Gene with his father and mother, Masha and Jack.

My father and mother both came to this country sometime in the 1920s. Maybe early 20s like 1921. For most people in their circumstances, the guys were running away from the draft. Half were drafted into the army and they were usually put into very menial jobs there.

My parents came here in the early twenties. He was escaping the draft, which meant that he would have been in the Russian army. My father used to tell funny stories about how the guys used to try to outwit the army. One thing was to spend the whole month eating polly seeds (sunflower seeds) and herring. The result was your blood pressure went up a lot. Not only that but you smelled like a dead fish.

I don't know a lot about the early history in their own towns. I know stories that my mother told me about her life. They both came from what is called Bessarabia. (It's now Moldova.) That was, at the time, a part of Romania, but it's an area that has shifted back and forth between Romania and Russia. My mother's town was Khotin, which is now in Byelorussia. My father's town was called Filesht. I don't know if you can find that on the map, but Khotin was a pretty big town.

He had a background in furs and, when he came to this country, he became a very skilled cutter. That's the guy in the fur shop who takes the raw skins and cuts them to fit a pattern. He must have been in his twenties when he came. My parents didn't know each other when they arrived here.

With my mother, it was not the draft but I think her older brother Zelig (the father of Moyshe Oysher and Fraydele) came here first and then many of the others came afterwards--her brothers, Jack and Hymie. Three other brothers were left in Europe and they were all killed in the Holocaust.

 
Gene's grandfather, first name unknown.

My father's father had died in the old country and my father was the oldest son. His father was an inn keeper and a dealer in furs and animals. I have a tape of my father telling how when he was about 13, his father sent him to Siberia to buy furs. He was mugged, they stole every penny he had, and he was almost killed.

I think my father's whole family came here, his brother Sam, who came to be known as John, and sisters Claire, Rose, Ida, and Gittel who was a serious diabetic and she died a long time ago. When I last heard, the others were all alive and lived not far from my father in Miami Beach but he had not seen them. He didn't know where they were. He knew they were in a little town somewhere in the suburbs but he never saw them.

That was the story of his life. He used to like to say he was the man that nobody loves, because he was in effect the father to that whole family. His mother and brothers and sisters were here and he took care of them. Mainly he got them all through high school. But they were all absolutely poor as church mice.