Meeting with Grandfather and Grandmother
(Narrator was Josef Sivashinsky, who died 3 years ago.)
By Ilya Magid

1. Trip to Grandfather and Grandmother
2. Time with Grandfather and Grandmother
3. Return Home

Editors: Steven Siegel and Dan Smollens

Meeting with Grandfather and Grandmother

1. Trip to Grandfather and Grandmother

The time was 1918. I, Josef Sivashinsky, lived with my family in the city of Petrograd. (The city of Petrograd was renamed to Leningrad in 1924, when Lenin died.) I was a 4-year-old boy and lived in a big religious family. That was the time of a Civil war and in Petrograd it was a time of starvation, we did not have enough food.

My relatives decided to send my sister and me (she was older than I by 3 years) to shtetl Uglish in Byelorussia to my mother's grandfather and grandmother. My older sister (16 years old) accompanied us. It was spring. With great difficulty we took a seat in the train and arrived in the town of Vitebsk. After that we had to go to the ship on river Vest Dvina. The river at that place was very narrow. There it was very crowded. All people sat on the deck with their baggage. Once the ship stopped, and the captain came to us. I sat on the floor and saw only his boots. He knocked with a whip on the floor. He ordered my sister to leave the ship to get and saw firewood for the ship. She could not go because she could not leave us and argued and cried; at last he left her.

There were lawless bands of men: red, green, and other. They blocked the river with chains, robbed people, and some times killed some of them. The previous ship had been hijacked, and my grandparents were very nervous.

2. Time with Grandfather and Grandmother

My grandfather was a Rabbi. Grandfather and grandmother lived in a big log house. In the center of the house there was a big village oven. There were also a synagogue and religious court. I had never seen my grandparents and at first lost courage when I saw grandfather with his big beard. I stood behind my sister. Gradually I got courage. In the house it was cold; we did not have warm clothing. But we did not freeze; they put us over the stove. There I could stay, but my sister couldn't.

My grandmother was in the garden all the time. Each morning about 7 o'clock my grandfather wore a fur coat and began to pray very loudly (he was a little deaf). We each day heard his prayers. We did not understand it, but remembered all, and anticipated, and some times checked him.

In the summer sometimes came some soldiers of bands to the shtetle. Once I saw a soldier take out a piece of bread and metal can of oil, salt it and begin to eat. I saw him and he gave me a piece.

We did not have salt; it was expensive as bread. Once, an empty wooden barrel from herring was delivered to us. We poured some water into a barrel, and prepared bread in the barrel. I remembered a big tree in my grandfather's garden. They sawed it, but could not saw it into small pieces (because it was hard) and put thus peace directly into the oven.

I forgot Russian and spoke only Yiddish. On the Shabbat, Jews came to us. I liked to sit on my grandfather's lap. He covered me with his fur coat. I liked to see people across his beard. He spoke and read about one and a half hour (He also read parts of the Talmud).

Once, my grandmother washed me in the wash-tube near the oven. Two women came from Petrograd. My grandmother did not have clothes for me. My grandmother took a pillowcase. She made two holes for my legs and that way I went out with them. One woman kissed me. They began to ask me, "Who is your mother?" I indicated one woman who kissed me. Really my mother was another woman. We had to return to Petrograd. That was in 1922 when civil war ended; the communists won. (In that stetle there was also church.)

3. Return Home

We returned to Petrograd at the Vitebsk terminal. We were adults. A man loaded me and other baggage onto a wagon. I was excited and looked at different sides of the street. My sister went alongside. I wore 'bast sandals and my clothing were strange. At home I saw electric bulbs. In the shtetl I saw only a candle and lamp.

My father decided to send me to heder. At that time heders were forbidden. We had class in a private apartment. When we heard a knock at the door we had to run. The same way I studied until age 13. We studied Gemora and other subjects. Later it was necessary to stop that studying.

Some other notes about Joseph Sivashinsky's grandfather and about him were written in the story, "Recollection about a Photograph."

Boston, 1999

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