I Have a Story to Tell You

Bluma Kogan

86 Bluma Kogan was born in Prostora Gubernya in Russia, around 1900. The village must have been very small, as I have been unable to locate it on a map. I met Bluma at the Baycrest Home in 1974 when I went to talk to Pauline Chudnovsky, and Bluma kindly agreed to talk to me. Pauline Chudnovsky sat in on the interview and contributed now and then with her thoughts. I WAS BORN IN PROSTORA GUBERNYA and my name is Bluma Kogan there and Bluma Kogan here. That’s my father’s name and I keep it all the time. Conditions in the Old Country for us were not very good. My father couldn’t make a very good living. So we were poor.And my Dad has cousins over here in Toronto. He made an application to come here and he came first. This was around 1909. I think it was 1909. We didn’t even have money for the voyage but some of our friends were here already and they were very, very friendly, so they sent us money for my father to come here. In 1913, after my father had been here for several years, he made a little bit of money to send for us to come. We were six children. You want to know them? My sister Dora, my brother Morris, and myself came here first. I began to work, my brother began to work, and my sister Dora was too young to work. Anyhow, we chipped things together. We took a little piece of a very dirty place to live. And I worked there day and at night after work to make it livable. The place we rented was a front place, the front part of the house. It was large and had a table to eat on, and a stove and a sink with water. We lived by ourselves. It was off the street, a couple of steps up to the door and you come in. But it was very, very bad and very poor. There was no bathroom— it was someplace outside. There were more apartments and more quarters Bluma Kogan  all the way around—they went this way and this way—and here was the street. [Bluma motions with her hands.] I collected horse manure from the street and bought some lime and made a paste and plugged up holes in the home. It was raining in and so I plugged things up. After that I bought some paper and papered it. And it looked a little bit brighter. In the first room was a great, big, old stove, dirty and not working. Somehow we got rid of it and bought a smaller one that was workable. In the back of that big room, where the stove was, was a closet. It was very dark and very dirty, very roachy and very ratty, and very, very bad! And my father and myself worked there. We plugged up the holes, papered it, put a light in there and it became bright. When people came in a few weeks after,they didn’t recognize it.I don’t remember how much rent we were paying there. [Pauline says, Ten dollars was how much at that time.] It was very cheap because we didn’t have any money. My father became a shochet here—do you understand me? And he arranged the rent there. When I came we arranged a different accommodation . I remember that. It was cheap. We bought furniture that was—at that time—a hundred years old. Very inadequate! The light was of particular trouble. There was, what do you call these lights on the ceiling? It wasn’t a bulb … [Sunlight? A skylight? I offer] Yes, that. It was raining and the rain came in. It rained on me in the bed. Okay. Well, I tried. I tried very hard to plug it up. I did the best I could, with my Dad—we were like that—we co-operated. By the time I came here I got a toothache which was very, very bad. We came here to some cousins. I was in bed with that toothache. My face got swollen and ten days—ten days—I was in a fever and I was very sick. I got better and I am here! After I came in 1913, 1914, I looked for work. I looked and I found a place. I don’t remember how I found the place...