for the first time. A t’noyim was much more than an engagement party, instead being an important moment of commitment accompanied by a signing of a document. This confirmed the terms of the marriage, including the wedding date and any dowry. The finality of this commitment was emphasised by the famed Rabbi of Lithuania, the Vilna Gaon, in the eighteenth century, a time when a more conservative rebellion was occurring against the Chassidic movement which it was felt was devaluing learning by being open to all. The Vilna Gaon advised that the breaking of a t’noyim commitment was a greater sin than divorce.
The mothers of the bride and groom symbolically broke a ceramic plate, often hand-painted for the occasion, together, as if to emphasise, as Shakespeare would say, ‘what is done cannot be undone’.
Let us imagine the t’noyim. It was an afternoon tea at the Lazovski home when my mother was to be introduced to her future groom for the first time. The two families would have been there, but whether Chaim and Mina had a larger party with other guests I cannot be sure of, for they were not into overt celebrations. What I do know is that when my mother peeked through the curtains into the room and saw her husband-to-be, all she later said was … ‘I immediately knew he wasn’t for me.’
I suspect she thought he was too old.
Once the plate was broken, there was no backing out. A bride who didn’t go ahead with the wedding from then on would be scorned, shunned by her family, and unlikely to ever marry. This my mother knew as she let the curtain fall and crept away.
The afternoon was getting late. Most likely the groom was asking his parents what was happening, for he too was keen to see the bride his parents had chosen for him. Rivka, the next oldest girl, may have been asked to go to get Gitel, whose attack of nerves was out of character for such a level-headed girl, or else my grandmother Mina may have excused herself from her guests and gone to fetch her.
An open back door allowed my mother to flee across the unmade road, unseen by anyone, up the gentle slope to the woods at the back of town, and from there she vanished. It is said she walked through the woods, swam across a river at the porous Lithuanian border and made it into Poland some twenty or so kilometres away.
This, by a woman I never knew could swim.
Perhaps, looking back on the family dynamic I have outlined, there is a simpler explanation. Her mother, Mina, may have supported her in the decision to leave, for it was likely that the highly opinionated Chaim alone had chosen the groom. Mina was a more progressive woman, as shown by her actions, when she later encouraged her youngest daughter, Bruria, to leave Vishey and study nursing in Germany. My grandmother, Mina, may have shared my mother’s dismay at the choice of groom. So it may not have been the sudden fleeing of a young girl, as I have been told, but perhaps planned ahead, for Bruria remembered Gitel coming to her just before she left with a gift she had knitted for her. Not only was such a gift unusual, for Bruria had never received such a gift before, but my mother also told her it was a secret.
The only photograph of my grandmother Mina, taken after my mother had left. With her daughters Rivka and Malka beside her and Bruria holding the ball in front.
Days after this giving of the gift my mother was gone, and as a result Bruria didn’t see her favourite older sister again for another thirty-five years.
5
I know my mother travelled over 200 kilometres to get to Bielsk Podlaski in Poland. This town is 40 kilometres past Bialystok, so it must have been her destination, for Bialystok was a much larger community and therefore a more logical place to seek work and shelter. How my mother got there is a mystery for she would have needed money for transport and the idea that a young, Jewish girl travelling alone across a border between two anti-Semitic peoples and for that distance without any help is hard to imagine.
Once in Bielsk Podlaski, my mother found an uncle who took her in. This uncle, I am told, had three daughters, all older than my mother, and he had a haberdashery shop. So she moved into his home and worked in his shop. She was so capable she was soon promoted and after a time managed the shop on her own.
In the passing of time and perhaps as much a result of my not asking, I don’t know the name of this uncle, and knowing what I do of the family tree, he is not easy to find. There is no uncle in either the Lazovski or Kannengiser family with three daughters, nor is there an aunt whose husband may well have been called an uncle.
My mother fled Vishey in 1924. I have found the 1928 and 1930 business directories for Bielsk Podlaski. This was a much larger town than Vishey, with 2,500 Jews and many businesses.
Could these reveal the name of the uncle with the three older daughters?
Haberdashers sold ribbons, buttons, needles and thread and similar sewing goods. The 1928 directory list the thirteen galanterja or haberdashers, of which eight are all in the same street, Mickiewicza Street. The 1930 directory had reduced the list to twelve haberdashers.
Bielsk Podlaski business directory 1928
The owners of these haberdashers are listed alphabetically as:
Bielski
Borensztyn
Chalulta
Drydak
Gorfinkiel
Lewkowski (but in 1930 listed as Lowkowski)
Sanicka
Surazska
Szyfman
I. Wasser
M. Wasser
Zundelson
Could Lewkowski or Lowkowski be a misspelt Lazovski? Spelling isn’t the strong suit in this directory, nor is it in other documents. I have found the family name alternatively spelt as Lazanski and Lozovskis. If so, the uncle could be from her father’s family and perhaps was from an undocumented generation earlier. This could explain the older daughters.
In Bielsk Podlaski, my mother learnt of the consequences of her actions. Angry words are likely to have followed her disappearance, for not only the groom, but also his entire family were humiliated. Her parents, Chaim and Mina, may have felt they had no choice but to no longer speak to their daughter if they were to stay members of the community, and it seems this may well have occurred. What I do know is that they didn’t see their eldest daughter, Gitel, my mother, for seventeen years.
Bielsk, like Vishey, had nearly a century of Russian rule. The town Bielsk only became part of Poland after the end of the First World War. The Podlaski was added to its name in 1919 because Poland already had another town called Bielsk. Bielsk Podlaski, being larger than Vishey, had four synagogues and, like Vishey, over half its population was Jewish.
This town had one of the oldest Jewish communities in eastern Poland with nearly a thousand-year history; by the fifteenth century it was firmly established, as Jewish traders in the forestry industry were shipping large amounts of timber to Riga in Latvia. So successful was the community, it became known as the ‘Land of Bielsk’ and the ‘Pearl of Podlaski’, with the Jewish population numbering 4000 by 1900. When my mother arrived in the 1920s, the Jewish population had
