The Heavens Are Empty - Avrom Bendavid-Val [64]
My older sister married a fellow like this. He had no profession, and if he had a profession what would he do with it there in Trochenbrod? She was a poor girl, my mother had six girls, and her husband died when I was eighteen months old. I was born nine years after the last bunch. So he died and left her with lots of kids, but some of them, their husbands came to America, and they made a few dollars, and my sister married one of the sons whose father came back. He was dressed nicely, with a collar and a tie …
I went to Lutsk many many times: not so much to buy, no—I couldn’t afford something like that, it was out of the question. I went to Lutsk a lot when I was trying to get to America; the administrative offices were there. And I had very good friends there, elderly people, through marriage we were related. So I was in Lutsk a lot; I knew the city very well, and made a lot of friends there.
We had our own theater in Trochenbrod; I was in many plays in Yiddish. We had plays around all the holidays. In the Polish school we also had plays, but they were in Polish. I remember Nachman Rotenberg was the wolf when I was Little Red Riding Hood. Tuvia was also one of my friends.
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IDA LISS
Ida’s story has an unusual twist. She was born in Chicago in 1912 to parents who had immigrated separately from Trochenbrod, and then met and married in the United States. Her father was from the Gilden family and her mother from the Kerman family. They went back to Trochenbrod in 1912 to visit their families and show off their nearly one-year-old child. They stayed on a bit, then were caught there by World War I, and then stayed longer. Ida eventually returned to the United States. with her mother in 1928, when she was sixteen years old. She is the only person to have grown up in Trochenbrod as a U.S. citizen. Ida now lives in Evanston, Illinois, just north of Chicago. She says that these days she spends more time in Trochenbrod than anywhere else—she sees it in her dreams most nights and remembers it clearly and with affection in her daydreams.
If I was able to go to Trochenbrod now, I’d point out to you where I lived. I can just see my house where I lived. And where my uncles lived: one uncle lived on one side of us and one lived on the other side. One uncle had a granddaughter named Baske. And Baske had a love affair with a Blitzstein; I don’t know if they ever got married or not. But every Saturday he used to come there for lunch; and I used to see, she put powder on, and lipstick, and made herself look beautiful. She was a gorgeous girl, but she used to do all that stuff, and I knew he was coming.
The main street was nothing but a long road of dirt. It wasn’t bricks, or wood, or anything, nothing but mud. And on each side of the street was like a ditch where the soldiers used to hide in there. And they had a board over that; if you walked you walked on the board, not a sidewalk, there was no sidewalk. And in the middle was enough for a horse and wagon to go through; there was no cars, only horse-and-wagons—in the mud.
We lived there in a white stucco house. That was my grandmother’s house. Baba Rivke, it was her house; we lived in her house, a white stucco house. Everybody had a backyard. It was as big as like, maybe 25 by 125. A big-size lot; everybody had a lot that big. And we used to grow potatoes, and vegetables, and everything they could grow in the backyard.
We lived in the middle of Trochenbrod. One side was north Trochenbrod and one side was south Trochenbrod, and we were like in the middle of Trochenbrod. If I was there, I could walk right up to the house and show you which house I lived in.
When I go to sleep, what do you think I do? I don’t watch television, I can’t see it, I don’t even turn it on. So what do you think I do? I dream about things from my life, like Trochenbrod. I can see, I can see … I can see Trochenbrod right in front of me.
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RYSZARD LUBINSKI
Ryszard Lubinski is the son of Trochenbrod’s Polish postmistress. This was a government job that Jews were not permitted to have. Ryszard