Itzhak Dudak

My father Itzhak Dudak on our horse. This photo was taken before he married our mother, in the 1920s, in Jonava. My father, Itzhak Dudak, was born in 1902. I don?t know whether Grandfather Meir managed to give his older children higher education. My father actually had no education. He attended cheder, as a child, where he learned an everyday prayer, but he didn't know the Saturday prayer. My father couldn't read or write. Since his early age he was helping his father. He was used to handling horses, and became a cabman, when he grew old enough. My father had a horse. It wasn?t big, but it was strong and sturdy. When trucks and buses appeared in Jonava, my father sold his horse and became a co-owner of this company. However, the company owners were smart and educated people. Some time later they paid my father his share and expelled him from the list of co-owners in order not to have to share the profits with him. My father bought a horse and took to his own business. In the late 1930s he obtained a driver's license and went to work as a driver in that same company. My father drove all across Lithuania. He was familiar with all roads, farms and villages, as well as he was with his own home. My mother was my father's second cousin. When my father was 15, and my mother was 12 to 13 they had already developed a warm and far from cousinly feeling toward one another. Their parents didn't discourage them since marriages between relatives were a common thing in the Jewish environment.