Re: [Cz-L] language

Language and culture are so intertwined.

My father left Vascauti (Vashkivtsi, Vashkowitz) 40 km from Czernovitz in
Bukovina in 1927.
He attended cheder and did not have the opportunity to complete his
education because he left Romania with his older brothers while in his
mid-teens.
But he eventually learned to do business in 7 languages, including
Japanese.
But Yiddish was his first language, in which he wrote to his brothers using
Hebrew letters.

My maternal grandmother, having finished gymnasium in Dresden where my
mother was born,
and her Polish-born university-educated husband, spoke German.
But their other European languages came in handy as they had their other
children in France and Belgium,
and settled first in Colombia, and ultimately in Cura=E7ao.
To assimilate, my grandfather added "Montevenado" to his name, a Spanish
translation of his surname.
And so the name on his gravestone in the ancient Jewish cemetery Beit Haim
Blenheim reads "Max Hirschberg Montevenado".

My mother, having received a Dutch education in Cura=E7ao was fluent in
several languages.
But she did not learn Yiddish until she and my father made it through WWII
in Japan,
where they lived with my father's cousin from Czernovitz and socialized
with other Jews from Eastern Europe, as well as Iraq and Syria.
When my parents returned to Cura=E7ao in 1946, Yiddish came in handy as the
language of the growing Ashkenazi community,
which had reached a sufficient critical mass to resemble a "Shtetl".
In Curacao we Ashkenzi Jews were callled "Polacos" because the first to
arrive came from Polish Galicia,
ironically from Snyatin, immediately across the Cheremosh river from, and
the nearest town to, my father's birthplace.

My childhood classmate, Sherman de Jesus, lived near our community's
Shaarei Tsedek synagogue and social Club Union.
He was fascinated by our community early on.
A successful documentary producer and director, he is now completing a film
project on the Shtetl in the
Caribbean.<http://www.cinecrowd.nl/een-sjtetl-de-cariben>

At the link above, there is a clip of some scenes shot so far in Bukovina,
Belarus and Israel.
The text further explains the project.

[Mark Wiznitzer]

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Received on 2014-04-02 16:27:16