Mansbach - Levyim Family

The Autobiography of Solomon ((Avram Zalman Ha Levy) MANSBACH

                                                  The Formative Years: 1926-1943

“My brother [Raymond MANSBACH] was born on a kitchen table about 10A.M. in the morning at 457 E. 174th Street Bronx on January 20, 1927.  I was in the hall vestibule of the building playing with my jar of marbles.  (I was nine years old.).  Neighbors came in to help the doctor to deliver my brother.  I heard much screaming.  But I had no idea what was going on.  Finally, I was let in to see my brother, the women neighbors were all agitated and I still remember one said she would never do it again.  My brother had a terrible gash in this temple and was bleeding (due to using forceps).

 MANSBACHs who perished in the Shoah include:

However, I was proud to have a brother (all my friends had older brothers and sisters, of which I was very envious).    They also had grandfathers and grandmothers who lived in the same apartment with them.  They all seemed to have a wonderful relationship. This also was a cause of envy.  My father [Oyzer] worked very hard as a milkman.  He would leave for work about 230AM and would return at 5 or 6 PM, exhausted.  He would eat his meal, talk about his job or share experiences of the day and go off to sleep setting the alarm for 200 A.M.  There were some days we would visit my mother’s friends that she had worked with in the sweat shop. I remember one was Pauline.  Her husband used to urge my father to buy shares and make a lot of money (this was probably around 1927-1928).  I thought that shares were some kind of scissors (share is a Yiddish word for scissors).  But my father said he didn’t know anything about shares and wasn’t interested.  Luckily, he didn’t.  When 1929 came all these people were wiped out-including their savings accounts when the Banks failed or closed.  My father and my mother had used the postal savings system which was a bank in the post office that paid 1% interest.  

My father was a milkman to the grocery trade and would get free tickets to the Metropolitan Opera.  They would see Caruso and other famous opera luminaries.   We had records of all the operas on the wind-up RCA Victor phonograph which I demolished to find out where the voice was coming from after we had a radio. 

During the depression, my father had what was considered a very good paying job.  His relatives would often come to borrow money or my uncles would come to ask for money to be sent overseas to his father.  There were many arguments about that between my mother and father. Sometimes there would real rough times, when there was a strike.  My father wouldn’t come home for days and money became scarce.   We had gas lighting.  The gas was generated by putting quarters in a box which activated the gas coming into the fixture.  When the gas light started to dim it was ready to put in a quarter.  We used to have an alms box in our home. Every religious home had one. This was collected by a pious Jew who wore a beard and a (Tzetl).  A receipt was given. However, we would borrow from the box when we ran out of change, or if money was short.  But it was incumbent upon the family to repay the “Pushka.”

Many times during a strike or hard times the light would dim and we would light candles or borrow them from the neighbors.  Cooking was stopped and we resorted to whatever could be consumed without fire.

Ice boxes were the cold boxes.  The upper box was filled with a chunk of ice from a huge block of ice sold by the ice man with a horse and wagon.  He had ice tongs and an ice pick.  He would scratch a line on the large block with one end of his ice tongs , then chip into to line with the ice pick and a 25 cent chunk would break off.  He picked this up with the ice tong and lifted it across his shoulders which were covered with heavy rags of leather and strap it up six flights of stairs. (We lived on the top floor).  He deposited it in the upper door of the ice box. Inside was galvanized tin to hold the cold. 

We had a clothes line from one widow to a pole (like a telephone pole) with pulleys.  You leaned out the window, put the laundry one by one with clothes pins and pulled the line so it would go forward and make room for the next piece.  When the line broke, you would wait for the line man who would come in the back yard and yell, “Line man, line man”; if you needed his services he would shout out his price.  After some haggling, he would climb up the six stories with leg spike irons and fix a new line.   When he was finished, you wrapped the coins up in a piece of paper and threw it down to him.

We used to have travelling violinists or organists with a monkey, playing down in the backyard.  People would throw paper wrapped coins down.  The laundry in the wintertime would freeze on the line into stiff effigies of winter underwear with arms overhead, legs straight and the button down (buttock seat) attached; pillow cases stiff like a bread  board.  These garments when taken off the line were ice cold and smelled ever so fresh. They had the aroma of the air; delightfully cool as a summer breeze.

My mother, Bertha [Breindel bat Lev] Rosenberg was born in Russia.  She was a great deal of fun and had many tales to tell.  She told stories of the old country where she lived with her mother in a small house and of the oven they had to bake bread.  On very cold Russian nights, they would sleep on this clay oven to keep warm.  She told of people gathering in the village square to protest and sing songs and the Cossacks came on their horse with sabers and guns.  She was watching from a window and heard sounds like bees as the bullets were flying and someone pulled her down from the window to keep her safe.   She finally gathered the money to come to America and started out by horse and wagon.  However, their “guide” took their money and abandoned them.  Nonetheless they made it to the boat and came to the U.S., arriving on September19, 1906, aboard the SS Hamburg, sailing from Hamburg, Germany.

Her sisters (Fanny and Sara)(Fanny’s children were Lillian, Abe, Harry, Rose, Sylvia, Shirley and Ruth)(Sara’s children were Ben, and Arthur Vines) and a brother emigrated for the U.S. after their father left for the USA.  Their father [Lev? Or Louis? Rosenberg] was supposed to bring them over after he had established himself.   He didn’t; instead he re-married and apparently raised a second family.  Bertha was ten-years old when she left for the USA.  Bertha’s father, as far as I can remember, had two sons and three daughters (Fanny, Sarah and Bertha) and two sons, one named Sol whom I might have been named after.  The other, I think was named Louis [Rosenberg]. My mother worked in a woman’s blouse factory on the lower East Side on a sewing machine.   She was illiterate as were her brothers and sisters.  She was superstitious and well versed in reading tea leaves.  

My mother had a half-brother named Hyman Kaplan.  [Bertha’s father, Lev or Louis Rosenberg] came to America leaving Bertha’s mother [“Ray”] behind, he married and had children.  [This was apparently bigamy].  Uncle Hymie came to our house in Long Beach, announced who he was and wanted to know how his sister Bertha was doing.  When he died I went to pay my respects to his wife Francis.   There were several women sitting on the couch; they all resembled Bertha. None of them knew of Bertha’s existence; Lev Rosenberg had never told them about his wife and children in Russia and the U.S. Uncle Hymie tried to rationalize by saying that his father was young and couldn’t afford to bring his wife and other children to the U.S. from Russia, so he started another family.  Bertha’s father tried to contact Bertha and he was tossed out on his ear.

When we would visit our relatives on the lower East side where my Uncle [Louie?] and Aunt Fannie [Bertha’s sister] lived.  She was the superintendent of the tenement house. She cleaned the tile floors, swept and tended the furnace.  They had a giant big black coal burning stove.  They lifted to lids to put the coal in.  They gave off a lot of heat in the winter.  I remember that they always served frankfurters.  These were on a string-put in an iron pot and after much bubbling lifted out like spaghetti, place on a big plate and served with mustard and bread.  There was a big boiling kettle of tea.  Lump sugar which was cracked in half with the front teeth and held in the mouth to dissolve with each glass of tea.  These glasses were all the same type-old yortzheit glasses with hexagrams at the lower half.  Since there were large families there were many cousins.  Since my father was the youngest son, all my cousins were much older, so we would have many weddings to attend.

I remember only two weddings-my cousin Anna’s, I was to be the page boy dressed in velvet and carry the ring down the aisle on a tiny velvet cushion.   Somehow or other Anna’s younger brother, Abe Orner, decided he wanted to be the page boy.  At the wedding, there was such an argument between my mother and my father’s family that my mother and father went away from the wedding and since we hadn’t eaten we went to a delicatessen and had a meal.  The feud continued for quite a while.The other wedding was considered a scandal.  Held in a night club with scantily dressed young women dancing on a stage.  My cousin Dorothy—Izzy’s daughter had married into a wealthy family.  They always were referred to as the “the Preefers.”  

There are seven MANSBACH families today that descend from one of the following MANSBACHs:

The wedding with the scantily clad dancers (Ed.)(!).

Sol and Ray MANSBACH c.1980

Going back to 457 E. 174th Street, Bronx-

My best friend was Sol Feigenbaum who lived on the first floor with his brother Hymie and sister Tilly.  They were like family to me.  We played together and we went to kindergarten together.

I remember my teacher was Mrs. Rosenberg.  My first encounter was building blocks of some kind and she picked on my friend Sol’s blocks as being a beautiful project of some kind. I was jealous that mine was ignored. I had no one but my father to help me with my homework, he had only an elementary knowledge of arithmetic and spelling so my grades were not the best.

Sol Feigenbaum got me a job after school and during the summer where I delivered flowers.  I remember delivering flowers to [the actress] Helen Hayes when she opened in Victoria Regina. I delivered it to the theatre among huge crowds.  There was an orchid for every member of the cast.

Some other things I left out.  We had fire engines driven by horses. House boilers were fueled by coal delivered by coal trucks.  The ashes were brought out in ashcans. During Halloween we took our long socks; loaded them with ashes; and smacked them on someone’s back, leaving a grey swatch on their clothes.

I saw the Graf Zeppelin going over the Bronx.  The Nazi emblem was on its tail as it floated majestically in the air flaunting the hated symbol of the Nazis.  It was in the sky heading towards Jersey and there were dark thunderclouds.  I wished the damn thing would explode. It did!

There were boxing matches.  We used to hang out outside the pool halls.  These were nefarious places of iniquity.  They had ticker tapes and we would find out who won the World Series or the boxing matches by hanging outside.  These places were used for playing pool and illegal betting. No children were allowed. Those who frequented the pool halls were ostracized.

My father did not smoke at that time, he started in the late fifties. But my friend’s father did. Later on we used to buy cigarettes, 2 for a penny and a match. The packs had beautiful pictures of well-tended gardens and flowers.  Some Sundays my father would take me on an open air trolley.  There were some seats the whole length of the side.  We would ride to the end of the line and back.  We lived across the street from Ella’s Bakery (Greek).  They had a frankfurter making factory run by Germans in their WWI Army boots. They brought meat in on wheel barrows and out it came in strings, beautiful hot dogs. Some of the kids would swipe these and eat them raw. But most of the Jewish kids couldn’t--they weren’t kosher.  Ella’s made hot dog buns.  The flour was mixed in great big vats.  We use to grab a handful of sticky dough when it was pea shooter time.  A pea shooter was a hollow metal tube about ten inches long with a wooden mouth piece.  You put the dough in your mouth and blew it through the tube at a target, namely your friend’s eye.  We also made sling shots out of rubber bands and shot clothes pins at one another.

I used to ride a scooter; my favorite pastime was roller skates.  We also used to bake “Mickies” [potatoes] in the winter time. We scooped out a hole in the snow and started a fire. Most of the time they were half raw but we thought it was great.  We chewed Black Jack gum.  Sometimes in the summer when the tar was soft we chewed that [!].  We played stick ball (broomstick) or punch ball in the gutter.  We played stoop ball off the steps of a buildings.  When I was very young people used to breed pigeons on the roof of houses. My father used to regale us with his stories of faraway places like Hawaii and the Philippine Islands and his exploits in the army, about anti-Semitism in the army, in Austria and at his work place-- the Dairymen’s League.

When I was older he took me to the union outing in New Jersey but I was forewarned not to eat the chicken--it wasn’t Kosher, I could eat the vegetables and herring.  My father was an avid gambler. He played Pinochle. At the outings, he shot crap.  He was a very funny man. He told many anecdotes which made us laugh. He was a very gentle man, I never remember his ever chastising me or a cross word.  I always had spending money.

I was always interested in science; I bought my first radio about 1930 for short wave listening and police calls.  My high school days were nondescript. I was on the track team at Morris High School.  The only time we could have won a medal for the 440 relay was the day I was the second leg.  I made a good pass, but as I was running away, there was a fumble and my man dropped the baton.  I had dreams about that fumble for years.

[In college], I was not a brilliant student but I did pass inorganic chemistry, one or two qualitative chemistry, differential calculus and one term of organic chemistry.  I failed physics the one course I really cared about. 

 I knew I couldn’t get into dental school, things at home were bad.  My father was gambling and money was getting tight.  I left school and tried to get a job. But things were tight,  the war had started in Europe. I got a job filing electric items to be shipped to England.   One of my friends got a job as a private detective; very few people had a car.  We went on a case and sat in front of a factory to see if a certain employee was taking boxes out.   I then went with one of my friends to Bridgeport, Connecticut and took a civil service exam. They wanted to know if I had experience. They asked if I had used any knowledge of gauge instruments I said I used a micrometer and a few other untruths. I got a job as an inspector of ordnance and my friend and I took a room in Bridgeport.  We had good times there. I finial had steady work as an inspector of parts for mortar shells. It didn’t take a genius to know how to use the gauges and I learned the job real quick.

My friend joined the army. I stayed in Bridgeport.  I was transferred to a Reynolds Metals factory inspecting 155 mm shell casings . It was a revelation to me how these shells were made. I was assigned a number in the draft but I was deferred because of defense work, However I was dismissed for lying on my application.  I was worried about never being able to get a civil service job again but I got a discharge without prejudice.  I was an inspector for about 6 months; I wasn’t making a hell of a lot so I asked for a raise and I ended up getting fired.

I found another job and after being deferred for a while and then I was inducted into the Army.”

 

Above, Sol and Ray MANSBACH c. 1930

possibly at Coney Island