In the mid-1800's, the Buckovina area of Romania was under the gentle jurisdiciton of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Emperor Franz Yosef treated his Jewish subjects kindly. Not only did he visit Jewish towns and synagogues, he even supported their development. The Grand Synagogue of Radovitz was built in 1850, funded in part by the Emperor himself.
Franz Yosef allowed the Jews many freedoms and privileges. Jews were permitted to hold high ranking positions. Uncle Moshe Lehrer's oldest brother was a member of the Parliament. The Jews, as they are in all countries, were very patriotic in Romania. So when Zaidie Mendel Dalfen was drafted into the army, it was not easy to leave his family, but he went willingly to fulfill his conscript of several years.
The Dalfen family was not a family of means, to say the least. The poverty was overwhelming. Before bedding at night, nine Dalfen children would fluff their straw mattresses out on the earthen floor to be as comfortable as possible. The outhouse was several yards away, but it seemed like miles on cold winter nights.
The family had one cow, especially resourceful for its milk. Every morning, Bubba Toba Devora or one of the children would milk the cow. Then they would all line up and Bubba would give each child one spoonful of precious milk. The rest of the milk was sold so they could buy some of the economical Romanian staple-corn meal, or perhaps a small amount of luxurious wheat flour.
Zaidie's brothers were very sympathetic to Bubba's situation - an impoverished Jewish mother raising her nine children alone. Not that their monetary situation was much better. Every few weeks, they would come in from Kamenersht, and bring one or two of the children to reside in relative comfort. Then they would return to Radovitz and exchange the children for others.
One wintry day, it was my mother's turn to make the twenty five kilometer trip to Kamenersht, to Fetter Aharon's house (Abe Dalfen's father). As the horse and wagon plodded along, the sun began to go down and a cold chill set in. My mother, clad lightly in her third-hand dress, began to shiver. Fetter Aharon noticed almost immediately, and promptly removed his own coat, wrapping it around my mother's trembling shoulders. And how did Fetter Aharon stay warm? He descended the wagon, and ran alongside the horses the last few kilometers to Kamenersht.
