Ella Rozenblum

This is my mother Ella Rozenblum. The picture was made in Lodz in 1910s before parents' wedding - they went to the photo salon to have the pictures made for each other. My brothers, the fugitives to the USSR, kept that picture. The even managed to have kept it in the exile to Siberia. Recently they gave the photo to me.

My mother Ella Rozenblum was born in 1886 in Lodz. She finished elementary Jewish school and couple of classes of lyceum. Judging by the fact that my elder brother was born in 1914, my parents were married in 1913. I do not know how they met: whether it was arranged by shadhans or they met in the company of some Jewish people. Parents did not have their own house. They rented an apartment, where we were born and spent our childhood and adolescence. Mother was considered literate for those times. She could read and write in Yiddish and Polish. Moreover, she was multitalented. She was actually in charge of quilt making workshop. She was the one who created the patterns, she controlled the quality. She was a pretty good administrator. Father was responsible for purchase of necessary raw materials, equipment and for the sale of the end product as he had the contacts, who owned the stores, where the quilts, produced by our family, were sold.

Work did not interfere with her main purpose- she gave birth and raised four sons. The first-born Moishe was born in 1914 on the eve of the first world war, during which our family and close relatives stayed in Lodz as well as many other Jews, considering Germans to be quite positive. They thought that Germans had a good attitude to Jews, bought different goods and products from them. Of course some people were killed in action, but practically nothing changed for peaceful citizen, including Jewish population. Another evidence for that is that my brother Isaac was born in 1917, when the World War One was in the full swing. The twins were born on 16 January 1925. I, Meer, was the older one. My brother Benjamin came into world 15 minutes later.