The first vivid memories from my early childhood are that of my beloved mother Rukhtshe (Rolhl) Kaufman-Infeld. Whenever I woke up from sleep, I would see my mother on a chair at her workshop near the high window in the back of the spotlessly clean room. This huge room included: a dining area in the center, a reception area to the right of the entrance door, the main bedroom area to the back (on the same side), a huge tiled heating oven immediately on the left of the entrance, a long wall with two oak wardrobes to the right behind the stove, and mother’s workshop between the wardrobes and the sleeping area. The family would often gather around the stove in the winter to enjoy each other’s company. There were three windows in that room, red slippery floors, and a door to the long spacious kitchen that had a sink with running water from a tap, a long white table with chairs, a number of kitchen cabinets, worktables, two pails and many kitchen utensils.
Though we were not wealthy, my family was rich in ideals, spirit, hope, warmth and the belief in the potential goodness of all people. We thought of ourselves as working “intelligentsia” – and as a devoted, moral, ethical and aesthetic family.
My father came from a Khasidic family in Piatek. My grandfather, Reb Shimen Pionther, ner Alexanderer Khosid, was the most influential Jew in that town and of great importance in the Alexanderer Rebe’s hoyf (court). He was a grain merchant, and as I learned after I had moved to the United States, the count of that region used to bow to him when greeting him by saying: “Dzien dobry, Parzie Infeld.”
But all this was of little importance to my worldly, educated father. Though he had studied and had received certification from the Alexanderer Yeshiva, he later became a revolutionary, and a big opponent of the clergy and religious dogma in general. Despite the fact that all of the young men from Piatek who wanted to get out of the Russian army draft turned to my paternal grandfather for help, my father himself chose to serve in the army. This was a terrible blow to my grandfather, who was hoping that my father would become a rabbi or at least a Dayen (religious judge).
My paternal grandmother, Feygele, had a reputation as an extraordinarily good-natured person who was always ready to give tsdoke (charity) to people in need. The people in town referred to her as Feygele the Tsidaykes (righteous woman). Both my paternal grandparents, who later lived on Piotrkowska, the main Street in Lodz, died when my father was a prisoner of war in Germany during World War I.
I heard an extraordinary story about my father’s grandparents. Local hoodlums robbed and knifed them both to death while they slept. My father’s first cousin, Alye, who was a small boy at the time, had slept over that night in his grandparents’ home, but did not share in their misfortune. One of the armed robbers asked him in Polish: “Alye, are you asleep?”… He pretended to be asleep, and did not answer. Then the Pole turned toward his partner saying: “Alye is asleep! So let him be!” When Alye grew up he immigrated to the United States.
Unlike my father, my mother did not come from a prestigious family. Her father was a poor street-peddler and her mother was an illiterate but extremely wise and charitable woman. Neighbors and friends said that she helped many people, particularly orphans. She was well known for curing homeless children of scurvy.
I only knew one of my grandparents – my maternal grandmother. I thought the world of her. I used to say that I had three mothers – my mother, my mother’s sister Leytshe (Aunt Leye) and my grandmother Freydl (pronounced Fraadl in Lodz), whom I called Buba. I considered all of Buba’s worldly possessions to be ours, and if my mother punished me or insisted on discipline that I disagreed with, I ran to Buba for help.
Prior to WWII, Buba used to stand up erect and proudly announce that she had eight children, twenty four grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. Three of Buba’s children – her daughter, Kaltshe, and two sons, Hersh-Leyb and Note – resided in England. Several times Buba went there to stay with them, but each time she returned to be close to my mother (who was her youngest child), and me (her youngest grandchild). Buba was a very pious woman, but was aware that her offspring followed other, newer paths, and learned to accept their right to be different. If she noticed that any of her children or grandchildren failed to observe religious laws or customs, she pretended that she had not noticed it. She claimed that she was lucky that her family tried to honor her by observing religious laws when she was around. I heard that when grandfather Ele (or Eliyohu) was alive he was most intolerant of his “modern” children when they committed “religious transgressions” by failing to observe traditional religious customs, and he caused them much misery; including, at times, physical abuse.
(to be continued…)
©2001 Fela Infeld Glaser and Marty Capsuto
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