parade would portend a military career for me, but I only spent two years in the army (during peacetime in the United States) and that is also a story for later on in my tale. However, I’m getting ahead of myself.
My maternal grandmother arrived in the United States in February of 1904 with my three-month-old future mother-to-be. Like all the other third-class immigrants of the time, when they landed in New York, they were required to pass through Ellis Island. They first settled in Rochester New York and later moved to Chicago. About twenty-five years later I was born on November 16, 1929 at Mount Sinai hospital, Chicago Illinois, a month after the great stock market crash that heralded the onset of the great Depression creating some of the economic conditions that would lead inevitably to the amazing history of the 1930’s, the decade that paved the way to World War II.
CHAPTER 2
FAMILY HISTORY
My next memories occurred two years later. I was five years old and living in another apartment. Whereas I had lived on the second floor of the two flat with the cement and brick outdoor porch, I now lived on the second floor of another two flat (without a cement and brick porch). This new residence was two blocks further South on the same street—867 N. Sacramento Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois.
Only now, there was no father in the house. He left. There was no difference as far as my memory is concerned, for I have never had a recollection of a father in the house, and the only memory of my mother until I was five years old was the parade episode. Apparently, when I was a toddler, my mother fell mentally ill and spent a considerable amount of time in a “sanitarium.” She often spoke about it later and mentioned her psychiatrist—Dr. Schoolman (sp?)—whose son I would later get to meet as a young adult while taking a math elective in medical school.
None of this registered in my brain, of course. My father was no longer with me, and during my mother’s absence, maternal grandparents cared for me. My grandmother, who I called Bobby, a child’s distorted Yiddish bubby, or grandmother, would become a great influence in my life. In essence, she served as a second mother. Her name was Anna Tepper and my grandfather’s name was Sam. They served as substitute parents for me and provided me with loving care that I otherwise would have missed—and who knows what impact that would have had on my life.
My mother told me that once when she returned from the hospital, “You wouldn’t come to me because you forgot who I was.” She said these words with a sad expression that I remember to this day. At the time, I was standing in the dining room of my apartment and those words are a memory I will never forget, because, as young as I may have been, I felt how deeply that experience would affect any mother. It made me very sad, and I remember somehow feeling responsible.
My maternal grandmother and grandfather came from the Pale of Settlement, an area under Russian control. Specifically their hometown was Tiktin (Yiddish) Tykocin (Polish), a small town on the river Narew in northeast Poland. My maternal grandmother’s name was Rosenovich. My maternal grandfather’s name was Tepperovitch, subsequently Americanized to Tepper when they came to the United States through Ellis Island. The same is true of my paternal grandparents. Their name was Tombach (sp?), changed to Cohen when they arrived in the United States on passage through Ellis Island. There are three versions of this name change. 1. An Ellis Island clerk gave my grandfather the name Cohen, because he looked Jewish (a reflection of my grandfather’s beard and heritage), 2. My grandfather changed his name to Cohen in order to get a “good American name,” or 3. He changed his name as a reflection of his pride over the fact that he was descended from the first priestly tribe of ancient Israel, the Kohanim. I never learned which version was correct. Many years later, a man who I have confidence in told me that Ellis Island employees never gave immigrants a name. At this time, it would be appropriate to mention that my grandfather followed my grandmother and my infant mother to the United States. He was in the Czar’s army, an army in which Jews could never be an officer, and in which Jews suffered persecution. Many years later, my cousin (my grandfather’s son’s daughter), told me that her father told her that my grandfather deserted the Czar’s army, was captured by a Russian guard who said, “Let the young man go, his family is already in the United States.” I have to wonder, if caught by another guard whether he would have suffered the fate of most deserters during wartime (Russo-Japanese war).
Why did my grandparents leave? Some history will be informative. It was in 1772 that Russia, Austria, and Prussia divided Poland in three stages over a period of twenty-seven years and my ancestors in Poland found themselves part of Russia. These partitions resulted in Russia assimilating several million Jews within their boundary. Most of these Jews comprised the middle class between the nobility and the peasantry of Russia.
At first, the Russian government tried to ignore them even though it was against government policy to have them within their borders, but eventually the government found them useful as they blamed the Jews for the untenable economic position of the peasants. As a result, the condition of the Jews became precarious, and the officials subjected them to onerous laws with ever-increasing restrictions.
The “Pale of Settlement” was the name of the entire landmass within which the Czar required Polish and other Eastern European Jews to live. As time went on, the geographic boundaries of the Pale would change and the living restrictions lifted for certain Jews who worked in some vital occupations, such as artisans, physicians, wealthy merchants, or graduates of universities; these were rare. The population of the Pale increased to almost five million by nineteen hundred.
In 1843, Nicholas I was Czar of Russia. He characterized the Jews as “the leeches of the country.” He had instituted one of the most onerous laws in Jewish history when, in 1827, he decreed that once a Jew reached the age of twelve, he was required to serve in the Russian army for twenty-five years. At twelve, the authorities sent Jewish recruits to the same schools as the Russian soldier’s sons. The purpose was simple. While serving in the military, a Jew had to convert or die.
In general, they had to endure ill treatment by their officers, and religious authorities subjected them to various tortures in order to accept baptism. Awakened in the middle of the night and compelled to kneel until they accepted conversion or collapse, their tormentors gave them high salt meals with no water, beat and tortured them and it was the rare recruit who was able to hang on to his faith.
Jewish communities received a quota of Jewish twelve-year-olds to supply to the military. This quota was a certain number of conscripts per each thousand males. Who would go? Who would not go? In some areas, authorities forced children of the poorest Jews into service. Influential Jewish leaders assigned to this task hired “khapers” to fill the quota. In essence, these hired men were salaried kidnapers.
Upon entering the military, Jewish children lived in barracks called cantonments and as a result, the authorities named them cantonists.
My maternal grandparents first settled in Rochester, New York and then Chicago, Illinois where my maternal grandfather went to work for his wealthy brother-in-law, a prominent bakery owner and investor named Sam Rosen who became a master baker at the age of twelve following a three-year apprenticeship in Germany. In the thirties, I can remember my grandfather’s salary of thirty-five dollars a week, and the rent on Sacramento Boulevard of thirty dollars per month. On that income, he raised three daughters and one son.
My father was also born in Tiktin four years before my mother. His parents and my mother’s parents knew each other in the old country. My father’s mother died aged twenty-six. I’ve heard two versions as to the cause of death: childbirth or pneumonia. I suspect the former is more accurate, but I’m not certain. Regardless, my paternal grandfather became a widower, and in time married a sixteen-year-old girl (my future step-grandmother) and immigrated to the United States—in 1904. This was most fortunate for my step grandmother because during World War II her twelve brothers and sisters who remained in Poland
