My parents left their shtetlach in Lithuania in the 1920s to settle in Montreal, where my father’s grandfather and other relatives were living. Mother left behind her parents, two sisters, their children, and a brother. Many of those relatives were murdered in the Holocaust. Only a few survived.
The agony of separation on Mother’s side between 1936 and 1941 was reflected in touching expressions of love and devotion in the letters her mother wrote – all in Yiddish.
“Our dearly beloved children. You must write us more often.” “Got two letters and rejoice with them. Each word is precious but it only takes a second to read and then the pain and yearning returns.” Again and again the verb benken – “to long” – appeared.
Mother’s parents ran a bakery and boarding house in their home. By 1936, business was bad and Jews in Lithuania felt less secure. The price of bread was controlled. “The town commissar must approve and so that’s how they don’t let us live.” Their hotel license was threatened and their business reduced as peasants no longer came to rent rooms. Their son-in-law “discussed it with the mayor and the result was that we could continue but must make improvements.” It was not until my grandparents faced tough times economically and felt growing hostility against Jews that they begged to leave.
In 1938, we received the urgent question: “What’s happening dear children about the trip? How great is the bitterness in the world and the troubles. We went to the JIAS [Jewish Immigrant Aid Society] office. They said if we could claim to be farmers and had a visa for each person then we could leave. Therefore, my daughter, you should make an effort to find out everything in detail and immediately write us.”
Since my parents were poor, Mother had trouble raising money to get them out. Sadly her dear ones had waited too long to get out. Her guilt lasted a lifetime.
Some aspects of life went on as usual. Aunt Malca had two suitors but couldn’t decide whether to marry for love or security – the hometown fellow or the man from Shavl, a nearby town.
The upshot of this dilemma was that my aunt married the hometown guy, divorced him within a year, and then married the man from Shavl. That marriage endured their whole lives through thick and thin – concentration camp, the Red Army, their lost child, chronic illness, and several anxiety-producing migrations between Israel and Canada.
On the other side, Father’s Socialist-Zionist family had begun preparing to make aliyah before leaving their shtetl of Keidan. They spent 10 years in Canada going to public schools while training as Shomer Hatzair chalutzim. They left for Palestine in the 1930s to help found several kibbutzim.
Deprived of grandparents on both sides of the family, I knew them only by hearsay until meeting some aunts and uncles in 1969 when my father died. Urged by my parents to write my grandfather as I was graduating high school in 1950, I protested that I didn’t really know him.
He replied: “It’s very true what you write that you have no concept at all about me…because you were only a baby when I left Montreal.” He asked me to write him my ideas about special Jewish issues and indicate whether I was active in any movements.
When the Six Day War broke out, Father wrote his siblings in great anguish:
“I imagine what you’re living through there…Now we can see how many friends we have and even more enemies who pretended to be good friends…My own children are very worried and would do everything to help…I myself signed up to do whatever I can…”
Since I found relatively few letters from Father’s family, I asked Aunt Pessi in Israel to describe their history. In 1989, she obliged by writing about life in Lithuania, Russia, Canada and Israel:
“The story of my parents’ and grandparents’ home is of a world that was and is no more. It is telling of the past, of their legacy, of a culture that was destroyed, of a little Lithuanian town where hard-toiling Jews lived. It is to tell of a revolution that had failed, a world war, pogroms, refugees and wanderings.”
Letters used to be important messengers of love, fear, joy, sadness, daily concerns and long-term hopes. Fortunately, my parents had saved letters from their families written in the 1930s and into the 1950s. In turn, I saved their letters to me from the 1950s and 1960s after I moved to the United States.
Fashioning stories from letters took significant time and thought as I searched for clues about the lives of the writers, interpreting their meaning with the help of memories, relatives and friends.
After adding Aunt Pessi’s story, I compiled them to create a booklet called Stories about my Family. I sent them to my children and nieces. That was one step towards forwarding the past. Still, my urge was to transmit the “pintele yid” – the Jewish essence that so enriched my childhood and my adult life, beyond the family.
Pondering what to do with the translated letters and other materials, I contacted the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Canadian Jewish Congress about their archives. Both were interested, but since my parents had made their lives in Montreal, my brother, Frank Bloomstone, and I, chose the Canadian Jewish Congress.
I often wonder if I’ve done enough to transmit a world that is past. At least, I’ve made a start. I ask myself “What’s next?” Perhaps it’s time to write the personal saga of richly complex experiences that span my life from 1933 to 2014. There’s a treasure trove of courtship letters still in boxes, so there’s abundant raw material for a glutton like me to start writing again.
The Bloomstone-Zlatis family collection can be accessed online at www.cjhn.ca/en/permalink/cjhn280