Ludvipol: A Modern Shtetl
The Zionist Dream
later Yona Tuchman, spent a year or two at a kibbutz in Poland before she married. One of the most pronounced memories I have from Ludvipol in- volves Zionism. In about 1936, Joseph Schwartzman, the son of our shochet (ritual slaughterer) Mottel — a prominent man, very well liked and respected — who had already immigrated to Palestine, arranged for his entire family to join him. Joseph had left his chil- dren, Shlomo and Chaia, behind with Mottel and now they all were to join him. Their departure for Palestine was a major event and the cause of a great celebration. The day they left, all of the stores in our town closed and all of the students of the Tarbut School, dressed in our uniforms, marched alongside their wagon waving flags. The Schwartzmans rode by horse and wagon to the railway station in the next town, and ev- eryone in Ludvipol marched out to the farthest bridge to bid them farewell. Horsemen rode in formation, as if they were the Polish cavalry. These rough, simple men were so poor that they did not even own saddles, but used blankets and robes to try to look like cavalry. Each one carried a Jewish flag, blue and white with the Star of David. It was an impressive spectacle that demonstrated the deep Zionist sentiment of the entire town at that time. Everybody was envious that the Schwartzmans were on their way to Palestine. In those days, our people’s big wish was that when they died, they would be buried in Palestine and become part of the soil of Israel. I assume that this was one of the motivations of the shochet, who was a pious elderly gentleman, to go and live with his son. He probably wanted to die in Palestine. My father’s parents would not have considered moving to Palestine back in 1918, when they went to the United States. For one thing, the Zionist organizations that helped people emigrate to Palestine for ideological reasons barely existed then. For anoth- er, they left Poland for economic, not ideological, reasons. People went to the U.S., not to Palestine, when they wanted a more com- fortable life for themselves.
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