Early Years: To 1939

Tsivye as a young woman

Here is what Tsivye recorded about her childhood:

I tell you from my part, like it says in Akdamot: if all the woods, all the trees of the forests of the world would be pens, and all the oceans ink, I wouldn’t be able to write all that happened to us, and how things went.  It’s impossible. 

First I would like to bring out the memories how World War I started and how this hit us.  We were established in a small shtetl called Radymno, where I was born.  We were four children.  The youngest was Avrum, your uncle, who was then a year and a half.  This I can remember very well.  When we heard the War broke out and the Russians were coming, we had to flee, because we were told about them very cruel things – that is, which for those days were very cruel; but for what we saw in World War II there’s no comparison.  Anyway, I remember my mother standing behind the counter in the store giving whatever… without money, with money … for the Austrian marching soldiers.  Our shtetl was in Galicia, and Galicia in those days was part of the Austrian Empire of Kaiser Franz Joseph.   My mother cooked for them rice, whatever she could, and gave it out – a few days of war and already they were hungry.  Everything was very disorganized. 

I remember how we felt that we had to pack up and leave.  I never can free myself from this terrible feeling.  This was Shabbos morning.  Friday night no kiddush, no davening, nothing.  With our neighbors and a few other families, we hired a man with horses and buggy.  We had our bedding, clothing, a little bit of food.  We set out.  My older sister and my younger sister Scheindl were crying, they were cold and hungry.  I joined in too.  The little one was best off, he was bundled up, he was still breast-fed.  By the way we saw all kinds of things – marching soldiers, dead horses, houses already ruined, even Austrian soldiers looting – terrible scenes.   We arrived in a very small shtetl called Bobov.  I remember one lady helped my mother with the children.  Our parents didn’t pay attention to what we children wanted; when we demanded something, whether we were right or wrong, they slapped us left and right.  Altogether we were three families in a small room.  The bedding was spread out on the floor.  We slept like dogs.  The Jews from this shtetl made some contributions, they took big tables and put them in the schul; whoever was there could go and eat whatever was available.  Meanwhile there was a sickness, a small child in the same room died.  It was a terrible experience.

Next morning we set out further and further.  With difficulties we got on to a train and went to Czechoslovakia.  It took a few days and nights until we arrived there.  We were among other people from our shtetl and from other shtetls, displaced persons who’d run away from their homes.   We were taken to a big hall – I think it was a theater, with a gallery.  Everybody was given a place to put their bedding and put up the children.  We were fed, supported by the Government. 

We stayed there, in Auherzen, for a couple of days.  Father went out to look for work, food to feed us.  In the nearby town Nyrshan there were some German Jews who supported us.  They looked upon us as from above but, you know – Jewish solidarity.  So they helped us with clothing and bedding as much as they could.

This was the time before the High Holidays.  In Nyrshan there were more families, refugees from Galicia, and they made a minyan.  My father took me to measure the distance, if this is within the Shabbos / Yom-Tov tchum – if we can go to the minyan.  So it looked like the right length and we went to Nyrshan to daven.  We went out early, so there were no incidents.  But on the way back we had to pass some other villages – German villages – and we had a rain of stones, and all kinds of dirty words and songs about us.  This was my first encounter of how the Gentiles “love” us.  It’s indoctrinated in them, in the kids.

In the third year of being in this village, Auherzen, my youngest brother Moshe – or, as we called him, Monye – was born.  It was really a plight.  Nothing had been prepared for the child.   I was his nanny.  My mother had enough work to do.  Moshe was born before Pessach.  It was a belated Pessach: this was a leap year.   It was a really hard – Mother couldn’t work to prepare.  We did everything possible to help her.   How old was I?  Eight.  My older sister was ten.  Moshe was a few months old.   The war was at its height, 1916, with no end in sight.  Although we were five kids in the family with nothing to live on, Father was called to the army.  In the beginning he could exchange this by going to the mines.  He went for a couple of months.  I remember him holding his lantern leaving home in the morning when it was still dark, and coming home at nightfall all black and dirty from the coals.  But this didn’t help too much. After a couple of months he had to go to the army.  This was real terrible.

In 1917 we could go home, but we didn’t have a home.  In Galicia everything was burnt down.  It was very bad, to come back and not to have a place. We went to Lezhensk to my mother’s relatives.  We stayed by our uncle, then another uncle.  Finally we got a little room and we moved in.  We had no furniture, nothing in the house.  But one thing I remember is that my parents saw to it that we never starved.  What kind of food – it doesn’t matter – but food in the house, there should be no hunger.    

When the war was over Father came back.  We had to start all over again.  We found a bigger apartment – not really an apartment – a room: the kitchen, the stove, everything was in one room.  All five of us children and the parents lived in one room.  We looked around for a way to have a livelihood.  Our parents started to work very hard to buy grain and eggs and butter and to resell them.  The time came to go to school, but there were almost no books.  We had to buy paper – not white paper, but very plain paper, a few leaves sewn together.  And that’s all we had for our first years of school.  A few kids had one book – not always was this book available even to a few kids.  So we had to wait for our turn to use the book to do our homework.  And at school our teachers didn’t want to know about anything, the lessons had to be done.

I forgot to mention what changes took place after the war.  Austria fell apart.  In place of Austria little nations became independent, among them Poland.  Poland had been divided 125 years between Austria, Germany and Russia.  The peace treaty at Versailles declared Poland independent.  How to celebrate independence?  How can a nation celebrate independence?  By beating up Jews.  Why?  No reason – for hitting Jews there doesn’t have to be any reason.  They just felt very happy.  So we had to hide again like mice in their mouse holes.  This took quite a few months until everything got quieted down.  It was a terrible experience.  The first Prime Minister Pilsudski helped to quiet down those hooligans.   Quite a few of them were punished.  There was a pogrom in little shtetls like Strzyzow, where Meyer came from, and other shtetls.  There were even a lot dead.  But he, Pilsudski, somehow made them quiet down

Then there came inflation, and everything was so expensive.  We wanted to come forward in the world, have a bigger apartment, more material things, but it was very hard.  My uncle, Mother’s brother, lived in Frankfurt-am-Main; he used to send us money and clothes from his children.  This was a big support.  It took quite a few years until our parents and we got on our feet. 

It would be a too big task to tell how the winters went on without proper heat and clothing, and what kind of dresses we wore and what kind of food we ate.  Dresses – the oldest had the new dress, then we used to make from the old new and hand it down.  I don’t know if anybody can imagine how this went.  But one thing I can take credit: there were no complaints, anything we got we were very happy.  We looked healthy.  And any time we got something it was a big holiday.

***

Mechel’s family was even more impoverished than Tsivye’s.  Lezajsk was a market-town of five thousand people, so that there were some commercial possibilties there; while Dubiecko was deeper in the countryside, and had only a few hundred souls.  Aryeh Leib, Mechel’s father, was a melammed.  His charges’ parents were as penurious as he; it was difficult to get food on the table with the few coins they paid him.  Amidst the poverty, he demanded a strict regime of study and prayer from his son.   

Here is what Mechel said about his childhood:     

I started cheder when I was three.  At age five I was already learning Gemarah.  The melamdim hit us if we didn’t listen, even with sticks.  Once, on a Shabbos, my father sent me to his friend Lazer Pinchas Haim so he should test me.  I didn’t know my lessons.  When Father heard this he whipped me.  The next week you can be sure I knew my lessons by heart.

At age six I moved up to my father’s cheder – I was the youngest.  Father gave his lessons in our house.  We had one room with a table, and a stick lay in the middle of the table, a warning that you should pay attention.  My father wasn’t tall or big, but he was a good explainer, and he knew how to learn; he applied all his energy into the lessons.  My father taught Gemara with Rashi and Tosefot.  This was the cheder schedule:  In winter it was dark when we got up.  At seven we began to learn, summer and winter.  We davened at nine-thirty, for an hour.  Then three-quarters of an hour or an hour recess, then we came back to study again.  At two-thirty we had recess again for half an hour. The other boys went home, but I was already at home.  We ate something warm. We’d cut off some bread, smear butter on it if we had.   The boys came back and we studied till eight in the evening.  Then we’d have supper, and by the time we were in bed it was nine-thirty or ten. 

After two years in my father’s cheder, the children moved on to the next melammed, where they learned subjects like laws of meat and dairy until their bar-mitzvah.  My father got a new batch of kids.  But I stayed on with my father after I finished his cheder, and he learned separately with me.  We’d get up at four in morning in order to study, before his regular pupils came.

There was a time when I said Tehilim from beginning to end every day.  I got up early in the morning, before we started learning, to say it.  I was nine or ten at the time.  Every day I said the whole Tehilim. 

Aryeh Leib and my Grandmother Pesche had five children, but their marriage was stormy.   Aryeh Leib had been promised a dowry by Pesche's family which was never delivered.  Pesche was diasppointed that Aryeh Leib could not apply himself to business and raise them out of poverty – why couldn't he emulate his two brothers who were successful and respected merchants in Przemysl?

Perhaps this is why from early in his life Mechel was drawn to business.  He began, still a child, buying bags of tobacco and papers, rolling cigarettes, and peddling them one by one through town.  Then, as a teenager, he bought farm produce from peasants and brought it to Przemysl, the regional market town, for sale.  His uncles in Przemysl vouched for him; he bought manufactured goods in Przemysl and sold them in Dubiecko.  By the time he was an eligible bachelor Mechel had built up a respectable amount of capital.  

Mechel’s talent in business helped him win Tsivye’s hand and convince her to move to Dubiecko – he was a country boy, while she was educated, finer.  Tsivye’s friends gossiped that Beck had so many dollars they rotted from disuse.  Tsivye became a partner in Mechel’s affairs, and in the years before the War the couple advanced in the world.  Mechel was proud of his success. 

If the War hadn’t broken out I would have been a big merchant.   It was good to do business with the landowners.

There was a noble family who had property in our area.  I can’t remember the name – a real aristocratic Polish name. I did business with the stewards who ran their affairs.  I even have some receipts lying around somewhere recording transactions we made with them.  There were three brothers, they lived outside Poland, they were in the Foreign Service.  One was in Rome, another in London.  I met the Countess once or twice.  Her husband was away, he was Ambassador somewhere.  There was a business office on the estate where she had meetings.  I bought timber from their forests, and I paid them ahead of delivery.  She asked me if I’m not afraid to pay cash in advance, considering the times.   It was clear then that war was coming.      

I also bought from the Sapieha family various farm products, but they were difficult to deal with.  The best business I did was in Bachorzec, an estate in our area, which belonged to the Kracziski family.  There was a small town in the middle, and the estate was all around.  Kracziski was a rich landowner, his affairs were in good shape, he didn’t travel out of the country or get drunk, he didn’t waste his money.  He had a Russian wife who was a good manager.  How did I come to them?  The Countess owned a mill where I used to mill my wheat.  I had a partner in this deal, Naftali.  We were competing with someone from Dynow, who was using the mill there too; we wanted full use of the mill, so we tried to get her to lease it to us.  We made an appointment to see her, but nothing came out of it.

How did I come to the partnership with Naftali?  Tsivye and I started out modestly.  Our grocery store in Dubiecko was on a side street.  Naftali was the big shot.  If someone wanted to buy salt for Passover – this was a joke, because you couldn’t make any money selling salt on Passover – he would send them to buy from Mechel Beck.  If a Gentile came to sell an animal on its last legs he told him that Mechel Beck would buy it.  At first he made fun of us.  Later on, when we prospered, he wanted to be partners with us, and we did him a favor that we took him in. 

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