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Masha Goldkind
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
- Chapter
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212 I met Masha Goldkind in Toronto in 1974 at the home of Lil and Albert Abramowitz. (Their stories appear earlier in the volume.) She was reluctant to speak to me; she felt there was nothing important in her life to relate. However, she kindly sat down and talked to me. Masha, who was sometimes called Mashinka, meaning the youngest (which she was in her family), was born on 15 May 1907. She left Vilna, which was in Poland at the time, in 1924. She was fifteen when she tried emigrating for the first time. During her lifetime she married and survived three husbands. Her son, Bernie Zuker, a long-time dear friend of my own family, is sorely missed. Masha died on 22 August 2001, at the age of eighty-four. I CAME HERE TO CANADA because I had my sister here, who was also in the same tailoring trade. And I had my brother too. I didn’t know them, as I was little when they left. They all left. They wanted to get away from home. It took me a long time to get here. I went through the war, the First World War.I left the Old Country in 1924 fromVilna—it was in Poland at that time. I was left an orphan. There was another brother and he went to the States and he came here later on.And I came here to brothers and sisters and their families. When I came, I was a very young girl. I was only seventeen years old. I couldn’t even go to school because I had to go out and make a living . But I went to night school because I had the ambition to learn. My father was a tailor and my mother used to help him out because she had quite a few children—nine children. I remember—I remember so much! My mother had bought a big fish, must have been about twenty-five pounds It was a hake—you know what a hake is? Like a pike. It was so huge that it made me a little bit afraid! I remember that. Masha Goldkind I started working here in Toronto—my brother took me into a place where he worked. I lived with my brother, upstairs in an attic—I don’t know if you have it in Vancouver—where the ceiling is bent. Well, that was not important. Now I say it wasn’t important, but when I first came, I had a hard time. I didn’t look like a tailoress, and I was returned back to Poland. They told me I didn’t look like a tailoress. I got sick on the way back. I had typhus and was in the hospital in Poland for months. I didn’t have where to stay. Then my brothers and sister here made out new papers for me and I returned again to Canada after one year. It took me two or three weeks to travel. I remember the boat. And I had experiences there on the boat. I wasn’t a bad-looking girl and the doctor started up that I should stay with him. I had a translator at that time, I couldn’t even speak—he spoke English … and this and that—I shouldn’t say anything! Well, I was a young girl here and until I struggled through, it was hard and it took me a very long time. Then I landed in a shop. I was very, very unhappy to be in a shop and I couldn’t tolerate that. I didn’t have a very good education and it hurt me. I was very hurt by it. I was very unhappy. I was in men’s clothes in a factory. I didn’t know anything.We worked nine, ten hours. I learned a lot of things in the trade, to work by hand, by machine. I was okay—I was capable of doing it. I struggled through with it, without happiness. I went to night school as much as I could. I met Karl and I got married. He was in the jewellery business at the time and he was making seventeen dollars a week. Then I was pregnant and I had my son, Bernie, and we were living in two rooms. I was working and getting paid about ten dollars or twelve dollars— that’s what they paid for us as finishers—and then I worked...