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The Karbenovich Family
From;
www.cousinsplus.com
CousinsPlus home page
Susan Rogers
for the original site go to;
http://www.cousinsplus.com/families/CousinsPlus/trees/Usher-Russian.htm#spaces%20on%20top
Carl of Krasnoye weds
childhood sweetheart
Carl married Dora Rubenstein in 1918, and they soon started a family and did not leave for America until 1923. Their story, based on lengthy interviews in 1967 and 1973 with both of them, is our most extensive account of the family's life in Eastern EuropeÉ.
Many of our family, including other children of Usher and of his brother, Lazar Elia, arrived on these shores well before this story begins. Later research has uncovered some of their stories. Hirschel Uberstein, Carl's father-in-law, stayed in Gorodok and was killed about 1929 by ''pogromistas'' [thugs or outlaws] according to my father, Larry Rogers.
Morris emigrates
Hirschel and his wife, the former Rivka Hyman, may well have had several more
children than the five who eventually found their way to the United States.
Pressed by the threat of the draft, Morris, the oldest of those who came, was
the first to arrive. The year was 1901, although 1905 is the year of arrival
indicated on his death certificate. Japan was soon to attack Russian-controlled
Port Arthur (now called Lu-shun), initiating the Russo-Japanese War on the
Pacific coast over 4,200 miles to the east of Minsk.
Dora stays
Dora, younger than my grandfather Morris by some 15 years, was still a toddler
when he left for America. So of course she would remain at home with her
parents. Our focus is on the period of Carl and Dora's life together. While
their story in America is one of success and a full and good life, our
narrative centers on their environment in Russia, including Carl's many brushes
with danger and his family's numerous frightening experiences.
From Krasnoye to Gorodok
Carl and Dora knew each other from the time they were children.
Carl was about 10 years old when he was sent from his village, Krasnoye
(Kraz-nick), to neighboring Gorodok (Horr-o-duck), 8.9 miles southwest. It had
been arranged that he study there for his Bar Mitzvah and live in the home of
his teacher. The years passed, Carl was Bar Mitzvah, and he became friendly
with the Rubenstein family, including Dora Rubenstein, the youngest of
Hirschel's children. Carl and Dora would finally marry after World War One.
Shtetls and stadts
Carl wanted to be sure I understood the difference between a "shtetl"
and a "stadt." Minsk and Vilna were stadts or provinces in the Pale
of Settlement where Jews were forced to live, and they were also the names of
major cities. A shtetl was a townlet (a little town or village), and Jews
typically lived in shtetls unless they had specific permission and the papers
to live elsewhere. Gorodok, Krasnoye, and Radoshkovici (see map) were shtetls.
The Jewish population
Despite oppression, the Jewish populations of both Minsk and
Vilnius reportedly reached 40% of the total population by the eve of World War
II. Gorodok is situated between those two cities -- 35 miles northwest of Minsk
and 150 miles southeast of Vilnius
'Fiddler on the Roof'
Forests dominated the landscape, Carl said. Between the town and the forest,
peasants grew corn and tended their cows. Visions from "Fiddler on the
Roof" come easily. The place to go when it was time for fun, according to
Dora, was the mill on the lake at the end of one of the streets on which
"Christians lived." The mill was where 40-pound bags of barley and
rye would be taken for turning into the flour used to bake bread.
Fun at the mill
At the mill there was a special rope, and the youngsters would take turns
pulling on it. The rope would send them swinging outward Tarzan-style, and they
would then "come up on the third floor," Dora said, enjoying her
memory of the fun they had.
The quiet life
What was life like in their shtetl? During intervals in the last quarter of the
19th century and the early years of the 20th century when there happened to be
no ongoing war, revolution or
pogrom, "it was quiet," Carl said. He drew a small circle to represent Gorodok and two intersecting lines for its main streets..
After reviewing these notes and reading about the pogroms, I wondered about "quiet;" as compared to what? Gorodok's residents numbered "about 200 Jewish families and 50 non-Jewish peasant families, and there was one policeman and a government office." In the central area of the village was a single big house occupied by "a wealthy Jewish family," and on the northern periphery, two synagogues: one Hasidic, and the other, Orthodox. The town paid taxes, and when a problem arose, the troublemakers, Carl said, "would be called to the office."
"Pogroms" -- which
came to mean what thugs and outlaws perpetrated on Jews' property, and on them
in the way of bodily harm -- were commonplace. Gorodok's ratio of Jews to
non-Jews may have made self defense possible, but only sometimes.
Morris' father, Hirschel Rubenstein,
had been killed by thugs, and I was unable to uncover any details. He was a
tanner and traveled to Minsk in the course of business. I got the impression
from my father that Hirschel met his end either en route to, or on the way home
from, Minsk.
Trouble on Tuesdays;
Fridays, too
The Jewish area lay chiefly in this
region and to the northwest, but as Dora said, it was essentially a two street
town. "Sometimes the Christians [peasants] would get drunk, such as on
Tuesday which was market day, and also on Christmas, New Year's and Easter,"
she said. "They didn't like the Jews, and they would make trouble."
In 1998, Shirley Karben, her daughter, elaborated: "According to my mother, this sort of thing happened almost every Friday night, and also on market days and holidays." But it was "only when they got drunk, and it was always local with the pogroms; they were never official." (The word "pogrom" came to be associated with these random anti-Semitic outbreaks of thuggery.)
Carl and Dora's first child, Shirley (1919 - 2000), was a great help in this endeavor. During the last three years of her life, however, Shirley would complain that those with whom I should have spoken had died, and often she would add, "15 or more years ago."
Politics Russian
style
Morris Uberstein was born in
1883, two years after the assassination of Czar Alexander II by "a
revolutionist's bomb." The story goes that he was not killed by the blast
but afterwards, when he left the carriage to help a wounded soldier.
Alexander II had been a comparatively mild Czar, but the
climate was roiling with discontent.
His successor, Alexander III, immediately increased the oppression of minorities,
oppression that was "particularly severe in regards to Jews,"
according to Funk and Wagnall's Universal Standard Encyclopedia (1931-1957).
Jews "were forced to live in certain areas, not permitted to enter
specific professions, and killed in great numbers in pogroms fomented by the
government." The term
The term "Cossack" comes from the Turkish word for adventurer but
came to mean "predatory horseman." It originally referred to "a
people of the Soviet Union principally of Russian and Ukrainian stocks."
In the latter part of the 19th and the early part of the 20th century, the
czarist government used Cossack troops "to perpetrate pogroms against the
Jews."
Poverty and
emigration
Belarus, whose capital city is Minsk, had been "laid waste" by the Napoleonic
invasion. Thereafter it continued suffering "great poverty," which
spurred mass emigration to the United States in the 19th century, "notably
among the Jews." Morris was 11 years old when Nicholas II ascended to the
throne in 1894. Again, the history books note, there was "an increase of
autocracy, oppression and police control."
Domestic strife
Morris had emigrated just in time to sidestep the Russo-Japanese War. In its
takeover of Port Arthur, Japan overwhelmed Russia's forces; domestic strife added
to the "complete defeat" of Russia, and the revolution began to
build. There were demands for reform, demonstrations, strikes and riots. The
revolutionary
movement was crushed in 1906, regrouped, and was again repressed. A revolution
"was being prepared by the radical parties" when the outbreak of
World War I occasioned its "temporary postponement."
Hirschel and Rivka Rubenstein,
with their youngest daughter, Dora
Party time
Czar Nicholas II and his family had only four more years to live at the time of
this elaborate festival to celebrate the Romanov dynasty's 300 years in power.
In 1913, Dora was 15 years old, and Carl was 18 years
old. The end of the Romanov dynasty was only four years away. Carl had obtained
an apprenticeship to a furrier, probably in Volozhin, which is 16.2 miles
west-southwest of Gorodok. World War One would break out a year later. 30-mile
walk
Carl almost certainly was working in Volozhin and not in Gorodok at the time
his uncle was drafted. In 1914, his uncle, who lived in Radoshkovici, was taken
into the army. His aunt then had no choice but to go to Carl and ask that he
take over his uncle's shop. She told Carl the pay would be $10 a week.
"So," Carl said, "I took a 30-mile walk to Radoshkovici."
Volozhin is 28.7 miles west of Radoshkovici.
World War One:The draft calls Carl
Basic
training in Siberia
On August 2, 1914, Russia declared war on Austria and Germany, and within a
year Carl was drafted and sent to Siberia for three months of basic training.
Then he was ordered to the German front, which at that time was "only 15
miles away from Minsk." Efforts were being made to evacuate
civilians living in the area. "There was no food, and it was
raining," said Carl, who got permission to leave the camp to go to the
city for food. Carl goes AWOL
In the city he saw soldiers with bread, so he went up to them and asked where
he could get some. "They pointed out a place," he said, "and
they told me, 'You want to eat? Go in and eat.'" Carl entered the place,
which turned out to be a synagogue, and it was full of refugees. "There
was my mother and brother, and another two brothers and a sister," Carl
said. "So I took off my uniform and gun, and I threw them away and went
with them."
Bought
"papers"
The Germans were "thrown back" a couple of weeks later, Carl said,
and the people returned to work. The family's Radoshkovici shop was set up in
Minsk, 22 miles to the southeast, where Carl's mother had gone for refuge. They
rented an apartment, and Carl knew he was going to need papers for the
government, so for 100 rubles he bought papers.
The Police
The papers said that his army company had sent him to Minsk for three months to
recover from sickness. When things quieted down in Minsk, everyone had to
register with the police, and Carl took his papers down to register. The man in
charge looked at Carl's papers, and then he said to Carl, "Where did you
buy these?"
Prison life
Carl was arrested and spent three months in prison awaiting trial. "I was
lucky not to be shot," he said. There were 20 soldiers imprisoned in one
room with long benches. Conditions were not good. "Once every couple of
weeks they would take us to a Turkish bath," Carl said. He was expecting
to be sent back to the front, and then to have to serve four years after the
war ended.
Welcome the
Revolution
Meanwhile, the Revolution came. "Thank God I had not fought for
Nicholai," said Carl, referring to Czar Nicholas II, whom the Revolution
toppled. What about Carl's trial for having bought phony papers? The trial
never took place; the Revolution had caused a change in agenda.
Straw mats
Instead of a trial, Carl was sent "deep into Russia" where he was put
to work for the winter making the mats that soldiers used for sleeping in the
trenches. The mats, he said, were one-inch thick and made from straw.
Eventually his assignment changed, and he was put to work in a bakery. The pill
One day Carl obtained from a friend a pill that would make him sick. For three
weeks he lay ill in bed in the hospital, and then he was sent to Minsk.
"Go home," he was told there. "They gave up on me," he said
with a grin.
Multiple dangers
While Morris' departure from his homeland was spurred by the desire to avoid
military service and almost certain death in the Russo-Japanese War, everyday Basic
training in Siberia
On August 2, 1914, Russia declared war on Austria and Germany, and within a
year Carl was drafted and sent to Siberia for three months of basic training.
Then he was ordered to the German front, which at that time was "only 15
miles away
from Minsk." Efforts were being made to evacuate civilians living in the
area. "There was no food, and it was raining," said Carl, who got
permission to leave the camp to go to the city for food.
."
|
The pill Latkes and
Cossacks
Below: Dora with
Shirley, left, and Phil.
Wagon wheels And so it was that he and
Dora lived during troubled and dangerous years. The Chasmans Then World War I broke out. Esther managed to regain her health, but had to return home alone because she couldn't retrieve the children during wartime. The youngest of the four children died. Below, The Chasmans of Newark: Esther and husband, Leonid Chasman, with the two oldest of their four children, Sidney and Randolph. After the war ended, travel still was not permitted. The grandparents of the Chasman children (Dora's aunt and uncle) asked Carl Karben to smuggle the three children out of Russia so that they could get back home to Newark, New Jersey. As a favor to
Dora's oldest brother, Morris Rubenstein, Carl agreed. There is much more
that can be said, but let us continue. By the time Carl took this mission,
Randolph was 14 years old, Sidney was 12, and Ethel was 9. The children had
learned Russian while they waited out the war. Arrested Poland off
limits The 5 Karbens go to America Esther Minnie was the
second of the five children of Hirschel and Rivka to arrive in America. She
even traveled here alone, said her daughter, Marion Shapiro Potashnick, of
North Adams, Massachusetts. Esther Minnie's brothers, Jack and Henry, arrived
soon after. was 15 years older than Dora, and Rashka's is where the Karben family headed from Ellis Island. Rashka's husband, Shimsel Kirshner, had come to America some time earlier. He worked at making pocketbook frames, and he lived in a basement while saving to bring over his family, I was told. By the time the Karbens arrived, the Kirshners and their three children had a two-story house on Essex Street, and for some years, they shared it with the Karbens. It was just down the block from Morris's house. Arrival A new name Rubenstein had come up with another possibility. She was reading a novel with a heroine named "Shirley," and so that was the name she told the immigration officer to write down. When it came to a last name, Karbenovich became Karben. Carl Karben became an American citizen five years later, "to the day," said Shirley. A significant
day Valued worker Many talents him to find employment in the manufacture of children's shoes. The fortune-teller The year Morris died -- 1940 -- became forever associated in Shirley's mind with the fortune-teller. It was on the occasion of Morris's unveiling that Dora announced her pregnancy with Jerry, who was to be her fourth child. found Carl on the street. "I almost got shot," he said. Dora nodded in agreement. At that time, they were married and had two children, and they were living in Radoshkovici in the house that belonged to the blacksmith. Dora mentioned often having to lie down "on the floor in the basement without any lights on because we were afraid." Wagon wheels And so it was that he and
Dora lived during troubled and dangerous years. The Chasmans Then World War I broke out. Esther managed to regain her health, but had to return home alone because she couldn't retrieve the children during wartime. The youngest of the four children died. Below, The Chasmans of Newark: Esther and husband, Leonid Chasman, with the two oldest of their four children, Sidney and Randolph. After the war ended, travel still was not permitted. The grandparents of the Chasman children (Dora's aunt and uncle) asked Carl Karben to smuggle the three children out of Russia so that they could get back home to Newark, New Jersey. As a favor to
Dora's oldest brother, Morris Rubenstein, Carl agreed. There is much more
that can be said, but let us continue. By the time Carl took this mission,
Randolph was 14 years old, Sidney was 12, and Ethel was 9. The children had
learned Russian while they waited out the war. Arrested Poland off
limits The 5 Karbens go to America Esther Minnie was the
second of the five children of Hirschel and Rivka to arrive in America. She
even traveled here alone, said her daughter, Marion Shapiro Potashnick, of
North Adams, Massachusetts. Esther Minnie's brothers, Jack and Henry, arrived
soon after. Rashka's husband, Shimsel Kirshner, had come to America some time earlier. He worked at making pocketbook frames, and he lived in a basement while saving to bring over his family, I was told. By the time the Karbens arrived, the Kirshners and their three children had a two-story house on Essex Street, and for some years, they shared it with the Karbens. It was just down the block from Morris's house. Arrival A new name A significant
day Valued worker Many talents The fortune-teller The year Morris died -- 1940 -- became forever associated in Shirley's mind with the fortune-teller. It was on the occasion of Morris's unveiling that Dora announced her pregnancy with Jerry, who was to be her fourth |
The Karbenovich Brothers
Hitler's Nazi soldiers
slaughtered Benjamin (right),
his wife, and their oldest
daughter in the presence of their two younger girls. The sisters ran for their
lives ... to freedom.
In a displaced persons' camp, they each met their future spouses. One sister went to Brazil where her husband had family. The husband of the other had a sister in America. That sister found Carl through
the Brooklyn phone book.
They met, and Carl (left) arranged for her brother and his niece to get to
Canada. There they lived good lives. For about 40 years -- almost every year
until Carl's death in 1985 -- they sent him a coat and a suit. Sometimes they
sent a jacket.
Russian inscription on the
back of this photograph:
"For remembrance,
To my dear sister,
Luba Zilberstein,
From me, Benjamin, and
Kimel [Carl] Karbenovich"