IN THE COURTYARD OF OUR HOME IN KROLEVETS

A tour of the Dubrawski home, then of the yard, the cellar, and the corner where the armed guard stood at his post … Read and find out.

THE DUBRAWSKI FAMILY LIVED HERE

Our home in Krolevets was not bad, considering our financial situation. We had a medium sized dining room; two bedrooms – one for my parents and one for Zeide-Rav and my grandmother; and a kitchen with a large oven, as was the practice at the time in towns – a deep fireplace which was heated with logs, into which was placed clay pots and iron skillets, and came with a long shovel and poker. These were ovens with a large and warm upper surface and a large storage space under the oven (usually for chickens).

There was a small foyer between the rooms. One hallway, which led to the yard, contained a pantry, and another smaller hall that led to the street was where we stored our Pesach dishes since we did not use it to get in and out of the house. In the yard we had a sort of shed (for firewood) and part of a deep cellar.

Our furniture was something else entirely (if it could be called furniture). Each item of furniture was very old, but that was the only thing similar about them. In appearance, each one had a different “yichus” (pedigree), a different color, and many other deficiencies. There were two bookshelves of s’farim, one near the southern wall and one near the northern wall.

I had never seen anything like the southern bookcase; its wooden sides and shelves were ancient and very thick and heavy. How did we obtain it? I don’t know. Zeide-Rav would say about the carpenter who built it that he was definitely a first rate partatz (unskilled laborer) with two left hands and three cockeyed eyes.

MIRACLE BOOKCASE

The other bookcase, on the northern side, was just the opposite. It was woven of branches and its very existence was miraculous. It was a miracle in itself that it was able to stand upright, even when empty, without falling over. The bigger miracle was that it could support s’farim on its shelves (actually, Zeide added some wire, rope and nails on top of these miracles).

Our table was, bli ayin ha’ra, blessed with old age but still strong. The seven or eight chairs were also elderly, but just as each one was different, with a worn faded color, so too each chair had its “ailment” and a different slant. We had a few strong stools that were very useful when we had a gathering or farbrengen. They would spread out a bed from stool to stool and that is how more guests were able to sit.

On the western side was a sort of couch that mostly served as my bed. The original upholstery over the straw had long since torn and my mother put patches on the patches. Despite this, the pointy ends of the straw poked through anyway.

I must add that we had another piece of furniture that was in decent condition: the sideboard. My mother put in great effort to clean and decorate it with a number of embroidered tablecloths and other chotchkes. My mother also hid some better food there, for guests, such as cherry preserves (in better times, my mother cooked jam).

THE NICEST ITEM 
OF FURNITURE

To my young eyes, the best piece of furniture in the house was the clock. Although it wasn’t beautiful, it was nice enough. The main thing was that it was a bi-weekly clock. That meant that after winding it once, it worked for two weeks straight! I found this miraculous. Only Zeide-Rav handled it, winding it and setting it.

In general, Zeide, being a rav nearly all his life in a number of towns, fulfilled the statement of Chazal “Love work and hate rabbanus” in a paradoxical fashion. He had great pleasure in learning Gemara with someone, Ein Yaakov and the like, but he did not like all the other things associated with his position, such as having to employ all kinds of diplomatic tricks in dealing with the leaders of the community; flattering the wealthy who sat comfortably on the mizrach (eastern) wall (he would call them the “mizrach-pempikes” [derogatory term for the stout of form]), as well as all other ceremonial duties.

He truly loved work, physical labor in and out of the house. When we bought logs in the market, they were often large and cheap. Zeide (who was an older man and had a white beard) would chop them. He did not always wait for Hirshke the nudnik to come. Zeide also would often fix a broken chair, beds that had fallen apart and doors that had come off the doorposts.

WHAT I NEVER HEARD

As for the furniture in other rooms, I think this is enough; you can picture the furniture that I described previously. I’d like to mention that although there was no harmony among the various items of furniture, there was beautiful harmony among the people who lived in the home. Simply put, the life of our family that we shared with my grandparents in one apartment, in our straitened circumstances, were so natural, so homey and united, that when I think back to those days, I am amazed.

If I may permit myself to say something positive about myself, it is that by nature I noticed everything. Throughout all the years of my childhood, I did not observe or hear anything that indicated any annoyance or anger, or anything remotely similar to that between the two older generations in our home.

I think this was mainly thanks to my mother, her warmth, good heart and pleasant character; and of course, an important part of that must be attributed to her being born to such parents as she had. My mother said that in their home, she never heard their parents quarrelling. Furthermore, she never heard them raise their voices.

THE YARD AND THE BIRDS’ NEST

Our yard was not spacious, but it was crowded. The larger section of the yard had a fenced in garden. The large-bodied neighbor grew onions, potatoes, beets and other vegetables. However, it did not seem as though the gentile owners of the garden derived benefit from this garden.

I had a special connection with a narrow and very tall tree on the edge of the garden. On a thick branch, almost on the edge of the tree, was a wide nest made out of interwoven twigs and branches. It was the “summer home” of a pair of storks. They would come and nest at the beginning of the summer. At the end of the summer, they would fly (in an organized flock) faraway. We were told that they flew to warmer climes. The amazing thing was how they knew the way back! It’s a special ability that the Creator gave them.

I remember that for quite a few years the pair flew back (I think it was the same pair) and during the summer they raised a new chick which joined its parents at the end of the summer when they flew to warmer parts. I also remember that they would communicate by tapping with their beaks. I sometimes noticed that one of them brought food for their baby.

During the winter there were also things to see and hear in the yard, a place full of activity. There were two storage sheds at the end of the yard, one that was ours and one that was the landlord’s. In Russian they called it a soroi. It was something a bit more than a simple shed. That is where large pots and all sorts of old things were kept, boards and poles for the sukka; and the largest place was for logs for the fireplace and for the bitumen to light the iron stoves.

Bitumen is a flammable material that I did not see anywhere outside of Russia. It is mined from the ground and is soft, and is not considered valuable and good for burning like coal, which is probably why it would make a lot of smoke and produce unpleasant odors.

(Under the bitumen in our shed, Zeide buried pictures and manuscripts that had to be hidden from the eyes of the red demons of destruction. They might even be there till this very day).

THE INCREDIBLE CELLAR

If it could boast of anything, our yard could boast of a cellar whose pointed roof, made of stone, was located near the shed. It was a wonderful cellar! In order to get to it, you had to go way down a flight of stone steps; I once knew how many. All the way at the bottom were two rooms – and thick darkness – for the two families. There was a moist coolness there, even on the hottest days.

We stored in the cellar, especially in the summer, all those things which could spoil in the house. In the good days, we pickled a large barrel of cucumbers for the entire winter and had a barrel of pickled cabbage as well. Sometimes, there were pickled sour apples, a delectable food to which even the infinite number of delectable foods in the world cannot compare.

Not far from the cellar was a wooden hut that served as a two-room outhouse for the two neighbors. As you can imagine, there was no indoor bathroom in our town. In the yard, they built an outhouse over a large pit that was used by all, day and night, summer and winter … When the pits filled up, peasants came with wagons and shoveled out its contents and brought it (I think) to the fields.

Right near this double outhouse was an open pail of garbage. Most of the time, you saw only a pile of garbage and not the pail itself which overflowed (I take the liberty of describing unpleasant things like these, but I do so on purpose, so that future generations will thank G-d that they don’t need to live under the conditions that their grandparents lived under). A large hog was a regular visitor at the garbage, and it would grunt contentedly to display its pleasure.

CLOSED “MILITARY” AREA

Near the garbage were small wooden cages where the shkatzim, the children of the neighbor, raised rabbits. They ate the rabbits and sold their fur. A band of chickens roamed the yard, including a large rooster that walked proudly, with head held high, with large red hanging cheeks.

Tobik, the irascible dog, was tied up by day with a long rope. He yapped not only at strangers who entered his royal territory, but also at more familiar creatures in the yard. When the hog entered the yard to its territory, Tobik greeted it by grabbing it by the ear. The dog was even more annoyed when the large rooster would sometimes “forget” and approach him. The dog would attack it and the rooster would flee nervously with outspread wings and a noisy commotion.

On one side of the yard was a brick wall that separated our yard from the only bakery in town. In the free world of today, you would not understand why the bakery was closed to ordinary passersby. Not only that, near the door stood a guard booth with a guard and not just any guard but one who was armed. The truth is that they said the rifle was a museum piece because it was from back in the days of Napoleon.

The guard wasn’t just anyone, but a man by the name of Kozkovitz, a middle aged man, hunchbacked but strong. At the end of the 30’s, when it was impossible to buy as much bread as you wanted, and in the few bread stores you had to stand on line in order to get bread, Kozkovitz would bring us thin loaves at night, that had been kneaded out of the remnants of dough. We paid him much more for this than the usual price in the stores.