KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
well-to-do and respected throughout the community. My parents offered a helping hand to anyone who needed it. When community members were sick, a relative would come to our house and my mother would send me down to the cellar to bring up preserves. She would send a jar along because she felt sick people needed a little special treatment and nourishment. After the war, in Israel, when people from Ludvipol would invite me to dinner, the host- ess would say to former neighbors, “Do you know who this boy is? He’s Golub’s son!” This was a sign of distinction, a yiches , the Yiddish term for a prominent family background or pedigree. We lived in a beautiful house. It was distinguished by its shiny zinc roof, which few houses had. On every corner of the house there were elaborate leaders, topped by a decorative little rider sitting on a horse, and drainpipes for rainwater runoff. There was open space around the house and a big side yard. Our garden, which we shared with our neighbor, was behind our house, as was the outhouse. Adjacent to our yard was a fenced-in lumberyard, owned by a lo- cal businessman named Mr. Guttman, where he stored cut lumber from our mill for people who wanted to purchase small quantities. Our house had six rooms, but we were required by the govern- ment to rent three of the rooms to a Polish officer during much of my early childhood. We used one big bedroom, where my parents, my older sister Chava and I slept. My sister Esther, three years younger than I, slept in the large living room. It was furnished with a credenza holding books on one side and nice dishes, platters, sil- verware and household items on the other, a serving buffet, a large dining table and chairs and a couch. Our kitchen was huge. Large windows lit the house by day, and after dusk elaborate kerosene lamps provided enough light even to read music. I do not remem- ber specific family heirlooms, but I know we had valuable articles of sterling silver because we buried them in the ground when the Russians came later to Ludvipol. We lived near the border with the USSR and there was a big Polish army base nearby in the place where the Nazis later mur- dered all the Jews of Ludvipol, except the few who escaped. The
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