Re: [Cz-L] two questions

I believe that the "CL" stands for Caliceanca, a suburb of Czernowitz,
located to the NE of the city, quite fart from the center.

I have the memoirs of my maternal grandfather, Saul Leib Steinmetz, who came
to Czernowitz in 1879 or 1880. His parents were both from Maramures, from
very religious families, and had moved to Czernowitz on the advice of the
Rabbi of Wiznitz. The rabbi introduced my great-grandfather to one of his
other Chasidim, a man from Czernowitz by the name of Drimmer, who owned
a wholesale wine store on the Tempelgasse and my great-grandfather probably
worked for Drimmer till about 1890 The family also lived on the Tempelgasse.
Sometime during the 1890ties, my great-grandfather opened his own inn or
wine shop on the Tempelgasse and my great-grandmother also took in lodgers,
predominantly students at the university. My great-grandparents remained
very orthodox Jews, sent my grandfather to "Cheder" and on major holidays
went to Wiznitz to be at the court of the rabbi. My grandfather yearned to
learn German and obtain a general education, but his parents would not allow
him to do so; they feared that learning German would induce their son to
leave Judaism. About this period, my grandfather writes, that he frequently
stole his way into Yiddish theatre plays, but he did this without his
parents' knowledge. They probably thought that going to the theatre led to
godlessness.

Around 1893, my grandfather left Czernowitz for a small village near Sighet.
Part of the way he could travel by rail, but part of the way he had to get a
ride on a cart transporting felled trees. This was quite a common mode of
traveling.

By 1898, my great-grandfather had a Weinschenke (bar) on the Hauptsrasse.
By 1909, my great-grandparents had moved to the Karolinengasse #4, now
Zankovetska #2. My grandfather had married and had two children and he too
lived at Karolinengasse #4. This building is what my mother described as a
"Miet-Kaserne" (very large rental apartments building). It is a three
stories square building with an inner courtyard, located adjacent to the
Tempel. The families of a number of members of this list lived in that
building, as did, I believe, Joseph Schmidt. Families were large; my
great-grandparents had 6 children, my grandparents - 4. My paternal
grandparents, less affluent than my maternal ones, had 8 children, two of
them from a previous marriage of my grandfather. His first wife had died.
They lived in Manasteriska on the Verlaengerte Pumnulgasse. Their house was
build bit by bit by my grandmother. I mean actually built with her own
hands. Twigs, straw and clay mud were the building materials. The house
still stands, a one story small building on the bank of the "Klokutczka
Bach". In their immediate vicinity, also lived the families of a number of
members of this list. All were observant of Jewish rituals and laws. For
help with their problems they went to the Rabbi of Sadagura. All the
children played together on the street and the men visited each other in
order to talk and escape from the noise of their many children.
One family on the street had 18 children.

Infectious diseases often spread through the town. Before WW1 one of my
aunts had smallpox, another had polio. In 1924 there was a scarlet fever
epidemic in Czernowitz. My paternal grandfather died due to an infected
mosquito bite, probably Tetanus.

Jews mostly spoke Yiddish to each other, in school they learned German and
wrote in Gothic letters. To the peasants who came in from the villages, they
spoke Ruthenian, or Polish or Romanian, as needed. Non-Jews who worked for
Jews, often spoke Yiddish fluently. Even though there was little social
mixing, the various ethnic groups learned from each other and influenced
each other.

My maternal grandmother, who was born and grew up in Klyvodin, had learned
to make and eat raw vegetable salads, from her Ruthenian neighbors. At that
time this was not a common practice among Jews. As I found out on my recent
visit to Czernowitz, "Mayineh", a Jewish dish, not known in other parts of
the Ukraine, became popular in Czernowitz and is still on the menu of a
number of restaurants in town

Many people left Czernowitz for America, before WW1. Some, in order to
improve their economic circumstances, others because they had embezzled
money from their business partners. The emigrants often had to leave their
families behind.

Sorry about the "langhe megilleh".
Shana Tovah to all of you,

Mimi

On 9/4/10 1:13 AM, "Attiyeh" <rea_at_ucsd.edu> wrote:

> I have two different questions for all the Czernowitzers with great
> memory of the past:
>
> 1) Thanks to entries from the 1936 Cz directory, I now know the
> address of my father's younger brother at that time. My question is
> about the "stadplan" area for him, which was written as "CL". All the
> others on the list were in stadplan CZ. Does anyone know where the CL
> neighborhood was in the city, what kind of neighborhood that was (I
> can tell that it is not where the affluent central Herrengasse and
> Hauptstrasse are), and what the CL initials stand for?
>
> 2) Does anyone remember stories their parents or grandparents told
> them about what Czernowitz life was like for them, perhaps between
> the 1870's to 1890's, or around 1900? I am learning so much from your
> own wonderfully written memories about life and culture during your
> own childhood years, right through the awful times of the1940's, and
> that helps me to "know" the experiences of my family who remained in
> Czernowitz after my father left for America in 1911. But I don't have
> any feeling for what the life and culture of Jewish families was like
> in the time of my father's childhood (he was born in 1893) and that
> of his older siblings and his parents. Did your parents and
> grandparents talk about their own childhood and young adult years?
> Were their experiences growing up very different from yours? Had they
> all been born in Czernowitz, or, if not, where had they come from,
> where had they been born?
>
> Jessica Falikman Attiyeh, San Diego, CA
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Received on 2010-09-05 06:40:21