I Have a Story to Tell You

Hyman Leibovitch

Hyman Leibovitch  Hyman Leibovitch was born in 1896. He came to Montreal with his young sister in 1914, a few months after the First World War had begun. Hyman was a fine cabinetmaker from the Old Country; however, he serendipitously found himself in the building trade, where he flourished. I met him in the summer of 1974 at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in Montreal, where he kindly gave up an afternoon of card playing to talk to me. I COME FROM ROMANIA.When Romania started to fight Bulgaria and Hungary,I was only eighteen years old and they took me to the army for three months for training.This was in 1914.So I made the three months in the army and I left because they gave me my privilege to go home. Instead of going home, I went to find work to the Romanian border and I passed to Chernovitz and when I came to Chernovitz42 I have nothing left—no papers, no passport, nothing; only my uniform from the army. That’s all I had. I didn’t have a penny in my pocket. I came over to Chernovitz and there was a man standing there with a little horse and a wagon. And I was talking to him in Jewish because I didn’t know whether he speaks Romanian or not. I was speaking to him Jewish and I told him, Please, I want you should take me to Jewish people, I should be able to stay and have at least a cup of water, because I have no money to buy anything. Anyway he said, All right, I know a person who lives not far from here who has a farm, no children, and I’ll take you there. He took me there, I come, a man comes out; I would say, he is only about four feet—not tall, not fat. So the man said to the other fellow, he was speaking like an Austrian , he was a Jewish man. I said, Far vos? Why don’t you speak Jewish? He said, I’ll talk in Jewish. He asked, where I had come from? I told him I had 193 194 i have a story to tell you come from Romania, I had passed the army, and I don’t want to go in the army further because I don’t want to go in the war. In Romania the Jewish people have no opportunity to do anything, to go anywhere—the same like in Russia. So they took me in and I was sitting outside in the balcony and I was waiting there, and a lady who comes out—I would say about three feet higher than he is—a lady, a fat woman comes out. She says to me, You would like to have something? I was waiting, maybe she was gonna ask me because I want to ask her to give me at least a glass of water. Because they don’t have like we have around here, a tap and go take some water. No, there is a well, you have to draw with a pail a bit of water. She went there, I said, I don’t want nothing, I just want a glass of water if it’s possible. She said, I’m going to go to the well and I’m going to get a pail of water and you are going to have water. Believe me, if I didn’t drink four cups of water, not one! I was hungry like a dog. Then she asked me, Are you hungry? I said yes. I was very, very hungry and she said to me, we’ll wait for supper. Until supper, I thought I’m going to burst, because I was hungry. I asked the lady to give to me to eat,something,a husk,anything,I’m hungry.I’m waiting for the moment when she called me in for supper.There was potatoes and what else there was didn’t matter—I was the happiest person—I filled my stomach. While we are eating the meal she asked me from where I’m coming. I told her I’m coming from a small little city near the Russian border—Stephanitz. She asked me, Was your father born in the same city? I said, No, my father had been born near the Austrian–Hungarian border. He comes from Bordejen . When she heard that my father...