Re: [Cz-L]stories of pre-and-early-1900's

Dear Jessica and all members of the Cz.-List,

I welcome your questions Jessica, because I myself have long been interested
in the question "What was Czernowitz REALLY like?"
Under ordinary circumstances, it is possible to get a good idea of the
character of a city and its inhabitants, by asking a sufficiently large and
random sample of its people to answer the question. Not so, when you ask
Czernowitzers. We are famous for the exaggerated sense of our own worth.
  
They did NOT sweep the Czernowitz streets with roses, nor did the whole
population consist of lawyers, physicians, poets and university professors.
But a very, very large segment of the population were snobs and what in
German are called "Hochstapler".

The truth is to be found in verifiable facts, such as the address books,
made available to us by Edgar Hauster, lists of students matriculating from
high school, lists of newspapers published in Czernowitz, advertisements in
the local newspapers, etc.

To get an idea of what professions or businesses Jews were employed in, in
1898, I looked at all the people named Rosenblatt on the 1898 address book.
There are 21 of them. All but one have Jewish first names. Two lived on the
Synagogengasse, two lived on the Springbrunnengasse, two on the
Kaliczakaergasse, two on the Hauptstrasse, two on the Liliengasse and the
others, one each on various streets.
In all, 5 lived in the lower town, the traditional Jewish part of town.
Three lived in what you might call the suburbs, except that the word
"suburb" has a positive connotation, whereas the German word "Vorstadt" does
not.

Their occupations or businesses are listed as:
2 "Agent", meaning sales rep. of larger companies, 3 are "Taglohner,"
meaning day laborers, 2 are bakers, 2 are businessmen, one is a porter, one
is a school-janitor, one is a carter, 2 are owners of brickyards, one is the
community janitor, two are grocers, 2 are bar-tenders or bar owners...

I seem to have annoyed a number of people by writing that at the turn of the
century, most Jews spoke Yiddish among themselves. Please remember that at
the time, the Jewish population of Czernowitz, consisted largely of people
who had only recently moved to the city. They had come from the surrounding
villages, from Besarabia, Galizia and Maramures, from places where there
were no schools in which German was taught.

I sense that some members of this list have a negative attitude to Yiddish.
As if it was the language of the uneducated.
Not so. Remember the 1908 Yiddish Language Conference, Yiddish theatre,
Yiddish authors popular at the time and the Yiddish authors who lived in
Czernowitz itself or visited it.

In the 1920ies the following Yiddish periodicals appeared in Czernowitz:
   
Arbeter Tsaytung
Dr. Birnboym's Vokhenblat
Folks-Tsaytung
Di Fraye Yugend
Frayhayt
Getseylte Verter: Literatur, Teater un Kunst
Der Kantshik
Kultur
Dos Naye Leben
Di Naye Tsaytung
Di Neshome
Oyfboy
Der Shtral
Tshernovitser Bleter
Tsukunft
Far Undzer Shul
Di Yidishe Hofnung
Der Yidisher Veg: Religiyezer Hoydesh-Zhurnal
Dos Yidishe Vort
Der Yunger Kemfer
Yugnt

Had very few people spoken Yiddish at the time, who would have read all
these periodicals?
  
Those born in Czernowitz after the turn of the century, all learned German
in school and spoke it among themselves. My generation, born shortly before
WW2 and never having studied German in school or university, all speak and
read German.

Jessica, I will try to answer your questions about particular streets, also
about the size of families and infant mortality, in another message,
probably later this week. In the meantime, does anyone know how to obtain
Czernowitz census data?

Thanks to all who have written to tell me that they enjoyed reading my
story.

Shana Tovah,

Mimi

On 9/5/10 4:00 PM, "Attiyeh" <rea_at_ucsd.edu> wrote:

>
> Dear Mimi --
>
> Your "langhe megilleh" describes so well the way of life of
> Czernowitzers at several economic levels, at least two of which are
> likely to fit how my grandparents and some of their children (as
> adults) lived. Your response, and several others, are so helpful, and
> as is the way with such things, they have also generated some more
> questions. I hope you can bear with me!
>
> You wrote about several things I especially wanted to learn about,
> including the health concerns of the time and the differences in
> housing between poorer families and wealthier ones. My grandfather
> delivered coal in a wagon, at least in the first decade of the
> 1900's, so I've assumed they must have been poor, but I don't know for sure.
>
> The description of the various houses your paternal family lived in
> is of particular interest to me.... I see that my own grandparents
> and uncles had a number of different addresses, both for home and for
> business, over the years covered by the records I've been able to
> obtain. I had wondered whether that was unusual --- the moving around
> so much. ...Was it a matter of "moving up" in the word, to bigger and
> better places, were Jewish families frequently outsted from their
> rented apartments, or did Jewish families tend to cluster in
> different neighborhoods over the years? I know that my mother's
> family, for example...all clustered for the first few years with
> other Latvian newcomers near the docks where they'd first arrived in
> the States; and later they moved a bit north, and eventually, some
> years later, to the suburbs. So I wonder if a similar thing happened
> to Jews coming from elsewhere into Czernowitz.
>
> I wonder about some particular streets:
> for example: 1) Treifaltigskeite (spelling?) in the 1920's, where
> both my g'parents died; 2) Judengasse, Bahnhofstrasse, and Waag G. in
> the 1880's and '90's, and Hauptgasse in 1895, where my father and
> some of his siblings were born, and 3) Kaliczankergasse in 1890,
> where Jerome's grandfather lived then -- was those fairly poor
> streets/neighborhoods, or not? In particularly religious
> neighborhoods, or non-religious ones? I'm still trying to figure out
> whether our extended family were originally religious or not,
> particularly poor, or not. My father himself was non-observant in
> this country, and arrived without obvious means. But he came from a
> large family in Czernowitz, -- there were 10 and maybe 11 children,
> from two wives, as one died after her second or third child was born.
> So I presumed that the family might have been religious --- or
> perhaps it was just customary to have large families in the days
> before childbirth control measures were known. What do you know about this?
>
> You are so fortunate to have a written account from your
> great-grandfather. That must be fairly rare. It is wonderful.
>
> Again, a big thanks to you and to the several others who have written
> in answer to my earlier questions, and to whom I've responded
> privately. What a generous community the Cz-L is.
>
> Shana Tovah to one and all. --- Jessica Falikman Attiyeh, San Diego
>
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Received on 2010-09-06 06:09:29