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This page was updated Dec 31, 2009
My Grandparents
My mother's parents
My mother's parents were Moshe Chaim ( משה חיים)
and Esther Gita (אסתר גיטע) Friedman. Some members in
the family believe that her name was Esther Gida but my mother and I always
referred to her as Esther Gita. And I have a note that she wrote and signed
Esther Gita. Besides which I never called her by her name. To me she was
"boobeh". That's the way we pronounced Bubby.
I have some information that goes back to the late 1890's and early 1900's, based on documents that Aaron Maslow, a first cousin twice removed, gave to me. More about Aaron in a moment. He obtained them from some Jewish organization in Poland that searches the original Polish records and translates them . The documents are fascinating and they establish dates and information that otherwise would not be known.
My grandfather, Moshe Chaim, 42 years old, married my grandmother Esther Gita, 24 years old, on June 28, 1888 in the Polish town, Zareby Koscielne. We always referred to the town as Zaremb. They had both been married previously. Moshe Chaim had been married to Ruchale Konopiata who had died on December 30, 1887 leaving him with five children. My grandmother's maiden name was Chmiel and her husband Moshe Chmiel (a cousin ?) had died on December 17, 1887. There were no children from that union. The document does not give a cause for the deaths but I was told on a number of occasions that Moshe Chmiel died as a result of complications from a procedure to make him ineligible for the army. Military service could be brutal at that time especially for Jews, all the more so for frum Jews.
Back to Aaron Maslow. One of Moshe Friedman's children from his first marriage was a daughter, Dvoshe. She and my mother were half sisters, the same father but different mothers. She married Moshe Maslow and they had a son, Simcha. Simcha and I were first cousins and I knew him but I never realized that we were related. He was a learned individual and spoke at my bar-mitzvah. He had a son Moshe, a first cousin once removed to me. And Moshe had a son Aaron, our Aaron, a first cousin twice removed.
My grandmother had ten children with Moshe Chaim but I am only aware of the four who emigrated to America. I never heard anyone speak of any other children that my grandmother had and I believe that they didn't survive into adulthood. Life can be hard and it was very hard at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. The three children who were already in America when my grandmother and mother emigrated were my mother's brother, Joe ( יוסף לייב ) Friedman with his wife, Toba, and my mother's sisters Chava (חוה ) and her husband Yakov Lustig and Leicka (לאה ) who married Jake Zlotnick in America.
My grandmother was a very capable person. I knew her very well because my mother and I lived with her when my parents separated and I continued to live with her on and off over a period of years even after my mother was divorced and remarried. I lived with her up to the time that she died in 1946 when I was 17 years old. She was always telling me stories of the old country but I only remember fragments of her many stories. Considering that more than sixty years have elapsed it isn't surprising that my memories are vague. But one that she told me and that my mother repeated is worth telling since it illustrates what a courageous and resourceful woman she was. Her stepson, Simcha, Dvosha's son, received notice to report to the army. As mentioned before the army was to be avoided if at all possible and sometimes terrible risks were taken. My grandmother undertook the task of helping Simcha avoid army service. I have only the outline of the events that took place. She traveled to Warsaw, got into the office of the chief army doctor located on an army base and offered him a bribe to reject Simcha. He accepted and Simcha was rejected for army service because of a non-existent heart condition. It is almost impossible to understand how she was able to accomplish this.
Another example of her talents. Here in America she arranged theater parties twice a year, before Pesach and Rosh Hashana, to Yiddush shows. The purpose was to raise money which she sent back to Zaremb to help her old neighbors with their Yom Tov expenses. I remember this well because I went with her to the theater where she negotiated with the manager for a block of tickets which she subsequently sold to family, friends and neighbors. And I got another chance to see a Yiddush show. I remember seeing such stars as Menashe Skulnick and Molly Picon, giants in the Yiddush theater. My grandmother continued with this fund raising project until World War II when it was no longer possible to transfer funds to Poland. And after a while there was no one to whom the money could be sent. More about this wonderful woman later.
My mother's three siblings were in America and they convinced my grandmother that it was time to leave the old country and come to America. So sometime in late 1922 my grandmother and mother came to America. My brother, Chaim and I guess that our mother was born around 1906 which would make her 16 years of age when she arrived in America in 1922. My mother always said that she was listed older on her papers so that she wouldn't have to go to school and she would be able to work and help with the families finances. Perhaps she was born in 1908 which would have made her 14 when she arrived in America and would have required that she go to school. Whatever the truth is it doesn't matter anymore.
My grandmother and my mother went to work in factories. Eleven years before, in 1911, a terrible tragedy had occurred when a fire broke out in a factory and 146 young people died because they couldn't get out. My mother heard about this and she remained afraid to go into a closed room for the rest of her life. This led to some interesting situations. Once in the factory she and another girl got locked in the bathroom when the door jammed. My mother panicked and instead of banging on the door she broke the door window with her hand sustaining severe cuts to her hand. Another incident, which fortunately turned out okay occurred when we visited my cousin Laura Kolansky, the daughter of Leicka and Jake Zlotnick. My mother went to the bathroom but left the door ajar. Her sister, Leicka, yelled at her that she couldn't do that. But my mother insisted that she would not close the door. So Leicka went into the bathroom with her and sure enough the door jammed and they couldn't get out until someone opened the door from the outside with a tool. My mother was not upset because someone was in the bathroom with her. And she was so happy to prove that she was right not to close the door.
Sometime after they came to America my grandmother married Yakov Bieder. Her children didn't want to call him Tateh and out of respect they wouldn't call him by his name so they called him Uncle. And that is what I called him also even though he treated me like a grandson and he was like a grandfather to me. I have distinct memories of him getting up early in the morning to light the stove which was the only source of heat in the apartment that my mother and I shared with them. I was very young, perhaps two or three but the image is fresh in my mind. And this is the apartment where the bathtub was in the kitchen because the bathroom was on the landing outside the apartment and it was shared with other tenants. There was a large board placed on the tub with a cover and I don't recall if it served as a table or as a counter. Yakov Bieder would often come to the Yeshivah to bring me a nosh during recess. I remember that the knish wagon was there when we had recess and it cost three cents for a knish. He was frum and even though he wasn't a gabbai he would admonish people if they were talking during davening or Krias Hatorah. I don't know anything about his past. He passed away around 1944. The family gossip was that he was over one hundred years old. I have no knowledge if that was true.
Sometime later when I was about five we moved to a three bedroom apartment at 437 Hopkinson Avenue, between East New York and Pitkin avenues in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. This was a 16 apartments tenement and we had central heating with a radiator in each room We also had our own bathroom in the apartment. To flush the toilet we pulled a chain that was connected to a water tank located close to the ceiling. In the kitchen we had an ice box with two doors. A small upper door was the compartment where a slab of ice was kept. It cooled the big compartment below where the food was stored. A inner pipe carried the water that melted to a small area under the ice box where a small basin was kept that had to be emptied periodically into the sink. Every day, except for the winter the ice man would park in front of the building and called out "ice, ice" and we would respond by opening the window and yelling that we wanted a piece of ice for 25 cents. He would put it on his shoulder which was covered with a burlap cloth and bring it upstairs to the apartment and put it into the ice compartment.
I remember that mail delivery was twice a day and that garbage pickup was daily. The mailman didn't have a cart and carried the mail in a bag over his shoulder. But of course there wasn't that much mail either. I don't remember magazines or circulars in the mail. There were four garbage men to the truck; a driver, one man on top of the open truck and two men who lifted up the pails to him. And the guy on top was standing on a mound of garbage.
Nobody in our building had a phone. So the calls would be made to the candy store which was on the block. I would wait in the store and when a call came in I would run to the right house and call out to the person about the call. And usually I got a tip sometimes as much as a nickel.
My father's parents
My
father's parents were Leyzer and Chana Tzirel Balanski (Pictured with me and a
step-granddaughter in 1947/48). When they came to America they changed the name
to Balanson. They came from a small town on the border of Poland and
Russia, Grinik or Grinki. I know nothing of their life in Europe and have no
memory of them until I met them when I was 19 years old in 1947. They had three
sons, my father, Joseph, Hymie (Chaim) and Lou (Levi) and one daughter, Ida
(Leibowitz, I think). My mother always said that she got along very nicely with
Ida. My mothers English name was also Ida.
In the early 1930's, in the middle of the depression, they left New York and eventually ended up in Los Angeles. I was only three or four years old at that time and assume it was the economic conditions that caused them to leave in New York. My parents had a rocky marriage and they were separated at that time. We were living with my grand mother and her husband at that time.
I remember that we visited my father to say goodbye because he was following his parents and leaving New York. I certainly didn't understand what was happening because I was only three or four years old .He gave me a present, a small white truck that had headlights that lit up. I believe that my father thought that my mother would follow as soon as he had a job. I know that they corresponded for a long time and that he did send some money. But in the end my mother wouldn't leave her mother. She told me that she was afraid that his family would hurt her. She asked my father for a get. This took a long time and my father finally gave the get when I was around ten years old. Shortly after she married Ben Tzion Strickman who was a watchmaker and had a tiny store, no larger than a news-stand on Hester Street corner of the Bowery in Manhattan. My mother would probably deny this but my mother wasn't too happy with this marriage. Money always seemed to be a problem. But there were some wonderful results of the marriage, my brother Chaim Stickman and my sister Yospha Fishman.
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