed that. And somebody shouted, "He's afraid to catch cold!" (laughs) And everybody laughed.

[BREAK IN RECORDING]

AI: Why did you decide to go to kibbutz?

SD: Well, I was -- I joined a youth movement, Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir. It's a left-wing 77:00youth movement. And I thought that life in a kibbutz, communal life and so on, is the way to go, is the ideal. So, I joined. And I stayed there till I got kind of disillusioned and left, in '72.

AI: So, for how long did you stay?

SD: I stayed -- well, that -- including my military service -- I joined before I joined the military, in '67. So, it was five years.

AI: And what was the moment when you -- of your awaking (sic) that this is not the path to go?

SD: It was gradual. I didn't come to think that this is not the right way for 78:00people to live. I came to think that I don't fit in, that it's not for me. And much of it is -- a kibbutz is a small village. And people are not thinking about how to live a perfect, pure, socialist life. They think about their life, they think how terrible is the other person, they gossip, they can -- anybody who is -- does not conform can be ostracized. And I've seen it happening a lot. And I 79:00didn't like it. And I didn't conform myself, myself I didn't conform to -- I just wouldn't be -- I realized that the people who actually stay there and live there are pretty close-minded. And they are not open to any ideas or to any other behavior, to people who are different. They like to have their life to conform to a certain way of living, to a standard. And much of it is moral 80:00standards, which is lifestyle, sex, the usage of recreational drugs, for example. And even behavior that in anywhere else in town would be considered just fine, in this very close community, it's being out of line. So, I felt very constricted, and I left.

AI: And you left to where?

SD: I left to Tel Aviv. I lived there for a while. Then I went to travel in Europe. I was there for two years, then came back to Israel and came to the US. And I came to the US because my wife is American. I met her back in Israel, and then I came to join her. And when I was in Tel Aviv I actually liked it, liked it a lot. Tel Aviv is a nice town.

AI: Simon, when did you discover Yiddish for yourself? You are part of the regular meeting group --

SD: Yeah.

AI: -- and I would like you to share this part of story.

SD: I would correspond with my mother in Yiddish. So, when we talked on the phone, I would talk to her in Yiddish, and she would write me letters, I would write back in Yiddish. And when she died, I felt that I would have nobody to talk to Yiddish to, and I wanted to preserve it for the memory of my mother. This is when I joined the class here.

AI: What year was that?

SD: It was about eight years ago, six, seven? I don't remember exactly anymore. 83:00Yeah. It was seven years ago or so. When I joined the class, it was -- Eli was running the class. And then, he got the stroke, and Yael Chaver took over. So, I was there the last year of Eli. Did you ever have a chance to meet him? No?

AI: Would you like to say something about him because what he contributed to the community's very meaningful.

SD: Yeah. Unfortunately, when I joined, he was already after his first stroke. And he was already limited. So, I didn't have a chance to get to know the Eli 84:00that everybody is admiring. He was running the class, and Yael was also there. He was not reading from texts. I think he already had a hard time. His speech was fine. But it wasn't as good as probably as before. So, I joined too late. Yael, though, is a good reader. Occasionally she would be reading when there was nobody assigned to the page. She's teaching in UC. And she had other classes 85:00(coughs) for beginners. Thank you. Actually, I didn't know which class to join, so I walked to one of her intermediary classes that Yael was running, and she told me, "What are you doing here? You belong to that other class." (laughs) Which I joined. And I really enjoyed the class. We were reading "Di brider Ashkenazi [The brothers Ashkenazi]" when Eli was there. It was a big book. It took us a very long time to finish it. And I really enjoyed the class, a lot.

AI: Is this group your only one way to keep your Yiddish alive?

SD: Well, right now, yes. I'm thinking of maybe joining other groups. I looked into some of the gatherings of conversational and so on. And many of them are people who want to spend time with other people, and I'm still working. I'm not retired yet. So, I don't know if it's a good use of my time. But I will probably retire next year, and I will look into some other groups. Do you know of other 87:00groups that are -- which ones?

AI: I will share this with you later.

SD: Okay.

AI: Simon, I have a question to you. From your perspective of a person who grew up in Yiddish-speaking home, what do you see as the future of Yiddish language?

SD: Well, the only future of Yiddish language is in the Hasidic community. They are the only people who continue speaking Yiddish. The rest is just an academic language. People in academia study it. This is how things evolve. For example, now there is no future for Ladino. And it will happen the same with Yiddish. 88:00Actually, I think that in Israel, Yiddish was spoken much more than it continued being spoken here in the United States. I don't know about Argentina. In Argentina, I don't know if there are still any -- actually spoken Yiddish in Argentina. I know that there are people who speak Yiddish, who write in Yiddish and so on. And it was a spoken language until early -- until '50s or maybe '60s. But I have relatives in Argentina, and my father's cousin came to visit. And his 89:00grandkids also came, grown-up people already. They couldn't speak a word Yiddish. He was talking to my parents in Yiddish. And they used to correspond, all letters in Yiddish. So, I would think that it's true for the rest of the community there. And here, people only know words like "shlepn [to carry]" and so on. They just know words that sound funny to them. And in Israel, there are 90:00people who are nostalgic about Yiddish, there are classes being taught in Haifa and in Tel Aviv University, but the younger people -- some still understand, some still speak, but they don't converse. If you don't converse, you don't continue the language.

AI: A sheynem dank far dayn tsayt mit undz [Thank you very much for the time you've taken with us].

SD: Bite, s'i'geven a fargenign [Please, it's been an honor].

CW: Ikh hob -- etlekhe frages oyb ir kent [I have -- a couple of questions, if you can?. Can you just ask --

AI: Of course. Okay. How did you feel when your sister told you you were Jewish?

SD: Uh, I just didn't feel like it's anything important. Okay. So, we are. Okay. 91:00It wasn't a surprise for me. It was just a fact.

AI: And do you know what it was for her?

SD: 'Cause I never thought that I'm anything at all. I never thought of myself as Polish or Jewish or anything. So, okay, I'm classified as Jewish. All right. Fine.

AI: And do you know what it was for her?

SD: I don't know when she found out. She knew before she told me. So no, I don't know. I don't think it was a big shock for her because I think she knew it before she could understand what being Jewish means.

CW: Sorry. Oops. (laughs)

AI: Looking back, what was your feeling about the Yiddish language growing up?

SD: In Israel?

AI: Also in Poland.

SD: In Poland? It was just a -- the other language that I knew. And it was the language, too, that my parents communicated in. I didn't have any feeling of not -- of rejecting it or being proud of it, just the language that -- a spoken language, a way to communicate. In Israel, it's different. I never -- there is 93:00this thing in Israel about something they'd call "Galuti," which is a exiled Jew with characteristics which I -- I think this is -- characteristics of exiled Jews are taken out pretty much of an anti-Semitic caricature. And there was this attitude in Israel of -- regarding people who spoke Yiddish or a language from some other diaspora cultures as being Galuti. So, it's not us Israeli sabras, 94:00but -- so it probably wasn't cool to speak Yiddish. But I didn't really care. I never liked this attitude. Even though I really wanted to fit in. Because it's a conflicting sentiment. I wanted to fit in. I was actually desperate to fit in. Because you can understand, somebody who came from Poland, didn't fit in there, and came to another country, and he saw all these kids who are -- well, there is another thing, a difference between Israeli kids and kids in Poland. There is no fear. And we grew up in fear. We were told -- there was fear everywhere: from 95:00the authorities, from Polish neighbors, from -- and you could feel it. And it came down to the kids also. And in Israel, those kids, they fear nothing. We would play around outside all day, and they were not respectful of us. They even were not respectful of adults, which is -- for people who grew up in Poland, it's unheard of. And I liked it. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be one of them. 96:00So, in many ways, I did succeed. But my background was different. I came from Poland; my parents spoke Yiddish. But I never felt like I should give that up.

AI: What are the role of Hebrew and Yiddish for you in your sense of identity?

SD: Yeah, that's a very hard question. Because Hebrew became my first language, and still is, even though I'm here from -- I've been here for many years, it's still my primary language. I speak on the phone with my friends in Hebrew. I go 97:00to visit, and we speak in Hebrew. And so, Yiddish is the language of my parents. And English is the language to communicate with my surroundings. My primary language is Hebrew.

AI: Do you remember the moment when it did happen?

SD: Well, after I learned Hebrew when I was a kid. I learned it very quickly. And from that moment on, Hebrew was my primary language. I was still reading 98:00books in Polish that we brought with us until I switched to Hebrew, and then gradually, I forgot Polish. I still remembered Yiddish because this was my way to communicate with my parents. So actually, I came to appreciate Yiddish recently. Because I wasn't reading books in Yiddish. I was only speaking and corresponding in Yiddish. And my parents would read books in Yiddish to each other aloud. Mostly my mother would read them. And they had quite a few books in 99:00Yiddish. I glanced into them occasionally, and I read Yiddish books in translation. Only here I started reading the old -- the Yiddish texts. That was, like, seven years ago or so. And this is when I came to appreciate the language much more: as a language with a rich history, rather than a way to communicate only.

AI: And what does Yiddish mean to you?

SD: Yiddish means to me not only the language. It's the entire culture that was 100:00left behind in Poland, that we have only memories of in those Yiddish books. Yeah. That culture is no longer here. You know, if you say -- the Hasidic communities, it's not that. It's not Jewish life in Poland. It evolved into something completely different. It's a very closed and zealous community. From what I hear, the majority of Jews back in Poland, in other countries in the Russian Empire, lived normal life, and they had both secular and observant, but 101:00not strictly zealous religious life. The religion was part of the culture, part of life here. Big part of it. And the language was part of it. And so, that is left only in the literature.

AI: Thank you very much for this.

SD: You're welcome.

AI: Dziękuję [Polish: Thank you].

CW: Dziękuję.

SD: Proszę [You're welcome].

[END OF INTERVIEW]