Survivors & Witnesses
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Name: Rubin Feldstein
Date of Birth: February 15, 1933
Birthplace: Zamosc, Lublin in Poland
Parents: Isadore (Itzrahk) Edna (Yitta)
Siblings: One sister, Sylvia Sherr
Spouse: Ann Feldstein
Children: Three
Grandchildren: Two
I was born in February of 1933 --- that was the same year that Adolph Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany. My family lived in Zamosc, Lublin in Poland. Zamosc was a small, historic, walled city. Part of the city that was inside the wall was called the “Alteh Shtot” That was the old city, we lived outside the walls. My father had a general store in front of a cobble stoned market square and I still remember images of it. The farmers came on particular days of the week, and it was very lively kind of place, gypsies came to perform and tell fortunes --- very colorful. My dad’s store faced that, and his brother- in law’s store was next to it. His brother- in law was in the dairy products business. And behind the store there was a kind of a quadrangle. The houses were built perpendicular to the stores and went straight back. In the back of that a fence completed the courtyard. Several families lived there, all related to each other. If “it takes a village” I lived in one. I was never out of sight of an adult or teenager. They were the children and grandchildren of my maternal grandfather,” a man called Borach Tavu Reifer. BorachTavu means “the good blessing and he was both a rabbi and a cantor and he worked for the Lublin Yeshiva. He traveled the countryside, would sing in the synagogues on Sabbath and other holidays and in the process would raise funds from the prominently wealthy citizens that he solicited in town.
At any rate, things were getting very bad in Poland in the early 30’s. The Poles were culturally anti-Semitic to begin with. And then the story from the west, from Germany was adding to that. Very fortunately for us, my dad’s older brother had left Poland either in 1911 or 1912 and gone to America. During World War I he joined the American army and was wounded somewhere in France, he lost an eye, and came back with a Purple Heart and a couple of other medals. In 1936, he got an appointment with his state senator, Philip La Follette, the son of Robert La Follette. The purpose of the appointment was to see if he could get a precious quota number which would allow us to immigrate to the States. We got the precious document. My dad had been notified and one day, he was told to go to the post office at four o’clock because there would be a phone call for him. In 1938 in, Zamosc there were very few telephones, we didn’t have one. And since the telephone company and the post office were connected, that’s where you went to receive or make a call. The phone was from the Cunard - White Star Line in England and the fellow there told him that his ship’s tickets and passports were all set. He asked him to be in the port of Gdynia in four days. My dad’s response was he knew it was coming; but, he added that he expected more warning, more time to prepare and sell his business and so on. The man told him that if he wanted to wait for another ship, that was okay, but he had to know now yes or no because he didn’t want any ships to leave with empty cabins. My dad thought about it, and he tells me that he felt of a kind of a sense of urgency from the man who was talking to him, and he said “We’ll go.”
In four days we had to prepare and some very important decisions had to be made. I can remember that we had a large extended family. In the houses that I’ve described to you there were thirty seven- people and we had to say goodbye. I remember we had a party for the children before we left and my parents had to make decisions as to what they were going to carry with them, and what they were going to leave behind, given the amount of luggage they were allowed to take. They were going to a place they knew nothing about. Leaving family was traumatic. My dad gave the business to his brother in law with idea that he would someday pay him for it. The brother in law and the business kind of evaporated, he never pursued it. I returned to Zamosc in 2005. The two stores were destroyed, but the buildings that replaced them used the old foundation and the footprint is the same.
Very often the movies portray people leaving home for America as a joyous occasion. It isn’t that at all. The people that make home a special place must be left behind. The security of that community is forsaken for the unknown. To me the most poignant scene in Fiddler on the Roof is when Tevyeh’s daughter leaves and says, “Only God knows if we’ll ever see each other again.” This is a very realistic assessment, no dramatic license is needed. Of the thirty-seven people who lived in our little world only eleven survived. We, with the help of HIAS and friends brought those and some others to America after the war.
We got on the Polish ship, the Varshavah (the Warsaw). This ship was to take us to England where we would get the English ship, the Scythia, which would take us the rest of the way. On the way to England, we had to go to through the Kiel Canal in Germany. It was late September, I don’t know exactly when. It was a nice sunny day when we entered the canal. We went up on the deck. A group of teenagers dressed in uniforms very similar to Boy Scouts, but carrying a flag with the red white and black Swastika marched on the side of the canal. They sang the Horst Wesel to us. This was a kind of anthem named after one the Nazi party’s martyred thugs. The German words, “Ven dahs Yuden Blut fun dahs meser shprotst”, means, when the Jew blood runs from the knife. My parents grabbed my sister and me and took us down to the cabin for the six to eight hours that it took us to get through the canal. My reflection as an adult are these were adolescents who were being taught that it was okay to hate, that it was okay to kill, as a matter of fact it was not only okay --- it was patriotic, it was the thing that they were supposed to do. And I look back at it now, and realize how very important education is. In South Pacific the song, You Have to be Taught to Hate and Fear resonates.
We eventually got to England. We stayed there several days and then got
on the ship, the Scythia and we were headed for the States. We hit a
north Atlantic storm and I remember that vividly because it was either
Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. I remember that they were having services
in the dining hall that had been set up with candles and all the rest of
it. The storm hit, and the captain told us that we would have to end our
services and everybody was to go to their cabins. We got through it,
but, I believe it delayed our arrival in New York because we came into
the city late at night. My mother woke us up, which was unusual, a
Jewish Mother waking up sleeping children? We saw the glittering lights
of New York and she told us we were coming to the “Goldeneh Medinah”,
this meant the golden nation. My sister and I still react to that
memory.
We stayed for a couple of weeks in New York with relatives of my mother’s and then we went to stay with my uncle who had been able to get the passports for us. He lived out in Wisconsin. My dad worked for his brother, until he learned some survival English. He had to earn a living. It was very difficult for an immigrant at that time; it was still the Depression, 1938. And he had very little command of the language, but eventually he bought a horse and a wagon. He named the horse Hitler, he didn’t abuse the animal, but just liked to tell it when to stop and start and which way to go, went down to the south side of the city of Milwaukee which, at that time was overwhelmingly Polish, either immigrants or children of immigrants. Language, therefore, was no problem. He sold fruit and vegetables in the summer time and scrap in the winter. When the war broke out he got a job in one of the breweries in Milwaukee. He eventually bought a little neighborhood grocery store and earned a living. My parents used the little “mom and pop” business to send two kids through school. That pretty much summarizes most of it. My sister and I both went to college, both went into education. My sister taught art for awhile and then elementary school. And she now does fantastic art work; she’s been shown in a number of juried exhibits and at her own show. Each of us has three grown children. I was a teacher, guidance counselor and principal.
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