Rebbetzin Chana’s Memoirs: Pigs Dearer than Children

In this 8th installment of the series, Rebbetzin Chana describes how their Kazakh landlady’s pigs used to disturb her husband, Reb Levik‘s studies. Annoyed, he would shoo them away with his stick. This greatly annoyed the peasant woman, who admittedly loved her pigs more than her own children.

Swine more precious than children

Our “society” consisted of our landlady, who used to arrive home late at night, and her still young but hooligan children, from whom we suffered greatly.

As the sun would set, we could sit outside near our room and enjoy the evening air. But the landlady’s goats and pigs disturbed our repose. There wasn’t a single human being in sight. As my husband sat outside, he would select one of the sefarim I had brought, or, as I could discern, sit deep in thought. The roaming pigs, however, disturbed both these pursuits and, irritatedly, he would sometimes drive them away with his cane.

But this annoyed our landlady, whose pigs gave her much nachas. She once confided to me that her pigs were more precious to her than her children, for the simple reason that “from the pigs I will derive benefit, but from my children—what do I stand to gain?” So she was upset with my husband’s treatment of her pigs. On one occasion, she said to me viciously and spitefully, “Your husband doesn’t seem to like pigs. He even hits them with his stick.” After hearing that, we had to be careful how we treated her pigs, because getting her upset could get us into trouble.

What to eat?

Time didn’t stand still. The provisions I had brought were running low. The problem of where to get food became pressing.

Even today, when I am, thank G‑d, a hundred-percent sated, I still recall the pangs of hunger I experienced then. We wouldn’t talk about it but would glance anxiously at the now empty containers which had held our food. Most alarming was our lack of bread. I recall how we didn’t even see any bread throughout the entire month of May.

Our landlady was employed by privileged officials who had more bread than they needed. They gave her the extra bread, and when she came home, she gathered all her goats and pigs and her two dogs, and threw them morsels of bread.

As I recall that now, I am pleased by the self-control I mustered by not asking her to give me a piece of bread as well. I clearly remember how I would squeeze my hands together, trembling a little from hunger, while realizing how, for my husband, this actually represented a continuation of the year of hunger he had already suffered during his imprisonment. I have seen people who were once wealthy who became so impoverished that they came to the point where they actually begged for bread, may G‑d protect us from such wretched depths.

I took care to ensure that my husband shouldn’t see the landlady’s bag of bread. We used to break our old, left-over crusts into several pieces and dip them into water to soften them and make them edible. Gnawing at us was the thought, “What will be tomorrow?”

Every day we cut the crusts off the bread and saved them in a bag to keep them clean. Later we soaked and ate them. We even shook the crumbs from the tablecloth so that none fell to the ground, and used them for extra food to help leave us a little more satisfied.

To receive just one kilo of bread per person, which had to last us for three days, we had to wait many hours in line. We needed to get there really early in the day to receive that kilo, or sometimes even less, because often there wasn’t enough bread for those standing further back in the line.

Among those waiting in line were deportees of various ethnicities—Koreans, Kazakhs, Russians and many others. Each ethnic group worked determinedly to ensure that their fellow ethnics received bread, and occasionally fights even broke out between groups.

Every group of ten waiting in line would appoint a “supervisor” in charge of all ten. Usually, the first groups of ten in the line could be more confident that they would not have to leave empty-handed.

We both waited in line, because you weren’t permitted to receive bread on behalf of anyone else. To make sure my husband attracted no undue attention and appeared as ordinary as possible, I sewed for him, while yet at home, a proletarian-looking suit, and he wore an ordinary cap. But his face betrayed his secret as a personage worthy of special treatment, and often those in the first groups of ten invited him to join their group so that he shouldn’t have to stand too long. When anti-Semites, usually Russians, noticed this, they shouted out, “Hey, old man! Where are you pushing in?”

I couldn’t bear hearing this, but there was nothing I could do about it.

Receiving that kilo of bread was a “whole world” for in itself.

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