05/08/2026
At the end of the week, we have been featuring excerpts from Yizkor books in JewishGen's archive. If you are not familiar with the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, please click on this link: http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/faq.html
Most of the excerpts I publish here are stories; “In a Little Town” from the Yizkor book of Khorostkiv, Ukraine is more a slice of life as seen through the eyes a young boy born in 1855. He recalls the small, cramped house, low-ceilinged and stifling, with a beaten mud floor where he was born an orphan. He remembers the loss of his mother and his sufferings at the hands of a stepmother.
He describes the diet of Jews in his Galician shtetl: white bread on the Sabbath and coarse rye the rest of the week and the two meals a day that people generally ate – a morning meal consisting of meat and soup and an evening meal of bread or gruel. He tells of the local marriage customs where it was common for boys of 15 and 16 to marry girls who were even younger – and how a panic ensued when rumors spread that the Austrian government intended to prohibit marriages where the bridegroom was below the age of 24.
And finally, there are the superstitions harbored by many Jews at the time that resulted in his belief in evil spirits until he was well into my teens.
I have shortened this excerpt. You can find the full version online here: https://bit.ly/4eztOR6
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𝐈𝐧 𝐚 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐓𝐨𝐰𝐧
𝐛𝐲 𝐏𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐚𝐠
I first saw the light of day on 26 August [1855], or – to be more exact – I first saw darkness on that date, because I was born in a small, cramped house, low-ceilinged and stifling, with a beaten mud floor, in a little town in Galicia – Chorostkow. There was only one bed in our home – for my parents – a tiled stove and a few poor, miserable household utensils. The two windows were small, so that little sun penetrated, even at midday.
Evidently because it was so dark in our house, no memories of my early childhood years remain, but this I do remember: One day, when I was four years old, I was sitting on a bench next to the stove. On the floor in front of me lay something wrapped in linen, and I observed it with half an eye, not knowing how precious a treasure it concealed. It was my dear mother. When my mother died, my father took a second wife. Only when I was six or seven did I come to realise that I was an orphan.
I saw the difference between me and the other pupils at the cheder (religion classes). They used to bring all sorts of good things to eat to cheder, while I looked on, starving hungry. This was not because my father was poor and could not afford to give me what I wanted, but because all my stepmother used to give me was a scanty piece of bread, which was not enough to assuage my hunger.
She did not do this out of hard-heartedness or because she was cruel, but because she was secretly helping her sons by her first husband with money. They were already married but were desperately poor. The money my father doled out to her was not enough so, instead of spending it all on food, she used to hold some of it back and give it to her sons. When there was a festive meal at the cheder, or an outing, everyone else used to bring hard-boiled eggs and other titbits, while I was the only one who had to go empty-handed…
…I remember something that happened when I was 10 or 11 years old. In the town, they used to bake challot (bread baked specially for the Sabbath and festivals) with fine white flour on Fridays, and bread with coarse rye flour for the rest of the week. I used to receive a slice of challah only on Friday evening and Saturday morning. On Saturday afternoon, I had to make do with black bread, because the white bread was reserved for my father.
One Saturday afternoon, I asked my stepmother for some bread. She broke off a piece from the old loaf and offered it to me. I refused it, because I wanted fresh bread, and was immediately punished – I did not get any bread at all, stale or fresh. When the hunger pangs became too strong for me, I went to the cupboard, cut myself a decent slice of bread and began to eat it.
I shall never forget how my stepmother suddenly fell upon me, snatched the bread out of my hand and began hitting me. I was so upset that I blurted out a curse. When she told my father all about it, he gave her permission to beat me whenever she felt like it. She took full advantage of this permission.
It was the custom in Galicia in those days to eat only two meals a day, one at 9 o'clock in the morning, after prayers, and the second in the evening. The morning meal consisted of meat and soup, while the evening meal was bread or gruel. At midday, people used to make do with a piece of bread and butter or meatless gruel. The children who went to cheder after breakfast used to take bread and butter (together with a piece of salt herring in the winter, and a hard-boiled egg in the summer).
All I ever had was a piece of dry bread. To give it a bit of flavour, I used to go to my uncle, who sold salt herrings, and ask for a little brine from one of his barrels. If my two married sisters had not helped me out, I would have died of starvation. They knew about my hunger pains and used to bring me a slice of bread and butter and a cup of coffee from time to time.
I had four sisters, three of them married. Breine, my eldest sister, had a most unusual wedding. At the beginning of 1860, a rumour began to spread that the Austrian Government intended to prohibit marriages where the bridegroom was below the age of 24. In those days, it was the custom in Galicia to interpret very leniently the precept of our Sages that a man should marry at the age of 18, and it was common for boys of 15 and 16 to marry girls who were even younger.
The rumour about the impending ban caused panic among the Jews, and parents rushed to marry off their 14-year-old sons before it came into effect. So intent were they on beating the ban, that all the distinctions between classes, which had previously been meticulously observed, went by the board. Parents did not worry so much about prestige or dowries. All they were interested in was getting their children under the wedding canopy before the "marriage decree" came into force.
Breine married at that time. Both she and her new husband were only 14 years old, and it was only by chance that she did not ruin herself. At any rate, her luck held, and her husband grew up to be a highly competent businessman and became very wealthy. My second sister, Roizl, married a man who had a haberdashery shop, and my third sister, Ziessl, married a glazier…
…I remember well my days in the cheder, where I studied Gemara. When I left the children's class and moved up to a higher one, I felt very good about it, because, here I was studying Talmud, which not every boy was able to do. I spent many enjoyable days there, days of carefree youthful happiness. Our teacher, Rabbi Yecheskel, had a number of occupations: he was a mohel, a marriage broker and, on market days, he used to help his wife on her haberdashery stall and then help her take the stock home at the end of the day.
Market day, when the rabbi did not come to the cheder, was a particularly joyful occasion for us. We forgot all about our studies and the world and its worries and played all day long. My father was not very religious and, like many others in our town, fairly liberal-minded. But there were also some strictly religious boys at the cheder, and they told me all sorts of terrible stories about evil spirits, demons and ghosts, which I had also heard old women talking about.
These stories made such a deep impression on me, that I believed in evil spirits until I was well into my teens. One such story was about a man out walking in the town late at night, who was confronted by a demon dressed in a morning coat and top hat. The demon followed him everywhere until midnight, when it vanished. Another story concerned some men from our town who were returning home by wagon from market day in another town, when the horses suddenly stopped and reared up on their hind legs. The driver whipped them furiously, but to no avail. They refused to budge. After a time, flashes of light were seen in front of the horses, and ghostly laughter was heard all around.
Then the horses started moving again. There was a ruinous old house near the synagogue in Chorostkow, which was believed to be haunted. Many people claimed to have heard all sorts of sounds coming from it – howling, whistling, twittering, the sound of a small child weeping. As soon as midnight chimed, these "witnesses" claimed, the ghosts and evil spirits vanished, and all was quiet once again. The people of our town used to avoid passing the house at night, and the story was told of a mother who awoke one night and found her baby lying dead beside her, strangled. Another woman immediately appeared and said that she had seen a black cat running across the roof of the house where the mother lived. The cat had been Lilith (the Queen of the Devils), the woman declared, and had snatched the baby's soul.
Actually, Lilith is mentioned in many books, and it is said of her especially that she lies in wait for baby girls just before they are born and steals their souls. That is the reason for the superstitious custom of hanging a piece of paper with verses from Psalm 121 written on it ("I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills: from whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the Lord… Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep… The Lord is thy keeper… The Lord shall keep thee from all evil…") above the bed of a woman due to give birth, above panelling, on windows and above everywhere where there is a crevice or a hole…
When I grew older, I wrote out Psalm 121 on pieces of paper countless times for neighbours and acquaintances…
…The impression all these stories made on me can be judged by the fact that I was afraid to be left in the dark on my own, and when I went to bed at night, I was too scared to open my eyes after the light had been put out, in case I should see a co**se in its shroud or a demon. Once, when my stepbrother was getting married, I went to a Christian shoemaker to see whether my new shoes were ready. When I walked into his workshop and saw fashion pictures cut out of newspapers on the walls, showing men wearing top hats and white gloves, I became frightened of evil spirits. The absence of a mezuzah on the doorpost, which would have afforded protection against harm, increased my fear, and I ran out of the place as if it were a den of thieves.
