[Cz-L] What else?

Dear Landsleute,

Rachel Cylus must have been overwhelmed by all the "help" she got for her
paper and I hope she gets an "A" for it. What may have been an added
surprise was to discover how much Czernowitzers usually disagree with each
other and that this characteristic had survived intact ocean crossings and
was passed on to succeeding generations.

I would like to share with you three language-related experiences:

I belonged to the German speaking faction of Bukowiners who often distorted
the grammar, syntax, and pronunciation of German in the belief they spoke
Yiddish. During the war I lived with the parents of my stepmother who hailed
 from Poland and spoke Yiddish and I managed to learn to speak, read and
write this language. One of my most respected teachers, the mathematician
Hersch Segal, had been an avid collector of Yiddish folklore and this also
had an influence on me.

In March 1944, the German retreat had been in full swing and the continuous
rattle of tanks, trucks, horses and wagons could be heard in the basement of
the apartment house on Stefan Wolfgasse (Gheorghe Lazar) where we were
hiding. Suddenly, the noise subsided and an eerie silence descended on the
city. After a day, I had sufficient courage to crack the door and stick my
head out. Facing me was a soldier on a horse, wearing a fur hat and the cape
of a Cossack. Since units of the Vlasov army (renegades from the Soviet army
who were allied with the Germans) had also been passing through Czernowitz,
I was quite apprehensive but could no longer turn back. I proceeded to greet
the soldier with 'Sdrastvuytie' and noticed the red star on his hat. Whether
it was my limited knowledge of Russian or my apprehension - I could not
understand what he asked me. He then said: "Redst Yiddish?" When I
excitedly said "Nu, farshteyt sich", he dismounted, took his cape off, and
I noticed that he was a major. He took me around and said that I was the
first Jewish youngster he had met since he left Stalingrad several months
ago. There were some tears, we didn't talk much and the major then rode away
in the direction of the Volksgarten. During the past sixty-four years I
often wondered how much I would have missed out had I not known Yiddish.....

In 1955 I had to take the foreign language examination for doctoral
candidates at the Polytechnic Institute of New York. The choice of languages
were French, German, or Russian. With the customary Czernowitzer modesty, I
asked the Professor to pick the language and he said it had to be German,
because much of the chemical literature was in that language. I passed the
exam, but I felt it was "kein grosses Kunststueck".

In 1963 I was at the McMurdo Base in Antarctica in connection with the
installation of a small nuclear power plant to provide electricity and
desalinated water for the Research Station there. The hut once used by
Captain Scott was nearby and it had become the custom of visitors to
inscribe on one of the walls "I love Antarctica" in their own languages. I
found that there was no Yiddish inscription, so I wrote (with Hebrew
letters): "Ech hob Antarctica ser lib". It would have been superfluous to
indicate that I was from Czernowitz, since any linguist or anthropologist
who would read this would have guessed it.

Alfred Schneider
Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Engineering
Georgia Tech and MIT
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Received on 2008-01-10 21:24:59