DR. MOISE WOLF, seen here in a 1998 photo, died in February of this year. He left behind the manuscript of a memoir that chronicles his eventful and
distinguished life that included survival in Poland and the Soviet Union during World War II, and then his life as a Jewish emigrant from Russia who followed his family to Oregon late in his life. Portland’s Jewish Community has launched a project that will bring Dr. Wolf’s important personal and historical document to the public as a published book.
Wolf manuscript ‘vivid memoir’ of an extraordinary, courageous life
By Moise Wolf and Judson Rosengrant
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Preface
The manuscript excerpt below is the first of four excerpts from the memoir of Dr. Moisey Wolf to be published in the Jewish Review
Dr. Wolf was born in 1922 in Warsaw and grew up there with vacations spent at his grandparents’ home in the village of Cheremoshno in what was then southeastern Poland but is now northwestern Ukraine.
With the partition of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 and the immediate occupation of Warsaw by the Nazis, Dr. Wolf fled to Cheremoshno after the murder of his father. He then entered Soviet territory, moving from there to the Ukrainian city of Lvov to continue the medical studies that had been interrupted in Warsaw. When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Dr. Wolf again fled east, this time to Stalingrad, where he resumed his studies at a military medical institute and where he soon saw action as an army medical officer.
In 1944 he was sent by Soviet authorities to Moscow, where he at last took his medical degree with an internship in psychiatry, completing the latter in 1947. After his internship and like many who had enlisted in the army during the war, Dr. Wolf was called back to duty, remaining in uniform until the mass demobilization of 1955. He served as an army psychiatrist with assignments as far-flung as Sakhalin Island on the Pacific Coast and Arkhangelsk on the White Sea.
After demobilization, Dr. Wolf returned to Moscow, where he proceeded with what would become a distinguished and innovative career in psychiatry and public medicine with a specialization in epilepsy. In 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he and his wife emigrated to the United States, settling in Portland, where his son and his family were already living and where earlier members of the Cheremoshno Wolf clan had emigrated as early as the first decade of the last century.
Dr. Wolf died in February of this year, leaving behind a vivid memoir of his rich, highly eventful life, a life that spanned several cultures and historical periods and that was, for all the terrible dislocation and tragedy it witnessed, one of extraordinary courage, insight, learning and achievement.
Judson Rosengrant, the translator and editor of Dr. Wolf’s memoir, has taught Russian language and literature at the University of Southern California, Reed College, Indiana University and St. Petersburg State University, and is an award-winning scholar, literary translator and editor of Russian literature and historiography. He lives in Portland.
Manuscript Excerpt—When the Nazis Came
Two sons of my fertile but very strict great-grandmother Reiza remained behind in Cheremoshno—the oldest, my grandfather Yeruhim, and the youngest, Shimon. She would allow neither of them to emigrate: “I won’t permit it and that’s final!” Despite their respectable ages, both bowed to her demand.
Till the end of her days she called my grandfather Yeruhim der Kleiner or “the little one.”
If for some reason he was kept away on business, she would gruffly ask my grandmother, “Riva! Wu iz der Kleiner?” Where’s the little one? Although I was probably four or even younger at the time, I still remember her very distinctly: a white-haired old woman with exceptionally fair skin and contrasting pink cheeks who would sit by the tile stove on a chair specially adapted to her needs. She sat with her eyes closed and seemed to be asleep and to see and hear nothing. In fact, she was wide awake. If I or another of her great-grandchildren happened to disturb the way things were arranged, her stern voice would cry out, “Sheigetz! Shoin zol vern altz in ordenung!” “You good-for-nothing! Put everything back where it was this instant!” No one dared disobey.
She was especially strict with me. Whenever I did something wrong she would shout, “Vos vet fun dir oisvaksn?! Nor a ganev!” “What will you turn into?! Nothing but a thief!” That terrified me. I would run off to my grandfather or mother in tears and ask if that really was to be my fate.
Great-grandmother Reiza died accidentally at the end of 1926 or the beginning of 1927. Since at the time there wasn’t any electricity in my grandfather’s house where she too resided, the house was illuminated with kerosene lamps arranged chandelier-style. On the fateful evening a lamp chimney fell down and broke. Great-grandmother Reiza immediately got up from her seat, found another chimney, placed a stool on top of the table, climbed up onto a chair and then onto the stool, and attempted to put the new chimney back on the lamp. Just what happened then is unclear, but she lost her balance and fell, striking her head on the floor. She died the next afternoon. She was, it was said, a mere twenty days shy of her 103rd birthday. She was buried in the Jewish cemetery in the nearby town of Melnitsa, where one of her favorite daughters, muma Freida, lived.
Great-grandmother Reiza was survived not only by her four sons but also by her six daughters: Beila, Hanna, Rivka, Esther, Freida, and Luba. Hanna emigrated with Great-grandmother Reiza’s blessing, settling in Portland, Oregon...
Standing beside the prosperous buildings of my grandfather Yeruhim’s property was the modest home of his brother, Shimon, and of Shimon’s wife, Esther. Shimon was quite different from the other three brothers. He was short, skinny, and half-blind. As a child he suffered from trachoma, which had completely scarred the cornea of his right eye. As a result, he studied little and poorly whenever he did. Among the hired hands who worked on my grandfather’s property was a glazier, and Great-grandmother Reiza ordered him to teach Shimon his trade. Shimon soon mastered it and took his teacher’s place. I can still see him with a broad glass-filled box on his bent back as he went round the streets of Cheremoshno crying, “Glass! Glass! Who has a broken window? Who has a broken window? Glass! Glass!” No more than three or four people a day ever required his services or responded to his call.
Being curious by nature, I often ran to his so-called workshop to watch him work. He did so very slowly. Using a folding ruler, he would measure the length and width of the window frame into which he was to install the glass. He would intently measure it many times, more even than the proverbial seven, each time stopping to scratch his beard and say, “O, Gotenyu! Oi vey!” (Our God! Woe is me!) And then after lengthy reflection, he would lay his ruler on the glass and draw his glasscutter along its side, after which came the most delightful part. Placing the pane of glass with the line cut in it over the edge of his worktable, he would press down on it, breaking it exactly as required. Then raising his eyes to heaven, he would say with obvious relief, “Riboine shel oilom! Got tzu danken!” “Creator of the World! I thank thee, my God!” Using a special lubricant and brads to secure the pane of glass, he would then put it in a box for “repaired items.” He got a pittance for his labors. So he could feed his family, my grandfather and especially my grandmother Rivke gave him regular assistance. He also received a fixed sum of dollars twice a year from his brothers and from his eldest son, Morris, who had emigrated to Portland in 1910 at the age of sixteen...
To conclude my account of the family of my grandfather’s youngest brother, Shimon, let me add that besides Morris, Shimon and Esther had four other sons, Berl, Mekhl, Yankel, and Ruvim, and three daughters, Rivka, Khaia, and Basia. Berl was married to Sheindle, who bore him two children, Itzik and Zlata. Berl established himself in the livestock business and was reputed to be one of the wealthiest Jews in the city of Povursk (ten kilometers from Cheremoshno). He too helped his mother and father from time to time. In 1941 he was shot in a mass execution of Jews and thrown in a common grave beside my younger brother Yankel. Berl witnessed Yankel’s agony. Berl himself had been seriously wounded in the hip but pretended to be dead. At night he crawled with great difficulty out of the grave. A peasant he knew saved him, but all the members of his immediate family perished and were buried in the common grave. Buried there too were his brother Mekhl and Mekhl’s wife, his brother Ruvim, and his three sisters.
In November 2006 a committee was formed to promote and support the translation and publication of the memoirs of Dr. Moisey Wolf. If you would like a brochure about the project or more information, please contact Project Coordinator Rosanne Royer at 503-646-3717 or rosanneroyer@comcast.net.