This morning I travelled to Beer Sheba for a small project. It was infernally hot. Each time I drive on Road 40 near Beer Sheba, I see these tall grain silos and the memory of my uncle Yoshka, Jóska bácsi in the original, comes to my mind. He was my father's uncle, brother of my Grandfather, with strange glasslike clear blue eyes. In fact, he had one glass eye. According to the story, he lost his eye in a beating at the Gestapo, from where he escaped by a miracle. Once, after a visit at his home at calle Humahuaca 3401, Buenos Aires, my father commented that truth was that he had lost his eye before the war, when he fell off a cart. After the war, with his wife and two children killed in Auschwitz, he was invited by the new State of Israel to take over the Beer Sheba flour mill. Before the war he had owned a large mill in Hungary and Israel needed an expert to put into operation an abandoned Arab mill in the recently conquered Beer Sheba. My uncle wanted to come, but his second wife, Eta, refused to pioneer in the desert, so they emigrated to wealthy Argentina. My uncle was not happy in Buenos Aires and never forgave her. The fact is that every time I pass this silo (pic), my uncle Jóska looks at me. This could have been his mill. May his memory be blessed.
11 comments:
My mother's father was also a miller. In Galicia transportation was primitive so every town had a mill so that the local peasants could grind their grain and saw their lumber. My grandfather's mill, as described by my uncle, was surprisingly advanced for where it was - I think the machinery was purchased from France. It was a steel roller mill as opposed to the stone mills of our imagination, and with sifting machines for separating out the germ and bran so that they could make white flour. The power was a water turbine, not the water wheel you see in paintings.
After returning from a Soviet prison, my grandfather was never again the socher he had been before the war. Of course in America milling was a highly advanced industry conducted on a vast scale and the skills he had in running a shtetl size mill were useless anyway. He died just weeks before I was born (I am named for him), but I have heard that he was a very dignified figure with a gold pocket watch on a chain that he wore in his vest pocket.
K
Your grandfather z"l may have suffered in the Soviet Union as a mill-owner and "capitalist". As for my grand-uncle, I have no idea what class of mill he may have owned, but they were well to-do provincials. He never adapted to Argentina, his second wife had illusions of high-society woman and was not religious, while he was strictly orthodox.
What did uncle think of Argentine women?
Roissy is not pleased with them. He prefers Slavic girls
My uncle was a deeply religious man who did not look or touch females, except his wife and that only when permitted by the Law.
My uncle was a deeply religious man who did not look or touch females, except his wife and that only when permitted by the Law.
Yes, my grandfather was arrested as an enemy of the people and his entire family including my mother was deported to the other side of the Urals (to northern Kazakhstan). This saved their life when the Nazis came to their shtetl later in the war and killed all the Jews. So what they thought was the worst possible thing was actually the better alternative, thought they didn't know it at the time. I take this as a life lesson.
You, J, have already remade your life a couple of times but I can't imagine having the strength to do it - certainly not at this point in my life. Americans are used to stability - my father in law was born, lived for 90 years and died without ever changing his domicile more than 25 kilometers from his birthplace (although he traveled the world for business and tourism) Sometimes I joke with my son about moving to China and I will be the elderly grandfather who doesn't speak the language.
K
K, you would find living in China very comfortable and you would learn Chinese in three months to a level that they couldnt sell you. You also have the overworking vice, so you would like to work with Chinese.
My daughter is succeeding in Shanghai but she does not like that the Chinese come to work on Saturdays and Sundays too. They dont have to but they are all there. She was assigned to a group where no one spoke English and it appears that she took over the leadership of the project (some kind of building for the government) and they won the competition.
Chinese are obedient by nature, as observed by Terry Pratchett, who in a funny episode makes Kohn the Barbarian the Emperor of China, till he gets bored with being it.
My son was also (un) impressed by his Chinese co-workers lack of initiative - they worked (or at least were in the office) for long hours but they did not necessarily get a lot done. I think it may have to do with the Asian maxim that the stalk of rice that sticks up above the others gets its head chopped off first - less risky to hide among the masses.
I always thought people from totalitarian countries would be savvy in their encounters with authorities but recently a Chinese intern who was supposed to come work at my son's office in Seattle did not make it past US immigration - she got tripped up by the questions of the immigration agent (she had a tourist visa but was here for work - all she needed to do was not mention work and say she was here to visit the national parks) and never made it out of the airport. I think this is a sign of progress in China - only someone who lives in a (relatively) oppressive country is so naive about the authorities. Not a sign of progress in the US - the immigration agent has made the US safe from Chinese PhD students - too many more "victories" like this and we will be lost.
K
Make that UNoppressive.
By contrast, our visas to visit China always came thru in a few days and at the airport they just stamped our passports and let us on our way. In many ways China appears to be a more "free" country than the US, at least as long as you do not provoke the authorities.
Agree. China is free and people has no fear of talking of anything or protesting or striking. On the other hand, there is little violence and people does not steal (generally).
Agree. China is free and people has no fear of talking of anything or protesting or striking. On the other hand, there is little violence and people does not steal (generally).
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