EWA. Have you been back?
AVIGDOR. What is there for me there? Not even any graves. Childhood is childhood, the river, the forest, games. After the First World War there was an economic crisis and life was very hard for the adults.
EWA. What do you remember of those times?
AVIGDOR. It was a time of migrations. Everybody, Poles and Jews alike, was migrating to the towns. The villages were left empty. A great emigration of Jews began. The more pragmatic went to America. Others, enthused by Zionism, went to Palestine. It all hardly touched our family. Mother held on to the inn as if it were our ancestral stately home.
She had two major priorities: to hold on to her asset, the inn, and to get us educated. The more so because it was obvious very early on that Dieter was extremely able. As children we were similar, like twins really, but my brother was far more talented than I. I never resented that, not least because I had my own modest practical skills. I was much better than him at working with wood and metal. You can see that even here in Israel. Although I never went to college, I am always put in charge of the agricultural machinery. To this day whenever anything breaks down, people come running to me, even though I’m an old pensioner now. I know all about everything here because I’ve been in this moshav from the day it was founded.
EWA. Is a moshav the same thing as a kibbutz?
AVIGDOR. A moshav is a cooperative of owners of plots of land, while a kibbutz has complete socialism, with everything communally owned as it was on the Soviet collective farms. Don’t interrupt! Now I’ve forgotten what I was saying … Yes, about Dieter, although nobody here has used his German name for a long time. Everyone just knows him as Daniel. Anyway, when he turned seven he was sent to live with an aunt in the nearest town so that he could attend a good Jewish school.
The school was exceptional. There was nothing like it in East Poland. It was a thoroughly up-to-date Austro-Hungarian teaching institution, secular not religious, and with the instruction conducted in German. It was really considered Jewish only because it was funded by Jews and most of the teachers were Jewish.
In those times it mattered very much what language the instruction was conducted in. German education was more valued than Polish, let alone the Yiddish or classical Hebrew used for teaching in Jewish schools. In spite of his flair for languages, Daniel did not know Yiddish well. Evidently destiny had a hand in that. He spoke without the least hint of a Jewish accent. In foreign languages his accent was unmistakably Polish. He mastered Hebrew quickly and spoke it fluently. He could read books I could never hope to read, whose titles I could barely pronounce, and yet he spoke it with a Polish accent. You may not believe it, but my Hebrew accent is better than his was.
My brother completed his primary schooling in four years. He came home only in summer, not very often in winter. There was no railway then, he couldn’t walk the forty versts, over forty kilometers, on foot, and as for horses, either my father would be away on business or he would have lent them to some business partner. At the time, my father was trying to deal in timber I think. That didn’t work out either. It was a great treat when my brother came home in the summer. He had so much to tell me. I sometimes think those talks we had went some way to remedy the deficiencies of my education. He had a knack of talking about complicated matters in a very straightforward and comprehensible way.
He had another stroke of luck when he gained admission to the Jozef Pilsudski State Academy. It was considered the best in the town and they accepted Jewish children. Teaching was in Polish, and they only separated Catholics and Jews for the religious lessons.
MILKA. Perhaps you’d like to pause now and I can serve lunch. I have it all ready.
AVIGDOR. Yes, good. Can I help?
MILKA. No need, just move to other seats so I can lay the table.
CASSETTE 2
EWA. Oh, Jewish food! Broth with kneidlach! Scrag end of neck!
MILKA. Why, do Jews eat this kind of food in America?
EWA. Only certain families. I have an older friend who cooks it. I really don’t enjoy cooking.
AVIGDOR. What, you don’t cook at all?
EWA. Almost never. My husband is Armenian and he has always liked to cook. Even today when we have guests he cooks lots of Armenian dishes himself.
AVIGDOR. Well, Armenian food is quite different. That’s like Arab cooking.
MILKA. Eat up! Eat up!
EWA. No, really it isn’t. They do have some Turkish dishes but the cuisine is far more refined. Very appetizing. But this Jewish food has the smell of home. It must be genetic memory. I was brought up in orphanages and nobody made broth for me when I was little.
AVIGDOR. Now, where did we get to?
EWA. You were telling me about the Pilsudski Academy, but I would like to know also about this society, Akiva, which you were a member of.
AVIGDOR. Ewa, all in good time. In that school he also learnt—you should find it interesting, because later on this ability proved very useful to Daniel—let me tell you … Jews were of course a minority in the school, but my brother was lucky to be studying in the same class as our cousin. The attitude toward Jews in the classroom was perfectly normal. I may be wrong, but I have always thought that anti-Semitism is in inverse proportion to a person’s cultural and intellectual level. There were children from the most cultured Polish families of the town in my brother’s group. At all events, neither he nor his cousin ever had to fight to defend their personal dignity. Daniel never did fight. It was not in his nature. Actually, I didn’t notice much anti-Semitism even though I was attending a professional school, a kind of vocational college, where the children were from a humbler background.
I think the first time Daniel encountered anti-Semitism was when he was prevented from joining a Boy Scout group. He was very upset. To this day, I do not know whether it was a general rule of their Scouting organization or just the Scout leader who did not want a Jewish boy in his troop, but Daniel was turned down. It was a blow to him. He really had many Polish friends, although perhaps not particularly close friends.
However, one Polish friend who was the son of a cavalry officer, did him a very big favor without realizing it. This is the story I wanted to tell you. I’ve forgotten his name, but this lad’s father was a colonel in the Polish army and ran a riding school. Twice a week Daniel and his classmates would go there to learn horse riding. This was a highly unusual activity for a Jew, but Daniel greatly enjoyed it and trained in this aristocratic sport for several years. He became a good horseman, and only a few years later that skill may have been what saved his life.
In the summer before his final year, Daniel came home for the holidays. That year we became particularly close. We no longer felt the age difference at all because we had new shared interests, and a new topic in family conversations was Palestine. We joined a Zionist youth organization called Akiva and attended meetings almost every evening. It was quite like the Scouts, with sports, hiking, nights spent out in the open, and training in endurance and loyalty. The big difference was that Akiva was a Jewish organization, political and educational. We were taught Hebrew, Jewish history and traditions. The Zionism in Akiva was not religious. They were not interested in Judaism. We were introduced to the Jewish tradition, a way of life and principles of moral conduct underpinned philosophically by altruism, pacifism, tolerance and contempt for acquisitiveness. These were straightforward but very attractive teachings and they became our philosophy of life. There was no chauvinism or anti-Communism in Akiva. Zionism had a strong socialist tendency which can be felt in Israel to this day. It was behind my decision to join a moshav. I liked the idea of a Jew who becomes the master of his land and lives by the fruit of his labors. I have been living here since I moved to Israel back in 1941. Nothing will induce young people to come here now. My children rejected any idea of staying here to live. As soon as they grew up, they moved away. The youngest, our son Alon, left home when he was sixteen.