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<h2 class="featurette-heading">Abner Schreiber's Memoirs</h2>
<p>
I recently finished a project to digitize the memoirs of my great-grandfather, Abner Schreiber. I took photos of each page of the paper copy and used the tesseract optical character recognition library to translate that into a text document. Unfortunately, my photos were not high quality enough so there were a lot of errors that I had to fix, and it probably would have been faster to just type it by hand. But it was a fun project!
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<p style="text-align: center;"><b>Abner Schreiber at 87</b></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>HIS LIFE AND EXPERIENCES</b></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><b>1977</b></p>
<p style="white-space: pre-line">
I was born in Lipcani, Bessarabia in 1890; at that time it was annexed by Russia from Romania. Lipcani was a wonderful city as small cities go. We had good Rabbis and the boys were all in Cheder studying. We had several good writers in Yiddish and in Hebrew. The Jews were all religious. Like a ghetto, you had to do what everybody else was doing. There were about
2,000 Jews and 5,000 Christians in the town. There were some Russians and Romanian peasants that spoke Romanian and the Christians that spoke Slavik.
All Jews kept the Sabbath. There were a couple groups of younger men, all together about forty or fifty. They had a small room for prayers for themselves. They had their own Chason and Torah readers. They were the young people without beards. They did not fit into the other seven synagogues.
Nothing was open on Sabbath and nobody conducted any kind of business. Bessarabia was like a bread basket. We had a lot of grain to export, also eggs and live poultry. We had railroad stations, government-owned with open and closed sheds to store close to a thousand carloads of grain. When a carload was accumulated of a certain kind of grain, the government advanced us money, about 60% of the value, to wait for a better market. We had large vineyards in Bessarabia, and we used to export grapes and all kinds of wine. We used to have dried prunes and pears for export. Everything was bought and sold by the Jews, because we had railroad stations and we had a lot of business. The railroad stations were twenty-five to thirty miles apart.
In Lipcani we lived on the Romanian border, divided by a freshwater river. All the boys knew how to speak Yiddish, Russian, Slavic, Romanian and German, not grammatically, but just to get along in the market place. All the boys knew how to Davin and read Hebrew fluently that was a part of our life.
The villages where the Christians lived were three to ten miles apart, and the Jews used to travel the countryside to buy eggs, poultry, fruits and grain to bring to the city and sell to make a living.
There were no schools. The Jews sent the Children to cheder to learn Hebrew and Jewish. They also got them private teachers to learn Russian. I started Cheder at the age of three. In dry weather I was led by the Rabbits helper, together with other children. When it rained, the helper carried us two at a time on his shoulders. There were no lights on the streets and the streets were not paved. When it rained we all had boots, some had galoshes.
When we get older, we went in groups of two, three or four. The Christian boys were bothering us. I was a strong, plump boy and used to be the leader of the Jewish boys. I was to get five to ten kopeks a week, from the parents, for protecting their boys that went with me. The Christian boys did not bother me. I had a younger brother, Sam. We were not afraid of anybody, younger or older. Nobody would bother Moshe Schreiber's boys.
My father was buying eggs and exporting them to Germany. In the fall and winter the chickens were not laying, because it was cold, and there were no provisions to keep the chickens warm. There was no business, only what the peasants from the country village produced. Sixty to 70% of the Jews were storekeepers and used to make a living from what the peasants brought into the city to Sell and buy and take home for their needs. In the fall and winter, when there was no egg business, my father used to buy grain for export.
The eggs and the grain were shipped through Novaselitz, that was a border town. From there, buyers used to ship the eggs and grain to Germany. There was a grain and egg exchange on the Austrian side of Novaseiitz.
We also used to get grain on commission to sell to smaller dealers. We had a railroad station four and a half miles from the city. The government owned it and gave us dy Space to store the grain until we accumulated a carload of any one product, because we could not ship less than a carload.
As boys of seven or eight, we were used to helping make up the crates for eggs, that we ordered from a lumber yard. The came knocked down and we had to nail them together. Each held 120 dozens and was packed with wood shavings. The shavings came in bundles pressed together. The boys had to make the crates and separate the solid wood shavings for the egg chandlers to candle and sort the eggs and pack them. When the candlers packed up a crate of eggs we had to nail it up and pack them together and store them in the shop. Each crate weighed about two hundred pounds. When we had enough for a wagon load we shipped them to Novaselitz. There they were sold at that day's market, the prices changing depending on how many eggs came in that day.
All that work we did after Cheder. My father did not spare us; he also did not spare himself. Things were hard and money scarce. People lived poorly, even when they made money We depended on the crops and they were very uncertain.
My Cheder years were wonderful; I had a wonderful Rabbi. We were a group of five boys all willing to learn. We remained friends all our lives. One died in Europe two died in Israel one is still living in Russia. I correspond with him very often. He is a Yiddish writer. They gave him a Party in Moscow last year for his 85th birthday, and more than fifty-five writers from all over Russia came to the party.
When I was ten and a half years old I was drafted by my father to work because my older brother got married. I had to walk to the railroad station to receive the grain that was shipped in on consignment. I had to weigh it, keep a record of what kind of grain came in, and store it in the right place.
When I was only six weeks at the railroad station, a couple of Jewish boys stole five bags of grain from my pile, which was next to where they were loading. They dropped my bags of grain in the carload that they were shipping (all the grain was shipped loose in the railroad cars). I came by when they were loading; I started to make a noise and picked up a big rock and sat myself on a pile of five bags that they were loading. I threatened anybody that came near me I'd kill them with the rock. I held these five bags for the five bags that were stolen from my pile. We had no telephone, so I sent a telegram to my father in the city to come to the railroad. We found the empty bags with our insignia in their car. The loaders claimed that the clerks from the carload they were loading told them to take my five bags of grain. There were other Jewish Commissioners at the station that begged my father very hard and he made a deal with them that they were not to work for themselves or anybody else at the railroad station. My father fined the man that used to buy the stolen grain from the boys, three hundred rubles to be given to the charity fund in the city because he felt he was guilty of buying the stolen grain.
When my father's business was slow, I went to work for another commissioner. I watched when they shipped the grain in cars and shipped the empty bags back to the city to be used again. Because I was such a small boy, the other clerks took advantage and stole empty bags from my shipment. I was about three bags short one week. The man I was working for called me in and told me that if I couldn't watch the bags, I would lose my job. I did not know how to watch the men that were stealing the bags, so I did what they did. I I stole thirty bags from them at one time. Nobody thought that Moshe Schreiber's eleven-year-old boy would steal thirty bags. There was a meeting of all the commissioners and all the clerks to find out what to do. I was among the clerks. I was only a kid, so I started to laugh, and they asked me, "What are you laughing about?" So, I said, "Why don't you tell your clerks to stop stealing bags and nobody will lose bags," and I told them to give me back my bags and I would try to find the thirty bags. That settled the bag stealing business. I was all of eleven years old!
My father had trouble with the land owner, who arranged with politicians to smuggle in a bundle of Austrian merchandise to our house, and then reported to the border police that we were selling smuggled merchandise. The police searched the house and found the goods and arrested my mother and also had a warrant for my father. Luckily my father was out of town, further than the fifty miles of the martial law limit, and they could not arrest him. We had a criminal trial and they produced twenty-two false witnesses claiming that they bought smuggled merchandise from my father and mother. We also had twenty-five witnesses that said my father was an honest merchant and would not handle smuggled goods. Some of the witnesses testified that they saw a woman carrying the bundle into our house. Among our witnesses was an eight-year-old Christian girl who also testified she saw a woman carry in the bundle.
There was another martial law that stated that you don't believe witnesses in smuggling cases, and my mother was convicted to six months in jail and excluded from the martial law territory. My father appealed the case and argued with the court, that if they did not believe witnesses in smuggling cases, how come they disregarded the testimony of the eight-year-old Christian girl that swore before a priest and the Church icons. So, the Supreme Court dismissed the case.
(The Christian girl was also a false witness)
My father, Moshe Schreiber, was a descendent of the Chasam Sofar family from Hungary. His father was a seventy-year old widower, and he married my grandmother when she was forty years old. She had three boys within five years and then her husband died.
My father grew up as an orphan. There were no schools and he had no money to go to school anyway. He used to study in the Shul with the older Jews. He was very inquisitive and he was very brilliant. He studied Hebrew a lot and was well versed in Torah and Mishna. Because we lived in Russia and there were no schools, he got some people to teach him. He was a good student and he learned Russian by himself. He was a self taught man. He was self taught all around in everything he did.
He didn't have any money. When he grew up, he bought from a widow a law library, a Russian law library, with all kinds of books with all kinds of laws. He was studying all the laws and he used to give advice to all the people on the laws. There were not lawyers in the town and the Landowner and the Police Chief used to take terrible advantage or the Jews because they were a lot of illiterates. Very few knew Russian; they didn't know the laws, so my father became a politician, actually.
The Landowner didn't like him and the Chief of Police didn't like him. They got together quite a few people on their side and they ignored my father. My father wouldn't let go on anything he thought was right. He used to defend himself and other people in the city. He used to write petitions to the lower courts and they had to accept him. He learned how to do it from a cousin, a lawyer in another town. He went there to stay with him to learn. We were living under martial law all the time because we were living on the Austrian and Romanian border. Within fifty miles of the border, there was martial law. There were two kinds of police: one, civil police, and military police . Under martial law, the Military Police used to have investigators and they investigated anyone smuggling anything; and if they could prove that the person was smuggling, they used to send him away to Siberia for a year or two without a trial.
Nobody would know where he was going or when he was coming back. My father knew all the laws and he warned the police that they better Watch themselves because they were responsible to the people. The Landowner was responsible to the tenant. so there was a fight between The Landowner, the Chief of Police, and my father. We had a property that was left to my father from his father. It was about a hundred years old. For seventy-five to eighty years there was a lot next to the property that was used as a street by the Russian peasants. One time my father got an idea he would like to close up the lot. It was a big lot and he would build something or make some kind of a business there So, he got himself some lumber from the lumber yard we had a lumber mill there, and he started making a fence around the lot. When he started making the fence, the whole neighborhood was up in arms that he was closing up the street. So, they brought down the Chief of Police and the Landowner. They came on horse-back, because we didn't have any cars or trolleys. They told my father he would have to stop and my father said, "I don't have to stop; it is my property." They said, "You have to get a surveyor." My father said, "I will put up a fence and you get the surveyor. If it is wrong, I will move it; but it is not going to be wrong. I am going to put it up on my property."
They started to give him all kinds of trouble. At one time, there was a law, because it was martial law, that if they got 250 signatures and they thought somebody was a troublemaker, they could take it into the lower courts together with the Landowner and the Chief of Police and would send him away from the neighborhood. He had to get away from the neighborhood for two hundred miles. So, they put in a petition with 250 signatures that my father was a trouble-maker and they wanted him out of the neighborhood.
This was a very serious charge. My father petitioned the government in Saint Petersburg to send an investigator to come to town. He came at 8 o'clock in the morning by train. The Landowner, the Chief of Police, and their wives were wining and dining him and showing him a good time. In the evening, around 9 o'clock, two gendarmes came down to my father and they took him. My father knew there was an investigation--but he couldn't do anything about it. It didn't bother him they wanted him up to the hotel where the investigator was. Everybody got scared in the family and they called all our friends, and they alarmed everybody because my father went to see the investigator. There was some wine and tea and the investigator told him about the inquiry and my father said, "Give me a few minutes to compose myself. It is not easy being dragged out of bed by two gendarmes under martial law, and you don't know where you are going or what you are doing."
Then he said to the man, "You came here at 8 o'clock in the morning and you are calling me at 9 o'clock at night. All day long you were wined and dined by the people and they told you that I am a bad man. I'11 tell you what I will do. I want any ten of the men who signed the petition saying that I am a bad man and who didn't want me around here. You got me out of bed; you get the others out of bed who signed the list. I will even settle for five men from the the list instead of ten."
They sent out for the men and my father was telling the story of what was going on in the city, of how they were robbing the people and annoying them. Then they brought in the five men and they were scared. My father asked them in front of the investigator, "Did you sign this? Is this your signature?"
They said "Yes." They couldn't read Russian. Some wrote in Yiddish, others in very poor Russian.
My father said, "Did you read the petition that you signed?"
They said, "No."
My father said, "How did you sign it?"
They said, "They called me in and they treated me nice and they told me to sign it, so I signed it."
He said, "Did you know what you were signing?"
They said, "No, we didn't know what we were signing."
My father said, "Do you know me to be a bad man? Do you know me to be a trouble-maker?"
They said "No, I don't know you to be a trouble-maker."
Each one of them said, "I don't know you to be a bad man."
He said, "Would you want to have me sent from the city?"
They said, "No, you are a good friend. You lived here all your life. We want you here."
My father said to the investigator, "Now, you can go to back with your report."
When the investigator got through with them, he went back with his report and no one bothered my father anymore. They dismissed the case. My father said, amongst the 250 people who signed, there weren't five who could read the petition and there weren't ten who could write Russian.
When they got through with this, the Landowner and the Chief of Police were trying to find ways and means to annoy my father. They had politicians on their side, too, and there were always Jews who played up to the Landowner.
My father, in order to make trouble for the Landowner, questioned the assessment on the property. The Landowner used to collect all the taxes on the properties according to the assessment that he put on them. So my father looked up the law from his law book. The law stated that if the people were not satisfied with the assessment, they could force the Landowner to buy the properties at the price of what he assessed them. When there was a bad year and the the crops were bad and the Landowner needed money, my father gathered the people to take the Landowner to court to reduce the assessment
My father looked up the charter to find out when the city was established. At that time they were selling lots to people with the Privilege Of providing pastures for their cows. They agreed to pay a dollar a cow for the summer for a watchman. There were thirty or forty people that bought lots that agreed to pay so that the cows wouldn't stray away onto other fields and get lost. At this time there were eight hundred cows in the city and the Landowner used to collect two dollars each or $1,600 to have two Watchman that cost $80 a year. So, my father started suing the Landowner saying that he was only entitled to the $80 for the watchman and no more. They took that money away from the Landowner and that was just murder for any man to lose that kind of money in those days.
From the Chief of Police, we used to get passes to cross the border every thirty days. When you came to the Chief of Police's office there was a clerk and then the Chief of Police would sign the passes. One time, at the line, there were three or four people ahead of my father and the same amount of people behind him. So, he waited his turn and when the four people in front of him were called, they started to call the people behind him. The Chief of Police was making my father wait. So, my father started yelling at him that he was not doing right and that he was going to report him to his superiors, that he was trying to give him trouble.
The law in Russia was that when the Chief of Police or any officer got in trouble with somebody and he was getting sued by somebody, he would lose his seniority, because he was sitting on an accused bench. My father sued the Chief of Police, saying the he pushed him and he had witnesses that he insulted him and the Chief of Police lost his seniority. what Stopped the Chief of Police from ever being promoted.
When I Was thirteen years old my father was in Germany on business. In our part of Europe they did not make any Bar Mitzvah parties. I had a pair of Tfilin that my father bought six months before, so, I went to the Shul and told of an old man to show me how to put on the Tfilin. I knew Hebrew and I read the rules. The next day was Thursday. I put on the Tfilin myself in Shul. My mother baked a cake and bought a bottle of whiskey in the Russian state store. I got an Aliyah and made myself Bar Mitzva. when my father came home two months later he said, "Gut, Mein Kind."
About that time, my father used to send me with a peasant driver to buy eggs in different market places. I used to carry with me as high as a thousand rubles in a vest under my shirt. When I came to the market place, I'd contact small merchants, who were buying the eggs from the peasants that came to the market place. I had to compete with men between thirty and fifty. Many times they were sore at me because I paid more than they wanted to pay. At times they wanted to beat me up. I was not afraid, I was big and strong, and everybody was afraid to touch Moshe Schreiber's boy. My father used to write his own petition to the court and they would need a lawyer to defend themselves and this was costly.
When I was thirteen and a half, my mother died. My mother was wonderful, a good wife and a good mother and very charitable. She had little to spare from what my father gave her, my father being thrifty. She opened up a flour store and gave all the poor people flour for bread. She had to account for the money my father advanced her for this proJect She used to borrow money to account for the money my father advanced her and made very little in the business. She had grown up as an orphan with a rich, intelligent grandfather. She had been reared well, being taught Hebrew and could recite any paragraph from the Prophets, if he gave her the first two words.
There was a typhoid epidemic in the city. At that time we had only one doctor for seven thousand people. Mother nursed three brothers and a sister during the epidemic. After they all got well, mother died from typhoid at age forty-five.
My sister kept house for the family after my mother died. She was only fifteen and a half years old. She was a poor housekeeper. She just did what she knew how. I had to go to work at six o'clock and walk to the railroad four and a half miles, rain or snow storm. There was only a wood fire stove. I could never hope to dream of a warm glass of milk or tea before I went to work. I used to drink a cold glass of milk and eat a slice of stale bread for breakfast. I took my lunch with me, usually two slices of stale bread, two slices of herring and four or six walnuts. This was my lunch. The bread used to freeze in my pocket and I ate it frozen.
The synagogue where my father had a seat from his father used to gather money before Yom Kippur, money for expenses. There were three or four plates. One for firewood, one for the Chason, one for the Shamis, and one for the repairs that were needed. There were four or five men that managed the distribution of any expense of the synagogue. One time on Simchat Torah, my father was called for an Aliyah in a small corner of the Shul, because on Simchat Torah everybody had to get an Aliyah. So,my father complained and asked why the Gabai pushed him for an Aliyah in the corner. He scolded my father and told him that he was not one of the main contributors. My father wrote a petition to the court that he was a member and contributed every year. He said that the President and the Gabai did not want to give him an account, because they did not keep a record of the money they collected and divided for what was needed. The court sent a summons and the President and the Gabai needed a lawyer to defend themselves. People came begging my father to undo the matter, so my father settled it. But the Gabai apologized and bought a ten ruble clock for the synagogue.
We lived in three rooms. One room where my parents slept was five by eight feet, one a dining room with two cots for my older brother and one for my sister. The cots were of wood, hand made, padded with straw. The kitchen had a big work table with cabinets in the bottom. I and my two smaller brothers all slept on the kitchen table. Two of us slept at one end with our feet facing the other, and the third brother slept the opposite way facing us. There was very little heat, only one stove for three rooms. We used wood for the stove, cut from logs that my father bought in the summer, fall, and early winter. A peasant cut up and split the logs in small pieces for thirty kopeks a day. We had a shed to store the wood. When my father was away from the city, we found that somebody was stealing the wood from the shed. I volunteered to catch the thief. I sat up nights near the cold door, and on the third night at three-thirty in the morning, I caught the thief. He was a poor neighbor; I started to beat him up and he ran away. My father tried to arrest him, but, let him go, making him promise he would never do it again.
During those years from ten and a half to fifteen, I studied Hebrew and Russian from five to six in the morning with a Rabbi and tutor. At six I went to work. In Hebrew I studied the Prophets. I knew Hebrew from Cheder. In Cheder our teacher studied with our group--short stories for homework. We had to bring in the same story in short form. In that way we learned all the words.
Because I was a big boy at fourteen, they took me into the Self Defense. After the Kishenef Pogrom, all the Jews in the cities were afraid of pogroms. We had three roads
to the city. We assigned five men to each road --one on horseback with with a gun and four with wooden clubs, on three hour shifts. It was cold and rainy at times The women in the neighborhood gave us hot tea and bread. We were watched not to sleep on the job I was also enlisted in the Fire Brigade We were forty Volunteers and when there was an alarm for a fire, everyone had to report. There were no pumps. Three of us pulled water from the Wells, Six carried it to the fire.
When I was fifteen years old we moved from Lipcani to Novaselitz. Novoselitz was a well organized city. All export from Bessarabia was shipped through Novoselitz, which was on the border, between Russia and Austria. We were able to have breakfast in Russia, lunch in Austria, afternoon tea in Romania and be home for supper.
In order for me and my brother to try to get work as egg candlers, we had to join the union, which was on the Russian side. They wanted 150 rubles from each one of us to work with the union candlers. My father knew all the union men since from time to time they had all worked for him in Lipcani. So, my father brought in three other boys from Lipcani and formed a non-union shop on the Austrian side of Novaselitz .
When we worked in Austria, we all slept in a shed on excelsior shavings with tarpaulin covers. The first Saturday as we were walking around in the street, six union men attacked us and beat up the three Lipcani boys very badly. They were afraid to touch me and my brother because the other people on the street had told them not to touch the Schreiber boys or Moshe Schreiber would have them arrested and put in chains the same day.
We remained working there and we got some Austrian egg candlers and we worked together with them. we used to export eggs to Germany and one time we shipped a carload of eggs to Germany and some of the eggs got musty. They were packed in excelsior and some dampness got into the excelsior so my father had to go to Germany to see what he could do. He went there to sort out the musty eggs from the good eggs and he sold them as best he could. He lost a lot of money and while he was there he saw people who were exporting live poultry from our part of the state in Russia. They were buying it as partners and they were buying it at a very low price and selling it at a very high price and sharing in a very large profit. My father came back and said he would like to be a partner in this business. They wouldn't take him in as a partner; they said, "You're not a poultry man, you're an egg man."
My father said, "I didn't make any money in eggs. I lost a lot of money and I want to make up my loss." He said, "I will go into the poultry business myself."
So, my brother and I bought crates and made up cages for the poultry and we loaded up two carloads of poultry to ship to Germany. My father made connections while he was there, The poultry stop was two and a half days away. There they would take the birds out to feed them and to give them water, so they could continue the trip to Germany. It took five days to get to Germany. We loaded up the cars and somebody came from the border police to my father and said that we were smuggling tobacco in one of the cars. Our competitor threw in about ten or fifteen pounds of tobacco in the car and reported to the police that we were smuggling. But my father knew all the laws and he knew what to do. He would have to pay 350 rubles fine and after the fine, he would have a trial for smuggling on the Austrian side, because we supposedly were smuggling tobacco to Austria. Finally, we went out all night and raised the 350 rubles. It was like raising
$3,5OO cash in South Philadelphia on a Friday night. We got
35O rubles and we paid it and my father said, "Thank G-d it's only money trouble. We'll find some way to get out of it."
When the trial came up, everybody in the family and all our friends insisted that my father get a lawyer to defend himself in Austria--an Austrian lawyer. He said he knew enough German and he would defend himself. So. he went into the judge and he said, "I would like to talk to you. We live in Russia. We hate Russia; we live there in fear, we are persecuted there. We don't have any rights. We come here to Austria and all the Jews have rights. I belong to the Austrian Exchange and the Grain Exchange and I enjoy my relationship with the Austrian Jews and the Austrian authorities. You have a Jewish Chief of Police and a Jewish Governor. Why should I smuggle fifteen pounds of tobacco worth $15 or less and take a chance of losing a carload of poultry worth
800 rubles? This guy is just an informer, somebody paid him to be an informer. He doesn't know anything about it. I will tell you what; I will make up a drawing."
We had three tracks where the poultry was loaded. we had three tracks that came from Austria to Russia and three tracks from Russia to Austria. They didn't trust each other any more than a half a mile, because they were afraid of attack in case of war. They had different size tracks so the Russians couldn't get into Austria and the Austrians couldn't get into Russia. My father said to the judge, "There were three tracks and six loading platforms, two for each track. I will show you where we loaded and then let him show you where we loaded. Bring the informer in and let him show you where we loaded." They brought in the informer and he was all scared and excited and he didn't know what to say and he couldn't guess the track that we had loaded on. He went to jail for three months and my father was discharged. It was one of the few incidents that my father had.
My brother and I continued working. I was fifteen and he was thirteen. There was not any cold storage at that there were more eggs than we could export. So, the exporters built concrete basins and filled them up with lime water, and we filled the basin with eggs about a carload each. They were kept in the lime water until the fall or winter. The basins were in a basement and we carried them forty steps in baskets and emptied them out into the basins. This took three or four weeks. At the end of the day we were so tired that We could not eat and we fell asleep in our clothes. In the fall and early winter we had to take the eggs out of the basins in baskets, and the baskets were dripping with lime water. We had tarpolin aprons, but we got very wet and the skin on our hands was cracking because we had to Wash off the lime water from the eggs in cold water. we then packed them in excelsior to take the dampness out of the eggs. Each man carried thirty baskets up the forty Steps, and then he rested by packing the eggs in excelsior. This was done in the fall and early winter and it was cold, but that was not the worst we suffered.
We were still sleeping in the cold weather in a shed, covered with tarpolins. We had no mother to protect us and my father was not worried since in our part of Europe we were used to cold weather. I was only sick when I was three years old. Up to the time I was twenty-two, I never remember having a cold even though when I worked for the railroad, I was exposed to very harsh weather.
We had to pump water into the basins in the spring and the water out in the winter to get ready for the next Spring. We pumped by hand, two hours at the time. It used to take us a Week to fill up the basins. We worked from six to six with two coffee breaks of only fifteen minutes each. At one time the Russian consumers and Austrian buyers could not get together on the share of the money they took off from every Crate of eggs and carload of grain. This money was divided between the Russian Charity Fund and the Austrian Charity Fund. The grain and eggs were coming in fifteen to twenty carloads a day. So the exchange sent my father to Austrian cities to sell the grain. In two days he sold forty carloads. The people in the exchange put up a poster, "Hurrah for Moshe Schreiber."
Another time my father had to stay overnight in a district judge's house and the district judge had charge over six magistrates in different towns in Russia. While they were drinking a glass of wine, the judge asked my father if it was true that the magistrate in our town was taking graft. My father told him that everybody was taking graft. He said the magistrate gets 40 rubles a month. He has to support a wife and two daughters that go to school, and he has to keep a pair of horses. He can't do that on 40 ruble a month. The judge asked him, "Do you think I would take graft?"--so my father told him, "You are a rich man, you own a lot of land, have a rich father and you are only handling cases up to
300 rubles. You probably spend that much to take out a girl when you are away from home. Nobody can offer you graft."
A Jewish man in our town had a wife who became a prostitute and she openly drank and went to bed with soldiers. It was very embarrassing for the man and his children, so he hired a man to kill her and to bring him back an ear as a sign that he did kill her. The police caught the killer and arrested him and the husband. My father charged the husband 300 rubles to go to Odessa and hire a good lawyer to defend him. My father found a lawyer, a converted Jew (Jews could not be lawyers in Russia unless they were converted to Christianity), convinced the lawyer that Russian Jews have only Jewish marriage ceremonies, no other legal binding laws. So my father showed the lawyer a Jewish book on marriage laws that proved that if the wife turned to prostitution and the husband has four witnesses, he can force a Jewish divorce and be free. So he did not have to hire a killer, but the killer himself killed her to get money from the husband. The husband was freed and the killer was sent to Siberia.
Once my father slept at the home of a village peasant. During the night he heard the wife cry. In the morning he told her husband his wife is a good woman and asked, "Why do you make her cry?" The husband said, "I love her, and she is crying because we have a three year old boy and the Priest does not want to christen him because he asked me for grain I told him I need it for my family." My father went to Priest and told him it was not right to deny the child to be christened. Then the Priest insulted my father and told him no Jew can mix in church matters. My father appealed to the head district Priest and then to the state church; my father was told they would investigate. A year later my father appealed to a higher church court in Russia and when, after three years, nothing happened, be appealed to the czarina. The Czar's wife in Russia was in charge of all the Churches and she sent a special deputy from Petersburg to take the Chief of Police and a Priest from another town and christen the boy, and the local Priest was transferred from his town.
When I was nineteen and a half, one of my friends got a ticket from a relative to go to Argentina, so I told my father that I'd like to go to New York. I'd send him the money as soon as I got work. He paid for my ticket and gave 25 rubles in cash. I found work the first week that I came to America with Armour and Company in Yonkers, New York, through somebody that my father knew. I arrived on February 10, 1911. I stayed with my uncle in New York for four weeks. I had to get up at three-thirty in the morning to get to Yonkers at six, when I started to work.
After four weeks I walked around the streets in Yonkers to find a Jewish grocery store. I told the grocer that I was looking for a room with a Jewish family. There was a woman in the store and she said she could rent me a room, but, for the first four weeks I'd have to sleep with another man in the room. He was a baker and he worked at night until three in the morning. I was four weeks before Pesach. At Pesach he would be off from work and would get himself another room, and I'd have the room to myself. He used to come home at two-thirty or three and I would be sleeping. I had to leave at five-thirty to walk twelve blocks and get to work at six.
One night I came home about two o'clock from a party in New York. I found a man in the first floor hallway (my room was on the second floor). I couldn't talk any English, so I tried to talk to him in Yiddish, Russian and German. I thought he was the baker and he walked up with me and we started to undress. I thought I'd better wake up my landlord and ask him whether that was the baker. The man was about undressed when the landlord started to yell at him and chased him out. It was the wrong man! One time the baker awoke up when my alarm clock rang and he dreamed he was being attacked and started to yell.
When I came to Yonkers I was getting eight dollars a week for five and a half days from six to four and Saturday, six till twelve. I got another Job with a small egg dealer to candle his eggs four days, from four to seven-thirty and 1 Sunday, six hours at thirty cents an hour. I paid three dollars and fifty cents for room and board and saved my money to reimburse my father for the money that he advanced for fare, and the 300 rubles he had to pay to the Russian government because I didn't report for the draft. All the boys that came from our part of the country kept close together, we used to meet every Saturday in a restaurant in New York and usually I had to pick up the check since I the only one working and earning money.
I went to night school from seven-thirty to nine-thirty to learn English. I also learned my English from reading and through my associates in business. My father insisted that I write to him in Hebrew and translate into English. He had a dictionary and used to check my translation. I also had a dictionary to look up the words I did not know. I had a Jewish/English and an English/Jewish dictionary (which I studied from). I wrote to my father a letter to say that it was five weeks since I had left my fatherland. The word, left, in Yiddish is "farlost," neglected. My father wrote to me saying in just five weeks I had neglected my fatherland, and went on to tell me that it was not the right translation, and I should be more careful.
My first four years in Yonkers were very hard. I was there for four years and two months and was only late once, about eighteen minutes. I had a toothache and a badly swollen face I was the only Jew among seventeen Gentiles, mostly Irish, middle-aged. I was only a young boy, twenty years old. They pushed me to do all the hard work. When I had nothing to do with the egg candling, they put me on other work. They annoyed me by pushing me around. Once I was so angry that I pushed a man about forty years old, so he insisted on fighting with me. I did not know the rules of boxing, but I weighed 200 pounds and was very hard and strong so I beat him up and he was bleeding, and from then on nobody bothered me any more. I was healthy and strong and was never sick since I was a baby. They took me to help unload a carload frozen beef that was imported from Brazil. The sides of beef weighed 200 to 250 pounds each. To carry it you had to hold it close to your body with the right hand. Holding it up there, I got tired and could not catch my breath, and I could not talk and the skin on my chest was scratched from the hard frozen beef. I had nobody to complain to or get sympathy so I did the best I could.
I remember one time when we needed another candler for two or three days at $2.00 a day, so I travelled three and a half hours from Yonkers to Brooklyn to bring one of the boys who was out of work. We both slept on the floor for three nights because I had only a steel folding bed and a torn mattress. I paid 65ct a day for his meals and when I took him back, I travelled altogether fourteen hours, just to have him work for three days--ten hours each at $2.00 a day.
In the summer of 1914, I came to Philadelphia to visit my aunt, and decided to look up the Lamm family who had come from Lipcani. They were farmers in Collegeville. Reuben had been a boyhood friend of my father's, and I went to Cheder with his sons. On that first visit I met Mary, who was 18 then. I came a few more times to Collegeville and then they moved to Essington. I talked to her about ' marriage. She said, "I don't know you and I don't love you." So, I told her, "I'll treat you nice, so you will love me." The more we talked, the more we loved each other. Her parents were all for it. Her father liked the Yichos. Her father and my father were old friends, and my father was more educated and a smart business man.
When we decided to get engaged, I went to an Armour and Company house in Philadelphia where I knew the manager from Yonkers. I got a job in Philadelphia. That was in 1915. I was to get seventeen dollars a week, and the manager put me on. They were not selling any eggs or poultry, so he wanted to develop some business in those lines. He put me to work with a miserable pork salesman. The first week we only sold two crates of eggs and made of profit of one dollar and sixty cents. The rest of the time I helped the pork salesman.
We worked for two or three months from three in the morning till four in the afternoon. I used to help to unload cars of meat many times on Monday mornings. We'd start to work at twelve or one a.m. and I tried to sell eggs, which we bought locally.
When I came to Philadelphia, I asked the man who I was an assistant to if he knew of a good bank. I had a cashier's check from Yonkers that I saved. He looked around to another man near him and told him, "The damn Jew is only working here a half a day and he is looking for a bank already." All the people working were very poor and were mostly married and getting twelve to fifteen dollars a week. I learned how to sell and within three years, I was the best salesman in the territory. I sold more than any salesman in seventeen branches. I was getting more pay than any other salesman. I was honest and tried to sell to the people what was best and available at the right price, and make sure that it was delivered on time, so a lot of people gave me the preference.
That year I went to New York to spend Rosh Hashanna with my uncle and friends. Coming back, I took a train that was supposed to bring me to the 30th St. Station at eleven-fifty p.m., since we were supposed to start work midnight. I missed getting off at 30th Street and I went to 15th and Market Streets and had to walk back to 30th Street Station. As a result I was fifteen minutes late and the pork salesman I worked with starting calling me names. He told me I should go to hell with my Jewish holidays. I told him that I would work with him until the manager came. The manager told me not to pay attention to him, and to try to sell eggs and try to make a department for myself.
I tried to got out in the streets to grocers and butchers to sell eggs and poultry, but I did not do well. I weighed 240 pounds at twenty three years and could not speak English well. I wore a fifty cent shirt and a ten cent necktie and did not know how to carry on a conversation about the weather and the ball game, as most salesmen did. I got the idea to use the telephone for selling. People knew the name of Armour and Company, and I described the product, the good eggs, the poultry and the cheese. Within two years, I was getting twenty-five dollars a week more than the pork salesman. It was war time and I worked very hard. I used to wake up the butchers at three or four o'clock in the morning and they liked it. They would not have to go out shopping. In three or four years, I was the lead salesman in our territory. I sold as much as seventeen other branches sold all together. I was making more money than my manager. I went to Chicago at the company's expense to ask for a raise. They told me that they couldn't give me more than the manager, so I suggested that send a check from the main office to my Philadelphia home address. When they agreed to send one hundred dollars every month, I told them to send the check every four weeks, hereby gaining four more weeks' pay.
I worked very hard, and was known to be the best poultry salesman in the territory. The Goyim did not like me. I also speculated by buying eggs for cold storage and buying in carload lots for myself.
In Philadelphia we worked nine to twelve hours a day. We came in at 3.00 a.m. and we went home 2 to 4 in the afternoon. I also worked another job twenty to twenty-five hours a week at 30 cents an hour. I paid tuition for a friend who studied in the Pharmacy College. Three weeks after he graduated he died from apoplexy. At the funeral three of us friends pledged to pay for the tombstone and pledged that the first boy that would be born to any of us, we would name Edward. (Edward is now a successful lawyer in Washington. I am very friendly with him.) I helped all the boys who were out of work because I was the only one with a steady job and also worked overtime. All the boys that came from our town were responsible for one another.
Now, I come to Mary. I married Mary when she was nineteen years old. I had saved up enough money to get an apartment with furniture and we moved in. Before we were married she was living on the farm and I would come from Philadelphia to the farm. We made up a plan with her brother and parents that one Saturday night she would go into town and he would milk the cows; the other Saturday night her brother would go into town and she would stay with the other brother to milk the cows. They needed three people to milk the cows and two people did the work for three. When I was engaged, I had all kinds of trouble. Mary's mother was illiterate and from a small town. She had a daughter who was here twenty-five years. When I got engaged to Mary, I was only here three or four years in the country, so I was supposed to be the greenhorn.
The sister who was here for twenty-five years couldn't read English, Jewish, or anything. The only information she would get and give to the mother was the news she would get when she went to the Schvitz. So, when I came from New York to Philadelphia she was there and we always used to start talking. She would say that is not the story, and I didn't get it right and she would get insulted. She used to annoy me so terribly that I didn't talk to her.
Mary had an older brother who was supposed to switch with us to come to town. One time when it was Mary's turn to go to town on a Saturday (we used to go to the Jewish Theater) he sent her to the post office two or three miles away and when she came back, she didn't find him there. He had gone to the city.
I told Mary's parents, "I'm not staying to milk the cows, I am going to town to find Hyman." I came to the city and I found him lying on the couch in his sister's house. I beat him up and he started to bleed and they called a doctor and he had to stay there a couple of days until they revived him. That is my experience with Mary's sister and one brother.
From Europe. I knew Russian and Hebrew and also studied advanced grammar, so I would know how to write. Years later, I took lessons from an Israeli teacher and learned Sefardit so that I understood what they said in the Knesset and in my friends' homes. I learned my English when I was only three years in America at night school from a very good high school teacher. He used to read with us short stories and then explain to us the complicated words in all the stories.
I always had a very beautiful handwriting. Where I was living a man came to the town and advertised that for five rubles he would teach two types of handwriting, beautiful handwriting. You would only have to pay half at first and then you were through you would pay the other half. I didn't have the five rubles, but one of my friends did. He had rubles and by the time I got through with him I had a beautiful handwriting within four or five weeks. I wrote beautiful letters.
One time Mary's older brother went to the post office and opened up a letter to Mary that I wrote. He had no right to do it. It was nothing special; it was just a love letter that a boy writes to a girl. He said that guys never wrote those letters. He could never write a letter like that. You have to go to school for years and years. He didn't know how to write; he couldn't have written it.
So, I came there and I said, "You don't know what you are talking about." He called me a liar.
I said, "You are calling me a liar? I will sit down I will write down exactly what is in the letter." So, I wrote out the letter and another letter and I showed him up and I didn't talk to him. So, before I got married, I didn't talk to the sister and two brothers. In addition to this, when the other brother came back from the city after he took Mary's turn to town, he told his father that I beat him up.
There is a Jewish law that says whenever you are engaged you have an engagement contract. If you are given your engagement contract back, you are out of business, you are not engaged anymore. So, everybody told my father-in-law to give me back my engagement contract. My father-in-law thought that I was right and he didn't give me back the engagement contract and I remained engaged to Mary. Those were some of my experiences.
Mary was a wonderful girl. She went to High School and finished when she was sixteen. She learned to type and got a job in a real estate office doing typing. They didn't have any servants and she was doing all the work. She was working and her mother was sick and she was doing all the cleaning and laundry and cooking. While on the farm, I used to come to the farm and I used to think they didn't have any money to take in any help. They didn't think of taking in any help; she did it all herself.
Then, we got married and we got a beautiful apartment with nice furniture, modern furniture. Later, I bought a house and I paid cash for it. I had accumulated money in two or three years, so, I paid cash for it, 3316 Lancaster Avenue, and it was only two or three blocks from where I worked. I used to walk to work and come home for lunch. I saved money and we lived very nicely and then I got another house and had children. In the ten years that I worked for Armour in Philadelphia, I saved twenty thousand dollars in cash and also had my home clear. My father came here on a visit in 1921 at the age of sixty-five. He liked my home and Mary so he lived with us for twenty years.
when he decided to stay he attended public school, was promoted from class to class, graduated from school and received his diploma. After the third year in America, he traveled from 41st and Girard to West Philadelphia High School and studied advanced algebra. He taught Hebrew to children. when they left on vacation, he insisted that my daughters correspond in Yiddish and he then answered their letters in English. He enjoyed his life with us and earned our love and respect through all the years.
In 1925 I had a two week vacation and Mary suggested that I take a few more weeks and look around for a business. I had twenty thousand dollars, most of it loaned out on second mortgages, which netted me 16 percent. I had a friend, Morris Ostroff. He had seventy thousand dollars and he asked me to look for something we could do together. I saw an ad in the Jewish paper that two partners were looking for a third partner to make loans and finance cars. Ostroff and I met the two Partners. They showed us how we could make money by lending money to car owners. The prospects looked good on paper. One of the partners had fourteen thousand dollars and one was a man that worked for a small finance company. We made up a Partnership Agreement and advertised to make loans on cars. They showed us that we could make money. I did not know the laws for lending money. We advertised and we did some business which looked profitable. They had forty-eight thousand dollars worth of repossessed cars, as well as loan balances, which they gave to the partnership for thirty-five thousand dollars. I told them I was relying on their experience and honesty. If I found these cars were not worth the money, I'd know they were trying to cheat us or they did not know what they were doing. After six weeks, I found out from dealers that our cars were not worth more than two thousand dollars. I told them, "If you think they are worth more, go sell them to automobile dealers and put the cash into the business." They could not sell them and they agreed to sell the cars to the partnership for two thousand dollars.
When we went into business, I helped the bookkeeper make up all the forms, filled in letters and sent away for repossessed titles. Up to the time that I came, we did not have repossessed titles. when a car was sold, one or the partners was experienced in forging the signatures.
Shortly after we started, an examiner from the banking department came to our office and told us that we were doing illegal business. He issued a warrant for one of the partners. had a hearing and we agreed not to make any loans, but that we would confine ourselves to financing cars for dealers. The experienced man started to look for business and discussed opening a used car store to sell the repossessed cars. After a year Ostroff and I got rid of the two partners and agreed to work evenings to try to develop business from dealers and the repossessed cars. I got thirty dollars a week more for working nights and I gained the experience in no time.
Ostroff could not read or write English as well as I did. I was running the business and he used to be with me. We had a line of credit with Parkway Trust Company. We sold cars and we were making money. After five years, Morris Ostroff died, and I continued with his wife as a partner. I was to get one hundred and fifty dollars a week for my work and we split the profits. We were doing well.
The first years in the business were very hard and nerve wracking. The dealers were poor and hungry for a dollar. I had to watch them, not to be cheated. They were pulling all kinds of tricks. Fortunately, I managed and came out all right. I learned from my father always to protect my interest. When the war started in 1940 and there was no financing because there were very few cars sold, I bought small properties. It took time and effort to look at the properties to evaluate values and to keep them in repair and rented. Thank God I came out without any mistakes.
During the war years I had three places to sell cars and one large place to store and repair the cars. We had fourteen mechanics, eight salesmen and three buyers for cars. I had to hire, work and deal with salesmen as to the salary and commission. I had to know the value of each car price, sales price and watch the sales so that the salesmen didn't sell too cheap. I also had to watch the financing and collections. Thank God I managed nicely in all that I did in the business myself. We did not take losses with the dealers or the customers' financing. I always manage to protect myself.
The war years were very hard. we were carrying a 350 car inventory. We had three places to sell cars and three buyers, and we also advertised to buy and sell cars. We did well financially. We also bought some properties that we sold at a profit. I operated the business, but used to consult Mrs. Ostroff daily. Thank God, I operated the business for fifty years without any serious losses. I had nobody to help me in the business, and I did it all myself. I thank God everyday for my good fortune. It was not easy. I watched all credits and collections, and watched the sales of cars and the financing. I had to know what cars came in, what to pay for them, and what to sell them for. I also had to know what was going on in the shop. We used to repossess from twenty to forty cars a month, and they all needed repairs. I had to watch the cost of repairs and shop expenses. I learned that nothing is hard if you want to do it.
I used to leave home at seven-thirty in the morning; I had my breakfast before I left, to get to the shop before eight. I had to see that everybody was in on time, and to look over with Sam Snyder all the repairs that were needed and watch the price of repairs. I'd go to the office at nine o'clock, stay there until five-thirty, get home at six to have dinner (which was always ready, on the table). I would eat and sit at the table thirty minutes, lie down and rest fifteen minutes, and go back to the office at seven to sign up deals. I returned home at ten o'clock. This lasted about ten years. I worked five nights a week and Sunday. I never complained that I was tired and I was never sick all those years.
I was blessed with good, loyal help that stayed with me for fifteen to forty years. we worked as a family; also the mechanics in the shop did not give me any trouble. They also stayed a long time in the shop. we had a lot of work. The repossessed cars came in with bad motors, bodies were banged up, and needed body work and paint touch up. I made all the prices with the body man. I followed up everything that was going on in the shop. I also made up a new list every week of the cars we had for sale with prices, wholesale and retail. We always had several cars of the same make and same year. I knew every car and what it was worth. I kept the salesmen in line with the prices on each car. I handled all the financing of the sales. I was always careful and knew what I was doing. I kept a close record of the shop expenses and amount of the sales. I was able to check every week how we stood on profit and loss in the used car operation, the finance operation, and in real estate. I knew every property. One time we had fifty-three properties and when they needed repairs, I knew what to do and always got repairmen at very low prices. I still do the same today. I went over every week the delinquent accounts with Harry Goldfarb, to decide which should be repossessed and which should go to the attorneys. I took care of all the ads for the sale of the repossessed cars and sold some to the dealers myself. Now, that I'm eighty-six years old, I'm wondering how could one do so many things and so much work. I always found the way. I also signed up all the finance deals and took care of the bank financing and knew every delinquent account.
The automobile dealers were very poor and I used to lend them some of the money to buy cars. Then I had to watch so they didn't sell the cars before they paid me. I used to keep the titles of the cars in the office. When they would sell the car, they would bring the customer to the office, because I did not trust them on what promises and what they said to the customers, because I would be responsible after they signed the leases. That was the way we were dealing all the time.
I was partners with Mrs. Ostroff from 1930 to 1944. In 1940, Sonny Stein came into their family. He was working at the Kitty Kelly Shoe Store in Trenton, traveling from Logan to Trenton for $35 a week. So, Mrs. Ostroff insisted that I bring him into the office. My two sons-in-law, Leonard and Alex, were in the army. Sonny Stein was out because he was rejected from the Service.
When he came into the office just before they were married, I gave him $40 a week. when he got married, I raised him to $50. At first, he was in the office. I taught him how to sign up deals and how to wait on the customers there. It was war time and we needed cars, so I advertised a lot and he went out to buy cars. He was very good, because he was very smooth and he made pretty good buys. Within a year or fifteen months, he was raised to $850O a year. Then he got an idea. My boys were in the army; he was 24 and he got the idea that he wanted a share of the business. I told Mrs. Ostroff that she would have to give him part of her share, because I wouldn't give any of my share. My boys were coming out of the army and when they did, I would have to give them a share of the business. She refused to do it and I said,
"Then we will have to start breaking up the partnership."
She got herself a lawyer, Leo Weinrott. I knew that he would try to take advantage of me, so I went up to Ira Jewel Williams of White and Williams, a very big law firm. I told him all I want you to do is to write a letter whenever I need a letter. You write the letter to show you represent me. I will manage everything else. Then, when I want you to talk to Leo Weinrott, you will talk to him. Leo Weinrott was trying to sell the business and get goodwill for it. I didn't want to sell the business, because I expected to stay in business and I wanted the customers, and I wanted the employees to stay with me. Whatever I wanted, they didn't want, and whatever they wanted, I didn't want. So, it took us eight months of arguing back and forth. We had twenty-three properties on hand. So finally, they decided they wanted to stay in business with me and have me manage the properties.
I said I didn't want to stay in business with them any longer and we should split the properties. It took two months and finally since we couldn't get together, we got an appraiser. Neither of us was satisfied. I said, "If we agree on everything else, I will show you how to split up the properties." I made up two lists of properties, two open lists. I said, "You take whichever one you want and I will take the other one. I will give you three days to make up your mind." They agreed which properties they wanted and I agreed on the properties I wanted. Then we started to break up. we divided the accounts receivable. All during the eight months I kept the employees. We didn't take any business, but I kept them.
It took a lot of time. We had 25,000 old accounts and I wanted to check out with the accountant on how we were going to split up. In the meantime, they bought a property about four or five doors from our office and they started a business there. This was in competition with me and I didn't have any office. We had a tenant on the second floor, a catering man, so I went up to him and I told him I would give him a lease for three years or five years, whatever he wanted, and he should give me a place on the second floor, an office. we agreed on it and I gave him a lease. Leo Weinrott started raising Cain that I had no right to give the caterer a lease, but Williams told me I had a right to give a lease as a partner, as long as we hadn't split up yet. So, I opened up on the second floor and they opened up a few doors away on the first floor.
During the time that we were hanging around, we agreed we wouldn't touch each other's customers after we had divided the accounts. I found out they had a list of all the customers. I was down the shore on a Saturday and they went in with some people and Sonny Stein made up a list of all the customers. When I saw customers coming in and they told me things they wrote to them, I started to make up a list and started sending out letters to the customers myself. It said, "You come to me I'm right next door on the second floor. We know you and you know us and we will take good care of you." The people came to me for renewals of their loans. Then, the Ostroffs started raising Cain and went to a mediator to stop me from doing that, so I stopped.
Finally, I started doing business slowly and they were doing business for about four months. I was on the second floor and then I bought a building at 661 North Broad Street, where I am now located and I started to do business. I did very well.
I was in business only about a year and a half and a company offered to buy me out and offered me a $50,000 profit for the business I had. They wanted me to go with them and said they would give me three million dollars to be a partner to the business, whatever business we do in Philadelphia. They wanted me to supervise but I was afraid to start with somebody else, and my family wasn't satisfied, so I didn't go in with it. I started for myself and I stayed in business ever since. Thank God I have done very well. Mary and I divided the stock in the children's names and some in the grandchildren's names. And we transferred the business to the children.
I was left with several properties that I took from the partnership. Then, I bought a property next door to my building where we are now and I remodeled if. It was a garage building and I remodeled it into an office building and I rented it out at a very good rental. I make my living now from the rental of the buildings.
In the split I got 1409 North Broad. It came to me at $135,000 according to the separation. It was rented for $l,500 a month. It had eight or nine years to run on a ten year lease to Sharp and Dohme. Sharp and Dohm didn't need the building and they rented it to an insurance company. The insurance company improved it a good bit--put in fluorescent lights and tile floors and additional washrooms. Three years later the insurance company failed and it had four more years to run. So, I made a deal with them to buy back the lease. They were trying to rent it. I put out feelers to find out what the property was worth. In the meantime, I left the property empty. I went to Israel and when I came back, I found the property in very poor condition. During the winter the asphalt tile floor was lifted up and curled up all over the place. So I got some fellows with torches and we softened the asphalt tile and put cement under it and leveled out the floor and cleaned the place up. I got a call after a week from Binswanger to come down because he had a customer. The government wanted to rent a building.
I said, "I'm 60 years old and I am not going anywhere. If you want something you come to me or tell me what the proposition is and if I like it, I will come down If I don't like it, I won't come down." So, he told what the proposition was and it was very good. I went down there and I rented the property for ten years at a very good rental.
Then, the Redevelopment Authority wanted the property. They wanted to demolish everything on Broad Street. I got a lawyer and it took some time. In the meantime, they were selling all the lots and they wanted this piece of ground to fill in the space in the front so they would have the whole front. I got a call from the lawyer telling me that I should come down and they asked me what I wanted for the property. I didn't know what I wanted for it, but knew I would like to get about $600,000 for it. I didn't sell it. I still haggled with the Redevelopment Authority. Finally, I got a much better offer and price from the Redevelopment Authority and I was very satisfied that I had bought this building.
My personal life with Mary was very, very pleasant. I'm saying it with tears in my eyes, crying. She was a. wonderful wife, a wonderful mother, and a wonderful housekeeper. As soon as I made some money, she had a bank account. She was charitable. She helped four or five nieces and a nephew who went to college. When the people were poor, she sent them checks from her personal bank account. I never asked what she did with the money. I never asked her whatever or what she spent it for. We were very happy until she died. Between 1917 and 1930, we had three daughters--Frieda, Vivienne, and Marciene. We were fortunate that they were all good girls and did well in school and never gave us any trouble. They married three wonderful boys, live a happy life, and each have three children.
The children grew up, thank God, without any serious sickness. All the children loved each other. We loved the children and I worked very hard all my life. I made money and I supported my family and kept us all happy. I was very charitable. In the last twenty or twenty-five years, I was making more money than I ever did.
I was very active. I was President of the United Hebrew Schools. I was on the Board of all the Jewish Schools. The Yeshiva was organized in my house. I was on the Board of Har Zion and I was Vice President for six years and President of Har Zion for two years. I was nine years the Chairman of the School Committee. I was on all the committees at Har Zion and I worked very hard on whatever project came up. I contributed to every project. I still do. I am still active at Gratz College, was President of the United Hebrew Schools three years, on the Board of the Federation of Jewish agencies, on the Board of Akiba Academy, on the Board and Vice President of the Solomon Schecter School. I thank God every day for my blessings and for the pleasure I get in contributing to these institutions. I have learned much from these associations. I have an Abner and Mary Schreiber Scholarship at Gratz College, also an Abner and Mary Schreiber Scholarship at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, also at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the Torah Academy, Beth Jacob School and Talmudic Yeshiva in Philadelphia and the Har Zion Temple.
Mary had a wonderful life with me and I had a wonderful life with her. She was very active in the women's organizations and she was Treasurer of Har Zion Sisterhood for thirteen years. She was respected. My children were teaching Sunday School. They always had their friends around the house and we had a very happy and satisfying life.
Now, my children are married and we are all like one big, happy family. We love each other; we love the grandchildren and the nine grandchildren love me. The sons-in-law--Alex, Leonard, and Herman--get along nicely. I have a wonderful relationship with my brother, Sam, the surviving member of my family.
My sister, Golda, lived in Canada all her years in America. I tried to make her life easier financially and tried to boost her morale by inviting her to my home and sending her fare every year for several weeks. Her one son is Oscar. I feel close to him because he is my sister's son and because he is a very understanding person. I enjoy talking to him and his wife, Ida, once or twice a month from Buffalo.
I helped my family in Europe and in America. I belong to a group of friends that were very active in Israel. In 1942 when the war was still raging, we called a meeting in New York and, with a few friends, we raised $50,000. and were able to help the people from our home town that were coming out of concentration camps and from other places, wherever they would be. When the war stopped, we sent to everyone who turned to us, $50.00 in cash, one package of clothing, and two packages of food. During 1942 and 1943, the Haganna from Israel sent out two men to Europe to look for volunteers for illegal immigration to Israel. The two men were from our home town. They recruited 200 boys and girls and led them to Israel to help the men in the Kibutzim. After them came 200 more and they brought their relatives that they had from Lipcani. The Landslite scattered all over Israel. Our American group decided to build a Shekun Lipcani in Israel. We built 64 apartments. We raised the money for the down payments which we gave each family free and gave the mortgages at reduced rates. We had our friends, Moshe Liebman, who was in New York, and Moshe Silverman, as the active leader in Israel. After we built the apartments, we raised money for a free loan society (Kupat Milve) and we are still operating making loans to needy Lipcani Landslite up to $300. After that we raised money and built a large cultural hall, Beit Lipcani. It holds about 500 people and it's being used for holiday services, Bar Mitzvahs and weddings. On Saturday they hold services in the balcony.
Mary and I visited Israel nine times. One time when we were there, we established a library and a museum that holds pictures and biographies of people from Lipcani. when Mary and I were there in 1968, many of the people approached us to build a synagogue. We built a very nice, small synagogue that holds 90 people. It is known as the Lipcani Synagogue built by Abner and Mary Schreiber. Mary and I helped many immigrants from Lipcani, some distant relatives and some people whose parents we knew. They are now all established, many are professionals, and with married children that we helped go to college.
In all, I have visited Israel 12 times now. I have a relationship with my brother's children there and with their children in New York. I helped them buy their apartment and I stay with them every time I'm in Israel. I also have many friends there.
I maintained my home with a housekeeper, Tressie Cottom, who takes care of the house, and a nurse, Mrs. Dorothy Stein to take care of my personal needs and the pains of arthritis. I'm enjoying my life with my children and grandchildren. I am good to them and they are good to me. I am grateful to God that my children live near me, my daughters and their husbands are close and make life pleasant.
I have a lot of pleasure helping people which I did all my life. On my recent trip to Israel I gave out quite a few checks to my relatives and people that I know. They gave me a dinner and I told them that they are legacy checks from Mary and myself. I had a lot of pleasure doing it, and they had pleasure receiving the checks.
Mary and I were blessed with a wonderful life. I worked hard and always made a good living. we raised three wonderful daughters and they all married good loyal husbands, and they each have three children all living happily, thank G d. It's very painful for me that Mary is not with us not to enjoy the children. I am very grateful to God for my happy, satisfied life that I enjoy with my family.
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