My parents, Jean and Ernest Dietz, loved to entertain dinner guests.
Ernie and Jean Dietz, 1980
These would include Harry and Irene Schwachman, reporters from the Boston Globe, Bernie Gould( a professor at MIT), Sumner and Flossie Gerstein, and numerous others. One of my father’s greatest pleasures, I always thought, was to regale his dinner guests with stories- stories about his parents, stories about growing up in Sharon, stories about college, and stories about his adventures in during the War (World War II).
Here are a few of his stories, told in his voice in the first person.
Imagine you are seated at the table at 93 Hancock Avenue, and you have just finished the chicken casserole main course and are waiting a few minutes before the chocolate trifle dessert . . .
My father, George Dietz, grew up in Rezekne, a town in central Latvia. He was one of seven children-Frada, Moshe, Shlava, Avram, Shlomo Yaacov, and Naftoli-, all brilliant.
Below: Main street in Rezekne, 1900
Same Street, 2007:
Below: Rezekne Green Synagogue is the oldest wooden building in the city (1845) and the only one of 11 synagogues that has survived up to the present time:
His mother, Libbe Ada- her maiden name was Passov- did everything- raised the children, ran a general store, kept the house, made the meals, everything.
My grandfather, Chaim Dietz (the name was originally Deitsch, meaning German), was a Talmud chacham (wise man), and sat all day in the House of Study and read the holy books. My father never respected him, for his mother did all the work.
Chaim Dietz
Libbe Ada Passov Dietz
Pa- he was called Shlomo(Shumel?) Yaacov in those days ( the early 1880’s) went to the village cheder (Jewish school), and hated every minute of it. I think he spent a lot of time playing hookey. It was cold, too- he used to tell me that his skin used to stick to the iron fence rails on the way to school, it was so cold. Despite his lack of enthusiasm for ‘formal’ education, he could speak Yiddish, Russian, German, and later also Dutch and English. He was always a great talker; he was a natural-born salesman.
One day when he was about sixteen, he decided he was sick of cheder, of the tiny village, of Judaism, of everything. He ran away, and volunteered for the Czar’s army. Mind you, in those days, every other Jewish boy was trying to evade being drafted into the Russian Army (Jewish boys would be seized and made to serve for twenty years).
After a short time, however, he discovered that it wasn’t so much fun in the Army (no wonder everyone else was trying to avoid it!), and wanted out. Fortunately, he was an excellent poker player. One day a Prussian officer came to visit the troops. He challenged him to a game, and won everything from the officer- his uniform, his passport, the works. He decided to become the officer, and, and ran away from the army passing himself off as Count Von So-and-So (Pa had blond hair, blue eyes, and spoke perfect German, which helped). Using the passport, he went to Dusseldorf, Germany, and set himself up as a Prussian gentleman, interested in art, and went to art school. He even joined a Prussian fencing club (though he never got the de riguer scar). While in Dusseldorf, he attended art school, and was even able to make money selling his paintings.
George Dietz in Dusseldorf
One night, however, his landlady woke him up in the middle of the night, and told him that the police were coming to arrest him; the authorities had discovered that he wasn’t really a Count, only Shlomo Yaacov from Latvia. He ran away that night, and went to Utrecht, in Holland, where he lived for a time with his brother Avram, who had also left Latvian Russia. Later on, they went to England, where his brother settled down. Pa changed his name to George, naming himself after the king. Pa always believed in starting at the top.
Abram Dietz
Toby’s variant: From England, Pa took a ship to Boston, MA., where he lodged at the Art Institute of Boston on Newbury Street. He painted many pictures and sold them on the street. One day he saw an ad in the newspaper placed by United Fruit Company, whose headquarters was in Boston, looking for a maintenance supervisor for their plantations in Jamaica, West Indies. He went down there, and the line of people applying went around the block. He noticed on the door that the president of the company was named Grabow. He went right in ahead of the line, and said he had an urgent appointment with Mr. Grabow. After he persisted, they let him in. Mr. Grabow asked what the urgent message was. Pa said, “The message is- I’m your man!” They both spoke German, they got along famously, and that was how Pa got his job with United Fruit in Jamaica.
Ernie’s Version: While in England, he read an ad in the newspaper, looking for people to work in Jamaica, on the boats and hotels of the United Fruit Company in the British West Indies. He answered the ad, and moved to Jamaica, where he became a maintenance manager on the United Fruit plantations.
George as a foreman in Jamaica
He lived there about 15 years, maintaining buildings, teaching riding, and playing the tropical gentleman with the starched white collar.
George(in white) as a construction foreman at the Myrtle Bank Hotel in Jamaica
In 1905 there was a large earthquake in the West Indies. Pa, who now called himself George, was injured. United Fruit sent him to Boston (where their home office was) to recuperate. There he met and married my mother, but that is another story.
Many years later (in the early 1960’s), Jean and I went on vacation to Jamaica, and visited the Myrtle Bank Hotel in Kingston, which my father had helped to design, build, and decorate. He had also built the hotel in Port Antonio for United Fruit.
An elderly black gentleman ran up to me, and said, “Mr. Dietz! Mr. Dietz! You’re back!” Then he realized that I was his son, now about the same age was when George Dietz had left fifty-five years earlier.
“You know, Mr. Dietz,” said the old man, “when you walk these streets, you should be very polite to the people you pass, and tip your hat. For some of them may be your brothers and sisters.”
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Many years later, in 1929, I heard that the Tzar's brother, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich was visiting Boston, and I went to collect his autograph. When I told my father he was upset, because he thought maybe the Russian army was still looking for him after he had deserted in the 1880's.
United Fruit was started as Boston Fruit Company in 1877 by Capt. Jesse Freeman, Capt. Lorenzo Baker, and others, for the purpose of exporting Caribbean fruit to New England.
My mother, Rosa, was the daughter of Yeruchum Fishel and Chaya(Clara) Stern. Yeruchum Fishel was a uniform maker for the Tsar’s army, in Kishinev, Bessarabia, in Southern Russia, but later moved to Odessa, where Ma was born. Chaya had a sister, Neysa Herbert. Norma was named for her. Neysa had been married to Yeruchum Fishel’s brother, but he had died quite young. Neysa was a very independent woman, who traveled widely. She had even traveled on her own to the United States in the 1860’s, returned to Russia, then went back to the USA to stay.
Eventually, Neysa came to live with her sister’s family. Through Neysa’s influence, when the Jews were thrown out of the Crimea in 1890, they managed to get out on a ship bound for America. On the way, in Constantinople, Yeruchum Fishel had bought the passport of a man named Goldberg who had lost all his family; and so they family name became Goldberg. When they arrived in Boston, they settled in the West End section, which had many Jewish immigrants. The house stood on Cambridge Street, where a bank in the Charles Cinema complex now stands. They later moved to an apartment in the South End near Union Park.
Chaya died around 1897 of cancer, three and a half months after giving birth to Frances, the youngest child.
Goldberg(Stern) Family, 1895
Neysa continued to live in the house, acting as nurse and housekeeper to the seven Goldberg children. After a while, however, the neighbors started to whisper that it was scandalous that Yeruchum Fishel was living in the same house as an unmarried woman. So to quiet the neighbors, Yeruchum Fishel married Neysa, although they never really lived as husband and wife. Yeruchum Fishel died two years later.
Young Rosa grew up loving reading and school, and was a constant visitor to the West End library.
Into her eighties, she read constantly, and was frequently called upon to address formal invitations in her elegant Palmer Method handwriting.
In 1908, when Pa came to Boston to recuperate from the earthquake in Jamaica, he was thirty-five years old. He had lived as a German gentleman overseer for nineteen years in Jamaica, and had no family of his own. He had saved up a lot of money during his years in Jamaica, as all of his living expenses had been paid for by the United Fruit Company.
He decided he wanted to live as a Jew again. It was Yom Kippur time. He went to the shul in the South End. For the Neilah service, they auctioned off the aliyahs. Everyone else bid twenty dollars, forty dollars, fifty dollars. Suddenly a tall white-haired stranger- Pa- bid two hundred dollars (like two thousand dollars nowadays)! Everyone wanted to know, who was this rich (and handsome) stranger?
George Dietz in 1908
Naturally, they invited him to their homes, to meet their eligible daughters. Among them was Aunt Neysa (Netti) with three unmarried step-daughters.
Instantly, George fell in love with sixteen-year old Rosa. She had been born in Odessa in 1890, but the family had immigrated to Boston when she was two years old, settling initially in the old West End of Boston, but later moving to the South End.
Rosa was 5’4”, with beautiful chestnut hair, a good figure, and a sunny disposition.
Rosa Goldberg Dietz, 1908
Neysa did not approve of the match at first. George was 36 years old, eighteen years older than Rosa. Besides, Rosa had an older sister, Harriet, who was not yet married. They would have to get married first, Neysa insisted. According to Toby, Kate found her own match, and made Rosa’s grammar school graduation dress.
Pa was not deterred. He went out and found a match for Harriet, and helped Neysa pay for her wedding and dowry. Finally, he married Rosa. They both lied on their marriage license, making Rosa a little older and George a little younger, so the authorities wouldn’t question things. They eventually had five wonderful children, and lived to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary in 1958.
When he got married, Pa decided he had to set himself up in business. Although he had little formal schooling, he had studied art briefly in Dusseldorf, and liked to paint. He had experience with building maintenance in Jamaica; besides, he figured, ‘all there is to painting is picking up a brush.’
With a partner, a Mr. Stoddard, they opened a painting and decorating establishment, whose proprietor-Pa- presented himself as a German design and decorating expert, ‘trained in the finest art schools in Europe’. Their first contracts were with the United Fruit Company, painting their cruise ships, and painting the Myrtle Bank Hotel in Port Antonio, Jamaica.
Myrtle Bank Hotel, Port Antonio, Jamaica
The partnership of Dietz and Stoddard lasted about six months, during which they had terrible fights, and finally Pa bought out Mr. Stoddard’s share of the business. Since then, he never sought a partner in the business. I could never work as a partner with my father either- when I took over the business in the early 1950’s, I had to encourage my father to retire- it was either him or me.
The Founder of Christian Science Plays E.R. Nurse to Pa
One of Pa’s first paying customers for his painting business was Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Christian Science Church. She had become his steady customer ever since the day in 1908 when she had been driven during her daily carriage ride past Pa’ s elegant new painting and decorating establishment at 45 Newbury Street in Copley Square, and saw his liveried footmen, waiting to help the new customers.
One day, Pa came into Mother Eddy’s Chestnut Hill mansion to look over a job he was doing there.
He was clutching a rag around his hand.
“Why have you got that rag?” asked Mrs. Eddy. “Oh, it’s nothing!” said Pa, “Just a little cut.”
Mary Baker Eddy
After all, this was the Queen of faith healers before him.
“Oh please, I must clean it and bandage it for you!” said Mrs. Eddy, ”For if you are not a Believer, than you must use all the medicine you can.” And she bandaged his hand.
Mrs. Eddy became quite an admirer of Pa, and gave him a lot of work. For one job, she paid him with one of her desks.
But after she died in 1910, her majo-domo threw him out- he was jealous of his influence.
1 Mother Eddy founded the Christian Science Monitor that year (1908), at the age of eighty-eight!
When it came time for me to become Bar Mitzvah, there was no one who could prepare me for it in Sharon. Pa had to bring in an Orthodox rabbi, complete with beard, payes, and long black coat, from Boston. When he would arrive at the train station, and begin walking to our house on Cottage Street, the ‘townie’ kids would taunt me, “Hey Ernie, your rabbi’s coming, your rabbi’s coming!” I learned my lessons well, and had a grand Bar Mitzvah at the Sunset Lodge, but I have always somewhat leery of rabbis ever since.
I Play Shylock
In the 1920’s, our family was still one of the few year-round Jewish families in Sharon, Massachusetts. Most Americans were still suspicious of immigrant families and Jews. When Ernie’s class at the Charles E. Wilbur School put on the Shakespeare play, The Merchant of Venice, they made me play the greedy Jew, Shylock, because they figured that “being a Jew, I’d be more familiar with the character.”
Mendel the Poet
George had a neer-do-well cousin from Latvia named Mendel, who was known as Mendel the Poet. Mendel traveled the world, apparently ending up in Alaska at one point, but never had any money. When he found out where is cousin George(Shlomo Yaacov) was, he showed up, penniless, at his door in Sharon, MA. "I had a dream", said Mendel, "in which I was told I should visit my cousin, who would give me money". "Why do you only dream about me when you are poor?", said George, "why not when you are rich?". George had a succession of relatives who showed up asking to be supported.
Max Looks for His Father in America
Pa, as I have already mentioned, had a younger brother, Avram Dietz, who had moved to England around 1900. There he married Sarah Levy, whose father owned a factory in Cardiff, Wales. Abram went to work for his in-laws in Cardiff.
Abram and Sarah had one son, Max. He was named for his uncle Moshe Dietz (Pa’s older brother), who had become an engineer in Russia and was killed in an industrial accident.
Margie was also named for Uncle Moshe.
Moshe Dietz
Another Dietz sister, Shlava, died in the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Sarah was apparently very domineering, and Avram probably felt that he was owned lock, stock, and barrel by his wife’s family, and was quite unhappy.
One day Abram left the house for work, and disappeared, never to be heard from again. The Levy family searched throughout England for him, without success.
Max, thinking that perhaps his father had gone to live with his brother in America, showed up one summer’s day in 1926 at our house in Sharon. Pa and Max made all sorts of inquiries, but they never located Abram.
Max, then about 16, stayed at the Dietz house about two years. He was like the brother I never had. Us two teenaged boys would go into Boston together and have a grand old time. Eventually, however, Pa got tired of Max lounging around, and said he should go back to England because his mother was all alone, and would think his uncle George was stealing him away from her. He left, and was not heard from for forty years.
The Dietz family in England, during World War II, changed their name to Deech, to make it sound less German. Max started a very successful electrical transformer company, Stewart Transformers, which made custom transformers for the Royal yachts, Royal Navy, etc. Max married Phyllis, and had two children, John and Frances. Frances, like her grandfather, had a great fight with her rather strict father, and moved to Nelson, New Zealand, where she had three children and five grandchildren and lives to this day.
New Zealand Dietz childen
In later years, Max got back in touch with the Dietz family, and we became great friends again, and have gone on several vacations together.
When I was an infant in 1912, I am told I began one day to have terrible nightmares. Every night I would wake up screaming, for no apparent reason. Ma and Pa didn’t know what to do. They took me to all kinds of doctors, without receiving a cure or even a diagnosis.
Finally, however, some Gypsies came through town. Ma took me to an old Gypsy woman, who lifted the evil spell with some incantations. It worked- from that day on I had no more nightmares!
Ernie in Dorchester
A Wonderful Pacifier
Also when I was a baby, Ma and Pa hired an Irish nursemaid to take care of me, and to take me for walks in Franklin Park in my pram. We lived in Dorchester in those days, on Burnside Road, in a house that Pa had built. Later on we moved to a house on Lyndhurst Street, just over the fence from the Fitzgeralds. Ma told Mrs. Fitzgerald not to let Rose marry that Joe Kennedy, he’s no good.
Rosa, Clara, and Ernie in Dorchester, 1915
I was apparently quite a fussy baby, besides the nightmares already mentioned. One day, however, it occurred to Ma that I had been awfully quiet the last few days, and that the nursemaid seemed quite satisfied with herself. However, it was then discovered that the whisky cabinet seemed rather depleted, and there was a smell of whisky around the pram. Little Ernie, they discovered, was quite drunk.
The nursemaid was fired on the spot. They took me to the doctor, who found that I had developed an enlarged liver from the alcohol. It was a long time before I was back to normal.
George Dietz with Ernie and Clara
Dr. Griffin
When I was about two years old, in 1914, I contracted pneumonia, and my lungs got very weak. There was no antibiotics in those days; the only treatment was to go to a ‘fresh air’ sanatorium.
Our family doctor in Dorchester recommended that they go to see Dr. Walter Griffin, a young doctor who had opened a new TB sanatorium in Sharon, Massachusetts, a small town about twenty miles south of Boston. Very few Jews lived in year-round in the town at that time, although there was a popular Jewish summer resort there, the Sunset Lodge, at Lake Massapoag.
Dr. Griffin suggested that my health would improve if they moved to the country air of Sharon. Ma and Pa took Dr. Griffin’s advice, and so it was that the Dietzes moved to Sharon, for the next fifteen years.
Ernie and Toby in Sharon
About sixty years later, in the early 1970’s, I read one day in the paper a story about the celebration that the town of Sharon was having for Dr. Griffin, who was now the oldest licensed MD in Massachusetts.
I took a drive down to Sharon, and paid him a visit.
I drove up to the house where the doctor had always lived and had his office, went in, and said that I wanted to be examined by the doctor. Soon I was ushered into the doctor’s examining room, which looked much the same as it had in the twenties, with all kinds of antiquated instruments.
Dr. Griffin came in. He was about ninety-five years old. “Now what seems to be the trouble?” asked the doctor.
“Don’t you remember your old patient, Ernie Dietz?”
“Wait a minute . . . yes, of course!”
We talked about the old days for a long while. “Of course,” said the doctor, “I don’t have many patients these days. I suppose I am getting a bit on.”
On his way out, I talked to Dr. Griffin’s housekeeper.
“He hasn’t actually seen any patients in years,” she said. After all, who would go to a doctor ninety-five years old? Every day, however, I dust the examining room, and lay out the instruments; and Doctor Griffin gets dressed in his old-fashioned doctor’s coat, and waits for a few hours for patients to come in, and thinks about the old days.”
Clara
In Sharon, I was always kind of thin and small, and would sometimes get bullied by the other kids in school. It didn’t help that Ma always insisted that I wear fancy clothes and Buster Brown ties.
Clara, my big sister ( she was one year older) was always my great defender. Tall, with a strong right arm and an attitude to match, she would pound the daylights out of any boy who bothered me, and they would be scared to touch me again once they had encountered Clara’s fist.
I Raise Chickens, And Lose My Appetite
At the house in Sharon, Pa loved to play the gentleman farmer when he wasn’t running his painting business. He bought a bunch of chickens, built a chicken coop, and put me in charge of them. I fed them, cleaned the cages, and exhibited them proudly at 4-H club fairs, winning prize ribbons for them. Pa even built a real playhouse for us in back, with screens and everything; Charlotte’s mother Hattie would even stay in it when she came to visit.
Ernie as a young farmer, Sharon, MA
One day, however, Pa invited the shochet (the ritual slaughterer) to come over, while I was in school. Pretty soon, the chickens were in the stove, and when dinner was served, and realized who dinner was, I suddenly wasn’t very hungry.
My Friend and I Go for a Drive
When I was about ten years old and living in Sharon, my best friend’s father was quite rich, and had gotten a beautiful new Packard automobile.
My friend said, “Come on, I’ll take you for a ride in my dad’s new car”.
“Are you sure you know how to drive that thing? “, I asked.
“Of course, it’s easy. I’ve seen my Dad do it a million times,” assured my friend.
They cranked it up, jumped in, and started heading down the street. The car started going faster and faster. Pretty soon we came to the top of the hill, and started heading down it.
“Can’t you stop this thing?” I asked, getting panicky.
“No”, said my friend, “My legs are too short to reach the brake pedal!”
“We’d better jump!” I said, for we were now headed straight for a tree. We jumped back into the rumble seat, and there was a tremendous crash. The car was totaled, but we boys were unscathed.
When Pa and his father found out about it, we were both in a lot of trouble. They were both grounded for a month, or worse.
Fourth of July Fireworks
As in most small towns, there wasn’t always a lot to do in Sharon for excitement. To celebrate the Fourth of July one time, the kids- the usual gang of town delinquents- found a horse pulling a wagon full of hay, and set the hay on fire. The horse, terrified, took off. Fortunately, it had a lot of horse sense, and headed straight for Lake Massapoag, where it doused the flames itself.
Pa Runs Afoul of a Traffic Light, But Not of the Law
One day in the early 1920’s, Pa and I were riding down Blue Hill Avenue through Mattapan Square, on the way home to Sharon.
Pa, in then fashion of Dietz men, was driving a bit fast. While heading into the Square, he plowed into a traffic light pole, knocked it over, and kept going. “Pa!” I asked, “Aren’t you worried someone saw you? They’ll have you arrested!”
“You’re right!” said Pa. By way of a side street, he circled back, and parked a block away from the deceased traffic light, where a crowd was beginning to gather. He walked up to the policeman with me in tow and said, “Geez, now who in hell did this?”
“We don’t know,” replied the policeman. ”The guy was going so fast, no one could get his license number!” “That’s terrible!” said Pa, “That guy ought to be arrested!”
We walked back to the car and continued home, satisfied that we were in the clear.
Uncle Sam, the Communist
Pa, as a boy in Latvia, had a cousin Samuel Dietz, the son of his father’s brother. Samuel, a real yeshiva bocher, was well known as a Talmud scholar, who would spend all day arguing fine points of the law.
After a while, however, like many of the other Dietzes, he left the shetl, joining the Communist party.
Sam eventually came to America, and went Columbia Dental School, got married, and lived and practiced dentistry in South Norwalk, Connecticut. Dr. Dietz had five children, four girls and one boy. When our family used to drive to New York, which in the 1920’s took several days, we used to stay overnight at Sam’s house. Sam and his fellow radical friends would spend all night arguing over fine points of Communist dogma, with exactly the same enthusiasm as they used to argue Talmud back in the shetl.
Grampa and Frada
George had an older sister named Frada. In Latvia, Frada was quite proper, and her little brother Shlomo Yaacov (Pa) was a hellion.
Frada got married in Rezekne, to one of the richest young men in the village. They had a beautiful wedding coach prepared. Just before they were going to get in, Pa stuck the horse’s rump with a pin. The horse took off, and ran through the village without the wedding couple.
Later, in America, Frada used to visit her little brother, now in his fifties, at the house in Sharon. She still treated him like the younger brother, and never let him forget what he had done to her wedding. She used to spit when she walked by a church.
Every summer Frada would visit us, and we all loved her. She and her children lived in New York. When she came to Boston, she would also visit her doctor, the famous cardiologist Dr. Samuel Levine, who lived on Hobart Road in Chestnut Hill.
Dr. Bernard Lown, in his book, The Lost Art of Healing, credited Dr. Levine with teaching him everything he knows today about bedside manner and listening to patients.
In 1929, business was quite good for the Dietz Paint Company. For their twentieth wedding anniversary, Pa took Ma on a grand ‘honeymoon’ tour of all the places he had lived in Europe.
Us ‘children’ (Clara was now twenty years old, after all) were left on our own, in the new house in Newton on Bishopsgate Road that Pa had just had built (around the corner from the mansion of his first client, Mary Baker Eddy) while we were in a temporary apartment on Babcock Street. Harold Rudginsky, who was going then with my sister Toby, Aunt Kate and I drove Ma and Pa down to New York, and saw them off on their luxury Cunard liner.
Seeing George and Rosa off to visit Europe, 1929
They landed in England, and continued to all the places George had lived in Europe- Holland (Utrecht), Germany (Dusseldorf and Berlin) and Latvia.
In Berlin, while walking in the park, they saw a man excitedly speaking to a crowd. “Who is that?” Pa asked a man.
“That’s the man who will be our next Chancellor, Adolph Hitler,” he was told. Ma couldn’t stand Berlin.
In Russia, the Bolshevik officials wouldn’t give them back their passports for several days.
Finally, they reached his old home town, Rezekne, where Pa’s mother, Libbe Ada, was still living,
Libbe Ada Dietz, aged 90
as well as his younger brother Naftoli, and Naftoli’s children.
Naftoli teaching a student in Rezekne, 1929
Naftoli, the only one of Chaim and Libbe Ada’s children to stay home, was very religious, like his father. He had become the Rebbe of the Rezekne Jewish community, as well as working for the government as a flax inspector.
Naftoli was much loved by the community as a leader and teacher; however, he was very poor. George and Rosa gave Naftoli all their extra clothes and belongings, and all the money they could spare.
George, who had been quite anti-religious since running away from the shetl, was transformed by meeting his brother, and became quite religious- a baal teshuvah, as they are called nowadays. He convinced Naftoli to let him take a Sefer Torah back to Boston with him, and he gave his brother enough money to purchase a replacement.
When Pa came home to Newton, he set up the torah in an ark in his house, and davened before it every morning. In 1930 he helped to found Temple Emanuel in Newton.
Michael and Sarah Rubin had a daughter Rachel who married Naftoli Taitz(Dietz)(Rachel's brother was the grandfather of Eleanor Cohen in the USA). Naftoli and Rachel stayed in Rezekne and had five children. Rachel, Naftoli's wife, died before World War II.
Above: Naftoli and children at the unveiling of the funeral stone for Rachel Rubin Taitz
In the late 1930’s, when things began to look foreboding for the Jews of Europe, Pa wrote letters to his brother, pleading for him to come to America, even sending him the tickets and everything. I remember addressing the letters.
Return address for Naftoli
Postcard from Naftoli
Naftoli refused, however; his community, his Hasidim, depended on him. If their rebbe leaves, he wrote, they would lose all hope. Also, he somehow imagined that his job as a government flax inspector would help protect him.
Naftoli did, however, send one daughter, Toba, to America. She stayed with us for a while, but eventually she settled in New York City with her mother's brother. Pa left her money in his will.
Dr. Reswa Taitz Arschon(b. 1900) and her husband Joseph Arshon(b. 1890)
Another photo of Reswa
Yitzhak and Deborah Arson-1930(?)
Postcard from Reswa(Riva)
Yitzhak(b. 1928) and Deborah Arschon(b. 1923). in 1936
Naftoli, son Zalman Peretz, daughter Reyva Taitz Arshon, son-in -law Joseph Arschon, grandchildren Deborah and Yitzhak(Izzy) were all shot at a gully near Rezekne on the 15th of Tammuz(July 10th), 1941.
Memorial Stone in Rezekne at the gully where the Jews were shot
One daughter, Fannie(Fania Anatolieva Vorbelchik), moved to Saint Petersburg before the war. She married and had one daughter, Bronislava Vorbelchik, but her daughter never had children.
Leib and his family fled to Russia before the Nazis arrived. Leib was conscripted into the Russian army as a medic and died in combat in 1942. His widow and children eventually returned to Rezekhne.
Military record of Leib Taitz
His daughter Rahil Ceitlin, is namedin honor of his mother Rachel. Rahil is now 87 or 88 and still lives in Rezekhne.
Rahil and Mark Ceitlina
She is a widow and her two sons, Anatoly and Alexander, passed away in the 1990s.
Above: Alexander Ceitlins
Below: Anatoly(Tolya) and Rebecca Ceitlins
She has one grandchild, Mikhail, who now lives in Israel.
Family tree(detail):
Another Section of the family tree- Dietz family in America(partial)
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