My mother Minnie Goldberg (Yaskolko/Jaskolsky)

 She was also the mother of  Alice Schlosberg;Sophie Schulman and Jerry Goldberg

Mama died three days before Yom Kippur, September 23, 1982, at the age of 89. Right after the death of our mother my sister Alice suggested that I will write up the little-known background of Mama's long life, of course assuming that this attempt at reconstructing an illusive past would be of interest to Mama's descendants.

At a time when seeking out one's "roots" was not yet fashionable, I was still impelled to know about them during my teens, and often questioned Mama. She invariably brushed me off. "Why do you need to know?" she gave impatiently as answer. That part of her life was pushed forever behind her; the new freedom and future in "the golden land of America" was all that mattered. Kovno, Lithuania was a place to which one wrote letters, until there remained no one left to write to anymore. So what follows is pieced together from remembered scraps of information dropped by Mama inadvertently, glued together with researched history. The picture I get runs like this....
As far as I can determine, our family lived in Lithuania a long time. Earlier origins never having been mentioned. From the time of the Crusades (11th, 12th, 13th centuries A.D.) Lithuania became the last outpost for Jews fleeing Eastern Europe, escaping massacre and untold tortures. Up until the 20th century, at which time Lithuania finally became autonomous, the country had been part of Polish Lithuanian Kingdom, where Jews had been living for many centuries, prospering the land with their talents for trade and finance. These talents were welcomed in still-pagan and undeveloped Lithuania by the king, who offered his royal protection. Some Jews became farmers among the peasants, but most went into craftwork, manufacture, liquors, salt mining, forest timbering, export, finance. Things were quiet for a while.
In 1454 the royal protective charter was revoked under Catholic pressure. 1495 saw wholesale expulsion of Jews, but they were allowed to return in 1501. By 1564 the Jesuits had entered Lithuania full force, spreading anti-Semitic propaganda in the churches and schools, fomenting Jew baiting and blood libels. Only the nobles protected their useful Jews from extermination.
Intermittent Polish-Russian wars resulted in three partitions of Poland-Lithuania, the last one ceding Lithuania and much of Poland to Russia in 1795. Until then Jews had been barred from Russia as Christ-killers. Russia was determined to remain Juden-rein in the eastern parts, despite this unwanted inheritance of East European Jews. what then became part of West Russia was delineated as a Pale of Settlement--an area from the Baltic to the Black Seas, bounded by Prussia, Germany, Austro-Hungary, Rumania--into which all the Polish and Lithuanian Jews were crowded out of scattered villages and farms and dumped into specified towns and villages. Thirteen governments were established, Lithuania one of them, which remained in Russian hands for the next 120 years (until the First World War).
Mama used to insist that she never experienced any pogrom, not even overt anti-Semitism, in Kovno. This was difficult to believe of a period rife with Jewish persecution by Russian hands. However, Kovno was a far outpost from the area of Ukraine which experienced many pogroms instances, at least until World War I. The Jews of Lithuania spoke Yiddish and had autonomous communities. The Jews more or less settled in stable and secure communities, and adopt their own Yiddish Lithuanian language and culture. into a distinct regional dialect, very sibilant (the sound "sh" was pronounced "s"). Litvaks, as Lithuanian Jews became known, were distinguished by their emotional dryness, letting intellect rule, thus developing extreme alertness and sharp wit. Kovno and near by Vilna became Jewish cultural centers. But disintegrating forces were at work.
After 1881, the unremitting Russification policy spurred Jewish emigration. Since 1804 the structure of solid tradition and family stability had been steadily undermined by free access to all public schools, high schools, and universities. Jewish secular schools were permitted. Hebrew was forbidden as a legal language, and secular clothes became obligatory. The Jewish community as a whole resisted these changes, which were insidious nonetheless. By the end of the 19th century young people by the droves were fleeing the country, our parents among them.
Mama mentioned that Kovno was a "large and beautiful city". Kovno, which replaced Vilna to become the capital of independent Lithuania during the period between the world wars (When Vilna became part of Poland), was situated on the confluence of the rivers Viliya and Neman. That bears out Papa's mentioning at times that his family lived in an ancient abandoned Lithuanian palace on a river. At the time Mama was four years old, in 1897, there were 25,441 Jews (30% of the population) in Kovno plus the suburb Slobodka. Not a very large population, surely. As for beauty, pictures of the Jewish. sections appear wretched and poor--probably another reason to emigrate. Mama's conception of the city may be a bit exaggerated.
The revolutionary movement had taken hold of many young Jews, Mama's sister Dora among them. She was often fished out of jail a number of times, and her home raided for seditious literature. She wasted no time and she emigrated as soon as she could. She. first joined a commune in Oklahoma, then to Houston where her sister Rose joined her. They both married and settled down. Shifra, the youngest sister, had left earlier for somewhere in the Crimea, where her husband had a small
business. When the Bolsheviks cleaned out the petty bourgeoisie in the Ukraine after 1917, Shifra and her family must have been victims, for they were never heard of again.
Dave, the only son, also had revolutionary leanings like his oldest sister. He ended up in Chicago, lived with us after Papa and Mama married and got settled. He was most eager to get Americanized; his English was the best of the family. I remember very well his singing of World War I songs, particularly "K-k-k-katy!". I also remember clearly the Armistice, of being suddenly awakened by the clang of pots and pans banging together, wild hurraying, tumult in the streets. I was only a year old at the time, but the moment stays with me.
Mama was the last child to leave home. What was her reason? She was quite honest...all the boys were seeking to evade conscription, and there was nothing to do but follow them. What was the nature of this conscription? Pretty horrible. In 1827 military service was 25 years long, plus 6 preparatory years. At age 12 or even as young as six, boys were grabbed off the streets to fill the quota. They were impressed into cruel discipline and pressured to convert to Christianity. Many perished, some succumbed to conversion and were later placed with Christian families, and a small number of the strongest and stubbornest survived. Standards for Jews were lowered in reference to stature and narrow chest.
Now, Mama's father Tevye was a retired soldier. He must have been made of tough stuff. Apparently he was able to survive all the grueling tests. Mama remarked once that her father was entitled as a retired soldier "to live anywhere he pleased". This was only partly true. He and his offspring were allowed to live anywhere within the Pale. Right of residence was forbidden to the ordinary person if Jewish. He had no freedom of movement except illegally or on the capricious relaxation of law now and then by the government if judged useful, like the colonization of new far-out areas. In 1896 a law was passed whereby a Jewish soldier could not even spend his furlough anywhere but in the Pale, forcing some unfortunates to travel thousands of miles to their homes.intolerable,
As general conditions became physically intolerable, and poverty spread, four million Jews emigrated between 1840-1940 from East Europe. How? Illegally, usually, in Mama's time. Bribes for passport or crossing the borders secretly with false papers were standard. Control centers resembling prisons were set up by German shipping firms.
Here physical exams, ticket buying, and false
papers were set up for emigrants who then boarded trains to the ports of either Bremen or Hamburg, ships awaiting them there. That's how Mama came, ostensibly she came as part of a strange family, across the border, to Hamburg, and thence to Houston where her two married sisters had settled.
How did the parents feel about never seeing their children again? No word was ever dropped about that; but one can imagine. I have no idea what Tevye did for a living. Sarah Rachel was his second wife; he had a grown family already when he married her. They did have a variety store, which Sarah Rachel managed, even traveling periodically to Hamburg to buy merchandise. Mama worked in the store sometimes. For this reason, she was given a tutor to learn Russian. Even though a number of kinds of education was available, Mama learned only how to read and write in Yiddish. Perhaps she had to speak Russian in the store. So she never got the habit of learning. In America she never attended night school. When I was eighteen I taught her the basics of reading and writing English.
But she had elan. People who knew her have told me that she was called a "krasavetska", the town beauty. A picture of her at age 17 with all her girl friends shows her with a full open face, clear eyes, the dew of youth. In her own words, "I laughed at anything." This is what Papa remembered about her, sparking the love in his heart. Later on he was to say, "She was like a cask of good wine." However much she loved company, she was really a very private person, had natural manners, and although quite naive, had her limits. Uneducated formally, she had practical wisdom. Always ready to extend herself for people, she stopped short of sacrifice. Before marriage, when Papa considered their joining an idealistic commune, she flatly refused, issued an ultimatum. Papa chose her.
Their courtship went like this....
Mama passed the time in Houston rejecting one rich older suitor after another. Papa was living with her brother Dave in Chicago. Mama's Kovno image was still alive in Papa's heart. He took a chance, sent her a Kovno picture of himself plus a round-trip ticket, giving her the option of return should she not like him. She took a chance, traveled to Chicago, took a look, liked him, never returned. It appears we are a family that takes chances.
Mama was never demonstrative like Papa. I never saw her kiss him voluntarily or show overt signs of
affection. Nor did she show us her children.
Sam Goldberg, our Papa
Papa was the emotional one, with strong feelings and convictions.
Passions lay deep in Papa. He loved to romp with us when we were small children, and always came into our room to kiss us goodnight. I recall his presenting Mama with a wristwatch on their tenth anniversary while embracing and kissing her with much emotion. Once he rushed headlong onto our second floor porch in the middle of the might to throw empty milk bottles at the car across the street where the driver was honking incessantly away. Despite Mama's attempted restraint, his arm was sure: the bottles splintered with a crash, the car zoomed away, and silence reigned. He could have been arrested for taking the law into his own hands; little did he care. At another time he hurried down to the basement to investigate odd noises, found our upstairs tenant there raising the furnace thermostat, and snatched up a convenient poker to strike her. Luckily, Mama's restraint worked long enough to allow the terror- stricken tenant to escape. He was arrested when I was about three; I saw the paddy-wagon come to pick him up for tossing a heap of tin cans into the offensive stable next door. It's no wonder he developed high blood pressure.
Papa was a year younger than Mama. On January 1, 1917, when they were married in a quiet ceremony before a few cousins and friends, Papa was 22; Mama, 23. At first they boarded with relatives. Shortly after, when I was about to enter the world, a flat on Haddon Avenue near Humboldt Park was their first home, rented. Perhaps because of his homeless boyhood, Papa yearned for a place of his own. He achieved this dream by joint buying of a two-flat on Beach Avenue--also near Humboldt Park--with his close cousin, Israel Schrogin. Humboldt Park was a wonderful place to live in: to air your babies of an afternoon, to safely allow children their games of hopscotch, rope-jumping, hide-and-go-seek; to meet your friends in the evening; to sleep on blankets near the lagoon on sultry summer nights. Parks were safe in those days, and entertainment tastes very simple. The height of extravagance was a season's ticket to the opera, which husband and wife shared, taking turns baby-sitting. The word "babysitter" had not yet been invented.
The twins Alice and Sophie were born and flourished here. But the tragic death of Israel's young daughter from diphtheria (she was the same age as I) strained the relations between the families, and the house was sold. The next move was to another two-flat on Claremont Avenue across from Tuley High School on the Northwest side. The school was new, fronted by broad ultra-smooth pavements over which skating was sheer delight. After our next-door neighbor threatened to build in his yard, thereby to obscure our daylight, we moved again. Papa abhorred darkness; he insisted on sunny quarters. We lived a few years in a rented apartment off Augusta Boulevard opposite
-von Humboldt School. Being close by a school was ever a prime consideration--in this case, the only one. Our Polish landlord made the mistake of shooing us kids off the front steps and calling us "dirty Jews". Papa had for years dreamed of getting a foothold in a quiet residential neighborhood, and so when he worked in a new two-flat on the outskirts of the city, far north- west, he used his life-savings to buy it. We became practically the only Jews in a completely Gentile neighborhood. Our brother Jerry was born here, when I was 12, the twins 9. We treated  treated him like a plaything, a doll, fought to push his buggy. Six years later the peaceful life ended: along came the Great Depression. and although Papa was reduced to painting bridges, he could not pay the mortgages, and so suffered foreclosure. He took the loss bitterly, wrenching out the plumbing fixtures with bare hands, but Mama was cheerful. She had hated living among Gentiles, in a cemetery-like atmosphere. She loved being among her own crowd, amidst bright lights. On her persistent urging, we moved to the respectable Jewish neighborhood of Albany Park, farther north to Sawyer Avenue. There we stayed until we children grew up to adulthood and married, bringing us through the years of World War II. Grandchildren began being born.

Papas Family in Lithuania