The Heavens Are Empty - Avrom Bendavid-Val [16]
David Shwartz wrote,
In autumn the potatoes and beans were harvested. The potatoes were stored under the beds and the beans in the lofts. Potatoes for Pesach [Passover] and for seed were buried in a hole dug in the garden: on one side those for Pesach and on the other the seed potatoes for sowing. The potatoes which were sweetened by the frost were used for baking at Pesach. There was plenty of goose-grease (shmaltz), and from Purim18 onwards eggs were stored in preparation for Pesach. Every householder would fatten geese and turkeys from which he would get enough shmaltz for the whole year. In winter, meat was scarce and the main dishes were potatoes and beans. The families were large and they used to make dumplings, puddings, and pancakes, all from potatoes. The city Jews indeed called us the “Trochenbrod Potatoes.”
We had all kinds of small factories, workshops, and tanneries. There were shoemakers, tailors, teachers, carpenters, blacksmiths, locksmiths, painters, bricklayers, foresters, brickmakers, sawmills, wheelwrights, feed mills, oil presses, a glue factory, and a glass factory. The Jews made a good living. There were in addition all kinds of stores and shops: glaziers, wood dealers, butchers, cattle dealers, dealers who supplied geese and eggs and dairy products to Lutsk and Rovno and to places as far away as Prussia, and contractors who supplied horses, straw and meat to the army.
There were many Jews also who lived by their land alone and also all the above-mentioned tradespeople worked their own fields, either alone or with assistance, in addition to their professional work. Apart from corn and wheat the land produced all. We had to buy nothing apart from bread and meat. The very poor people who did not have enough money with which to buy bread and meat for the Sabbath, made do with potatoes and beans, and each for himself was happy and contented with his life. We lived an organized and wholly Jewish life and we practiced Jewish rituals in accordance with Jewish law.
From the 1880s through the 1930s, except during World War I, Trochenbrod sent waves of immigrants to North and South America, and between the wars to Palestine as well. The earliest mention of an immigrant to the United States in Trochenbrod family histories is 1880. But as was the case throughout Eastern Europe, the largest wave from Trochenbrod was in the first decade or so of the twentieth century. There is a wealth of Trochenbrod family stories and memoirs describing the experiences of immigrants from Trochenbrod in the years leading up to World War I.
For many Trochenbroders, especially young men, there were lots of good reasons for emigrating from Trochenbrod at that time. Stories of unbelievable economic opportunity in America were trickling back to Trochenbrod, while physical expansion to accommodate the children of Trochenbrod families was not possible because the town was hemmed in by forests owned by wealthy Polish gentry who were profiting nicely from the timber. Though Trochenbrod’s relative isolation had shielded it from anti-Jewish hooliganism so far, reports of pogroms and anti-Semitic attacks across Russia suggested trouble ahead. Oppressive anti-Jewish regulations were in still effect throughout Russia, such as restrictions on education, employment, business pursuits, and movement; and while Trochenbrod suffered from these restrictions less than most Jewish communities, long-term economic and social prospects under the Czarist government were