Dad’s Early Life

Dad: When we were growing up in Winnipeg in the early nineteen thirties, the first person who comes to his mind is Shloime Vinocur.  Shloime was a landzman, coming from Galicia, and he was employed in charge of preparation of fruit baskets for some retailer. They were generous people and we used to go there and eat fruit – whatever they were packing at the time. My mother wouldn’t just put fruit on the table, she’d serve fruit as part of the meal, for example when we had bananas and sour cream for supper, that would be supper. Bread was five cents a loaf for fresh rye, but if you walked to the bakery, it was four cents (it was fresh but from yesterday, don’t worry, bread never lasted long in our house either). Mother (Bobi Bayla) used to make interesting things out of potatoes, like potato kugel (which we called kigel) –  [All the printing presses in Europe were centered around Vilna where people spoke Litvishe Yiddish (Lithuanian/Latvia, where the big yeshiva was). That was the high class Yiddish. But we were from Galicia where spoke a yiddisher Yiddish, with a way of putting an ‘I’ in].

In the family, Dad remembers, among his Mom’s brothers, Sam and Irving and Leon, Sam best. That was because Sam had a car – he was an insurance salesman, when the depression was at its worst, about 1936, they decided to call it quits in Winnipeg and moved on to Chicago, with my aunt Fannie and their two sons, Mickey and Norman. We missed them being in Winnipeg, uncle Sam was a generous guy, other people would give us a nickel for Hannuka, uncle Sam would give us a quarter. I played golf with Leon a couple of times when he was an adult and I was a kid and he was nice to me but somehow he and his wife were on the fringe of the Hollenberg mishpacha. Leon’s wife was named Bess and their children were Andrea and Narvee.  The center of all the activities was at 335 Manitoba avenue which I loved. It had a great veranda which an ideal place in the summer. The city had lots of elms for shade and the veranda offered a nice breeze in the hot summer.  On Shabbas you’d observe all the people hurrying by, dressed up in their best, looking for places to park. We were near two shuls. The house attracted all the relatives and friends. The food I remember specifically was Bobi Bayla’s cheese knishes. The recipe passed on through Mom and Mir. Next door to us was Mrs. Levine, a caterer, she used to make food for weddings and simhas, she used to make gefilte fish, my mother made a great gefilte fish from fish from Gimli, Mrs. Levine’s gefilte fish was even better than my Mom’s which was great in itself. Mrs. Levine had pzazz as far as the food (not her looks) was concerned. Fifteen cents bought you a piece of gefilte fish that would cost you five bucks [today] at United Bakeries.

When Uncle Sam gave you a quarter for hanuka, what would you do with it?  It was likely getting twenty five dollars. I’d buy skates for $2.50, I would go round mooching pennies from relatives. They would have a party at our place and you would remind all the relatives that it was Hanuka. Nobody phoned to invite them, people would just drop in. There wasn’t always money but there was food.  By 1936 we had an electric fridge, everybody had to contribute from their wages for the upkeep of the house. I remember in the summer buying a bottle of buttermilk that had been on ice and tasted great.

Cousins of Bobi Bayla [Dad’s Mom]: Hansi in Fort William and Berryl in Vancouver and Moishe Hollenberg in Winnipeg (a peddler who had five sons and one daughter, all five sons became physicians, one of them is the Dad of cousin Morley Hollenberg the physician).

In the 1920s, Bobi Miriam came to Winnipeg with her children, one was mentally retarded, he was in Selkirk, Bobi Miriam lived one block away and she had Sofie with her (her sister) whose husband made delicious herring. It was his second marriage, she didn’t have kids. Bobi Bayla’s siblings were Sam, Bobi Bayla, then Irving, then Leon then Charles (?).

Bobi Miriam didn’t have very much good to say about anybody. Dad visited her, Bayla used to make him go –  Miriam’s husband came back after the war but died soon after that.

My [Dad’s] father was my Mom’s Hebrew teacher in Miserifke. The Hollenberg clan brought in a teacher, and they fell in love (not a shiduch) and they had one child (Betty) in Europe.  Bobby Bayle’s Dad had a ‘shenkel’, an inn where Mom used to served vodka to the peasants. My mother once told me that on Friday night they would put drapes everywhere in the house to block off the view as they were afraid that angry and drunk types would see them celebrating and shabbas and attack them.  My maternal grandfather (Nehemia) during the first war was caught behind enemy lines (German lines) and his wife Miriam, my grandmother, was left to tend to her family while her husband was in Germany. I remember once Irving brought a letter to the house written during that period addressed to a relative in the US, because they hadn’t entered the war yet. On one sheet of paper it was in Hebrew on the other side it was in Yiddish, those were the parts written to my mother. The letter was from my zaide to my bobi, Miriam, on which day yahrtzeits had to observed and when. The letter was written from behind the German lines.  [Dad remembers because this was the only connection between the two generations].

Dad: I don’t remember any relatives at all of my Dad, except Friedel (Fred) who was a cousin of my Dad’s in Winnipeg, he was a watch maker. His kids were Dad’s second cousins, the only mishpacah I remember on my Dad’s side.

In 1912 my father went from his home town  to  New York and worked in a garment sweatshop. In 1913 he sent for Bobbi Bayla and baby Betty who joined him in New York, where my sister Jenny was born.  Things of economic importance drew my folks to Winnipeg, there uncle Moishe who had established himself as a peddler and they helped them get the papers to come to Canada (during the great war).  In Winnipeg my Dad got a job in a garment factory, and it wasn’t too long before he owned a factory, called H&R manufacturing (Herman and Rosenberg). My Father looked after the production of the products which were mostly overalls and denims, and Herman became a non-entity. Dad ended up with two partners, one son-in-law Hymie Glassman (married to Auntie Jenny in 1935) and his father. I remember the wedding very well because I was drinking soft drinks (Winola – Winnipeg cola) like they were going out of style and Mr Glassman asked me how many I had, I answered ‘eight’, he said ‘I’m going to tell your father to pay me’ and I believed him and was worried about it. My mom reassured me that it was just a joke, but I have my doubts.

Dad: There were three big Yiddish papers at the time, the forward, der tog, and ?, but [his] Dad subscribed to ‘morgen freiheit’, a small leftist publication. My brother Ike didn’t even have a bar mitzvah. I had a tutor, Mr. Handler, and his game was he drove a bicycle and he knew all the secret places where I would hide from him around the lanes close to our house. He would always find me. It cut into my freedom, I was a lone spirit, I had some friends but I had my own agenda. My mother tried to send me to Peretz Shul where there were two classes, one studying Yiddish full time till grade six, and the afternoon classes. It wasn’t for me and I was booted out of the afternoon school (pre bar-mitzvah). I misbehaved terribly, I was a street kid who hung out with everybody, jews, and some non-jews. I would have to recite ashrai ten times. After peretzshul I was sent to another shul, where I was also kicked out and banished to a dark basement room as punishment. My father, enraged, pulled me out of that class and got me that private teacher. Hendler succeeded in preparing me for the bar mitzvah. I ended up getting a bicycle as a present, my bar mitzvah was in the winter, had to wait till spring to use the bike. The bike enabled me to get anywhere in Winnipeg and I earned the salary of a grown person because I was able to deliver things efficiently. One place paid me five dollars a week for delivery and I worked from morning till night in the summers. The best job was working for a stationery company, the deliveries were in the commercial section. The worst job was with Mr. Axelrod, the butcher, between the deliveries I would have to help with treating the meat, making sausages etc. where I saw blood running (or imagined), hated that. When I  graduated from university I had $2000 saved up even after paying tuition etc.

The darkest period of my life was after Nov. 23^rd, 1940, the day my Dad died. He died suddenly within an hour or two, a Saturday night and just the three of us were in the house, Mom, Dad an myself. My father said “Bayla, ich fil nisht git”, and he passed on. Later there were some questions about his treatment for a blood clot that occurred as the result of an accident involving a bicycle. He was only 53 years old. I was very close to my Dad, we would go to the factory together, I used to go through a lot of pants and they would tear. He would take me to the factory and I would watch him cut the layers of material 20 cm thick. He was the designer, and made up all the patterns. He spoke to me in English, mom spoke to in Yiddish. Used to play cards with him.

On Pesach we would go through the hagadah faithfully, the house was kosher, we had a shabbas dinner but never made Kiddush. Why did you go to shul on Rosh Hashana? – because everybody else went and I knew how to pray – I said kadish for my father and laiged tfillin, went to shul every day for a year, Ike didn’t, Jack didn’t, it was a natural thing, I was a favorite of the people at the shul.

At home Friday was Friday, newspapers were spread on the floor to cover the freshly waxed wood floor, and Saturday the papers were in the garbage and the house looked shabbasdik. Friday nite were were all together, including  the siblings and their spouses, in 1941, the first year after Dad died, the family split. Anne got married to Jack and they moved to Kingston until he was drafted, Betty was married to a German whom she divorced some years after.

Before 1940 Betty ran off with a policeman, non Jewish, my father was head of the company and the chief designer. Betty’s live-in second husband (after the policeman), was a presser. Betty was the head of all the seamstresses. Lil was the finisher. Jack ran the button hole machine. Anne was a seamstress. Hymie was Glassman was salesman. Nobody studied passed the eleventh grade.  Ettie and I were thankfully spared.

Ike was an excellent student, so were Lil and Anne.

The depression was very tough on families. The young men would leave and look for something better, and there never was anything better, it just didn’t exist. The depression was also a social depression, the people that he would associate with later were also disillusioned. Jack came back with a war injury, got a pension. After the war he bought a restaurant with his war compensation, and it was a going concern, but he brought it down financially, he didn’t know how to manage a restaurant, so when he went down, Ike took a bit of a hit and me too, what happened was when we moved to Ottawa in 1953 we bought the house which we couldn’t afford, so I wrote to Ike and to Jack and asked to lend some money, so Ike sent a few hundred dollars and Jack sent too. No sooner had I paid them off, then I get a sarcastic letter from Miriam, Jack’s wife, he did you a favour, now I want you to do him a favour, so I sent three hundred dollars which vanished when he went bankrupt. A guy by the name of Solomon, an officer in the royal navy was on the pension board, I  went to him, told him that my brother was wounded, couldn’t use his left hand, can’t you step up his pension. Jack was a delivery man, they gave him another examination and upped the pension.  He died of Parkinson related (pneumonia) in an army hospital.

Ike went to school with his army benefits.

Dad: The [Rosenberg] boys had their bedroom together at 335 [Manitoba Avenue]. The girls had a bedroom for five girls, and the folks rented out an apartment on the second floor, so we always had tenants, but after my father dad, Bobi Bayla took Betty back in and she and Bill Wertner (?) were living upstairs. After she threw Bill out she lived with Adam Lang. Betty never had any kids.

Dad: I had some very close friends among them was Alan Greenberg who became less of a friend when he met his wife-to-be, Rae.  He was afraid that once Dad saw her, they would be in competition, so he was a little bit of a mazek when it came to girls. I liked girls and some of them liked him too, but I was more interested in boys, not sexually. My three bridge playing pals were Sam Kleinman and ?. He later became an important friend, a friendship that endured many years. Another friend was Bert Segal who, sad to say, drifted apart inevitably because of changes of interest. Bert was an afficianado of movies and became immersed in the whole cinema industry, I lost touch with him.

A new family moved into the Baltic apartments, whose youngest member was Ari Moskovitch, that time he was called Lawrence. I had become interested in Zionism and read all about it, all the material I was able to find, I read ‘judenstat’ and ‘altneuland’. There were letters to the Winnipeg free press, usually on the side of the palestinaians. What really organized the Palestinians was the UN. The UN supported the gaza strip by providing food, education and medical facilities, after 1948. Lawrence was also a fastidious reader and joined habonim which was a labour Zionist youth movement. He took me down to one of the Friday night events, I was about nineteen, but I found the youth there were mainly younger than me. Once I felt a reply had to be given to one of the vicisious anti-israeli cause. I wrote a letter to the editor which I thought was a proper response, ari agreed with me, I think that it was printed. The sentiments of the youth group worked on me and I managed to meet and make friends with some of the older members. Ari and I had early cooperated when we introduced his brother Jack to my sister Ann who had one of the most successful marriages for over sixty years and Ann died of a terrible disease that was diagnosed after her death as ALS.

The senior group in Habonim met on Saturday afternoons and at the instigation of some of the members, established a ‘hoog’ on the study of the ‘tanach’, the tanach group. Among its younger members was a woman that eventually became my wife (and our Mom). The study of the tanach page by page sentence by sentence was led by the members themselves and it brought many of us back to closer association with religion. It had a profound effect on me and Faigel, and I can remember celebrating the UN adoption of the two state resolution on nov. 29^th, 1947, we were at our home on Manitoba listening to the radio, and we bought the record afterwards. From habonim we also carried a high proportion of young Canadians streaming to Israel, some to help in the fight, the machal group, and some to carry out hityashvut. I volunteered in 1948 to go to Israel as many others young 18 year olds but my advisors then who was recruiting told me I should stick with the habonim course, that was Mel Fenson who later turned out to be a very close friend. He later gave up  a lucrative position as a lawyer  in Winnipeg and lived his whole life in Jerusalem. His wife Ruth is still in Jerusalem. So this combination of individuals and my contemporaries affected us every turn we made.

Special friends in the movement were Osher and Irene Chaiken. Osher was a great individual who inspired my modesty. I found out after he gave up his dental practice that he did so because he despised the fact that he was inflicting pain upon his patients. He minded it more than they did. Another warm friend was Morry Cohen. Morry used to sing mostly Jewish music and Yiddish songs, no one enjoyed his voice more than I did.  Also in the group was Moish Sudack, a special friend, with whom we carried on a life long relationship until his unfortunate death a few years ago. We brought up our children to enjoy their Jewish background and to take pride in their own selves, being Jewish or just being a mensch.

We thought that children should go to summer camp.

…This is where the interview ends. I wonder what intervened. Coffee? Shopping? It doesn’t appear that I worked on it at the time, perhaps because it meandered so and it didn’t seem valuable. But now the Dad is gone it does…