due to the disruptive effects of the First World War. It is, however, possible that the census of 1921 may have undercounted the Jews for there were over 5000 living there prior to the next war.
Bielsk Podlaski was an organised Jewish community with its own charitable institutions: hospital, a home for wayfarers which was open to the passing non-Jew as well, a burial society (chevra kadisha), an orphanage for twenty-five children and, while it had multiple synagogues, there was only the one rabbi overseeing them all.
The community was mainly Chassidic, the form of religion my mother practised, but during her years there, there were many other viewpoints: Zionists looking to emigrate to Palestine, Bundists (a Jewish secular socialist movement promoting Yiddish and opposing Zionism), and to a lesser degree, the Communists. There were sports leagues including Maccabi and Hapoel, libraries, discussion groups, lecture clubs, drama clubs, a local Jewish firehouse, and a Jewish cinema which in the late 1930s was barred by anti-Semitic youths who forcibly ejected patrons, but the Jewish youth organised themselves and fought back.
Right until the war the community was divided by a vigorous debate between those who preferred the traditional Yiddish schools (the Bundists) and those who espoused Hebrew schools as teaching the language of the future (the Zionists). There were active youth groups such as Hashomer Hatzair and Betar which still continue in modern Melbourne all these years later. Most of the younger people were Labor Zionists, wanting Hebrew education and assisting those going to Palestine, usually against the wishes of their parents. During the inter-war years the population of Bielsk Podlaski fell by nearly half as the young people left.
They were keen to leave; the anti-Semitic Poles were equally keen to get rid of them.
My mother lived in Bielsk Podlaski with this unknown uncle and his family. As a newcomer, she would have been unlikely to have been involved in anything apart from the religious practices of her immediate family. There would have been work and synagogue and, being an Orthodox home, there would not have been much opportunity to meet the fermenting youth of those years.
My mother Gitel was an attractive young woman, as we can see from her photos. She told of a tall customer coming in looking for a button; something about this man caught her attention. He must have noticed her as well, for the next day he was back seeking another single button. Over the next few weeks he seemed to have had a lot of bad luck with buttons. Let me assume there was another motive in his returning to look through the entire button stock. The attraction was more than haberdashery and the young couple was soon in love.
Yitzchak
Gitel
It wasn’t long before this man, Yitzchak Lewin, asked my mother if he could speak to her uncle. The uncle with three unmarried daughters, all older than his niece, Gitel, refused the offer for my mother’s hand, as he felt this young man should consider marrying the eldest of his daughters first. Quite a biblical response, but then these were very religious people.
So my mother disobeyed her uncle as she had once disobeyed her father and went to another town with Yitzchak where another uncle, a rabbi, married them. The town was likely to have been Bransk, which is where Yitzchak’s mother, Dvora, my grandmother, was born.
Yitzchak’s own parents were horrified. Their son, from a wealthy and illustrious family such as theirs, had married a girl for love. Not only that, but a lowly farmer’s daughter estranged from her own family with no dowry and certainly no evident good name, and the yichus it should bring.
6
My father, Yitzchak (or Izaak) Lewin, was born on 21 September 1900, so he was six years older than my mother. He was born in either Bielsk or Bransk where his mother was born. His parents were Moshe and Dvora Lewin. Moshe was born in 1875 and Dvora in 1880. Dvora was the daughter of Tzvi and Sara Kotlovitch.
My father Yitzchak and his sister Rose Lewin c. 1903-04
Moshe and Dvora Lewin
My father was the eldest of six children, a year older than his sister Rose and nine years older than his brother David. Then there were twin sisters, Sarah and Gitl, and the youngest was Shmuel, or as he was called, ‘Munni’. Shmuel was twenty-three years younger than my father.
The 1928 business directory listed four Lewins, all in the grocery business (spozywcze artykuly). F. Lewin was on Koscielna Street, L. Lewin on Mickiewicza Street, and W. Lewin on Rustowszowy Place, while my grandfather, Moshe Lewin, also had his business in Mickiewicza Street. While this is the longest street in Bielsk Podlaski, cutting through the town, it seems mostly residential, with the shops congregated in the area of Mickiewicza Square.
The Lewins were primarily in the grocery business in Bielsk Podlaski with only one, an A. Lewin, being listed in the directory as selling obuwie (shoes) on Sienkiawicza Street. Whether these were the sons of Moshe or brothers I don’t know, but it seemed Lewin was a big name in grocery, until I realised there were over sixty grocery stores in Bielsk Podlaski. The number of stores reflected the diversity of what they sold, for they were not supermarkets but had their own specialties: one for herrings, another for pickles, one for flour or sugar and so on. The addresses of nearly all these businesses were in one block of what must have been a thriving and vibrant central shopping district.
The stores themselves were often in single- or two-storey brick buildings with glazed doorways and ground-floor windows. Many were rendered in classic styles. It was quite an elegant town with wide paved tree-lined footpaths proudly displaying towering electricity poles carrying many layers of crossbeams and wires, areas of parkland, and its own railway station, rebuilt after being bombed in the First World War. The imposing main church across the square from the Lewin’s grocery was similarly white rendered, tall and two storeys high with a high red-tiled roof and a clock tower. Over half the non-Jews were Russian Orthodox in practice and most of the churches had Russian-style domes.
Could my father have first seen my mother as she was going to and from the haberdashery store in the same street and decided to introduce himself by buying a button? It does seem possible.
When they married it was to the horror of the Lewin family that their son could have married for love. Ostracised after their marriage, Gitel and my father stayed in Bransk, where it is likely my sister was born.
In 1929, after the birth of my sister, Chaya, in Bransk, my grandmother Dvora decided it was time to make contact and ask her son and his family to return to Bielsk Podlaski. After all, this was her grandchild.
My mother refused unless Dvora overcame her pride and personally came to collect them, which she did. So, it transpired my parents and sister returned from Bransk to Bielsk Podlaski, a distance of 25 kilometres, by horse and cart. To my mother this was as good as an apology. Strangely, from then on, she and Dvora got on very well.
Yitzchak and Gitel Lewin’s home and petrol pump
My parents moved into a large house in front of an extensive orchard and my mother began to help in my father’s business. It is likely the house and business were purchased by my grandparents and may have
