The Luck of the Nomads

By Clara Wolman

"Emigrating to another country has not been a new and unique phenomenon in my family's history," she thinks, "as it may not have been in the history of other Jewish families, who decided, or worse, were forced, to do so."

The protagonist, a university professor, tries to understand through the stages of her own life, the role o

• Language: English
• Publisher: ibukku, LLC
• Release date: Sep 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685742188

Book preview

The_Luck_port_ebook.jpg

The Luck of the Nomads

Clara Wolman

Reservados todos los derechos. No se permite la reproducción total o parcial de esta obra, ni su incorporación a un sistema informático, ni su transmisión en cualquier forma o por cualquier medio (electrónico, mecánico, fotocopia, grabación u otros) sin autorización previa y por escrito de los titulares del copyright. La infracción de dichos derechos puede constituir un delito contra la propiedad intelectual.

El contenido de esta obra es responsabilidad del autor y no refleja necesariamente las opiniones de la casa editora. Todos los textos e imágenes fueron proporcionados por el autor, quien es el único responsable por los derechos de los mismos.

Publicado por Ibukku, LLC

www.ibukku.com

Diseño y maquetación: Índigo Estudio Gráfico

Copyright © 2022 Clara Wolman

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-68574-217-1

ISBN eBook: 978-1-68574-218-8

Table of Content

Acknowledgments

I From Poland to Argentina

II Memories of Argentina

III Memories of Israel

IV Memories of the United States

V The Farewells

VI The Randomness of Life

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Louise Stahl and Dr. Susan Hildenbrand for editing the English version of The Luck of the Nomads , and Rogelio Obaya for editing the Spanish, original version of this book. Special thanks to my childhood friend, the Argentinian psychologist Norma Cristina Romano, for her feedback and numerous recommendations.

I

From Poland to Argentina

My first memories go back to when I was three years old. But in my repertoire of personal recalls, there are some events that became part of my autobiographic memory, even though they happened long before my birth. Where did these events come from? And if I did not personally experience them, how was I able to adopt them as if they were my own?

During my childhood, my parents, aunts, and uncles, would talk amongst themselves about events that occurred many years before, and we, the children, would listen to them carefully. After all, they were not referring to forbidden subjects, but to events from the past that had affected our family. After the adults finished those conversations, they would be silent for a few moments, their gazes lost in the distance, as if they wanted to understand alone, without anyone disturbing them, what had really happened back then. When I was listening to some of these stories, I would realize that Jorge Manrique’s phrase that all good times were in the past, it not always was true.

One of the events of the past that I often think about, because of its impact on my own existence, is related to my grandfather Iser, my father’s father. In the early nineteen-thirties, my paternal grandparents lived with their five children in a very modest house, a poor one really, in a village near the city of Minsk, in Poland (today Belarus). Every day my grandfather pushed a cart full of used and new objects and went door-to-door selling and buying kitchen utensils, brooms, soaps, towels, and some clothes. He walked through his village, and some neighboring villages, which were inhabited mostly by Jewish families. Usually, he left his house at dawn and returned when the dusty streets of his village were completely dark, although sometimes he had to sleep on the roads, returning home several days later.

Being a street vendor in the villages of Poland was not sufficient to support a family. Not only the poverty, but also the antisemitism that Polish Jews had to tolerate, pushed many families to seek new horizons. In those days in Europe, it was said that in Argentina, as in the United States, money was found in the streets. Thus, with the illusion of leaving poverty forever, many Jewish Europeans, similarly to the Christians, tried to seek a new life in the Americas. One of the ways chosen by many families to emigrate, was that the father of the family traveled first to the desired destination. If after a long time, months and in many cases several years, he found a job that could support his family, he would send them money to buy the tickets that would allow them to cross the Atlantic Ocean in the third class of a ship. And that is precisely what my grandfather Iser did. In 1933, he arrived with other Jewish men at the port of Hamburg, Germany, where they boarded a ship that sailed to the port of Buenos Aires, in the Republic of Argentina. From there, he traveled by train to the city of Rosario, where several of his relatives and acquaintances from Poland had already settled.

In the new country, the months passed slowly, and my poor grandfather did not do well, either with the Spanish language that he could not easily understand and speak, or with his work as a street vendor. After trying unsuccessfully to adapt, my grandfather decided to return to Europe with the few savings he could muster from a year-and-a-half of work. And with a portion of that money, he bought his return ticket to Poland.

The day he had to leave Argentina, while waiting in the port for the time when the ship was to set sail, Iser played cards with other Polish travelers and some local workers, betting almost all the money he had. He was good at the card game and was usually lucky, but that day his luck supposedly didn’t help him. In the second game he began to lose money, so he continued playing again and again to recover what he had lost. In each additional game he hoped to be able to win his money back. But that didn’t happen. He continued playing desperately until he lost track of time and eventually missed boarding the ship that was supposed to take him back to Poland. And so it was, that by a game of cards, my grandfather never returned to the country of his birth.

After missing the boat, Iser had no choice but to stay in Argentina. He barely raised money again to buy the tickets for his family to be reunited with him. Because that money was not sufficient for the whole family, an aunt of his—who lived in the United States—helped him to complete the cost of all the tickets. And that is why, in 1937, at the age of fourteen, my dear father, with my grandmother and my four uncles (two little sisters and two brothers almost the same age as my dad), arrived in Argentina to start a new life. Two years later, World War II broke out in Europe.

I imagine that for my grandfather, the day he missed the boat must have been one of the worst days of his life, perhaps the worst. He may have suffered for years for what had happened to him. He must have focused on his frustrating daily life and his temporary failure in Argentina, instead of seeing