We checked out the scene in Westhampton and decided that the ambiance and the cool sea breezes agreed with us. We liked the atmosphere at the Hampton Synagogue, too. It was Orthodox but not too rigorous—rather fun and festive, as befitting a shul in a resort town.
The first two summers that we were out there, we rented a very nice two-bedroom apartment in the center of town. By that time, we were committed to spending summer weekends in Westhampton Beach and decided to build a house with a swimming pool that would be large enough for our entire extended family.
Our surprise encounter with Jacob Herzog had already taken care of one big obstacle to self-sufficiency. The other problem was housing, which was in short supply during these postwar years in New York, before the big suburban building boom that followed....
The next day, [on my friend Herbie's referral], Tateh and I rang the bell at the entrance of a six-story apartment building on 52nd Street between 18th and 19th Avenues in Bensonhurst. A Jewish woman, Mrs. Kavanoff, came down and gestured for us to come in and look around.
Jacob Herzog was a landsman from Skala who had come to New York as a young man many years earlier. He was the son of Yosel Herzog, an elder tinsmith in Skala who had helped my father get started. Jacob had met Tateh on several occasions when he came to Skala on trips during the 1920s and ‘30s, visiting his family and bringing community funds on behalf of the New York Skala Benevolent Society.
We were stymied in our attempt to contact Izzie’s school friend, the Ukrainian mayor of Skala, Ivan Kowalyszen. Tateh knew him too, and believed in the mayor’s reputation as a decent and reasonable man. Each night when we cased the mayor’s residence, there was a German shepherd on a chain in the front yard. The smallest movement would set the animal to loud barking, and sometimes this would bring a police deputy forth from inside the house to investigate. Clearly the mayor’s house was under police guard, and that prevented us from attempting an approach.
One night in early December, we noticed that the dog was not chained up in front of the mayor’s house as usual. We decided to take a chance and I approached the door while Lonye lurked behind. It was the mayor’s wife who cracked the door opened was whispered, “Who is it?”
That was followed shortly by an order for the first 50 workers to be delivered to a collection point in Chortkov. From there, they would be sent to a camp called Borki-Wielke about 50 miles north near to Tarnopol. Ultimately just 28 Skala residents arrived at Borki-Wielke from that first call up.
Borki, as it was called, was one of many so-called arbeitslager (work camps) that the Germans established throughout the region. They were really prison camps where inmates were worked so hard on such poor rations that many did not survive for long.
By the time I knew my grandfather as a child in the 1930s, the years had worn on him. He walked with a limp and wore a patch to cover the eye he lost in an accident. Some of the boys in town were afraid of him and would run the other way if they saw him coming. But for me, he was my zayde and I think I must have sat by his side as he related to my mother the latest news of births, deaths and marriages.
For legal purposes, my father's parents never married and little Shulem and his two siblings—Rivka, who was older, and his younger brother Itsik—were officially considered to be illegitimate children.
I especially admired my Uncle Itsik, or Itshe, as we called him. He was young and strong and we would roughhouse together. Sometimes he would pass me a piece of hard candy on the sly, like my mother shouldn't know about it.
Owing to Schloyme’s important position in the community, the Engelbach family lived comfortably. My mother was born in 1900, the fifth of seven children from Schloyme's second marriage to my bubbe, Sima Lea Kronstein. Several of my mother’s siblings lived with their families in other apartments in the building.
My uncle Eliyahu Engelbach was known as the devout one, always studying Torah. Eliya and his wife Frima had a boy, Dov, who was born a year after me and was like my baby brother.