CHAPTER THREE
April 14, 1917
There were two entrances to their house in Stavishche. The front had a gate, but during the harsh Russian winters it was always snowed in, so the Caprove family was forced to enter through the back door.
It was the last day of Passover—April 14, 1917. Channa was four and a half. She balanced on a window seat and watched through the window as her father, Isaac, and three maternal uncles—Avrum, Yunkel, and Shalum—opened the front entrance that was used only during milder weather. The men carried in a large wooden box.
Her mother and aunts covered all the mirrors and pictures in the house. Channa had no idea what was going on. Now there were so many people—almost one hundred—who came to visit the family in their cramped living quarters.
They were the Jews of Stavishche, who arrived armed with homemade delicacies, such as kugels, rugelach, and challahs. While Channa didn’t recognize everyone, they all knew who she was.
“Channa,” an old woman said as she approached her, “you don’t remember me, but I knew you when you were this big.” As she held up her wrinkled hands as high as Channa’s knee, the girl could hear another elderly lady cornering her older cousin, “Oh, Daniel, I knew you when you were this big.…”
Isaac appeared from a back room, calling out anxiously for another man to make a minyan, a quorum with ten men. He grabbed Uncle Avrum, who, at twenty-one, was the youngest and most handsome of her mother Rebecca’s brothers. They shut the door behind them, but through the paper-thin walls the child could hear the men chanting the Kaddish, the Mourner’s Prayer.
Among the crowd in her house that day were the two Gentile peasants who worked for her father in his shoe factory that was located in the front of the dwelling. Mykola,I a lanky fellow, lived with his parents and three burly brothers on a vegetable farm on the outskirts of Stavishche. This friendly Christian family was proud that Mykola was chosen to be an apprentice of a shoemaker. To most Jews, an apprenticeship to a shoemaker was considered an inferior position, although Isaac himself had started out in this way after he was orphaned. To the Gentile peasants, however, many whose skills didn’t extend much further than farming, it was commendable to have a family member learning a trade.
Standing next to Mykola was the despised peasant, Vasyl. The Jewish merchants in Stavishche refused to employ him because he was a known troublemaker and a thief. Isaac took him under his wing and taught him the shoemaking trade, and, in return, Vasyl was loyal to him.
Vasyl always said that Isaac was the only Jew in Stavishche to ever show him kindness. While many of the Jews visiting the house that day came over to greet Mykola, Vasyl was met with disapproving stares, which he ignored. To him, paying his respects and expressing his sympathy to Isaac and Rebecca before heading home was more important.
Also among the crowd of visitors was Isaac’s only brother, Channa’s handsome uncle Moishe Caprove. Sporting a new thin mustache, he brought with him his plain wife, Bubkah, who was short with black curly hair. Family members whispered that she was frugal, except when spending on her obsession—jewelry. She arrived that afternoon wearing several of her favorite pieces: long necklaces and pins on her dress, as well as a couple of sparkling rings. Running around the Caprove home were the couple’s two young children: a daughter, Sima, the mirror image of her mother, and a young son, Beryl.
Moishe was two years older than Isaac. Everyone in the family adored him, including his sister-in-law Rebecca. Channa watched her mother that day holding on to her baby sister while weeping on Moishe’s shoulder.
Although she didn’t know what was wrong—Channa was just a little girl, after all—she could sense that something terrible had happened. She heard someone talk about death, a word that, up until that day, was foreign to her. Confused, she was determined to investigate. Later that evening, after all the visitors had left, she sneaked out of the bed she shared with her baby sister, Sunny, and into the room where the long pine box rested on a table. She quietly stood on a chair so that she could reach over and see what was inside.
To her horror, she was shocked to discover that inside of this mysterious box lay her grandmother Fay Cutler. She reached over and touched the long strands of her graying red hair. When she felt her forehead, it was cold and clammy. Channa tried pulling at her arm, desperate to wake her up, but she would not move or stir; Channa felt the scream rise in her throat.
Rebecca and Isaac heard Channa’s cries and ran into the room where they found their daughter standing over her dead grandmother. “What happened, Mama?” she shrieked, large tears rolling down her face. “Why isn’t she moving?”
Rebecca gently picked her up and moved away from her own mother’s coffin. Her arms embraced the girl as tears streamed from her own eyes. Rebecca rocked her little girl in her arms and said, “Someday, Channa, there will come a time when the living will envy the dead.”
1. I. Mykola is a Ukrainian masculine name for Nicholas.