How Lucky We Were

Figure 1.

Staff and campers, Winslow 1929 Chester Jacob Teller standing near left (with necktie); behind him and to left (by tree): Walter Magnes Teller; fourth to right (tallest): Albert S. Gerstein, dramatics counselor; to right of Chester Teller: Mrs. Aurelia Rosenbaum, camp mother; then Charles J. Schneider, head counselor; seated directly in front of him: Henry Hurwitz, Jr. at 11 (white socks)

Figure 2.

Chester Jacob Teller surveying his Camp Winslow waterfront (Winslow Scrapbook, 1929)

Figure 3.

William Block and his fencers (Camp Winslow brochure ca. 1934)

Figure 4.

“The Camp Winslow Orchestra” (Winslow Scrapbook, 1929) Standing at left: music counselor Herman Goldberg; at right with flute: Henry Brant. Seated at right with clarinet: William Popper, Jr. Seated center front (with trumpet as large as he is): Dicky Loeb

Figure 5.

Riding at Winslow—young Chester Teller at extreme right, counselor William Marts center (brochure ca. 1934)

Figure 6.

Summer 1934: Wayne L. Horvitz (13 1/2) left, with author (12)

Figure 7.

Summer camp advertisements in The Menorah Journal, 1923

Figure 8.

Summer camp advertisements in The Menorah Journal, 1923

Figure 9.

Jewish school children in Butrimantz (or Butrimonys), Lithuania southeast of Kovno, southwest of Vilna, contemporary with campers at Winslow and Arden in the nineteen-twenties and early ‘thirties. A rare happy and relaxed group portrait outdoors in mild weather, reminiscent of group photographs in those Maine summer camps. School director Berl Vinetsky is at right, teacher Hillel Millstein at left. They and nearly every girl and boy, including cousins of the author, were killed by eager Lithuanian collaborators with the SS Einsatzgruppen in the fall of 1941. Of the two thousand Jewish adults and children in the shtetl and surrounding Jewish settlements, fourteen survived the Holocaust. Photograph courtesy of Riva Lozansky and Mrs. Olga Zabludoff. Copyright 1998, Remembrance Books.³⁴

Remembering the unspeakable tragedy soon to sweep over Europe, but also recalling happier associations of a summer camp advertisement “For Lucky Boys” in The Menorah Journal 80 years ago, one looks back to a bright chapter of summer experiences for Jewish children in the 1920s and early ‘30s in this fortunate land an ocean away. ¹ At our camp we never dreamed our blessings came about because children like us were not wanted in a German village a hundred years before. But such was the case.

The retreat with which my brother first became acquainted in 1929 (when in his 11th year), and I in 1931 (at nine), was not, like those in the ad, in New York’s Adirondack Mountains, but in the rolling countryside around the Belgrade Lakes of central Maine. The town of Waterville is on the west side of the Kennebec River and the smaller town of Winslow on the east; the latter contributed the name to the camp, which was some five miles further east. Camp Winslow boasted an idyllic setting: some 200 acres of field and forest on a broad peninsula reaching into Pattee’s Pond, a quiet, unspoiled little lake perfect for swimming, rowing, fishing and canoeing. Sports facilities were ample, along with miles of trails close by for exploring, woodcraft and nature study, paddocks and bridle paths for horseback riding, and sturdy wood structures for living quarters, the mess hall and social lodge (the latter also used for plays and Friday evening services), infirmary, arts and crafts (the shop), the canoe shelter, and indoor games or other activities in rainy weather or evenings.

Narrow country dirt or blacktop roads with little automobile traffic stretched invitingly in all directions for overnight hikes—we ate around our campfire, and at night after stories and songs nestled in blanket rolls spread on forest ground carpeted with fragrant pine needles. Near the camp were traditional family farms and their barns with...