Page 212 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Old age and the future

I always gardened around the house or out in the fields, and liked
to grow flowers, watching over them carefully. But why that woman
kept on after me, when those sweet peas had just come out of the
ground, was an enigma to me. She wanted me to string up the young
leaves, one week old, because they were hanging down to the ground.
Sweet peas are planted late in October and grow a few inches before
the rain and cooler weather set in, and remain in that condition until
March, when they begin to grow higher. I begged her to let me do it
the right way, which is necessary, but I could not convince her.
When the flowers came in she ruled supreme. It was like a baby had
been born. I had to keep away from cutting the flowers, because she
knew how long the stems should be; I was only allowed to cut the
flowers at the highest spot, because she could not reach them.
She handled the flowers as well as she did the household, which,
like her clothing, was always neat and aesthetically perfect. Yet she
was not eccentric in her actions: she was friendly with all the
neighbors, sociable, vivacious, with a smile for everybody. I must
admit I lacked most of the qualities that pleased her, and she
sometimes suffered on account of those social attributes that I
lacked. And it was for the very thing I lacked, patience, that I feel
most her loss, and her memory will accompany me to the last day of
my life. I am bringing those sweet peas which I grew and nursed for
her memory’s sake.

1962: I recently met Baile Goldlist, Yankel Manchic’s only
surviving daughter, who has been living in Toronto, Canada. It was
very emotional for me. For sixty years I had not seen a living soul of
all those relatives, several hundred people who lived together on a
plot of ground not larger than a city block. I saw them every day,
talked with them, knew them by the sound of their voices. Their
images remain impressed in my memory. This meeting carried me
back to before my journey in 1903. Only a few are left now from that
big family tree; it is an emotion one cannot suppress with
philosophical arguments. Anyone who has not seen or heard about
the great calamity that befell the Jews in Europe, who has not lost
two hundred relatives to the barbaric Germans, cannot feel the pain
that stays in a man’s heart until the end of his life.
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