Lazowski, Ruth_1994/06/03, Oral History, June 3, 1994

Lazowski_Ruth_1994

Interviewee: Ruth Lazowski Interviewer: Adele Gaster Interview Location: Bloomfield, CT Interview Date: 1994/6/3 Interview Audio Location: (Box 27_Number 524) Transcription by: Janet Poitras

AG = Adele Gaster RL = Ruth Lazowski

AG: Today is June 3, 1994. This is Adele Gaster and I’m recording an interview with Ruth Lazowski for the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford in my home in Bloomfield. Ruth is the wife of Beth Hillel Synagogue’s Rabbi Philip Lazowski. She is a Hebrew, Yiddish and Sunday school teacher on her own and an active member of the Jewish community, and we are neighbors and friends so it’s a very comfortable situation that we’re in.

Ruth, would you tell us where you were born, what your maiden names was, tell us about your childhood and everything you can remember from the early years.

RL: Okay, Adele. I’m glad you’re the one who’s interviewing me. Well, I was born in a small town, a shtetl, called Zhetel in Yiddish, …in Polish and Jakova in Russian. When I was born it was Poland and now it’s Belarus. I was born 1935 and for four years I think I had a very carefree childhood. I also remember my home where I was born and more than I remember of later on. Nineteen thirty nine the Russians came into our part of Poland. At that time my father was in the lumber business and his name was Meshe or Morris Rabinowitz. My mother had a drugstore, her name was Manya Baretsky Rabinowitz, and she opened the drugstore probably around 1930. My parents were married in ’33 and I think three years before she opened it. In 1939 when the Russians came in we weren’t worried about our life but everything we owned was confiscated, and we had to move out from our house and my father was working for the Russians. I don’t exactly what he did, maybe it had to do with lumber but it wasn’t his own.

AG: Ruth, would you tell us also about the rest of your family, your grandparents and your sister who were with you at the time?

RL: Yes. I have a younger sister, two years younger than I am, and that was our immediate family, just two girls and my parents. And my grandparents lived in town, my grandparents on my father’s side. On my mother’s side I only had a grandfather who lived in Vogrewdic (sp?), not far from us, and then I had an aunt and uncle and cousins. We were a large family in our town.

AG: You mentioned to me that the town was famous for the rabbi who lived in that town. Would you mention something about that?

RL: Our town goes back over four hundred years as far as Jewish people living there. It was a small town but a vibrant town, it was a cultural town. It had many organizations, very .. Also a very famous rabbi was born there, … Chaim, who wrote many books, and he at the age of ten or twelve moved to Vilna, and eventually ended up in Radin (sp?). He like my parents belonged to a Jewish Israeli organization like the Betar (sp?). My father was the Betar, my mother was a “…” and quite a few people of our town in the twenties left for Israel, or Palestine at that time.

AG: You told us that in 1939 the Russians came in. Things weren’t too bad at that time but they certainly were worse later on. What happened in between the time the Russians came in and your coming to the United States?

RL: In 1941 the Germans came into our part of town. At the beginning, I would say for about a month or so, things were, it was just the army passing by so they didn’t do anything to us. Then about two months later all the Jews of our town were supposed to get into the ghetto which was on the outskirts of the town, the last Jewish street of the town, and only about two months later we had a “…”, a collection, and at that point everyone was asked to go to the marketplace. And not knowing what was happening at that time most of the Jews did go to the marketplace. That’s where I met my husband.

He, what happened was, he got to the marketplace and there was a lot of pushing. At that point, when we finally got there, people realized that it was something bad, so there was a lot of pushing and we were separated from my father. And my sister and I were holding on to my mother. We didn’t know at that point where my father was and we standing and waiting in line when we were approaching the German who was going with a finger right, left, right, left. And we saw that that they were looking for people who could work for them, who had certificates. My mother, because she was a pharmacist before, she had a certificate as a nurse in the ghetto, she worked as a nurse. At one point a little boy came over to us and he said “I’m alone here. Would you tell the German that I’m your son?” My mother turned to him and she said “Well, if the German will let me live with two little girls he’ll let me live with three.” And he took my mother’s hand on the other side. My mother was holding on to my sister and he held on to my mother’s hand on the other side, and I remember distinctly because at the age of 10 or 12, I think 12, you were supposed to put the Jewish star, the …, the yellow star, and his was torn in the back. We had one on the side, on the front, and on the back, and my mother quickly found a safety pin and pinned it up because she knew if it was torn off he would be beaten by the German. And as we approached closer to the German my father was already on the side to live, and he was pushing to see where we were, and he started yelling “my frau, my frau!” and my mother started yelling “My mann and the German looked at my father, a strong man and he had a certificate if he could work, my mother had a certificate that she could work, and he just said go to the right. And my husband Philip went with us. I was at that time seven and he was twelve. And we didn’t meet until 1953.

In the meantime, I must tell you that story, like two weeks later, my mother went to the doctor for my sister, and the doctor was on the same street where my husband lived and he was looking out the window and he happened to notice my mother. So on the way back he and his mother were waiting for my mother and his mother came out to thank my mother for saving his life. And the next time we met as I said was in 1953. My mother was always curious to know what happened to the boy from, he didn’t come from our town, he came from Galitsia. What the Germans did, they took Jews from smaller towns and put them in ghettos in larger towns, and that’s how we really didn’t know him, you know, because most of the Jews at the time knew each other. Zhetel had about six thousand Jews and it was 75% Jewish.

AG: Plus that was a very lucky time for you but things did not continue well. How did you end up going to Italy finally on the way to Palestine?

RL: Okay, just to make it brief there was another selection and we didn’t go to the marketplace, we ran away, and we were in the woods for two years. In 1944 we were liberated by the Russians. It was September ’44. And for a few months we stayed in Russia but my father said he would not stay with the Russians so the Russians allowed Polish citizens to leave the country to go to Poland So we told them we were Polish citizens and we ended up going to Lublin. In Lublin there were people from Israel who came to try to find any survivors and they organized many groups and told us that we should all try to get to Italy and from Italy to go to Palestine. So we went as Greeks from Poland to Budapest, Hungary; from Hungary to Austria, from Austria we went over the Alps at night walking and we got into Italy illegally. And in Italy we waited to get to Palestine but at that time the British Mandate and we couldn’t get in. And in the meantime my father found out that he had relatives in the United States.

AG: You also mentioned something about your father placing an advertisement to try and find those relatives because he didn’t know where they were. What’s that about?

RL: Okay. My father knew he had an aunt in the United States and her name was Mindel Berman but he had no idea where she lived so he puts an ad in The Forward that Meshe Rabinovich Rabinowitz from Zhetel and the parents’ name is looking for Minnie Berman. And she lived in New Jersey at that time. She used to read The Forward every day, and she found the ad, and of course right away they contacted us and they said come to the United States, what are you gonna do with two small children in Israel, or Palestine, and at that point we couldn’t get in so we came to the United States in July, 1948.

AG: How come you came to Connecticut and to the Hartford area?

RL: Yes, because my father had an uncle here, also Morris Rabinowitz. He was into window shades. He lived here, he came here around 1920, and he was the one who found a job for my father here, and we ended up in an apartment which was very hard to get at that time. We lived on Martin Street. Most of our family did live in Hartford, that’s how we ended up in Hartford.

AG: You say you came here when you were about thirteen years old and you had a little help in learning the English language because you didn’t have to attend school immediately. But then how did they help the young foreign students become Americanized here in the Hartford area?

RL: Okay, I started Northeast Junior High School in the eighth grade. And at 1:00 o’clock we used to leave the school and go to Ann Street, Board of Education, and there they had classes for foreign students. That’s where we learned our English. I think maybe I attended about half a year. It was from the city.

AG: What other memories do you have as a young teenager in this area getting to know a new country?

RL: Well, the Jewish Social Services was very helpful at that point. I remember the first time when we came here there was a Mrs. Frosh (sp?) who was working for the Jewish Social Service, she helped us get organized, she try to buy some things for us, and she suggested I should become a Junior Counselor at the Jewish Community Center, the Chem Shalom. And at that time Ruth Weiner, she was a Senior Counselor, and I was a Junior Counselor. And that’s what I did. We used to meet on Vine Street and then drive every day to New Hartford, I think, that’s where their Chem Shalom. That’s what I did the first summer. And then I joined the Habonim. And it was a very active Jewish community. Then in ninth grade I went to Weaver High School. And Weaver High School had mostly Jewish students. And not only were we students and friends during class but we also met afterwards. We belonged to the same organizations, the Jewish Center was active, we used to go there. During the holidays we went to the Emanuel Synagogue and everybody met in Keney Park. So it was a friendship that continued not only in school but socially we also met. It was a nice Jewish community.

AG: You say that even though you were a newcomer you mentioned to me you did very well in Weaver High School, so well that you could go on to continue your education at the University of Connecticut. What were your favorite subjects at Weaver, or how did you excel? What were the areas you were interested in?

RL: Well, I majored in Business Administration and I minored in History because I liked that. And I think math was my forte, you know. But I also very much enjoyed History. And then afterwards when I decided instead of going into Business but to become a teacher I attended Boston Teachers College here at the branch. And my Hebrew education was very good because in Italy while we lived there I went to a Hebrew school where the main language was Hebrew. The subjects that we learned were in Hebrew so I had a very good background for that. And then I continued, even at the University of Connecticut, at Hillel House, I organized a Hebrew class that I used to attend, and I continued at Boston Teachers College. And of course I’ve been to Israel quite a few times.

AG: We’ll talk in a little while about other things you took too. But, besides your obvious activities at Sholom where your husband was Educational Director before he became a rabbi and here in Bloomfield, at Beth Hillel, what other organizations did you belong to and how else have you been active through the years?

RL: Well, when I was young I think I mentioned I belonged to Habonim here. And then later on after I was married I was very active in Mizrahi. As a matter of fact I’m a lifetime member of Mizrahi. I’m a member of American Jewish Congress. And mainly I was very active in the synagogue. I really, you know, programs, some book reviews and I ‘m not as active now but I would say I was active for at least 25 years.

AG: Is the reason you’re not more active now because you’re more active helping out your son and helping out with your grandchildren? Tell us about that part, too.

RL: Well, my husband and I have three sons. Two are married and each one has a little girl. I have a son Alan who is here in Hartford, and another son Barry who also lives in Hartford. Alan’s little girl is Jessie and Barry’s little girl is Allie. And Barry is married to Cynthia Lam and Alan is married to Marsha Schwartz. And then my youngest son, David, lives in Boston, he’s not married. But I think why I’m not as active now is because I want to spend more time with my children. I also work for my son Alan in the office. That keeps me busy. And I love spending time with my grandchildren. And very soon, in a few months, we’re going to have three more grandchildren so I think I need to spend some time with them, and that’s the reason I’m not active as I used to be.

AG: How do you know there’s three grandchildren?

RL: Well, one of them is having twins. Marsha and Alan are going to have twins and Cindy and Barry are going to have another little girl.

AG: Now when I asked you earlier before this interview I asked you “what is the most important thing you’re doing in your life now” and you said you’re most interested in teaching. And you as a survivor feel that the Holocaust must be shared. What places have you taught and tell us about some of those teaching experiences?

RL: Well, I’ve been teaching Hebrew school at my husband’s school for about 22 years. And I also used to teach high school class when we were combined with the Emanuel. I taught a high school class there. I also taught Yiddish at the Jewish Community Center and one year I taught Yiddish at East Hartford, I guess it’s also part of the Jewish Community Center but it’s the Manchester branch, and at Beth El I taught Yiddish one year. And now besides the Hebrew school I teach Adult Education. I teach Hebrew and Yiddish. And you asked me why I feel that the teaching of Hebrew and teaching about the Holocaust is very important. When I was young I never talked about it although my parents did. My parents used to tell my children stories all the time about how we survived. But I never really talked about it. I think I wanted to be an American right away so I just wanted to forget my background but now I feel it’s very important to tell everyone what we went through. And every survivor has stories to tell. I think teaching is a very important part of my life.

AG: The other part that you certainly participated in, and other people that were lucky enough to go along with you and your husband, you’ve made many trips to different parts of the world besides going to Israel so often. Could you tell us about some of those trips and what was unusual about them?

RL: Well, one trip that we took not too long ago, we went to Israel and then we went to Italy. And then we went to a town called Padua which is about 25 miles from Venice and there we went to a cemetery where my ancestors are buried which goes back a hundred years. What was interesting besides going to the cemetery, it’s not kept up well but it’s in the center of Padua, and it’s locked up. You need to go to the synagogue first and get someone to open it up. But it was interesting to talk to the rabbi and talk about the Jewish community in Italy.

The next trip was one which my husband wanted to do for a long, long time. Last summer we went back to our home town. What it was at first we went to Vilna. It was fifty years of destruction of all the Jews of Vilna. Of course, we went to Penar where 70,000 Jews are buried from Vilna. We went to Pravna., again where thousands and thousands of Jews were killed there. And then we drove to Belarus to our home town. But before we went to our home town we went to Radin to see the grave of the famous rabbi. And another reason was my best friend’s father came from Radin and I promised her I was going to stop there. The cemetery, the only cemetery that I’ve seen in Belarus that they are trying to rebuild. Our home town, first we went to my husband’s home town which was called Galitsia, very, very tiny, maybe there were a 1,000 Jews in that place, and there there is nothing. There is no monument to the Jews. Jews from Galitsia were taken from other ghettos. There’s an old cemetery that you can hardly recognize, you can see a couple of Hebrew letters on some tombstones.

Then we drove to our hometown, Zhetel, there my grandfather’s house was still standing. Our house was standing. We went to two cemeteries. One, the … they took the Jews maybe five miles out of town to woods, small woods, a very beautiful place but this is where they buried about 3,000 Jews, the first selection. It’s one mass grave. It was interesting. There’s always a monument but on top of the monument was a Russian star and it never said Jews. Now the Russian star was still there and there was a very small … to say that Jews are buried there. And in that area my grandfather, who was in the Judenrat for the Germans, they were killed in the first selection. My grandfather is buried there. The other one which is in the newer cemetery of Zhetel, this was the second where my husband’s mother, two brothers and a sister, and my grandmother and my aunts and uncles are buried there because they were killed in the second. There, too, is a monument, it’s on the Jewish cemetery. It’s this huge grave, they just out up the monument, probably there was nothing there before, and on the old Jewish graves you can see some letters here and there, and all kinds of animals, cows, are grazing there. It’s very, very sad. It’s really, it took us a couple of months to come back to ourselves after we visited but it’s something we wanted to do for many years.

AG: Now you mentioned that you and your husband took many trips to Israel. Can you remember how many, and how many of those trips did you take people who had never been there, or who had a different chance to see it with your guidance?

RL: I don’t remember the exact number of times but approximately 22, 23 times that we’re in Israel. That amount of time maybe 18 times we took groups. The rest of the time we either, a few times there were conventions or conferences where we studied for a week where we went for ourselves. Most of the people we took it was their first time in Israel and there some that were repeats who wanted to go again. That’s another thing that my husband and I think is very worthwhile to do because many people are hesitating or are afraid to go but if the rabbi is going they’re going. So that’s one of the things we feel we should be doing, and we are.

AG: And you’ve taken many people through the years. And you say that it’s important as a survivor to share with people your experiences and I know my grandson, who’s had you twice as a teacher, talks about the Holocaust in a different way, because he has that understanding from you. What would be the message you would want future generations to know from you from what you experiences during the Holocaust, about coming to this country, and about life as a Jew.

RL: When, during the time, when the shoah approaches, I stand in front of the class and I tell them that I want them to remember that I am talking to them as a survivor, and I’m really one of the people that survived, that it’s not a make-believe story because nowadays we have already people writing that it never happened so I really emphasize a lot that they should tell their children and grandchildren that they had a teacher who actually survived and also I want to emphasize that because we did suffer so much how important it is to continue. It’s something that I feel that, how many people get killed, you’re going to forget about it?

AG: You feel very strongly.

RL: And that’s why I ….There may be people that survived that say “Why did we have to go through all this?”, you know. But to me it’s much stronger because of my husband.

AG: Okay, this was an interview with Ruth Lazowski and this is Adele Gaster speaking. It’s June 3rd, 1994, and we’ve shared some stories from the life and certain emotions that she had from this time. Thank you.