Chapter One: The daughter of David Halpern

Wanderings over the world, exile in a fortress in an island of Channel; a 100 year-old pharmacy

Bassie Halpern gradually waned, sinking into herself and broke away from the world surrounding her, as if she wouldn’t allow it to hurt her any more. She watched it from the window of her home in a small town in Portugal to which her son David had brought her to live, not far away from his and our home.

Whenever her granddaughter Sonia passed near her grandmother Bassie’s house she would wave to an old lady sitting near the window, who waved back at her, and smiled. Sometimes she went inside and Bassie would caress her. She lived very near our house in Chalet Bastos, in Carcavelos, a village on the Estoril coast, with Madame Bertha, a German lady caretaker. She had experienced many difficulties in her life– years of wanderings over Europe, separation from her young children, and during World War I, anxieties about her loved ones, capped by the loss of her husband and three of her children: Lazar died of typhus when 7 years-old, Osias, of the same illness in his early 20s, and Hannah, her first-born, following a miscarriage. All this left her without words. 

Bassie, my Father’s mother, was born in Bolchow, Ucrania, on 12/09/1866, the daughter of Yakov Gluskind and Miriam Sandoniska. In 1890 she married Yakov Mendel Chassidof, the son of Arie Mendel Chassidof, born in Poltava, Ucrania. The family were Chassidic Jews, followers of the Lubavisher Rebbe, and traveled frequently.

The couple Bassie and Yakov had ten children over the years: Hannah, Rachel (Recha), Berthe (Blima), Osias, David, Sarah (Sarita), the twins Dvora (Brania), and Samuel (Sami), Lazar and Armando (Hirsch). Sometimes, the large family was forced to separate and live in different countries for some time, and then were reunited again. At some time in their lives, they changed their surname from Chassidof to Halpern.

In 1901 they left Bolchow and settled in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. Whenever the Lubavisher Rebbe came to the city, the first family he would visit was the Halpern family. In 1908 Yakov left his wife and children in Frankfurt and traveled to St. Petersburg, in Russia for his business: he bought platinum and palladium for an important German client, and coloured stones for himself. Another two years passed and he wandered again to Yekaterinburg, in the Ural Mountains, which cross Russia from north to west –from Kazahstan until the coast of the Arctic Ocean. The climate was very difficult: the summer was very hot and the winter very cold- 40 degrees C below zero, and even two fur coats were not enough. But Hannah and Recha, the two eldest daughters, joined him to help in his business; they enjoyed the rich cultural life of the city. Later on, Recha told her granddaughters that this had been a wonderful period in her life.

They continued to wander. In 1911 Yakov decided to move his family to Paris, where most of his clients lived. The oldest sons Osias and David stayed in Frankfurt in order to finish their school year, and lived in a pension of Hungarian chasidim Jews. Later, they joined their family in Paris. The twins had also been separated from the family– when they were only 5 months old– and stayed at their grandparents’ homes, of both sides, in Bolchow. Only when they were 11 years old, were they again reunited with their family in Frankfurt.

My grandfather, Yakov Menachem Mendel Halpern (Chassidof)

In the interviews he had with Ari Shidlo, my sister Ana’s youngest son, David described later how World War I had shaken the life of the Halpern family: “In August 1914 we were told that we had to leave Paris and move south or east. We told the “Commissaire” that my Mother was very ill and bedridden. We had to bring a doctor’s authorization. Thanks to the doctors’s letter, we were authorized to remain in Paris. Then on 20.08.1914, some French neighbours stood in front of our house and shouted: ‘A bas les allemands’ – ‘Down with the Germans’. We closed ourselves up in the house. A French friend explained to the protesters that we were Jews like them and not Germans. But they entered our garden and found a prayer book printed in Frankfurt. They saw the book as a proof that we were Germans; our friend tried to explain to them that the book was printed in Germany, but they were Francophiles, against Germans and against the war.”

This event made a strong impression on the family, and led to their decision to leave the house, Yakov decided to move to the province, far from Paris, where no one  would know them, or their past. He asked permission from the “Commisaire” to move to a small town, called Mayenne, in Bretagne.

“My Mother’s health had in the meantime improved,” David said. “She packed the things we would need: food, kasher cooking pots, because we didn’t touch anything cooked in other pots, as well as sheets and pillows. Even though my Father didn’t wear sideburns (peyot), and dressed like everyone else, he was very religious (Orthodox) (charedi). We left Paris and traveled by train with other evacuees, in carriages which were usually used for the transportation of horses and cattle. When we arrived at Mayenne we were all assigned to a hut – women on one side, men in the other. Next day the mayor told us that we could rent a house or a room in the town, but that we had to present ourselves at the police station every day at noon and sign.

“It was easy to find a house to rent in the town, because many French men were in the army and the women rented their homes and went to live with their families. On the same day we found a nice, empty villa. We rented the house and bought mattresses, no beds, as we believed the war would be over in two or three months. We lived comfortably there and  strolled in the countryside, watched the fishermen fish in the river and enjoyed fresh food from the farms nearby. We were not allowed to travel by train to any other town.

A month later, in September 1914, on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the good days ended. At the police station, which we had to visit every day, the mayor told us that he had received orders from Paris that in the first stage soldiers would take away all the men over 18 years and later the women and children. Next morning at 6 we marched to the port of Granville and there boarded a ship to the isle of Chausey, near the Channel island, in front of the coast of Normandy. We were placed in huts, 40 men in each hut, inside an abandoned fort surrounded by walls. We were considered subjects of an enemy country, and an officer with 20 soldiers watched over us. No one knew how long we would have to stay in this place.

“How would my Father be able to live without prayers? We were about 100 Jews of the 300 men exiled on the island. My Father did not know French well and asked that I talk to the officer and tell him that we were about to celebrate Yom Kippur, a very holy day, when we pray all together and ask for pardon for our sins. He asked that he allow us to use one of the abandoned huts for prayers. The officer gave us permission, but told us we also had to ask permission from the mayor of the city of Granville, who was responsible for the island. I wrote a postcard to the mayor adding that we would pray for the victory of France. ‘Your petition touched my heart’ answered the mayor and gave us permission.”

The conditions in this place were very difficult. Men who were used to an easy life, now slept on straw mattresses in huts which were not heated in the cold winter months, they had to wash laundry and cook themselves, and take turns in the kitchen, as well in cleaning the toilets. David had to learn to wash clothes and also to cook. “In the winter, in the cold, my hands were always red. I didn’t dare complain, and thought that it would have been much worse if I had had to  put my life in danger in the excavations, or had become a refugee in a village captured by the Germans. We ate mainly potatoes, and I joked that at lunch we had water with potatoes and in the evening potatoes with water.”

David’s teacher in the Lyceum helped them. He wrote a letter to the authorities in which he said that David was not only an excellent student, but he was also a patriot who loved France, his country. Thanks to this letter, the father and his two sons were set free.

They succeeded with difficulty in finding Bassie and the children, who had been left without any means to live on. They had traveled to Austria, where the Jewish community helped them as they had nothing to live on.

After the War the family first settled in Nantes, the large city in the Loire, Western France. David had to work to help sustain the family and  found a job in the Electricity company. His Father was very angry because he worked on Shabbat.

When in 1919 Yakov passed away in Madrid, 22 year-old David became the head of the family. He would keep this task all his life. He learned Spanish very quickly, and started selling diamonds all over  Spain. He travelled for his business, sleeping in trains to save the expense of staying  at hotels.

David met Esther Bernstein (when she was 7) at the family wedding of his sister Recha to her brother Moshe Bernstein.  This took place in July 1914 in the Halpern home at  Enghien-les- Bains in France, before the turmoil of the War. David was 10 years older, but when they married 14 years later, their great love united them.

Esther Bernstein was born in 5.07.1907 in the city of Vitebsk, Russia (today Belarus). Several important people were born in this city: Shlomo Zangwill, the writer  of Dybbuk; the Nobel prize for Physics Georges Alperov; the head of the Mossad Issar Harel; the judge of the Supreme Court Miriam Ben Porat. The pride of the Jewish community was the painter, Marc Chagal, who was born in the neighboring town of Liozna, but lived many years in Vitebsk, where he painted many of his works of art. The city now honors him with a festival every year, and placed a commemorative inscription on the wall of the house where he lived. There is also a Chagal museum nearby.

The Bernstein family had left Vitebsk long before, and lived for a short time in Belgium, and then in England. They settled  down in East London, and opened a pharmacy. Esther and Pacha studied pharmacy, contrary to the accepted norm for girls in those days. Esther worked in the family’s pharmacy until her marriage. The “Bernstein” pharmacy continued to sell medicines for about 100 years, even after the original owners died. It was sold 10 or 15 years ago.

The Bernstein family was, like that of the Halperns a large and very religious family. The head of their family was a Rav, whom community members often came to consult. One of the sons excelled in playing violin, while another loved painting. Not much more is known about the family, because they were all quiet, introverted people and didn’t talk about themselves, contrary to David’s family. When Esther and David were married in London in 1928, she was already an orphan: both her parents had died recently at an early age.  The two families differed in this too: the Halperns lived long lives, whereas the members of the Bernstein family died early. David and Esther continued their parents’ wanderings, and moved to Madrid for a year, together with David’s mother. When Sorin, the husband of David’s oldest sister Hannah, proposed that David join him in his business of selling precious stones, a new period began for the young couple and they moved to Lisbon, Portugal. It would not be the last move, however.

The first home of David and Esther was in Lisbon, the capital. David joined his brother-in-law Sorin, in his business and sold diamonds and precious metals. His life was spent mostly in trains, so as to save going to hotels, and until he could allow himself to rent an office for himself in Lisbon – his firm, “David Halpern Lda” whom 4 generations will work for, and at its peak, led by Nathan Mucznik, was the largest diamonds and precious stones wholesaler in Portugal, and “Brilperl SA”, the second largest in Spain.

Sonia was born in 5.01.1929, the eldest daughter of Esther and David Halpern. In the “Shaarei Tiqvah” synagogue the name Sarah was added to hers, in memory of her Mother’s mother. Ana, her sister, was born in 10.05.1931 and the youngest girl, Miriam was born in 11.01.1937.

Ana's addition to this chapter
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Sonia was born in an apartment in Rua S. João Crisostomo in S. Sebastião da Pedreira, which was then the new neighborhood of Lisbon. “My grandmother Bassie was living with us. Ana was born after we had moved to Benfica, a suburb of Lisbon. It was a big house with a (‘quinta’) farm around it. When my Father wanted to find me he searched for our shepherd dog and he would know where I was, because it always followed me everywhere. But the humidity of the place was harmful for my Mother’s health, so we moved to Carcavelos, a small town in the neighborhood of the Estoril coastline. The first house we lived in, was small with a small garden around it.

Later, we moved to a large house with a very big garden, with trees, as well as a chicken coop. We loved to climb trees, especially I, and most frequently the nut tree, where we picked nuts, even when they were still green. Ana and I shared a room. When there were fireworks, very popular on weekends and holy days, I would stay awake for hours, frightened by the noise and the shadows on the ceiling and walls of the room. Friends of my parents would come for dinner sometimes, and for the parties they threw on Carnival and New Year, when they would all dance and sing in long lines around the corridors. Ana reminded me that our Father was one of the founders of “Hehaver” a group of Jewish Zionist young people who had come mainly from Germany and Poland. Among his friends were the Hiller (Sigfried was our dentist) and the Rosner families, who both left in 1940-41 for the States. We also played with the two Hiller boys, who were about our age. The Rosners had Nico, their nephew, living with them. His mother, with her second husband, had recently been killed in an airplane accident. I only saw them once again in New York, but Ana remembers that once in Yom Kippur we stayed at the Hillers’ in Lisbon.

There was a post office in front of our house and a shop on our street on the way to the train station, which sold all kinds of toys and dolls, where we liked to buy toys. I also had a friend who lived in the corner of our street very near the station, with whom I also liked very much to play. After going to my school friends’ birthday parties, I told my Mother that there had been a dessert that I liked very much: jelly. When I finished elementary school at St. Julian’s, I went on to the Portuguese Liceu for another year before our voyage to Cuba, in May 1941.