#cstrl-9

The marker ; "Shmuel Levin"
this photo was an unknown in the group I received from a descendant of
Hyman Costrell.

Solomon Costrell was born in Kurenets. He was the brother of Pesia (aka
Pashka),
the wife of Michael Alperovitz. The son of Pashka and Michael
Alperovitz ( Nachum Alperovitz, Named for his grandfather; Nachum
Kastrel) wrote a book. You could read it on line;
Thus It Began
Chapters from the Underground
by Nachum Alperovich
http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/kurenets/kur321.html
Here are some passages from the book "....I was drawn to HaShomer
Hatzair from a very early age, following my older sisters' example. My
oldest sister, Hannah, was one of the first youths in our town to join
the movement. Later, my sisters Henia and Rachel joined the movement
too. Hannah spent many seasons in training camps. She yearned to
become a chalutza and was waiting for years for a permit to leave for
Eretz Israel. Her dream was finally realized in 1938, still without a
permit. Using fake papers, she reached Israel on a boat of illegal
immigrants. I was the only son—we were one boy and five girls. Our
mother was very brave and clever. In 1917, she was very committed to
the Russian revolution. Although she was married at the time and had
two young daughters, she deeply believed in and fought for communism.
Eventually, she lost some of her zeal for communism.

At our house, my mother's brothers (Castroll) were often mentioned.
Two of her brothers left for America before I was born; one of them
had a candy store. His financial situation was not great and I
remember that in one of his letters he wrote, "I have a sweet business
with a sour income." My mother's other brother in America was Chanan
Castroll. He was the secretary of the Communist Party in New York. In
1938, he was a member of a committee that went to Moscow, and people
said that he even met Stalin! Hence it must have been a familial
trait, this interest in political action.

Father, on the other hand, was very different—quiet and much more
cautious. Perhaps his somber encounters in youth made him cautious.
When he was very young, he immigrated to the United States, but was
not satisfied with the way of life in the U.S. After a short time, he
returned to the town.

Mother was very involved with the youth movement, and sometimes I felt
that if she were younger, she would have chosen the path of the youth
movement. From this, you can probably gather that I never needed to
rebel against my parents, even though outwardly it seemed that their
lifestyle was similar to that of the rest of the town's Jews. Half of
our house, which stood in the market center, was for our personal use
and the second half was a fabric store.

My education was the typical education in the shtetl. First I went to
a cheder, and later to Tarbut school, where we spoke only Hebrew;
there I finished four grades. There was no fifth grade, so the next
year we had to continue our studies in a Polish public school. When
the school year started I was tested, but I failed the test.

Considering that I barely knew Polish, this was not a surprise.
Instead of putting me in fifth grade, they wanted to put me in third
grade. The teacher and headmaster in the school was a Polish man named
Mataras. Mother, who was fluent in Polish, came to Mataras and told
him that I knew the material; it was only the language that I was weak
in. Then she started talking Yiddish to the principal and repeated
everything she had said earlier, but in Yiddish. Mataras said, "How
are you talking to me, Madam? What happened to you?" "Nothing
happened," my mother said in Polish, "I was telling you the same
things in Polish, a language you know well; in contrast, now I said it
in a language you have no knowledge of. This is my son's state. He
knows the material; he just doesn't know the language. If you accept
him, you will immediately realize that he will be a good student and
in time will overcome the language barrier." ............When I was
thirteen, for my bar mitzvah my mother gave me her father's tefillin.
I was named after my mother's father, Nachum Castroll. Nachum was a
shochet in Kurenets for many years. He went blind when he was old.
Just before he died, he told my mother that if he were to be lucky
enough to have a grandson in Kurenets (he had other grandsons in the
U.S. and the Soviet Union), she should name him Nachum and he would
inherit his tefillin. I was very disappointed when my mother gave me
the tefillin. When my friends had their bar mitzvahs they got new
tefillin that looked beautiful, while mine were old and
shabby-looking. Mother kept explaining how important it was to keep
the tefillin, that it was a tradition that passed for many generations
in our family. Finally, I was convinced, and by the time I read the
Torah and Haftorah, I could already appreciate the importance of the
old tefillin. I argued with my friends and won the argument that mine
were superior."

Rabbi Landau wrote in the Yizkor book for Kurenets;
...Rabbi Zishka passed away on Shabbat, the fourteenth of Sivan, 1884.
They tell that before he passed away he got up and walked to the
window and looked outside and said, "Ah sheina walt. Ah sheina walt A
wonderful world." Although he sat in his chair and didn't lie down, at
certain points he felt that he was on the verge of death and a few
times asked if the doctor Yehoshua Kremer was still present, since he
was very worried that his soul would depart while there was still a
Cohen in the house (Cohanim-Priests are not allowed to be in the
presence of dead people). During the day when people asked him
questions he said, "You must ask my son-in-law those questions because
on the day of my death I cannot give answers anymore." The manifest of
the rabbinical transfer that was given to my father after he passed
away started in those wordsâ€_

The holy, who was light to our eyes, a crown to our head, went to
Heaven[7]. We gathered hereâ€_

This Rabbinical transfer was written by the famous Hasid, Reb Yehoshua
Castrol[He later moved to Latvia. grandfather of Yehoshoa Castrol Z'L
of Isreal] the uncle of the shohet in our town, Nahum Castrol. ...."
"....During that winter, Nahum Castrol the shohet became blind, and
when I again went to Lubavitch to ask the Rebbe to let me leave
Kurenets, I again received a refusal. The Admor expressed to me that
Reb Nahum Castrol must not continue his job as a shohet. Reb Nahum
Castrol who was also a Lubavitch Hasid had already visited the Rebbe
some time earlier. So as soon as I returned I let everyone know about
the Admor's orders and now there was a question of who should be the
new shohet. As is usual in such cases, there was a dispute on the
subject of who should be the shohet.. I brought R.Schraga to see if he
could handle the job. R. Schraga later became the shohet of our town.
Mendel Dinestein who was nicknamed Mendel Shmuel Naha's, greatly
helped me. According to the rules, the person who was the karaka[16]
was supposed to decide about the shohet and somehow Mendel by some
kind of trickery was able to become the karaka during the bidding
process for the job. So now he was responsible for giving the old
shohet the money owed to him for his pension. The community sent a
letter to the Admor asking his opinion if Reb Schraga should be the
shohet, and once he sent his approval, Reb Schraga became the
shohet....."