Marlyn Stein Writes

2008-07-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

I promised to send you some stories, so here are a couple that come to mind.

Velvet Hammer

As you know, we had our annual or bi-annual (or more) lobster parties when we were in Sutton. Well, we all contributed something toward the meal.

Harry made his "famous" drink, called the Velvet Hammer. He actually made it in a large tupperware container (nothing fancy in Sutton). This was a delicious and potent hard drink. Never knew what he put in it, but it was delicious. So, after the first batch he made, we all clamoured for more. But the deal was, only 1 container per party. And good thing too. We couldn't walk a straight line after.

So, Harry became "famous" for his Velvet Hammer.

Square Dancing

I think that square dancing with Harry was one of the best experiences we all ever had. Firstly, he was far too large for this activity. Secondly, he never learned the moves well. But he LOVED it. He loved the music and rhythm and danced his head off. He would give us all a turn to swing us around (the ladies) and we'd end up in the air. And when we decided to help him through his moves, we actually had to push him with force through a step / move. He loved it and we loved watching him love it. He was so funny.

Liquor Commission

Harry discovered (maybe Normie too) that the Quebec Liquor Commission had an outlet to purchase wine very inexpensively. What you had to do was bring your own bottles, wash them there and fill them from huge barrels of wine. (Which was bottled by the SAQ) for their stores. And the public was permitted to go there on weekends. So, naturally, we did!!

One Saturday, Normie and Harry decided to purchase one case of red and one case of white and that we'd split them both. So we did our thing........ washed the bottles , tasted the wine and filled the bottles. (We actually did quite a bit of tasting). Then they put the 2 cases in the trunk of Harry's car and they proceeded to divide the bottles , so that each case had 6 white and 6 red. As Harry was transferring, he had one bottle in each hand and they smashed together and broke, thereby filling the trunk with the contents of both bottles.

You can only imagine how we laughed!!

Chinese

Harry (and Thelma too) introduced us to Sheczuan (spelling???) Chinese food by taking us to Dick Chen. Dick had a house on Victoria St for this purpose. Harry always prearranged the meal and menu beforehand and surprised us all with this delight.

What made me think of this was that Dick Chen had a staff working there and of course, Harry spoke to him in Chinese. So when his staff heard this, they all came out and stared at him in shock. How could this very tall and large man who was caucasion, be speaking in their language.

And of course, whenever we all went out for Chinese food, Harry did his thing. And we always howled with laughter.

Hope this is good for now, Evan. My typing is tiring.

Luv, Marlyn

Grisha - Dad's Biography

2008-06-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

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November 8,2000

The Informant Report

The informant was Harry Savelson whose memory is nothing short of amazing. Keep in mind that this is a memoir, not a strict recounting of facts.

I was born in Harbin, China, on September 23, 1928, which happened to coincide with erev Yom Kippur in the Jewish calendar. My mother wanted to fast, but was persuaded not to by her ‘majong friends’.

My parents were Boris Moiesevitch Savelson and Fania Gregorivna Britanisky and I was named Gregory. My sister, Irene, who was eight years older, was born in Vladivostok,Russia.

My father had been married before, but he had no children.

He was born in Poland and went to China where he was doing business with the Chinese and Japanese. He was a great visionary, but a lousy businessman! He exported woolen fabrics, blankets, suits to be sold to Europeans living in the Far East.

My first recollection is one of panic-someone was trying to get into our apartment; my father was agitated and said in a loud voice ‘Bring me the gun!’ The person took off!

The next vignette is that of my governess and me walking, when a horse-drawn carriage stopped and I saw my father in it-he took me for a ride-I was about three years old then.

In Harbin we had a nanny or nyanya , Frosia, until my father died. She was a Russian woman who looked after me all day. I had a white rabbit fur coat. On a daily stroll with Frosia, I wanted to ride in a horse-driven carriage. There were none available. It had snowed the night before leaving dirty slush on the ground. In a tantrum, I threw myself onto the ground and rolled in the slush covering my coat with dirt. When I was dragged home , my mother really laced into me.

There was a courtyard with small attached buildings nearby that housed some small shops, a laundry maybe and some others I don’t recall what. One day there was a fire there. A few days after the fire, I went into the courtyard while my sister was supposed watching me... She was preoccupied with something and didn’t notice to where I had disappeared. When she realized that I was gone, she pannicked and called for help to look for me. No one could find me. I could hear them calling for me but remained hiding. At that period, my dad was well off. They thought I had been kidnapped. Eventually I made a sound loud enough for them to find me. When they came, they found me covered with soot. My sister bore the brunt of the punishment by being beaten by my mother, while I got off with a spanking.

One day, I was taken to my mother’s friend’s house across the street on the second floor. I saw a coffin being carried out my building. It was my father’s funeral. He had had cancer, but I didn’t know that he had died. I do not remember ‘how’ or ‘if’ it bothered me. My sister being older and adoring of my father was bereft, the more so because she believed my mother favoured me over her.

There are a few things that occurred in my early childhood that have not been forgotten. For example, my father took my mother, my sister, and me skating on the Sungary River which froze during the winter in Harbin. There were Chinese men who had sedan chairs for two of three people to sit in. The bottom of these chairs had a piece of wood, covered in metal, and they pushed you and the sled for some coppers which were worth a fraction of a cent for a thirty-minute drive; it was called “push-push.”or talkai-talkai in Russian They covered us with a large blanket, which was made from the hide of some animal, to keep us warm. There also were skaters, some speed skating, others figure skating. There were also hawkers selling hot tea or milk, which they kept warmly wrapped in blankets.

Another recollection was being invited to a seder at the home of Boris Danielovich Meerovitch, who was married to my cousin, Sopha Simonavna. She was responsible for me being born. My mother was not happy when she realized that she was pregnant. She wanted to have an abortion, a procedure that was not uncommon. However, Sopha went to great lengths to persuade her against it. So here I am. Boris Danielovitch was one of the best known and respected men in the community. He had built a huge hospital for the Harbin Jewish community and kept the top floor as his residence. At the seder, we were seated around the table, when suddenly the candelabra began to burn; Boris Danielovich ordered us not to panic, climbed onto a chair, calmly disconnected the wires, and then continued the seder!

Before my father died in 1932, my sister was sent to Tienjin(1931) to Catholic boarding school; she was in a convent run by nuns but we could see her almost every Sunday.

My mother had two married sisters living in Tienjin and they invited us to live there; one was well-to-do and had no children, so we moved in with her and her husband , Harry. I had a new friend who was living in the same apartment building. We used to play together & take our afternoon nap together. I was so spoiled by my Uncle Harry Witgob and Aunt Mary, that although I had been named ‘Gregory’, I became known as ‘Harry.’ He spoiled me with all kinds of toys and a red car that I used to pedal all over the apartment as well as in the yard. When Uncle Harry went to the World’s Fair in New York, he brought me a leather jacket- I was the only kid to have one!

When Uncle Harry was visiting the United States, he bought the hit record of that era-‘Ba Mir Bis Du Shein.’ My uncle had an RCA Victrola, upright, to be wound up by hand, which I was not allowed to use. But one day, my friend asked me to play a record and I did not refuse; we played that record and others. Then one day, by mistake, I put the record on a chair. We started to do something else. I forgot and sat down and!!!!!! I was punished but I don’t remember what the punishment was.

Mother and I moved into a room that was rented from the Tilis Family, on a street in back of Kiessling Café, in the German Concession. Between our house and the Kiessling was the office of our Dr. Perzl, who, as far as I remember, was our physician until about 1936.

Uncle Leon, my mother’s youngest brother, lived in Mukden, a city in northern China now called Shenyang. He was the representative buyer of horsehair manes and tails for Uncle Harry. Leon was hit by a Japanese army truck and his leg was broken. The Japanese did all they could to help him- first class at the hospital, nurses around the clock. They even paid for my mother’s ticket to Mukden to help him.

It was late 1936. We lived with the Kaliditsky family in a Japanese area of the city, across from a huge Shinto temple which had beautiful gardens and large grounds. It was there that I witnessed Sumo wrestling for the first time. You bought a ticket for the length of the meet, which usually lasted four to six days.

Next to that was a hotel in which my Uncle Leon got married a few years later. Uncle Leon had first met Auntie Lucy’s sister, Nina, in Tsingdao. Eventually he was introduced to Lucy. Before long he proposed and they married. I was the page who carried the bride’s train with a girl, Anya (Russian for Ann) who was the youngest daughter of the Krieger’s.

I was going to a school run by Seventh Day Adventists, which was far from our home, and I had to walk there and back alone. My teacher was Mrs. Larson and I was friends with her two sons.

My uncle Leon’s wife, Aunt Lucy, became a teacher in the Jewish Community Centre. This building was a five-minute walk from our house. It was used as a school during the week, a synagogue on Saturdays and holidays and festivities, such as, weddings. Sometimes it was a playhouse. At other times a lecture would be held there.

Most of the Jews in Mukden dealt in dry goods or fur pelts that they bought from the Chinese; they then sorted them, crated them, and shipped them to the United States. They also dealt in horsehair manes which, in those days, were used to stiffen the lapels of suit jackets. There was a big export of bristles mainly from pigs’ hairs. First they were cleaned. Then they were graded according to diameter, length, and colour and bundled, wrapped up, and put into wooden crates to be shipped to the United States and Europe to be used to make all sizes of brushes. Years later, after my uncle established his business in bristles, manes, and skins in Tienjin, and prior to my leaving China, he hired me to see that the workers in his factory were doing their jobs and not fooling around and not carrying out goods. I earned more than the Chinese overseer who had more experience than I. Because the atmosphere in the plant was extremely dusty, there was a ready supply of tea for the workers to clear their throats.

I also remember that during the winter, while on my way to school, I saw frozen aborted fetuses and bodies of girl babies put out to freeze to death in the gutters.

On a lighter note, I used to go skating in the winter. The rink was a long walk from my house. At the rink there was a building where we could warm ourselves by a stove. One day I had the bright idea to put my socks and gloves on the side of the stove. They burned to a crisp and I had to walk home sockless and without gloves.

I remember the day that I was listening to the radio, when I heard that King George V had died. I started to cry, and when my mother asked me why I was crying, I told her that he was a very good king and was very helpful to the Jewish people.

Uncle Leon and Aunt Lucy rented an apartment on Ioda Machi Hachi Bachi St and my mother got a room. The Japanese newspaper was published on a lower floor in the same building. My sister still lived in Tienjin, and came to Mukden only for the summer holidays. In 1937 my aunt and uncle were blessed with a child, who was named Rose. Their son, Mark, was born three years later.

The Tomchins had a haberdashery. The Lameens had a pharmacy. They had two sons, the younger one, Sanka, being closer to me in age. They lived away from us near a children’s mini-golf course.

They moved to Tienjin two or three years later and so did we, where we rented an apartment on Council Road. I got acquainted with some kids that lived in this complex made up of two buildings facing each other. Some were older, some were younger. We all played together often.

I was enrolled in the Tienjin Jewish School, which was on Victoria St. next the Leopold building which was the tallest building at that time. Adjacent to the Jewish school was a building where there were meeting rooms and exercise rooms for the youth movement, Betar. I made a lot of friends while attending classes at the Tienjin Jewish School. To name a few: Vova Dichne, his cousin Angelica, David Tunick, Vadia Gurevich, his brother, Dania, Nemka Kantzpolsky, his cousin Grishka, whose arm I broke in a fight in the old school in the German concession.

BETAR

Betar was a Jewish scouting and sporting club, founded by Joseph Trumpeldor, a founder of the new settlement, Tel-hai, in Palestine. We got a uniform and staves, had military drill, and learned about Palestine. We were in training to be soldiers, or guerillas, building our bodies for any kind of combat. We were taken to the countryside with rough terrain, put up tents, and stayed there two or three days. We used to run for three to five miles carrying metal water bottles that we could only drink from when given the order. We also had backpacks containing our food and clothing. The scouting group met at the Jewish club in two different age groups; the younger group on Sunday morning and the older group, with my sister, Irene, on Sunday evening. We were encouraged to participate in track and field, boxing, and other sports. Young adults and the youth met to listen to speakers who spoke about the Jews in Palestine and their struggle. A few members of our community who went to Palestine kept in touch with Betar members in order to encourage us.

Dumplings

Vove and myself, we were like brothers. Whenever we had some money, once or twice a week, we used to go to a small dumpling shop on Tacu Road that we used to call ‘vomit’ because we used to eat dumplings until we felt sick. We would wash them down with tea.

Concessions

The major cities in China had parcels of land, called concessions that were usurped by the European governments. The countries that had them were England, France, Italy, Russia, and Germany. Prior to 1941, the United States had a garrison barracks, not a concession. These areas were totally under the control of the aforementioned countries; this included municipal services, police, road works, courts, jails, taxation, permits, et al. Most of my friends and classmates lived in the English Concession, as did we, and school was in the French Concession.

St. Louis School

I was expelled from the Tienjin Jewish School because I had thrown a lot of snowballs at the kindergarten teacher who was my sister’s friend. My mother then enrolled me into the Meritz Brothers’ School that went under the name, St. Louis College. She enlisted me as a boarder. It meant that I lived there, and, if my studies and/or behavior were good, I was permitted to go home on Saturday and Sunday; if not good, only on Sunday.

Street Vendors

Every day at recess a Russian street vendor would bring hot piroshki and sweet potatoes outside the gate of the school. He carried a pole across his shoulder. At the ends of the pole his goods hung wrapped in blankets to keep them warm. We used to pass money through the fence and he would toss the piroshki or sweet potato over to whoever bought it. They were especially good on cold winter days.

My older cousins, the Rogalsky boys, sons of my mother’s sister, Luba, had been there before me. The Meritz Brothers were not only running the school and the sports, but were also trying to convert the non-Catholics! I was in this school for four years. It was hard to take. If you behaved and did your work, you were allowed to go home for the whole week-end. This was not always available to me as my behavior was not the best. I did not feel that it had to be so strict. The only thing that I loved was gardening. One of the brothers, Br. Claude, taught me to grow vegetables and flowers and how to care for them. We had a lot of different sports; cricket, handball, football (the English game), soccer, skating, and hockey.

I was not a happy student. My first teacher was Brother Otto, who was German and whom I did not like. The next year I had Brother Alouisias, who was Irish. He was a wonderful teacher and a good sportsman. He participated together with his class giving them lots of tips on how to dribble or pass the ball, and how to use the head to pass the ball to a player on your team who was closer to the opposing team so that you could score a goal. He also taught us cricket and handball. He was a friendly teacher and liked by all the boys.

I had a friend in the class, named Rene. He was French. He was a day student who did not live at the school as I did because he lived only half a block away. He had a deformed leg due to some accident. One leg was shorter than the other and not quite straight. However, he was very mobile. We were friends and I visited his house often to play with him. He told me about whore houses and showed me where they were! I already knew about this because some of my friends and I were in a movie theatre that had girls selling tea. During the movie they would sit with you and make out for a tip. The theatre was in the old synagogue.

Eventually, a year or two before my bar mitzvah, I was re-instated in Jewish school through my Aunt Lucy’s connections. I renewed my friendship with my old friends and made new ones.

Empire Theater

The Empire Theater was ten minutes from my house. It ran recent American films. We usually went to the movies on the weekend. One winter afternoon, as we left the theater, I felt a cold draft on my backside where my pocket was. When I put my hand there, instead of my wallet, I felt my naked skin. A very skilled young thief had cut my trousers around my pocket and made off with it together with my wallet. It still amazes me that I felt nothing.

Bedahe Summers

Every summer holiday after we moved to Tienjin, my mother, sister, and I went to the beach in Bedahe on the Bohai Gulf that extends from the Yellow Sea. We went there by train, a ride that today takes an hour and a half. We stayed, at first, with Auntie Mary and Uncle Harry. After they divorced, we had a room with Uncle Leon and Auntie Lucy. There were no cars permitted in Bedahe. Transportation was by horse, donkey for the children, or rickshaw. The rickshaws ran on a sand-covered asphalt pavement. The donkeys went along a path bordered by a low, meticulously kept hedge.

Rowing

When I was in my teens, Uncle Leon belonged to the British Country Club. Through him I was able to use the facilities where I was introduced to rowing. None of my usual friends joined me in this sport. However, I met a very nice guy, Rumjun, with whom I used to go rowing every morning before going to school. At dawn we biked to the Club on Racecourse Road (Machong Do, even today). It had an Olympic-size rowing basin as well as an Olympic-size indoor pool. We rowed, swam, and showered.
Then we biked to the dumpling shop for breakfast before going to school.

Kunst Jewish Club

The club was less than a five-minute walk from Uncle Leon’s house on Racecourse Road. The men and women played cards and mah jong. The members used to put on plays.
They used to hold dances and when I was older and loved doing the jitterbug, I was threatened to be thrown out of the club because the dance was thought to be unacceptable.

Bar Mitzvah

My bar mitzvah took place in September 1941 just before the Japanese entered the war. Mr. Greenfield, my Hebrew teacher, taught me my bar mitzvah. Auntie Mary made the party in her apartment on Victoria Road.

Japanese Occupation

One weekend, in 1941, we were coming back from school in the French Concession, when we were stopped at the barricades by the Japanese army guards and asked for our I.D. This was an unusual happening. The Germans had been pressing the Japanese to put the Jews from Europe into camps, but the Japanese did not comply. Some Jews were permitted to have businesses and were issued day passes that were controlled by the Japanese.

We were living in the British Concession. My school, St. Louis College, was in the French Concession. In order to pass through, the schoolchildren showed their ‘tokens of achievement’ for the current school session as proof that they were attending the school. As time wore on, the Japanese soldiers became less thorough in their inspection of identification papers held by Europeans. However, they were more stringent with the Chinese.

Shanghai

In 1948 I left Tienjin by train with some of my friends bound for Shanghai to be trained by Betar to fight for Israel. We were trained by young men who had been in Palestine and received training from the Irgun. We were given room and board in the Shanghai Jewish Community Club. My cousin, Sopha Savelson Meerovitch, was living there with her family. She was by then a widow living with her stepson, Eugene Meerovitch and his niece, Agnes. I fell in love with Agnes and did not want to leave her there. I moved into the Meerovitch home. The trained young men eventually left Shanghai by plane to Israel for more training by Irgun. I remained to depart by boat. In the meanwhile, my sister and her husband, Paul Hein, had come from Tienjin with their two girls, Louise, aged three, and Barbara, aged six months. They joined me and the Meerovitches, including Agnes’ mother, Nina, on the boat to Israel.

We left Shanghai on December 24, 1948 on the Woster Victory, a boat supplied by UNRA. It was originally a troop ship. There was no privacy of any kind. All the passengers were together, men, women, and children. We sailed to Cape Town, South Africa, where the ship docked for supplies. We were not permitted to get off. The Jews of Cape Town came to the pier and gave us supplies of food, money, “earrings off their ears”, and clothing. From there we sailed to Senegal to be refueled . Our next stop was Marseilles where we changed ships. While in Marseilles I jumped ship because Irene needed powdered milk for Barbie. I somehow got to a pharmacist and in my broken French explained my plight. He told me that I needed ration coupons that I could get a few blocks away. I took a taxi, got the rations, returned for the milk and got back to the ship just as it was pulling out of the dock. My friends threw me a rope that I hastily tied around the parcel of milk. It was pulled up. They threw the rope back to me and I easily pulled myself up, putting into practice the training I had received in China. My reward for this daring act was to be put in the brig for abandoning ship without permission.

The Negba

Before long, the Negba was renamed by us ‘Nebach.’ Seven or eight hundred men, women, and children were packed into a former troop ship that, after the war, was destined to go from France to Israel. We stopped in Naples, Italy. We were not allowed to get off the ship but I and some of my friends jumped ship in order to see the sights. We stayed close to the port as none of us spoke any Italian. We walked around but were unable to talk to the few people in the area. We tried a little English and French but it was of no use. They were as tongue-tied as we. Somehow we explained to them that we were going to Israel from China.

Ha’eretz

After two months of cramped quarters on board ship we finally arrived in Haifa. Immediately we were taken to an army camp, Beit Lith, near Natanya. We were issued uniforms and resumed our training that had initiated in China and continued even while we were on the boat.

Harry dictated most of the above to Ruth Goldsmith. She started to compile the notes she had taken until she could no longer do it because of her eyesight. At that point I took over the project. Harry is no longer able to remember or tell the details of his four years in Israel and the early years in Canada. I have tried to the best of my ability to continue his story.

Harry eventually made it to quartermaster sergeant in the Israeli Army. He was in charge of supplies for the unit he was in. He learned to drive a truck by instinct mostly. One story was how he traifed the kitchen by slaughtering a goat without a shochet and having it prepared. He was punished for it. At the same time Agnes was working for the Mixed Armistice Commission. Harry and Agnes were married in Jerusalem in June 1951. In spite of the fact that life was very hard in Israel, they had good times. They made friends with whom they played cards, went dancing, etc. They used to play poker for stakes as high as a month’s salary.One couple, Sara and Albert Hazan, eventually came to Montreal for a few years in the 70’s where the friendship was renewed.
Irene, Paul, Barbie and Loulie took up residence in Hadera. Fania lived in Natanya in the same house as the Hmelnitzskys; Ronia, Jacob, and Mika. Harry, Agnes, Gene, Nina,and Sopha were living in Jerusalem not far from the YMCA. Harry was away much of the time. Eventually he left the army believing that as a member of the wrong party, he would get no where. He drove a truck for a time.

Eventually Nina led the way to Montreal in 1953. They first lived on Victoria near Cote St. Catherine. Harry tried a couple of jobs. One was working a punch press. Unfortunately he lost the tip of his thumb while working the machine. He worked at a service station on Decarie Blvd near Isabella before the Decarie Expressway was built. With a partner, he opened a garage downtown on St. Jacques near Mountain St. It didn’t last. He then started to drive taxi. After a while he worked at Northend Garage on Bernard in Outremont. At the same time Agnes was working for Pepsi.

In 1955 Robert Daniel Savelson was born. Seven years later Michael Richard Savelson was born. During these years they bought a few taxi permits and sold a couple as well. When we met Harry had three. They moved their residence several times, Girouard, Coolbrook, and eventually King Edward. While living on King Edward, they became very friendly with the Papenburg and Vandervaart families. Also Gene and Carlota became neighbours. Their twin daughters, Sandra and Karen, were born three weeks after Michael while they were living on King Edward. Over the years Agnes had suffered from severe depression causing her to be hospitalized for a time. Then, in the sixties, she discovered that she had breast cancer. She underwent treatments and surgery to no avail. Even while she was so ill, Agnes, or Geulah, as she was called, insisted that that they buy a house in Chomedey, Laval, where they moved in the fall of 1968. In June 1969 she succumbed to the disease leaving behind a devastated family.

Harry’s friends, Rookie and Alex Gurevitch, had been friendly with Bernice and Philip Shaposnick , my brother, for a few years. They introduced me to Harry in the autumn of 1969. Harry in turn introduced me to his boys. I had been widowed the previous year and had no children. On July 2nd 1970 we were married. On June 22nd, 1971 Evan Jeffrey Savelson was born. A couple of years later, Harry went into a junior partnership in a body shop at Canada Tire where he worked for twenty-two years until 1995. On June 5th 1974 Aviva Louise Savelson was born. In the early seventies we purchased two more taxi permits. He ran the taxis concurrently with his work until they were sold in 1997.

In October 1991, his dentist discovered a white spot on the side of his tongue. The biopsy determined that it was malignant. The tumour was classified as T1 being the most treatable type. Dr. Marty Black was his very capable surgeon.

Around this time it became noticeable that his memory was starting to fail him. After being followed by the Memory Clinic for five years, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in December 2002. In November 2005 he was admitted to the long term care facility at Mount Sinai Hospital in Cote St. Luc.

Until Alzheimer’s Disease destroyed his brain, Harry lived a very good life. He loved music and still does. When I met him he had a collection of LP’s that covered a wide range of music. He could listen to Mme Butterfly on a Sunday afternoon, getting goose-pimples during some of the duets. There was blues, jazz, dance, Beethoven, Horowitz, Ima Sumac, Herb Albert, Paul Robeson, Frank Sinatra, The Andrew Sisters, The Ink Spots, Al Hirt, Louis Armstrong, to name a few.

vospominaniya

Eulogy

Marlyn Stein Writes

Grisha - Dad's Biography

Please share a memory

Collecting the pearls of memories of Harry Savelson