Vishey divided by Lake Ancia
For the Jews of the early twentieth century, it was as safe a community as any in Lithuania.
Gitel’s father, my grandfather Chaim, was born about 1870, and my grandmother Mina, formerly Kannengiser, possibly a few years earlier. Mina had looked after her ailing father so was a little older than Chaim, but it was still said they married young. Young could mean as young as sixteen in those days, but considering when their children were born, it is more likely they were closer to twenty. They were undoubtedly matched by a shadchen, or matchmaker. Both were Orthodox Jews from Vishey and there was no other way of them becoming a couple in that world other than being the result of a union approved by their parents. The date of their marriage is not recorded.
Grandmother Mina was the daughter of a rabbi of possibly the Misnagdim sect. She was born in Novy Dvor, also about the same distance as Bielsk Podlaski was from Vishey, but crossing another border into Belarus. Chaim was most likely a Chassid, for that is the community my mother later identified with. Chaim by definition, being from Lithuania, was a Litvak.
Litvak Jews differed from the Chassidic Ashkenazi Jews of the rest of Europe in their practices. They had their own distinct form of Yiddish known as Litvish. To be smart was to be klieg in Poland, but to the Litvak, it was to be klug. The candle was a lecht for the Pole and a licht for the Litvak. No matter, everyone understood each other.
Vishey was a uniquely designed town in that it straddled Lake Ancia. It was a half a dozen streets deep on either side of the narrowest part of the lake. The wooden bridge that originally spanned the lake and unified the community has now been replaced by a wider modern concrete structure. The other side of the lake was known as being ‘under the bridge’. My grandparents’ family home was on the western side of the lake and right on the water’s edge. It would have been a desirable and picturesque location back then as it is today. The house still stands. If you wish to visit, the street address is number 6 Zevju G, Veisiejai.
Like all the homes of Vishey, it is an unimaginative, unadorned, rectangular timber-clad box topped by a high, peaked roof that allowed the winter snows to drop off. In an area of forests, there were no brick homes; older buildings were simple log cabins with caulk between the logs. My grandparents’ home had more refined painted timber weatherboards – there are three equidistant narrow windows facing the lake. The roof is corrugated cement sheeting although it would have likely been shingled when Chaim and Mina lived there. Two chimneys pierce the roof, indicating the kitchen and lounge positions. The attic has a small window in each gable, but it was in effect only a single-storey home.
Lazowski home Vishey (recent)
It was a crowded home with so many children and in the summer months the children would sleep in a lean-to shed outside. Most of the homes in Vishey had a vegetable garden, some fruit trees and a chicken run beside the house. Some had goats and cows, as my grandparents did.
Chaim was a farmer and a fisherman, selling both produce and fish. Farming and land ownership were not common for Jews of the time, so my grandfather Chaim was one of the two Jewish landowners in the area mentioned in the history of Vishey before the war. Being a farmer did not mean he was a successful one – his land holding was quite modest and only a short ride away by his droshky (horse and cart). He needed to sell fish to survive.
His home was in an ideal position for a fisherman, having his boat moored nearly on his doorstep. The lake was teeming with many varieties of carp and perch. In the winter the lake would completely freeze over and the fisherman would hack open a hole in the ice to fish. The children would then skate on the lake.
It seems Chaim’s father, my great-grandfather Eleser Lazovski migrated to America and died in 1925 in Chicago. His occupation is recorded as being a judge. It is unlikely he studied law in Lithuania – perhaps this occurred in America. Could Eleser have been part of the mass migration of Lithuanian Jews that occurred from the 1880s onwards? They mostly left for America or South Africa, motivated by the increasing difficulty of Jewish life in Lithuania, for in the late nineteenth century Jews in Lithuania had been prohibited from acquiring land and there was a ban on Jews working on Sundays. They already didn’t work Saturdays and a two-day weekend was unknown for workers of the time. They had also been barred by educational quotas from enrolling in schools, universities and being employed in the public sector.
The pogroms in Poland and Russia were also threatening to spread to Lithuania. The Jewish population was growing much faster than the general population, helped by their tendency to earlier marriages, a low mortality rate among their children and the lack of alcoholism which was shortening lives in the non-Jewish population. The very basic hygiene created by the need to wash your hands before making the Hamotzi (the blessing for bread) is believed to be a factor as to why Jews suffered from fewer infectious diseases.
This growth in population led to overcrowding in Jewish homes, especially in the cities, and a lack of opportunity for all these children. They couldn’t all work in or inherit the family business.
The motive that most likely was the final straw for fleeing Lithuania was the imposition of compulsory military service for all citizens. Conscription exposed the young Jewish men to direct contact with the anti-Semitic Lithuanian military and, even worse, meant they could no longer keep kosher or be able to keep Shabbat.
In the decade before the turn of last century, 50,000 Jews left the Kovno (Kaunas) region, which included my mother’s town of Vishey.
They travelled by train to Germany, bribing the easily bribed border guards then sailing from Hamburg or Bremen to New York. They could buy tickets from agents in their own towns who were promoting these passages.
Why Eleser Lazovski left we don’t know, but it seems he left without his wife and children. It is possible he may have planned to return after earning some money in America, which was an alternative to the permanent migration most families sought. Circumstances may have meant return was not possible. Chaim, his eldest son, inherited the meagre farm and may have married early as farming is not a solitary occupation.
Chaim and Mina were proud of the fact that on one side a father was a judge and on the other a rabbi, and this may have sealed their union. As a rabbi’s daughter, Mina remained very Orthodox in her beliefs. Chaim may well have been less so.
A story is told of my grandfather being out fishing and falling into the lake. He was carried, lifeless, back into his home and there declared dead. My grandmother Mina, refusing to believe it, warmed him by the fire and massaged his limbs and heart for hours until he spluttered back into life. Evidently my grandfather was born as Avraham, but was known in the community from then on as Chaim, the name closest to chai which translates as ‘life’. In later documents I have found his name recorded either as Chaim, Avraham Chaim or Avraham. So changing names may well be a family tradition.
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The family tree my aunt Bruria created shows her parents Chaim and Mina having their firstborn, a daughter Tila, in 1902. A cascade of birth dates follows, each two years apart: their first son Nisan, followed by Daniel and then my mother Gitel. Four more children were born before Bruria, the youngest, was born in 1919 – Yosef in 1910, Shmuel in 1912, Rivka in 1914 and Malka in 1917.
Aunt Bruria’s family tree
In Orthodox families births were not usually registered but only recorded by the Hebrew calendar and written inside the cover of the family Bible. Many birthdays were remembered only by how close they were to major festivals. The Lazovski family was large, but not unusually large for the time.
Vishey was