The Street - Part I: The Old World

Last winter my wife, Cathy, and I decided to tour a part of Europe. Our prime goal was Prague and Czechoslovakia followed by a week with good friends in Holland. Geography not being a particular strong point of Cathy’s, it was not until I mentioned, rather casually, that once in Czechoslovakia we would not be very far from my mother’s birth place in the city of Tarnow, southern Poland, that she became aware of how close we would be to my roots.

For many years Cathy had heard me speak of my parents’ European origins and the rather bizarre circumstances that brought them together and, ultimately, led to their coming to Canada where they married and started a family in the early twenties. As soon as I pointed out the geographic proximity of our original destination and those ancestral roots, she immediately insisted that we organize a side trip to Tarnow. On matters of the heart I have learned to follow my wife’s advice, so I agreed.

Several months later we have the tickets, the visas, a shelf full of tourist materials and the date of our departure - August 11th - is quickly approaching.

Since first making the suggestion Cathy has wondered why it was her and not me that suggested the trip to Poland. I wondered as well.

Our family on both maternal and paternal sides is essentially north American. Thanks to the Holocaust, almost all Blauers and certainly all Dicksteins, (my mother’s family), consist of the children and grandchildren of my parents, both now gone, and those of their siblings. In my mother’s case no siblings and only two nieces - one in Canada and one in Israel - survived from among the entire family.

Because I was the youngest child by a large margin and a good listener with an interest in history, and a romantic nature, I know more about my mother, her family and the life they led in Tarnow than anybody. Unfortunately even that is sketchy in places. But I DO know enough to have a sense of who they were, what their lives were like and, also, what life for Jews in general was like in that part of the world. In fact, even before the idea of this trip first arose I was attempting to write the story of my parents and, through, them of what little I know of my family and their world.

My ambivalence about the upcoming trip stems not from a lack of knowledge or language but, rather, from a deep an somewhat troubling uncertainty as to what it will be like to step back - not only time and space but also, socially, to a place so ruthlessly and radically eradicated that it is as if it never existed - except in the stories my mother told me and in the imagined scenes, personalities, circumstances that surround, even today, the pitifully few photographs and artifacts that remain. Going back feels a little like disturbing the grave of a world, dead and buried. Is there anything to be gained? Would it be better to allow that world to remain as it is in my memory and in the stories I can recount of it?


For various reasons, I always knew the name of the street where my mother was born and grew up but, recently, when sifting through some of her old photographs and post cards I came across the precise address of her family’s home, so I can now stand on the very spot where she was born, in the centre of her world. The closer I get to doing that the more the emotions inside me grow. I am sure that many others have a background similar to mine. I thought they and all those who can empathize with such things might gain something from a description of my own journey - both physical and emotional. Hence this two part column.

Very briefly, my mother was born in 1897, the third child and eldest daughter in a family of six. Her mother was Freda Dickstein, (nee Blyweis), who although only a factory worker from a poor family, was, because of her great beauty in his eyes, and his great stubbornness, married, at the age of seventeen to my grandfather, Mordecai Dickstein. He came from a different strata on the social ladder of the Tarnow Jewish community and was destined to become the last head of its Kehilla - an institution that had existed since Jews first settled in the area in the fifteenth century. I am named after him - he living in Poland being known as Motele and myself, born in Canada, as Marvin.

Motele and his family lived on Spitalnya Street. Here he was at the centre of his world, a world that he, his ancestors and their community had inhabited for centuries. :The Street” itself draws its name from a hospital built by the Jewish community in 1840. As head of the Kehilla and rabbi, he used a room in the hospital as his shul, serving a large number of factory workers, mainly tailors, who came from quite a distance to be part of his congregation. Among his many endearing qualities, he was praised, (by his congregants but not his wife, for cutting a few corners and having the shortest Shabbes services in town. (As he tried to explain to his exasperated wife; “the only difference between factory workers and prisoners is that workers are allowed to sleep at home. They have one day off a week and I will not keep them in Shul!")

During my mother’s years there, “The Street” was the stage on which the stories of the community - tragedies and comedies alike - were played out.

When she was only nine or ten my mother contracted scarlet fever. The disease was considered so serious that the old felcher called by my grandmother insisted that the child be moved to the hospital immediately where all the power of modern medicine could be brought to bear. Serious or not, my mother’s rascally nature could not endure idleness for long. Three days after entering the hospital, she was well on the road to recovery. And she was restless. It was hard to lie there in the bed and look at the cherry trees which grew just outside. There, unpruned branches reached as high as the second story - their fruit, all the more sought after because of its unavailability, tapped against the window, tantalizing Eva Dickstein.



Adults on “The Street” became aware of what was happening because of the racket made by the large and growing circle of children gathered around the base of one of the trees - all eyes staring upward and hands poised to catch the fruit that the girl with long black braids and hospital clothes flapping in the wind - was gleefully distributing to those below.

On a very hot summer’s night some four or five years later, the Dickstein family supper was interrupted by a neighbourhood boy who came to tell Motele that “Die Alter” was dying.

Led by Motele, the whole family hurried the few hundred yards down “The Street” to the house, where his own father, a gentle soul much respected for his piety and loved for his kindness, lay breathing slowly. While his wife and the children of his second marriage stood in a circle around the sofa bed on which he lay trying, in vain, to fan away some of the oppressive heat, a growing group of people crowded outside the open door. Still others sat at their windows looking on. When an old man who has led a good, long life prepares to pass to the next world it is not a tragedy and those who had known him wanted to bear witness, to show their respect by being there to help usher him on his way.

The arrival of Motele caused a gentle stir. Here was a good man being comforted by a good son. It was a community event and quickly all present quieted themselves and waited to hear the words of the Kadush.

A few moments after Motele began leading his father through the familiar words, the old man’s breath became very laboured and it was obvious the end was near. Rather than continue to the end, Motele speeded up the pace of the recitation and a few seconds later declared “Amen”.

Everyone present was shocked. Motele had fooled no one. There were parts unsaid. The old man himself, lifted his head slightly and protested, “there is more”.

“I am the rabbi, there is no more. It is time to rest now”.

With a quick, small smile only visible to the tear laden eyes of his son who knelt over him, the old man continued. “Motele”, he said, you were always a goniff, you are still a goniff!"

On the way home, Freda put aside her customary reticence in matters of this sort and, in full view of her children, berated her husband in no uncertain terms.

“It is not right to rob an old man of his last prayer, it is wrong, it is an insult to God!"


Also somewhat out of character, Motele spoke directly to his wife.

“The man was dying. Our great, loving God will take him with the prayer or without. There was no point in ‘michinen’ him any more.”

Neither the children standing around the table nor the people animatedly discussing the matter up and down the Street had any notion of intervening. Each probably had his own thoughts on the event. For Eva, it served only to deepen an already deep affection for her father.