Where We Came From

Stories from the Radzyminski Family

By: Rona G. Finkelstein

XIV

Yankel David & Gitl
Gwisdalski & Their Children

_Yankel David was born in Wyszkow, Poland, about 1896, the fourth of seven children of Yetta (Moshe and Fayga Rochel Radzyminski's daughter) and Mordekhai Velvl Gwisdalski. He attended the yeshiva, and he doubtless helped out after school in the family meat business like the rest of his siblings.

According to his son Joseph, Yankel David's mother Yetta was a very strong person, and her husband Mordekhai Velvl went along with what she wanted. Yankel David married a woman like his mother in that respect. Her name was Gitl Rosenberg. "Whatever his wife said, he did, because she was always right," says Joseph. Yankel David and Gitl decided it would be wiser to set up housekeeping on their own, rather than to move in with Yetta, by then a widow and still living in the house behind the shop. They saw that two such strong women needed separate domains. The couple found another house, and in time they had three children, Ralph (1919), Joseph (1921) and Rita (1923).

Having a wife and three children didn't keep Yankel David from receiving a notice to report for military service, so, like his brothers and so many other Jewish young men, he fled from Poland. He went to his brother Simon, who was living in Paris with his family. Simon was hoping to move to the United States, where their brother Jules had been living since 1910. Yankel David also wanted to emigrate to the States, but when he arrived in

Paris, Simon told him, "The United States is closed, but you can go to Cuba, and after six months, you'll go to the United States." Yankel David applied and was accepted by Cuba, and he decided to go without his family in order to get established before they came. On the dock he met a landsman from Warsaw, a shoemaker. Hearing that Yankel David had no idea how he was going to make a living in Cuba, the man told him, "David, don't worry. I'm going to make shoes and you're going to sell them." When they arrived in Cuba in 1924 and discovered that not many people were manufacturing shoes, the two of them and one other new arrival teamed up to start filling the void.

At first, Yankel David had to sleep with four or five others in one room. For the first couple of weeks, all he ate were bananas and bread. (At that time, no kosher meat was available.) But their business was booming: he had only to take a pair of sandals outside with him, and within half a block, he had sold them. Everything he took out on the street, he quickly sold. Within six months, he had made enough money to send to Wyszkow for his family. Gitl brought the three children (now ages four, two and one) and started to help in the business, selling shoes. It grew into such a good business that, Joseph remembers, at one time his father had 15 or more people working for him. "Every Sunday he used to go to greet the ship, to get any Jew coming in to come work for him."

The business prospered, but Gitl and Yankel David had a big worry. Their children were growing up in a country with few Jews, and it was hard to provide them with an adequate Jewish education. They found a shokhet who could teach, and they paid him to come to their house to give lessons to their children. Their son Joseph recalls, "We were desperate, he should come every day! He used to tell us stories from the Bible. He was so good, so smart! The shokhet was fantastic!"

This was not enough Jewish education to satisfy the parents, however, and they decided to move to Santo Domingo to live in a larger Jewish community. Yankel David and Gitl opened not Yankel David & Gitl Gwizdalski & Their Children
one but two businesses there—a shoe store and a cafeteria. Trujillo came to power in 1930, and both businesses prospered. Then the watchful parents became aware of a problem: there were too many gentile girls around who could prove attractive to their growing boys. They had not left Cuba so their sons could have non-Jewish girlfriends! Determined to find the right place to raise their family in the proper way, Gitl and Yankel David left their thriving businesses and moved to Mexico. Not three days had passed after their arrival, however, when there was an earthquake. With that, they threw up their hands and moved the whole family back to Cuba.

But Cuba still lacked a sizable Jewish community, so the parents faced the same worries for their children. Their business, however, was going well—well enough for Gitl to propose that the family return to Wyszkow for a vacation. Once there, they liked the way of life so much that she and Yankel David decided to stay and open a business in Wyszkow. In 1933 they started a cowhide business, and it prospered.

Though Joseph, now 11, had grown up in Cuba, he found that he very much liked living in Wyszkow. He attended school, and he started going to kheder, which he had not done in Cuba. For the first time he was getting a traditional Jewish education. When he turned 13, he became Bar Mitzvah there. There was, however, one big problem: his older brother Ralph had turned 15 and would soon be eligible for the army. If he were conscripted, he would not be allowed to emigrate. Their mother Gitl knew that a decision must be made.

Joseph relates: "My mother was stronger than my father; she was the boss of the family. While my father took care of the business, she put her three children in a wagon, like `Fiddler on the Roof,' and took us to a big rabbi in a larger town. We had to travel all night and arrived in the town in the morning. We saw a line of people at least two blocks long waiting to see the rabbi, such a big rabbi he was! Mother was a smart woman. She goes over to the shammes, gives him a few dollars and right away he passed us through to see the rabbi. It was like a shul, I'll never forget, with a lot of
books. The rabbi had a white beard, an older man, and, without looking at her, he said, `Why do you come to see me?'

"She said, `My son is 15, and I'm afraid. I come from America (she didn't say Cuba because the rabbi wouldn't know), and I'm here, but my son is getting older and I'm afraid. (Who would want to go into the Polish army?) What should I do, Rabbi?'

"He wouldn't look at her—a rabbi wouldn't look at a woman. He was reading the Bible. He doesn't say a word. Then all of a sudden he says to her, `Woman, where did you make your money?'

"`In America,' my mother says.

"Still without looking at her, he says, `Go, pack right away. Leave everything and go back right away.'

"He didn't talk any more. We walked out, we took the wagon, we didn't eat, and we went back to Wyszkow. We got there at night. My mother called a meeting at the house with her three sisters and Bubbeh. She told them, `Here, I'll give you everything [that we own here], [sell it and keep] whatever money you make.' No one else in the family wanted to leave. We were all well off there, we had houses, we had gardens, we had farms, we had cars, and they didn't want to leave. They'd have to work too hard in America. They said, `In America, gold is on the ground, but to pick it up—oi!—that's the difficulty!' In Cuba my father worked very hard, but in Wyszkow, he didn't work—he was like a prince! He had people working for him, because he had money. But whatever his wife said, he did.

"The next day we packed everything, went to Warsaw to get visas, and from there to Gdynia on the Baltic Sea. There we already saw the Nazis in movement." It was 1937.³⁰ The family had to stop over for week in England to get the ship to Cuba, but the steamship company paid for their hotel and meals for the week.

In Cuba for the second time, Yankel David continued dealing in leather, selling it to the shoe factories. (He had sold his own shoe factory before leaving for Poland.)

"In 1938 my Uncle Julie said to my father, `Enough Cuba! Come to the United States!' so the whole family came to the Yankel David & Gitl Gwizdalski & Their Children
United States at Passover." Joseph and Ralph went to work in Jules' factory, stitching trimmings, but they didn't like the work and soon found other jobs. Their father didn't want to work in Jules' factory either, so he opened his own factory in Brooklyn, making shoes. But the shoes didn't do so well. "It was very bad times," remembers Joseph, "so Papa said, `I'm going back to Cuba.' Ralph also wanted to go back, but I said, `I want to stay here.'" When Yankel David, Gitl and Ralph returned to Cuba, Joseph and his sister Rita stayed in Brooklyn. Before long, Rita married Philip Mantel and they settled in Brooklyn too.

When the United States entered World War II, Joseph was 19. His friends were going into the army. "I want to join the army too," he told his father, who was in the States buying merchandise at the time. "I had to have two people who worked for my father sign for me. I went into the army, and when I received an honorable discharge three years later, I automatically became a citizen."

Even though he was now an American citizen, Joseph returned to Cuba after the war. He wanted to live in the same country as his parents. He joined his father's leather business in Havana. At a party he was introduced to Helen Weiss. They were married in 1948. "In Cuba we were middle class, not rich, but we had two maids for $30 a month. And in Cuba you could get all the medicines you wanted."

When Helen was pregnant in 1949 she decided to have her baby in New York, where relatives of hers lived in the Bronx. Her cousin was a nurse for newborns in Beth Israel Hospital. She recommended a doctor for Helen and took care of her when her son was born. Helen says, "When my son was born in New York, I had to make him a pidyon ha-ben, and Joseph's grandmother Yetta came. She was beautiful—she wore a wig." Joseph too remembers his grandmother as a beautiful woman, and a smart woman.Yankel David & Gitl Gwizdalski & Their Children
Two years later Helen decided to remain in Cuba to deliver her second child, a girl. She wanted to live in Cuba where she had maids, and where life with children was easier. Her third child, a daughter, was also born in Cuba, in 1956. Helen found time to attend a school there to learn to read English.

Castro came to power in 1959, and Joseph soon discovered, "I could not do my business." It was not that Castro discriminated against the Jews. "He had Jewish ministers, everything. He's still nice to Jews, even today." Joseph's mother Gitl died at about the time Castro came to power. His father Yankel David wanted to be buried next to her, so he did not want to leave when Joseph suggested it. But it was becoming more and more difficult to carry on his business, so Joseph decided to send Helen, her mother and their three children to live in Miami Beach while he waited to see what would happen in Cuba. (Thanks to Joseph's service in the army, he and Helen were now U.S. citizens.) After six months, the situation became impossible, and Joseph's business was taken over. When his brother Ralph had left six months earlier, he had been admitted to the U.S. as a refugee. But Joseph didn't know how he would be able to leave; though he was an American citizen, he had no passport—somehow it had gotten lost.

Joseph relates: "Every night I used to eat in a restaurant. I had a lot of money. The Swedish ambassador used to eat there too. He always sat over there, and I used to sit over here. The waiter was my friend, because I was eating there every night. I told him not to charge the ambassador, to charge it to me instead. After a few days, the ambassador came over (the waiter had told him who I was), and he thanked me very much and offered to help with any problem. I told him, I have a problem. I want to go to America. I'm American but I have no passport. He said, `Don't worry, I'll give you a diplomatic passport. Go to the British, go to Nassau.' (You couldn't go to the United States.) `If you can get a plane, I'll give you the passport.' Joseph went to the British consul, and they said, `Yes, if you're lucky. Next week there's a flight to Jamaica.'"

Joseph didn't tell anyone at the store that he planned to leave. "The manager, I didn't tell anything, because he'd probably stop me. The manager used to say to me, `Momser, you're a very smart Jew; why do you want to go to America? They're anti-Semitic. We're not anti-Semitic, we love the Jews.' I spent all my money, because that way I know I'm going to leave. I didn't even have money for cigarettes. I left everything. If you took money they wouldn't let you on the plane.

"So I went to the airport, went on the plane and sat down next to a salesman from New York. He opens up a package of cigarettes—Camels! I was dying, so I asked, `Could I have a cigarette?' "Of course,' he said, and gave me the whole pack. So I came to Jamaica. There were so many Cubans there waiting for visas to come into the United States! I called up Helen in Miami. Right away she sent me the ticket. The next day I took the plane to Miami, where they took away my passport from Sweden. Later, I got an American passport."

Joseph arrived in the States without a penny, "without even cigarettes." Ralph, who had arrived six months earlier, was in the leather supply business. Joseph worked at whatever job he could find to support his family, He sold books, he was a traveling salesman; he worked sometimes with, sometimes without a partner. "I came to the United States in 1961. I worked day and night to make a living. I didn't know what a vacation was! Fifteen years, day and night!" Then Joseph started in the electrical supply business, in which he remained and in which he still works today (1/19/95).

Yankel David died three years after Gitl, and they are buried in Cuba. Seven of their grandchildren and ten great-grandchildren live in the United States.

Information from Joseph and Helen Sobie, Jan. 19, 1995. Joseph died in February, 2001.

Yankel David & Gitl Gwizdalski & Their Children

30 In nearby Gdansk (Danzig) in 1937, according to the Encyclopedia Judaica, "… the minority rights provided for under the League of Nations lapsed. Albert Forster, the Nazi gauleiter, dismissed all Jews from practice in the liberal professions. A full-scale pogrom was initiated. Half of the Jews left Gdansk within a year, the Polish government offering them no protection. Between November 12 and 14, 1938, two synagogues were burned down and two others were desecrated." Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem, Keter Pub. Co., 1971), vol. 7, 347.