Audio file: Aunt-Hannah.mp3, recorded February 1979
[begins with an unrecorded description of harassment by Cossacks]
Hannah: Beating back and forth with their big whips and they looked in and they saw 2 little children playing on the floor and the little boy eating, so they left, but when it was over, within a very short while, Saul was sent to America because he’s a big boy. He was 15 and he was a big boy so he was sent to America. And Mama, and Tilly, and I remained in the brewery and I went to, I think they sent me to school for a little while.
And then there was a fire in the brewery. And when the brewery burned down, we all moved into my sister Ida and Tilly [&] Chinka’s home because she had a very good home. So, Papa said, “You know what? Now is the time for me to go to America and see what the children are doing, 3 children.” You know that was fantastic. So, he went to America. He came here.
Anita: Excuse me, Saul went alone?
Hannah: Saul went alone. Saul went to America. They tried to send him to school, but he wasn’t so very good at school. He was, he was difficult. Well anyway, so Papa came to America and he did little odd jobs and they had a, an apartment and they moved from that apartment to 126th Street between 7th and 8th Avenue in a very nice 5-room apartment.
Elaine or Lois: Go ahead, Mother, go on.
Woman 1: Oh.
Woman 3: It’s all right.
Woman 1: What do you want to hear?
Woman 3: I still have it on tape.
Hannah: 5-room apartment and they sent for us. So, Tillie, [inaudible][01:46] [?] were supposed to [inaudible, 01:47-01:50] I came.
Woman 2: What year is this?
Hannah: That was in 1906, but then here in a little while, I have the dates at home, anyway, the boats, I most go back. When we left, even I, as a little child, saw my grandmother, my father’s mother, running after the train. I can, we saw, I was, I forgot, but I remember it now and, uh, we got on the boat and we traveled 18 days and.
Ben Glotzer: Hi.
Hannah: Well, uh, of course during the whole trip my mother wasn’t well. She was a dainty person but we girls were like peasant women comparison to her and she was in the hospital, but we, we were not poor. We didn’t travel in the worst years.
Anita: Not in steerage.
Hannah: Huh?
Anita: Not in the steerage class?
Hannah: No, we traveled, so Tilly and I were all right but they permitted me to stay with Mom all day because I was a little girl. However, when the 18 days were up, they saw the, the shore, the, the doctor who was friendly with mother because mother, mother was slight of person, so he went, “Get up and get yourself together. We’re reaching America.” So, we came here and when we got off the boat, all I can tell you, by my father was standing there, the most beautiful creature and Aunt Ida was just gorgeous. She wore a brown fur jacket with a big green hat with a feather and she looked exquisite.
Well, they picked us up and we came to the house and within a little while I was sent to school and everything was running very nice. 3 weeks later, Morris Guterman came and Mama said, “In God in heaven, why didn’t you come with us?” He said, “I had no thought of coming to America.” He had just come from Cos Cob[inaudible][03:46] where he had been apprentice as a watch maker. So, he came too. He says, “The minute you got on the train I felt that I had to follow,” and we were not even that close, you know. Well anyway, he came to America and he lived with us, of course.
So, he got a job in a watchmaker’s place and he was working. Papa, however, got a job in the Ruppert Brewery Company and he worked all week long and at the end of the week he didn’t go in on Shabbat. So, they didn’t say anything to him and he was supposed to be a, a, what do you call it, a [medulia?] so, a chemist. So, the next Saturday when he didn’t come in, Monday they let him go because he said he couldn’t work on the Shabbat Day. So mother said to him, “Look, we are not desperate for money. We don’t have it but we’re not desperate.
You don’t go to work anymore, whatever you’ll do, as little as you’ll earn, it’ll be better than to go on the Shabbat than die Shabbat and he didn’t go back to work. Well, there he would’ve gotten a fantastic salary, but of course he was a Jew so he couldn’t do that. So, he began [inaudible][05:07] children and then he got a job at some kind of a shop helping out a little bit and so we went along, that’s not much of a story. [Shapiro?]. Then there was dirt on the floor. Now we lived, of course I didn’t realize it, but we lived with wood floors. Daddy had
Anita: In Pinsk.
Hannah: Huh?
Anita: In Pinsk. A lot of people had uh, dirt floors, dirt floors. I was surprised.
Woman 1: Yes, because we had wood floors. We had water in the house because [inaudible][05:40] we always managed to get hot water. We lived very nicely. Of course, that was our way of living so we could live nicely too. But in many of the homes things were very poor, you know.
Elizabeth: Did you know my mother’s family?
Hannah: No.
Elizabeth: The Pomerantz family?
Hannah: No, Mama knew them faintly, but not too much. Your mother’s father was, accept it for what’s it worth, he’s a very fine man, but a little bit on the gay side.
Elizabeth: Oh.
Hannah: Because you must remember [crosstalk] Mama’s sister was born and she died in childbirth.
[Elizabeth?]: My mother died in childbirth, yes.
Hannah: Yeah, I wanted to ask [??] about it because [inaudible][06:21] wanted to know more, but then we’ll he’s gay in those days, nothing today, but he was considered a very outgoing, gay sort of man.
Anita: Do you mean happy or a feminine?
Hannah: Huh?
Anita: Do you mean a happy or a femine?
Hannah: No, not a, happy, happy.
Anita: All right. I has a different meaning today, go head, yes.
Hannah: And of course, when he passed away Mama went there and then was caught in the war.
Anita: But she went there the time that he died? Was that the reason?
Hannah: No, he died and there was money left.
Anita: Yes.
Hannah: And she had gone off to Chicago and married Israel, so decided that she would go to Pinsk and collect her share of the money and see her sister, but when she came you’d think a war broke out, you can imagine. My sister Chinka died and we didn’t know for 4 years that she had died. There was no communication, but your daddy, you must have the…
Anita: Yes, we do.
Hannah: He was corresponding with Washington trying to get her to get her money to come back home.
Anita: How many years was she there?
Hannah: 4 years.
Anita: Oh, my.
Hannah: And I remember the day she came back and then uh but she didn’t have a bad time. In spite of the hunger, the misery, and all because she was able, she was permitted to travel and she was gay, and beautiful, and lovely, and spoke languages, so she got along very well with the officials. So she had a very nice time until she was able to get back here. So, she came back here and she came to our house because this was already her home. And she came back like on a Monday and that Thursday, [inaudible][08:01] you know, had invited her to come for dinner.
So we were all going to go to Jamaica, Long Island, for dinner and in the morning they called up and said that Meyer, their son, had disappeared and because Meyer, I was going [technical??] then and I used to go out there on a Friday and 1 of the men would take me back to New York.
Anita: And Betty could travel to Jamaica? How did you travel to Jamaica?
Hannah: By the subway.
Anita: The trolley car?
Hannah: No, subway.
Anita: Subway, already. It was elevated.
Hannah: Yes, so I was there the weekend and [inaudible][08:43] had 3 sons. 1 was younger, Meyer was my age, and Greer, the oldest. And, uh, I had a lovely time with the boys because they were, you know, I played with boys all my life since the time I was little. And I went to school that morning and when I came to school, I opened my book and his picture fell out. He was ashamed to give me the picture, but he put it my book.
Anita: Meyer did?
Hannah: Huh?
Anita: Meyer did?
Hannah: Meyer, so I came home and the day after we had learned, we came home from school, and he left his books and he just disappeared. He was 15 but he looked like 18, so they thought maybe he enlisted. And then they thought maybe he drowned, maybe he this, maybe that. Whatever they thought, they never found him. It wasn’t advertised like today but they did put it in a lot of papers and all.
Anyway, a few days later, Mrs. Wayburn was called again and said the tragedy, they don’t have a picture of the child, nobody took pictures in those years. I said, “I have one.” So I was young, I was embarrassed, so I [inaudible][09:57] and I gave them the picture. Of course, they never found him. And he was really the best of the 3 that was there. He was beautiful because when we played, he was never a teacher, he was a principal (laughter). No matter what we played, he was the headman and he was gorgeous.
See, Meyer wasn’t, the older 1 wasn’t good looking, Henry became a worker in the New York, the Daily News. He’s in Florida somewhere if he’s still alive. Anyway, time went on and uh [inaudible][10:31] and Gail, she had a Anita. Then later on she lived, as I said, the only time I scolded Mama, called her every name in the dictionary [inaudible][10:45] when Anita cried 1 night. Of course, the doctor said you just let a child cry, which I didn’t think was right and she cried so I went down and I called her every name in the dictionary.
I told her she was horrid and I hated her, but I really loved her very dearly. She didn’t get angry with me and then they moved out. There’s a lot of stories. She was a fantastic person. We used to go picnicking to the other side of City Island and it was the 4th of July and we were going to go the next day. You know, those years we’d make 12 pounds of hamburgers and they would get eaten. It was nothing for a person to eat 4 or 5 hamburgers by their standards.
We got up and it was raining terribly. I was standing by the window and I was so disappointed and she said, “Don’t be disappointed,” and she took a great big blanket and put it on the living room floor. We had 6 rooms at that time, and we all sat around and we had a picnic in the house. Don’t forget that there wasn’t 1 of us at least 10 years older than I. [inaudible][11:53].
Anita: That is nice.
Hannah: There’s a million memories, but you know, you don’t think of it at the time. You just accept it as such. And then another time my mother said, “Elizabeth, Hannah really needs a new coat.” She said, “Walk downtown with me and get a coat.” And we went downtown and she got me, I think it was a red velvet coat. It was beautiful and we passed another clothes store and there in the window was a hat and she says, “That’s the hat.” The hat was $5. At that time, [inaudible][12:25] but there wasn’t too much money.
So I said, “Elizabeth, don’t buy it. It’s too much money to spend.” She said, “Well, we’ll worry about that we came home.” I came home and of course whoever came in I had to model my outfit and the price was never mentioned, you know. She, another time when Guterman & Cooper was going out of business, she came home with a couple of dresses and big, white hat, all full of lace for me. I had this [inaudible][12:52].
You couldn’t get it for $15 and six little dresses. Ida came home with 6 dresses. Can you imagine for me to have 12 dresses, new ones, all in 1 day?
Anita?: That’s nice. I’m sure.
Hannah: I had a nice childhood.
Anita: That’s good. It shows in your adulthood.
Hannah: [inaudible][13:12] My mother was away for 3 weeks, she was sick and [inaudible][13:15] lived with us, everybody lived with us, she would take me out every evening and we’d have ice cream, we’d have this, very nice. [inaudible][13:24-13:29].
Anita: Yes?
Hannah: [?] talking and goes you’ll have to help me with my book that I’ve read.
Anita: I have to see the book.
Hannah: Oh
Anita: I gave Aunt Hannah to read the book, “Such a Life.” Did you read it?
Woman 3: Yeah.
Anita: Did you read that?
Woman 3: Yeah, I read that.
Anita: Aunt Hannah said she could’ve written it.
Hannah: I didn’t say it, but my children’s [?] mother could’ve written that. I don’t have the [inaudible][13:41].
Anita: Go back to the days of Pinsk.
Hannah: It’s amazing. I do a lot of word puzzle books, you know, normally the way I do it, it doesn’t matter if my vocabulary is 25 words or tons, or 50 words. We don’t talk. The few things you say to your neighbor doesn’t mean anything. So, I started doing, I really did about 7 of them, and you know, it’s amazing how many words we know and how well we know the spelling of them. It’s really, it’s really a wonderful way to spend time.
Anita: See, Aunt Hannah came here when you were what, 7 years old?
Hannah: No, I was less.
Anita: Less, wow.
Hannah: Maybe 6.
Anita: Not even 6 when you came here?
Hannah: I was the youngest.
Anita: The youngest, yeah. I gave Lillian the letter from the School [?].
Hannah: [inaudible][14:40].
Anita: Explain again how he was a brother-in-law. Who [inaudible][14:44] his husband?
Hannah: My father’s sister’s husband.
Anita: That sister’s name was?
Hannah: I can’t remember it. She had no children.
Anita: I see.
Hannah: He was a teacher, a very harsh man. My brother and my husband, Ben, used to say when they were little, he was very harsh on the little children. They used to think when they grew up, they’d like to once give him a good spanking. (laughter)
Anita: He wrote a letter describing the scene at the railroad station in Pinsk when my grandmother left with Hannah and Tilly who were the only 2 children still there, the others had my grandfather, my father, and Ida, and Saul, had already gone to America.
Hannah: My brother-in-law, Morris, his sister just died. Her husband had come.
Anita: Was Uncle Ben’s brother, 2 brothers married 2 sisters.
Hannah: Had come from [inaudible][15:36]. He had learned watchmaking there and came to Pinsk and it was just 3 weeks after he came that we were going to America. No, they were going to America and he remained, never dreaming to go, but 3 weeks after he came to America. I remember mother saying, “[inaudible][15:57] You could have waited, we would have waited for you and had a man with us.” He said, “I didn’t think I’d go but when I saw you leave and I thought I had to leave.” He came to us. The underlying thing is, he was with us. Chinka Cantor was with us, Leiser was with us, her mother was with us, my Mama.
Anita: Benny was with you? Did Benny live with you too?
Woman 1: Ben lived with us.
Anita: Right, and how many months?
Hannah: 6 months. Of course, 1 slept in the den, 1 slept in the kitchen, 1 slept on the couch.
Anita: But they always had nice apartments. Mother told me they always lived well. They didn’t leave in slums of the East side or anything like that.
Woman 1: We didn’t live any worse than we live today. You understand? Coming to my house, you would never say my home is spotless. The minute we all got up, everyone was done. I didn’t do it. My sister Tilly was home. It always looked very uppity. So, we lived nicely all the years of our life. Our first apartment was in Harlem back of the [inaudible][16:56] theater. We had a lovely apartment, an apartment with a bath and hot water, everything. Even in the old country we had all the comfort. Of course, we lived in a brewery and her daddy was such a friend of my daddy.
Anita: My grandfather was a master brewer. He was a very skilled person as a master brewer. My father was so mechanical so he always had everything fixed and maintained.
Hannah: Then he came here, well we came here. He tried, he tried to get a job at the Ruppert brewery company.
Anita: That’s grandpa?
Anita: Yeah, and they gave him a job. So he worked 1 week and he didn’t come in Saturday so they didn’t say anything but the next week when he didn’t come in Saturday they discharged him. And mama said, “Were they very religious?”
Anita: The whole family.
Hannah: You know, old fashioned people, traditional.
Anita: But not extremely religious, not fanatically.
Anita: Mama wasn’t fanatic. If someone had to fix something, she looked away. She didn’t say anything, but mama said to him, “Look, no matter what you’re not going to work on Shabbat. You’re not going to walk around when the world is coming to an end. We’ll live anyway we can. We weren’t poor people when we came here. We didn’t have a, I suppose today we’d be paupers, but in those years, she says, “We’ll manage.” So, he didn’t know what to do with himself.
He met a man who was a something of a store where they made suits and things. So he said, “Look, I don’t expect you to, but if you stay in the store, at least don’t be a drunk man in the store.” So Papa was there after a while he learned to press and seam, you know. And then he began to teach bar mitzvah boys and he was very [inaudible][18:44], you know. He worked at that on and off until my brother-in-law in Yonkers [inaudible][18:50] sister Terry’s husband. They opened a place where they did, worked for very big houses like um Sak’s Fifth Avenue, 1 of those contracting ladies.
Anita: Coat strapping.
Hannah: He wasn’t the tailor, but he was the outside man. He didn’t know how to throw a needle. Papa worked there for all these years. It was supervising a little bit. The truth was, the cost, he could’ve had a very beautiful job because they paid beautiful, but he didn’t want to work on the Sabbath.
Anita: Aunt Hannah, do you remember the trip across at all?
Hannah: Very well.
Anita: So after you left the railroad station in Pinsk, where did you go next?
Hannah: First we went to, uh, Germany.
Anita: Hamburg, Bremen?
Hannah: [inaudible][19:36] wasn’t still there.
Anita: As you go by train?
Hannah: Huh?
Anita: By train?
Woman 3: By train?
Hannah: By train, and I remember right now, uh, my sister’s.
Anita: Tilly.
Hannah: Husband gave us a great big bag of breads, which we were going to give to some poor family on the way.