Re: [Cz-L] World War One in Bukowina

Dear List members,

Marc Cohen's tale was very interesting. I thought it might be helpful to
re-post it in more readable form.

David

----- Original Message -----
From: "MARC M COHEN" <marc-cohen25_at_sbcglobal.net>
To: "Charles Rosner" <frenchczern1_at_yahoo.com>; "Czernowitz Genealogy and
History" <czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu>; "Miriam Taylor"
<mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu>
Cc: "Bennett M. Cohen" <bennettmcohen_at_earthlink.net>; "Betsy J. Cohen"
<dailyjoy365_at_gmail.com>; "Randa Nachbar" <randa_at_nachbar.com>; "Harris Roen"
<roen_at_burlingtontelecom.net>; "Marjorie Roen" <marjorie.roen_at_gmail.com>;
"Benjamin J. Cohen" <ben1cohen_at_sbcglobal.net>; "Gabriel R. Cohen"
<op-opu_at_sbcglobal.net>
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 1:39 AM
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] World War One in Bukowina
　
Mimi,

I will try to answer your question about the generation that came to America
right after WWI.
　
Yes, my family fits the circumstances about which you are inquiring. My
grandmother Golda "Gussie" Weininger was born in 1899 on the
Ribner-Weininger family dairy farm in Costesti. Her mother was Bertha Ribner
Weininger, at that time a widow, with three older children. Gussie's father
was Aaron Dovid Barak Kantorji, the mazieve-shleger (monument maker) and
engraver in Shtorozynetz. It was a second marriage for them both; Gussie
was the only issue. They were divorced by about 1910. Bertha and Gussie
moved
to Czernowitz, where they worked unloading milk cans from the "Milk Train"
at 5:00 AM and delivering cholov isroel to Jewish families in Czernowitz.
　
About 1908, Gussie's older half sister Rivka (Bessie) Weininger, about age
13, emigrated to New York, insofar as we know, she traveled by by herself,
but probably went there to work as a servant for a family that came
from Bukovina previously. On the Kantorji side, two of the seven older
half-sisters (and one half-brother) moved to Vienna either before or soon
after WWI. They both married businessmen.
　
Gussie and Bertha lived through WWI in Czernowitz. They continued to operate
the milk business, making deliveries whenever it was safe and they could.
They also sold tobacco and coffee to the soldiers of whichever army was in
town -- except when it was the Cossacks. Gussie said they became adept at
driving their wagon through whatever passed for the military lines that were
always changing.
　
In 1920, Bessie sent a ticket from New York for their mother, Bertha, to
sail from Le Havre on the SS Franconia. Bertha was over 60, and she declared
that she was too old to go and America could not possibly be kosher enough,
therefore she was giving the ticket to Gussie, the baby off the family,not
yet 21. Gussie told me that after she obtained her certificat d'indigeant
and other papers at the district office for Costestie. Next, she had to
travel to Bucharest to buy a passport and id papers in Bertha's name because
it was written on the ticket. Gussie stayed a month with her Kantorji
half-sisters in Vienna. She tried to visit some Weininger cousins in Vienna,
but they would not admit her to the house because she was a big, rough
peasant girl. Gussie said that they were highly assimilated, and some had
even converted to Christianity.
　
Gussie's cousin from Czernowitz, Moritz Weininger, was already in Vienna,
where he had attended university. They travelled together to Paris. There
was a Paris-Czernowitz connection, with whom they stayed for a week. Then
they parted ways; Moritz went to Marseilles to embark while Gussie went
first to Cherbourg where the Jewish community was actively helping emigrants
and had here physical exam. Then she embarked in Le Havre. When Gussie
arrived in New York, Bessie was completely undone, because she knew she
would never see their mother again. She resented her younger half-sister
immensely, accusing her of stealing the ticket. Gussie offered to pay for
the ticket by working as a household servant for Bessie, but they could not
get along and Bessie kicked Gussie out. The story goes that soon after,
Bessie suffered a total nervous breakdown and spent the rest of her life in
a New York State Hospital.
　
Moritz and Gussie met up again in New York, where both went to work in the
garment industry. In 1921, Gussie's older half-brother Sam Kantorji (Canter)
came to Boston, where he eventually set up a monuments business in Chelsea,
with a sign you could see from the Mystic River Bridge, "Drive Safely, We
Can Wait."

In 1938-39, Sam Canter provided documents and tickets to get his two sisters
and their families out of Vienna to come to Boston. The three sisters who
stayed in Bukovina all perished: the oldest, Malka and her husband and one
son in Siberia, the third youngest Clara Schaeffler in the camp in
Czernowitz. Clara's husband was Schimon Schaeffler, who had taken over Aron
Dovid's mazieve schleger business in Shtorozynetz. He was also the head of
the Jewish Kultesgemeinde in Shtorozynetz. When the Germans arrived, he went
out with a delegation to meet them. They shot him dead on the spot. It took
me decades to reconstruct many of these details.
　
It was always very difficult to persuade Gussie to tell me even a little
about her life "in the old country." Already the family geneologist-to-be as
a child, I was constantly cajoling and needling her to tell me
something about Bukovina and Czernowitz.
　
Usually, she would thunder, "It was TERRIBLE! Better you shouldn't know!!!"
Gussie was no Germanophile; she had none of the love of German culture of
the city people and sophisticates. She would say "Yiddish -- the Jewish --
is best!" There was no doubt in her mind that leaving as soon as she could
was good, final, and no looking back.
　
One time, I was really bugging Gussie, and asked if she had ever been
raped by Cossacks. "Certainly Not!" she replied, "How could we ever be so
careless? When the Cossacks occupied the town, my mother hid me in the root
cellar for six months." In retrospect, I am not certain to which town she
may was referring -- Costestie, Czernowitz, Shtorozynetz, or
possibly someplace on the outskirts of one of them.
　
One time I asked Gussie, "Wasn't there anything good there? Surely, it could
not have been all bad." She thought very hard, and then allowed that there
was somebody (I forget the name or the relation) who made wonderful candy.
Subsequently, I found in one of the commercial gazetteers for Bukovina, a
Schaeffler who was a confectioner, who is a possible candidate. My mother
Harriet was always trying to prove how modern and sophisticated she was, and
it disturbed her greatly that her mother was so primitive and unchangeable.
"You are such a peasant," Harriet would say, "You should do something
sophisticated already."
　
"So, nu, what is this -- 'sophisticated'?"
　
"You should go to Europe, take a vacation trip to Europe."
　
"I should go to Europe? I CAME from Europe!!!" To her "Europe," all of it,
was the ultimate hell and always would be hell, and also was the worst
epithet imaginable.
　
Finally, when I was about 19 and she was about 73, in 1972 I believe, I
got her to open up a little about "the old country," and why it was so
TERRIBLE.
　
She explained, "Look, in America, you have the Ku Klux Klan, but they are
not part of the mainstream of society. In Europe, everyone is the Ku
Klux Klan: Everyone has someone they hate; Everyone has someone they want to
kill; and Everyone will do it the first chance they can get away with it!"
　
She had no illusions about European civilization or culture, and she
shared those same attitudes with many of her immigrant generation from
Eastern Europe. Nearly all were active in the labor unions. Many were
socialists or communists, but their internationalism did not really extend
to "the old country." Generally, they agreed that there was no hope for it.
None showed any nostalgia. None wanted to go back, ever, and they would
be horrified to know that their children went.
　
Hope this helps to answer your question,
　
Marc
　
Marc M. Cohen, Arch.D, Architect
Palo Alto, CA 94306 USA
TEL +1 650 218-8119 Mobile
　
　
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Received on 2010-10-19 12:19:41