CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Yom Kippur 1920
There are some stories in life that are more compelling than fiction. They are the tales of seemingly ordinary men who, against all odds, accomplish extraordinary feats. It is with great wonderment that the triumph of one such man, Barney Stumacher, the first cousin of Molly Cutler’s husband, Itzie Stumacher, is now recounted.
In mid-August 1920, twenty-eight-year-old veteran of World War I Barney Stumacher left his home in New York City and set out on an almost impossible mission to rescue his parents and three of his five sisters, who were living in the city of Belaya Tserkov, which was then in Ukraine.
The gutsy young cloaks salesmanI had made this cross-Atlantic journey once before, in the opposite direction. Almost a decade earlier, at the beginning of 1911, the dark reddish-haired teenage adventurer bid farewell to his family in Belaya Tserkov and sailed alone from Liverpool to New York. With only twenty-five dollars in his pocket, Barney boarded the SS Franconia under his Jewish name, Benzion Stomachin and prepared himself to begin a new life in America.II
The handsome bachelor’s remarkable sojourn unfolded almost ten years later, in the summer of 1920, when Barney and his sisters Freada and Pauline finally received word from their father, Nechame Stumacher,III who smuggled a note out to them from Belaya Tserkov. The letter was delivered to the Henry Street home where Barney was living with his sister and brother-in-law, Freada and David Picheny, and their four children. Due to the war, the siblings had not heard any news of their family in Europe since 1914. Until the arrival of this long-awaited letter, they had no idea whether their loved ones in Russia had survived.
Barney read the undated letter aloud to his two sisters and brother-in-law:IV
Dear Son!
Thank God, we are well now. God keep us in the future from the terrible murderers. What shall I write you, dear son? It is five years that we haven’t heard from you. Now, as God has sent us an American, and we have an opportunity to write you a letter, as he promised to deliver the letter to you, I write you to have pity on us and to come and save us from these murderers, as we cannot be here. We have had many pogroms here; they robbed us in such a way, that we were left without any clothes on our backs. We haven’t enough money to carry us through each day, and my son-in-law Nissel, when he had the store, used to help us. Now, everything was taken from him too and the store was burned. They, themselves are starving; he has two children and hasn’t enough bread for them. The misfortunes through which we have lived are beyond my ability to write. Many people were killed, and our daughter, Basse,V had married, but her husband was murdered. Now she is left with a child, and has no means with which to keep it. They are starving. We beg you, dear son, have pity on us; talk this over with David, Freide, and Pesse and all our friends, and come and save us. We cannot live here any longer. We are not sure from hour to hour with our lives, for every now and then a gang appears and they kill and plunder. Many of our friends were killed. I cannot write any more. The children will add whatever they wish. Mother and the children send their greetings. Do not forget us. Be well and happy.
From your faithful parents who hope to see you,
Nechame Stumacher
Dear Brother Benny and Dear Sister and Brother-in-law, Father writes you of everything. To live through another time such as we have is beyond our strength. The only hope is in you, and if you will not do anything for us, we will be entirely wiped out. We are without clothes or food and the rest, you can imagine yourselves.
From your sister, Dvoira,
P.S. Nissel and the children send their greetings.
After reading the urgent pleas from his father and sister, Barney instantly knew what he had to do. Years later, he recalled his gut reaction to his father’s letter. “I came back from the First World War without a scratch, and I realized that I had a job to do. I never did anything for my parents since I was in this country, and realized that I had to go and help them. My sisters agreed with me.”VI
Barney, now an American citizen, desperately set out to obtain a passport from Washington, DC, that would permit him to travel to Warsaw, Poland, where he hoped to make arrangements to bring his family from Belaya Tserkov. Conditions in Ukraine made direct entry into the country an impossible task.
On July 23, 1920, Barney Stumacher, while sitting at a desk in his new residence in Bronx, New York, drafted the following letter to Bainbridge Colby, who served as the third secretary of state under President Woodrow Wilson:
Sir:
I am attaching, hereto, formal application for passport to go to Poland, in order to bring to this country, my family consisting of my father, 55 years of age, my mother, 50 years of age, my three sisters and my brother-in-law. I wish to inform you that I am a veteran of the United States Army, having served about one year during the recent war. My record while in the army is without flaw; after I had been in the army for several months I was promoted to First Class Private, and my service was satisfactory in every way. The case in connection with my application is as follows:
I had not heard from my people for about six years. In spite of my repeated attempts, I could not reach my people in any way, either to help them or to get into communication with them. I had given up hope of ever hearing from them again, when several weeks ago, I received the enclosed letter from them, which was brought to me by an American citizen who had been in the city where my parents live. As you can readily see by the translation, they have lost everything they had and are in extreme want, and yet can find no way out of the situation. They implore me to come to them in order to bring them to the United States. I, being the only son, it is quite natural that they should appeal to me, as they have always looked to me for help and advice. I have two sisters in the United States, also American citizens, and it was decided among us, that I take the trip and bring our people here. Realizing that conditions at the present time are such that it will be impossible for me to go to the city of Belaya Tserkov, where my people are, I have, therefore, decided to go to Warsaw and from there make arrangements to have my people meet me there and bring them back to the United States with me.VII I also know that conditions in Poland at the present time are not of the best, and that the Department of State uses a great deal of discretion in granting passports to Poland, but I am ready to stand all hardships so as I may alleviate the condition of my parents and other members of my family. Knowing of the state of affairs in Poland at the present time, I would not for a moment think of taking this trip, if the reason for my journey were not such an urgent one.
I, therefore, request that a passport be granted me in order that I might proceed to Warsaw, Poland, at once, and carry out my duty to my parents and other members of my family. My sisters in this country are also most anxious that this passport be granted me, as we are all greatly upset over the unhappy plight in which our people now are.
Respectfully Yours,
Barney Stumacher
Despite a flurry of letters that were collected from prestigious business owners in New York City in support of Barney’s application,VIII dire conditions stemming from the ongoing Polish-Russo War (February 1919–March 1921) forced the honorable secretary of state to politely decline Barney’s request for a passport to Poland. On July 31, 1920, Barney responded to the denial:
Sir:- In re: PC 7-20-14522
Replying to your letter of July 28th, in connection with application for passport filed by me on July 23rd, I wish to say that if your decision at present is final in connection with granting me a passport to Poland, that I shall be willing to have this passport made out for the British Isles, France, Switzerland, Czecho-Slovakia and [name of country crossed out, possibly Bessarabia]. This is with the understanding that if conditions in Poland change, either before I have started upon my journey or after, that my passport be amended to read Poland.IX As I have made all arrangements to start at an early date, I would request that you kindly give this matter your further consideration, and send me the passport as outlined above without delay.
I am returning the $9.00 fee which you returned to me, and trust that you will give this matter your early consideration and grant me a passport without delay, so that I may start upon my journey at once.
Thanking you very kindly for your prompt action in this matter, I beg to remain,
Very truly yours,
Barney Stumacher
On August 4, 1920, the Department of State finally issued Barney Stumacher a passport to travel to the above-mentioned destinations, as well as to “other necessary countries” en route to assist his parents. Despite all his efforts, though, Barney still didn’t know how to get into Ukraine.
Sixteen days later, on August 20, the spirited young war veteran boarded a ship that would sail from New York to Paris, where he met another American along the way who befriended him and showed him a map of Europe. His new acquaintance wisely advised him to take a train from Paris to Romania, pointing out that the nearest entrance into Ukraine was through Bessarabia.
Once in Bucharest, Romania, Barney arranged to be taken by horse and carriage to the city of Khotin. On a Sunday morning, he was met at the carriage by an American group whom he referred to as “delegates,” who asked why he was in Bessarabia. When Barney confided in them his plans of traveling to Belaya Tserkov in order to save his family, they laughed and said that he could not possibly enter the country without official permission.
“Look, we’ve been waiting here for more than two months and we didn’t get into Ukraine. You can wait here with us until we all get permission,” one of the delegates told him.
Barney agreed and even paid for his hotel room one week in advance so that it would appear to the delegates that he intended to wait with them in Khotin. In reality, he didn’t want to attract any attention to his real plan. When everyone in the hotel had retired to their rooms at ten o’clock that Sunday evening, they asked him why he wasn’t going upstairs to sleep. Barney answered that he couldn’t sleep and wanted to sit around for a while.
Barney Stumacher was anxious to leave Khotin that evening; he knew if he stayed any longer, he’d be lingering at the hotel forever. He made arrangements to be led by a young guide who was experienced in crossing the dangerous body of water that separated the two countries. While literally thousands of persecuted Jews were desperately trying to cross over the Dniester River in order to flee Ukraine, Barney was the only one trying to get in.
The two men met at midnight at an embankment by the river. For two and a half hours, a dog barked relentlessly at Barney while he sat waiting impatiently for the shadowy figure to return after paying off soldiers who were guarding the Romanian side of the river. They boarded a rowboat with an old-fashioned rounded bottom. As the men rowed across the Dniester, water poured into the boat, and their clothing and shoes became soaked. On the other side, they arrived at an open field with no houses in view.
The guide, who was beginning to panic, whispered to Barney, “Walk slowly and pray that nobody meets us, or we’ll be shot.” As they rested briefly on a pile of hay, the guide confided in Barney that life was both meaningless and miserable for him and his parents.
Barney tried to boost the spirits of the young guide. “Look, we are both young,” he reassured him, “and we have a lot of years ahead of us; things will get better.”
The two men resumed walking and found themselves in a little village. Once they reached a house, the guide knocked on a window with a closed shade. An old man answered, “Who is it?”
“Pop, it’s me—open the window,” the young man whispered.
“I told you not to come here—they’re looking for you,” the old man responded. “They are going to kill you. I told you not to come here!”
“Pop, just open the window!”
The window opened, and Barney, who was tall and lanky, dove through it, followed by his young friend. The old man quickly closed the window after them and pulled down the shade. It wasn’t believed to be safe in the city, so the men kept a low profile for the next few days and stayed inside the house until they could figure out a plan. The guide had a younger sister who was concerned about protecting her dowry, which was comprised of Old Russian rubles. She decided it would be prudent to hide them in the floorboards of her sister’s house in the nearby city of Kamenetz-Podolsk. It was agreed that she would be the one to accompany Barney into the town.
Barney took a good look at his new female guide and suspected that the next leg of his journey would not go as smoothly as he had hoped. The young woman suffered from a disfiguring medical condition called kyphosis, an abnormal forward bending of the spine, causing a bowing of the back: his new companion was a hunchback and therefore was automatically conspicuous.
Trouble in Kamenetz-Podolsk
Barney gave the young woman a lift onto a peasant’s wagon, where they sat in the hay with a few others who were also heading into the town. Barney was smoking, and one of the men sitting on the wagon asked him for a cigarette. When Barney obliged and handed him one, the man realized that it was a Romanian cigarette, one which had been bought in Czernowitz; he became suspicious. Meanwhile, the group heard rumors from passersby that soldiers were confiscating horses in Kamenetz-Podolsk. The peasant driver became nervous and insisted that everyone get off his wagon so that he could turn back to the village. As Barney and the female hunchback walked toward Kamenetz-Podolsk, he tried to convince her that if they were stopped, she should claim not to know him.
“If anything should happen, say that you never met me,” he said to her. “Save yourself; I can take care of myself.”
Just as Barney had suspected, the man who had asked for a cigarette pointed two Communist soldiers in his direction, and they promptly asked to see his papers. The hunchback ignored Barney’s advice and tried to intervene on his behalf by telling the soldiers that she was his cousin, so they took her by gunpoint, too. The soldiers led the two travelers to a room inside a small wooden structure on the side of the road and held a revolver to Barney’s head, ordering him to empty his pockets. They confiscated everything that he had carried into Ukraine: about seventy-five American dollars, a few cans of sardines, some Romanian cigarettes, and a fountain pen. They then wanted to physically search the girl, but Barney objected.
“It’s not a nice thing for men to search a woman,” he protested.
The men, still holding a gun to Barney’s head, brought in a woman to frisk her. The hunchback’s dowry money was quickly discovered strapped to her deformed back. The two were released unharmed, but the girl was crying. “That’s all of the money that I had in the world for my dowry,” she cried. “Now I’ll never get married.”
Barney, feeling sorry for her, gave her a letter to give to her brother that would ensure that her money would be replaced by one of his contacts when her brother returned to Romania. In Romania, Russian rubles from the old regime could be bought very cheaply, and Barney knew where to get them. At this point, she parted ways with Barney and left for her sister’s house.X Now free, broke, and alone, Barney had nearly two hundred miles to cover before reaching his destination of Belaya Tserkov. As he was finally about to enter the city of Kamenetz-Podolsk on foot, he encountered two more bandits, who pointed a gun at him. Barney laughed when they demanded that he remove his shoes, but he soon realized that the bandits were not joking and took them off. Now shoeless and penniless, Barney walked into Kamenetz-Podolsk in his stocking feet, where he soon found a group of Jewish men who directed him to the doors of the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The JDC helped local Jewish communities in Europe establish relief programs in Ukraine following the Revolution. They assisted Barney by finding him an old pair of Russian boots. Years later, Barney remarked that the boots were so large that he felt like he was “walking on mountains” with them, but he was very grateful to have something covering his feet.
While he was a guest of a Jewish family in Kamenetz-Podolsk, Barney overheard the disturbing news that “the soldiers are catching girls here.” At first, he misunderstood the locals’ concerns. “My God, that’s wonderful that they catch girls here,” Barney remarked, laughingly. “In America, it’s the girls who have to catch the boys!”
He was soon set straight as to the meaning of “catching girls.” Communist soldiers were grabbing innocent girls off the streets of Kamenetz-Podolsk and taking them back to their barracks to scrub their floors and wash their clothes.
The Polish army was advancing rapidly and planned to occupy Kamenetz–Podolsk. Barney’s hosts advised him that he should immediately take a train to Belaya Tserkov and offered to accompany him to the station. When they arrived, the very last train was about to leave the city. It was a large freight train bursting with men, women, children, and soldiers. Barney was about to give up hope of getting on the packed train when, through the open doors, an unexpected hand extended outward and pulled Barney inside.
For two hours, the train traveled slowly at a pace of about fifteen miles per hour. Barney was gazing out of a window when, to his amazement, he saw the Polish army advancing on horses toward the train. Suddenly, soldiers began shooting at the train, but their horses could not keep up with the speed of the locomotive. Finally, the damage from the gunshots took its toll: the train derailed, crashed, and then overturned into an embankment. Barney and the young man who had helped him onto the train fell through the doors and rolled down a ditch to safety. While at the bottom of the embankment, they could see smoke rising from the engine of the train that soon burst into flames; many passengers either died or were injured.
The train wreck left a trail of disaster in its wake: children screamed for their mothers and the injured cried for help. Barney and his newest acquaintance spent the next hour and a half pulling hurt passengers to safety. After a while, the two men decided that it would be wise to leave before authorities happened upon the scene. Barney’s mysterious new friend spoke Russian fluently and told Barney to come with him; he knew how to get out of the area.
From a distance, they spotted a farmhouse and a lone peasant who was plowing his land with an old horse. Barney’s latest ally unexpectedly pulled out a revolver and threatened the peasant that if he did not give up two of his horses, he would be forced to kill him. The farmer cried to him, “Please, I’ve only got a few plow horses and I work alone in the fields.”
Barney’s companion aimed his weapon at the peasant. “We’ve got to have two horses, or you know what’s going to happen to you; I’m going to kill you!”
The farmer, in tears, was left with no choice but to comply with the man’s wishes; he brought over two horses without saddles. Barney wasn’t a horseman, but out of desperation, he climbed onto the horse bareback, as did his companion. They rode for about an hour until Barney’s body ached so badly that he could no longer continue; instead, he opted to part ways with his new friend and headed toward the train station in Miringchuk.XI
Tired, filthy, and starving, Barney arrived at the crowded train station that evening and found himself a small vacant spot on the floor among many others who were sleeping. He hoped that he would be able to travel the rest of the journey north to Belaya Tserkov by train. Barney dozed off while waiting for a train to arrive but was brutally awakened minutes later when a soldier with hard leather boots kicked him. “Get up, comrade,” the soldier barked in Russian.
Pressing a revolver to his temple, two Communist soldiers demanded to see his papers. But the only document that Barney could produce was his American passport. The soldiers promptly accused him of being an American spy and brought him by gunpoint to see their superiors at the police station.
Barney was paraded before a group of soldiers who were sitting around a table at the station house. The soldiers spoke among themselves in Russian while passing around the American passport. One soldier said, “Yes, he’s a spy; the only thing to do is to shoot him.” Barney had forgotten much of his Russian, but he remembered enough to understand that his life was hanging in the balance.
Barney could hear gunshots outside the station house and became very nervous. He recalled:
I woke up [to the severity of the situation]… I started crying, as big as I was. I couldn’t explain myself well in Russian so I asked if there was a soldier among them who could speak Yiddish. One man sitting at the table said, “Yes, I can understand Jewish; what is it that you want to tell us?”
Barney tried his best to explain in broken Yiddish that he was not a spy; he had not seen his family in many years and was simply trying to get to Belaya Tserkov to see them.
“When was the last time you were in Belaya Tserkov?” the Jewish soldier asked.
“1910,” Barney responded.
“When you left Russia back in 1910, do you remember anybody living in your city of Belaya Tserkov?” he asked Barney.
Barney named some of the more prominent figures that he could recall from his childhood in Belaya Tserkov. The soldier turned to the others and said, “No, I don’t believe that he is a spy, because the people that he mentioned are people that I knew; they were in that city. So he’s not a spy, and there’s no use in killing him. We should send him to the prison and let them keep him there until we find out who he is.”
The soldiers agreed to send Barney to the prison instead of taking him outside and shooting him on the spot.
They called in another soldier, a commissar, to escort Barney to the prison.
Although Barney was a tall young man, this soldier was at least two heads taller than he was.
“He was an army by himself,” Barney recalled years later. “He wore a rifle on his back, a revolver on one side, and a sword on the other side. He had bullets all over him and wore a tall hat. He told me to come with him.”
The two men walked through the darkness for quite some time until they reached a house, where the soldier took Barney into a back room. “Sit down, comrade,” he said to Barney in Russian. “Are you hungry?”
There was a loaf of black bread sitting on the windowsill. The commissar broke it across his foot and offered a quarter of the loaf and a drink of water to a starving Barney. Although Barney had enjoyed many fine meals in America, this piece of black bread mixed with straw was the most appreciated meal of his life.
“You know, I am a Jew, too,” the soldier said in a conspiratorial tone. “You know that I know what you are planning to do; you are going to take your people out of Belaya Tserkov and bring them to America.”
Barney remained silent, fearful that the soldier was setting a trap for him, and that he would possibly find himself charged with more crimes.
“What could you give me if I was to put you on a train and hand you a paper that would ensure that nobody bothers you, so that you could get to your hometown to see your people?” the soldier pressed.
Barney began answering his captor in broken Russian. “What do you want? I don’t have anything; they took all my money in Kamenetz-Podolsk. All I can give to you is the coat that I’m wearing.”
“I don’t want your coat; I want a promise from you.”
“What promise do you want?”
“I want a promise that on your way back, when you pass through here, that you take me and my young daughter with you to America. I come from Grunzia, and my people were Jewish and they killed them; we are the only ones left from our entire family. If you promise me this, I will help you.”
“Commissar, I can promise you this only if I’m able to go through; there is a lot of fighting here. I hear that there is a lot of trouble with the Poles, the Denikins, Petliura’s gang, and all the other bands. So if there is any possibility, then I give you my word of honor that I’ll take you both along with me.”
That evening, when Barney laid down and tried to rest, he wondered what was in store for him the next morning. The situation was beyond his control now, he thought to himself as he drifted off to sleep. Whatever would be, would be.
At five thirty the following morning, the commissar was true to his word. He put Barney on a train with falsified papers, which the conductor read aloud: “This officer is traveling on orders to ride the train on a special mission to the front.”
Before a large crowd of witnesses, the commissar did all the talking. In Russian, he put on an act pretending to give Barney orders not to waste any time; he should return right away from the front after his mission was completed. There was a board hanging on the wall, and the commissar pulled it down and instructed Barney to lie on it and rest up for his mission because he was needed back as soon as possible.
The people on the train presumed that Barney was some kind of big shot, and they tried to strike up a conversation with him, but he faced the wall and didn’t turn around until the train stopped at the town of Fastov, which was just twenty-two miles from Belaya Tserkov. He would have to wait in Fastov until ten o’clock in the evening for the next train into Belaya Tserkov.
Barney vaguely recalled Fastov from his youth. As he exited the train, people stared at him—it was obvious by the way he was dressed that he wasn’t one of their own. Yes, the boots were Russian, but his clothing did not look native to the shtetl. He walked into the Jewish quarter of the city, hoping to find a family that would be kind enough to feed him. The quarter was strangely deserted, with the exception of a young girl who was playing alone on the street. After taking a closer look at her features, he approached the girl and asked, “Are you Jewish?”
“Yes.”
“Where is everyone? I would like to speak with some Jewish people,” Barney asked her.
“You’re Jewish and you don’t know?” the girl answered.
“Know what?”
“You don’t know that today is Yom Kippur?”
“No, I didn’t realize,” Barney answered. What he did realize at that point was that his chances of getting a meal were considerably reduced.XII
“Who are you?” the girl asked.
“I’m an American who is going to see his family in Belaya Tserkov.”
“What, are you kidding me? If you’re an American, what are you doing here? Anybody who comes here in these times should have his head examined. I don’t think you’re right [in the head], mister.”XIII
The little girl wandered away in disbelief.
Barney walked aimlessly around Fastov for many hours, finally hearing the familiar sound of the shofar blowing in the distance. He recognized the traditional long blast of the ram’s horn signaling a symbolic end to the Yom Kippur service.
Then you shall transmit a blast on the horn; in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, the day of Yom Kippur, you shall have the horn sounded throughout the land.… And proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.XIV
A couple of hours later, at nearly ten o’clock in the evening, Barney Stumacher finally boarded the train that would take him to his long-awaited destination—the city of his birth, Belaya Tserkov.XV The train was so crowded that the conductor couldn’t even get close enough to him to ask for the fare, which was a blessing since he was penniless. It was less than an hour’s ride, and Barney met a few Jews from Belaya Tserkov on the train. From them, he learned that his parents and sisters were still alive and well in Belaya Tserkov. He asked if he could stay with them that evening, as it was getting late and he didn’t want to shock his parents by waking them up in the middle of the night.
While Barney caught up on some much-needed sleep in Belaya Tserkov, his hostess made her way over to the residence of sixty-five-year-old Nechame Stumacher and his sixty-three-year-old wife, Miriam, and asked the couple if they had a son in America.XVI
“Yes, sure, we have a son who went to America, but we don’t even know if he’s alive,” Nechame answered. “Why did you come over here in the middle of the night to ask me about my son?”
“I heard that he is coming from America to see you.”
“You’re out of your mind! It’s impossible for anyone from America to get into Ukraine now!” Nechame exclaimed.
One of Nechame’s daughters, who had overheard the conversation, quietly slipped out of her father’s house and ran over to the home of her older sister and brother-in-law, Dvoira and Nissel Ravicher. She repeated the story of how the old Jewish woman arrived late in the evening at their parents’ doorstep and told them that Barney was coming from America. Stunned by this news, Nissel insisted that they all walk over together to the elderly woman’s house to find out more information.
“Now look, where did you get this information?” Nissel confronted the old woman in her home. “Who told you that Barney is coming from America? Is he here or not?”
“Yes, he is here; he’s sleeping.”
When Barney woke up, he was greeted by the sight of his brother-in-law, Nissel, standing over the bed. After the two men had embraced, Nissel urged his brother-in-law to get dressed so they could walk over to see his parents. As they were walking, the entire street congregated outside their houses, as if they had just heard news of the arrival of Eliyahu the Prophet.XVII
“As I was walking with them,” Barney recalled, “the entire street and all of the people living there were outside, and my own father and mother were both running together in front of me and they were hollering words that I never heard in my life.”
Shrieks of happiness reverberated throughout the neighborhood. All the neighbors gathered on the street to witness the joy of their reunion. Miriam and Nechame were reunited with their dear son after a tortuous ten-year separation, during a time when it was close to impossible to get in or out of the country. Barney overcame harrowing obstacles while possessing stunning determination in order to come and save his family. He had entered Ukraine illegally, was held and robbed at gunpoint, shot at by the Polish army, and survived a fiery train derailment. He was arrested and accused of being an American spy and was brought to a police station and was nearly executed. His arrival on foot in Belaya Tserkov was miraculous.
The Caprove family ran outside to see this American who had arrived late in the evening after sundown on Yom Kippur, September 22, 1920. Channa saw her older cousin Ruby talking to his parents.
“Who is he?” Channa asked Ruby while tugging on his shirt.
“He’s my father’s cousin, Benzion Stomachin. He’s come all the way from America to save his parents,” Ruby answered. “It’s unbelievable!”
“I have come to take you to America,” Barney assured his stunned parents, in front of a growing crowd of curious neighbors. From that moment on, everyone’s thoughts were occupied with the Goldene Medina, a place where you can pick gold from its streets. It was a place where everyone could live in peace.
Miriam held her son tightly, fearing that if she let go she would lose him again. “You are my son, and the house here and everything in it belongs to you.”
“We’re leaving everything—we’re all going to America as soon as we can,” Barney informed her.
During his first morning in Belaya Tserkov, Barney saw for himself the devastating living conditions that his father had described in his letter: residents of the town roamed the streets in starvation. He strolled over to the market that he had remembered from his childhood and noticed an old man with a long white beard selling fish. Two Communist soldiers casually picked up a large carp from his stand without paying for it, and the old man promptly ran after them, hollering that he wanted his fish back. One of the soldiers turned around and struck the elderly man in the neck with the butt of his gun. The old Jew instantly fell to the ground. Upon closer inspection, the soldiers realized that the old man had died as a result of his fall.
Shocked by the murder he had witnessed, Barney tried to clear his head by walking around the yarid. He found that peasants wouldn’t take any money for their goods; the Russian ruble was almost worthless, and farmers only wanted to barter their items for other products. Exchanges such as, “You give me salt; I’ll give you milk,” were commonplace.
Barney Stumacher told his parents that they should be prepared to leave Belaya Tserkov within a month—he would bring them all to the United States. He planned to hire wagon caravans to help his family escape from Ukraine.
But not all of Barney’s relatives were enthusiastic about his plan. Nissel Ravicher, who was Barney’s cousin as well as brother-in-law, was initially determined to remain in Belaya Tserkov, despite the fact that his dry goods business had been torched. When the oldest of his two children, a daughter Estelle, who was endearingly called Filia,XVIII was no longer permitted to go to school, Nissel decided it was time to leave.XIX He then assisted Barney with his plan to escape to America.
Barney later explained, “I got together all my relatives, cousins, first cousins, second cousins. I had an aunt (that joined us); she was eighty years old and blind in both eyes. My brother-in-law’s partners whom he said he didn’t want to leave were asked to come along with us. All in all, we had fifty-eight people. We left everything behind; we sold nothing.”
Barney’s cousin Itzie Stumacher added an additional twenty people to the group of fifty-eight, bringing the total to nearly eighty. The add-ons were mostly his wife Molly’s extended family members, who would begin the first leg of the journey with Barney’s group of refugees. Isaac, Rebecca, and their daughters would be among the additional twenty to travel on wagons in this caravan, as well as Esther and Yunkel Cutler’s family, and Avrum Cutler and his family. The family of Avrum’s wife, Slova, which included her father, Myer Ova Denka, the Tarashcha boot maker who once impressed Tsar Nicholas II, and his wife and children, would also accompany the expanding crowd.
Itzie wrote to his brother Julius, a wealthy plumber who lived in Brooklyn, and asked that he send money and passports for his own family of five. When Molly heard this, she insisted that her sister Bessie be included with them; if not, she would refuse to leave Belaya Tserkov. Julius had no choice but to agree to send a passport for Bessie.
The entire group, an entourage of fifty-eight of Barney’s people plus the Caprove, Cutler, and Ova Denka families, planned to travel together through the rough terrain from Belaya Tserkov to Kishinev, which was then a part of Romania. After arriving in Kishinev, Barney’s group and a few others would move on and spread out in hotels across the cities of Bucharest and Galatz as they waited for their visas. Isaac, Rebecca, and their girls would remain in Kishinev because they did not have the funds or visas to travel to America. They were depending on Molly, Itzie, and Bessie to send for the rest of the family.
Although his family did not have passports, Isaac decided that they would all travel together in the large caravan to Romania, from where it was their eventual goal to reach the Port of Constanta. The border of Romania was at least two hundred miles south of Belaya Tserkov, but he knew that having the power of numbers when traveling together was the safest and only way to get there. Each family planned to set out in their own uncovered wagon, and there were over a dozen wagons in total.
At the helm was their adventurous young leader Barney, whose stunning entrance by foot into Belaya Tserkov only strengthened their faith in his resourcefulness to lead them out of there. Barney’s uncanny ability to always land on his feet, combined with a chutzpah that attracted those that he randomly met to rally for him, enabled him to lead the group forward. Without that charismatic quality, which was so apparent to all upon his miraculous arrival on Yom Kippur evening, the lives of nearly eighty people would have surely taken a devastating turn.
Knowing that it would only be a matter of days before they would all be leaving for Romania, Isaac made one final trip, with Channa in tow, to the shop of the tombstone-maker. Isaac explained to him that he would not be around for his baby daughter’s unveiling, so the man there promised that he would put the stone on for him. With this assurance, there was nothing else keeping the family in Europe. It would not be long before Barney Stumacher would lead them on the first step of their journey toward the Golden Land.
The group would, however, encounter many bumps along the way.