"The Masterpiece" - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb- Included In The Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb Translated and edited by Goldie Morgentaler-2023

 The Masterpiece" - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb- Included in  The Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb Translated and edited by Goldie Morgentaler-2023

Originally published in English under the title “A Cottage in the Laurentians” in the Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers, ed. Frieda Forman. Exile Editions, 2012. Pp. 

"The great Yiddish writer Chava Rosenfarb’s unforgettable short stories are all about afterlives. Most of her stories take place a decade or two or three after the Holocaust, in the seemingly neutral and snowy terrain of Montreal, Canada, where survivors have come to start over, to make new lives in a place far away from the crematoria of Europe. Among Rosenfarb’s unforgettable characters are a former kapo who befriends the only woman whose life she ever saved and a baby kidnapper. But even a writer of Rosenfarb’s ability probably could not have imagined the incredible afterlife of Rosenfarb herself. 

This year, the city of  Lodz, Poland, declared 2023 the year of Chava Rosenfarb — shocking considering that Rosenfarb was once imprisoned in the ghetto there, after which she was deported to Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. Had she lived to see it, Rosenfarb, a daughter of  Lodz, would have been 100 years old this year, but she died in 2011. She is best-known for her novel The Tree of Life: A Trilogy of Life in the  Lodz Ghetto, and she also received acclaim as a literary translator of Yiddish. Her work was most recently translated by her daughter Goldie Morgentaler for In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb."  By Aviya Kushner, December 22, 2023 in The Tablet - 

https://forward.com/culture/574507/chava-rosenfarb-centenary-yiddish-writer-lodz-land-of-the-postscript/

"The Masterpiece" focuses on a couple who met briefly when both were prisoners in a Concentration Camp, the man gave a woman unknown to him half his bread ration, and met again after the war in a displaced persons camp.

"Sonia and Victor were born in Lodz, the Polish Manchester. Both were concentration-camp survivors who had lost their families, friends, and neighbors during the war. They had arrived in Canada carrying the substantial psychic baggage of horrific nightmares and tragic recollections, but aside from these, they had—in a manner of speaking—nothing else to declare." 

15 years have gone by, they are married with five children both working as teachers living in Montreal.  They are still very much in love. The husband focuses his outside of work energy on writing a book he is convinced will surprass the work of James Joyce.  Joyce never experienced the horrors that define for him the modern world.  The wife is interested in numerous topics, trying to make up for her lost years in the camps.

His wife does something that hurts him more than the Nazis did.  Rosenfarb brilliantly shows us his feelings:

"Writing was his destiny, his assigned function in life. This was how he was meant to contribute to the singing of the birds, to the slashing hum of waterfalls, to the howl of the wind and to the soundless fall of the snowflakes. It must be so! It was for the sake of his calling that he had needed this tremendous crash in his life. What a wealth of suffering he had discovered in the dark abyss of his soul! Too soon had he forgotten the suffering that he had endured in the depths of a former horror. He had abused the entire supply of knowledge he had gleaned from his former trials. He had squandered it almost entirely with a naivete of heart that bordered on stupidity! Only now, enriched by a completely new kind of torment, did he see himself standing one rung higher on the ladder of experience. Now he had a better view of the panorama of human fate, of the human comedy. During the time between that other storm and this new one he had become fossilized, stagnant in his fool’s paradise; he had lost contact with reality."

There is much more in this amazing story than I have mentioned as I hole others will experience her stories.

CHAVA ROSENFARB (1923 - 2011)Prize-winning writer of fiction, poetry and drama, Chava Rosenfarb was born February 9, 1923 in Lodz, the industrial centre of Poland before the Second World War. She completed Jewish secular school and gymnasium in this community where several hundred thousand Jews lived —nearly half the population of the area. The Holocaust put an end to one of the richest centres of Judaism in all of Europe. Like many Jews of the city, Rosenfarb was incarcerated in the infamous Lodz ghetto. She survived there from 1940 to 1944, when she and her sister Henia became inmates of the concentration camps of Auschwitz, then Sasel and Bergen-Belsen. Even in the ghetto Rosenfarb wrote, and she hasn’t stopped since. Her first collection of ghetto poems, Di balade fun nekhtikn vald [The Ballad of Yesterday’s Forest] was published in London in 1947. After the liberation Rosenfarb moved to Belgium. She remained in Belgium until 1950, when she immigrated immigrated to Montreal. In Montreal, Rosenfarb obtained a diploma at the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary in 1954. Rosenfarb has produced a prolific body of writing, all of which speaks from her experience during the Holocaust. Her work has been translated into both Hebrew and English. Rosenfarb has been widely anthologized and has had her work appear in journals in Israel, England, the United States, Canada and Australia in Yiddish and in English and Hebrew translation. Among the many prizes awarded her work, she has received the I.J. Segal Prize (Montreal, 1993), the Sholom Aleichem Prize (Tel-Aviv, 1990) and the Niger Prize (Buenos Aires, 1972). She has travelled extensively, lecturing on Yiddish literature in Australia, Europe and South America as well as in Israel and the United States.

Mel Ulm 

Little Red Bird - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb- Included in In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb Translated and edited by Goldie Morgentaler

Little Red Bird - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb- Included in In the Land of the Postscript: The Complete Short Stories of Chava Rosenfarb Translated and edited by Goldie Morgentaler - 2023

Originally publidhed - “Royt feigele” (“Little Red Bird”). In Yiddish. Di goldene keyt 139 (1994)

I greatly admire Chava Rosenfarb both as a writer and as a person. She is among the eight authors included in the header picture for my blog.

"Little Red Bird" focuses on a woman whose husband and four year old daughter were murdered in a German concentration camp.  Her daughter was thrown into the crematorium while still living.  She meets a man, while living in a post World War Two displaced persons camp.

"Manya and Feivel met after the war in the displaced-persons camp of Feldafing in Bavaria. Both had been members of the Bundist youth organization in Poland; he in Kracow, she in Lodz. They had discovered each other during those confusing post-liberation days of hope and despair. Neither of them had any surviving family, so their need for closeness and intimacy with another human being was great."

Manya is frustrated because she is not able to get pregnant.

"They are both upset about the direction the postwar world has taken, about the fact that the sacrifice of millions has been in vain. But in Manya’s case, there lingers beneath the surface of her general sorrow over the fate of the world an additional, more intimate pain, which translates into a longing to have another child. "

Manya does something deeply immoral.  I really hope others will have the opportunity to read this profound story so I will say no more.

I do feel obligated to share a bit more of the powerful unflincing prose of this story.

"Manya is standing by the window, peering out at the snow. A little girl is playing in the street among the mounds of snow. The child is about five years old. She wears a red coat and a red hat, just like Little Red Ridinghood, the child the wolf tried to devour in the story by the Brothers Grimm. Manya’s child was in fact devoured by the wolf—a wolf who was, in a sense, a grandchild of the wolf in the Grimm brothers’ story. Manya’s child had been destroyed by the Germans when she was five years old. Her name had been Faygele, Little Bird. She too had had a red coat. When she wore the red coat her parents called her roit faygele, little red bird. Her parents delighted in the sight of Faygele wearing her red coat. The color suited her. It harmonized with the dark brown hair her mother would roll in tissue paper to form curls. The curls peeked out charmingly from underneath Faygele’s red hat. It did not occur to Faygele’s parents to associate the color red with the color of blood— Faygele’s blood."

CHAVA ROSENFARB (1923 - 2011)Prize-winning writer of fiction, poetry and drama, Chava Rosenfarb was born February 9, 1923 in Lodz, the industrial centre of Poland before the Second World War. She completed Jewish secular school and gymnasium in this community where several hundred thousand Jews lived —nearly half the population of the area. The Holocaust put an end to one of the richest centres of Judaism in all of Europe. Like many Jews of the city, Rosenfarb was incarcerated in the infamous Lodz ghetto. She survived there from 1940 to 1944, when she and her sister Henia became inmates of the concentration camps of Auschwitz, then Sasel and Bergen-Belsen. Even in the ghetto Rosenfarb wrote, and she hasn’t stopped since. Her first collection of ghetto poems, Di balade fun nekhtikn vald [The Ballad of Yesterday’s Forest] was published in London in 1947. After the liberation Rosenfarb moved to Belgium. She remained in Belgium until 1950, when she immigrated immigrated to Montreal. In Montreal, Rosenfarb obtained a diploma at the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary in 1954. Rosenfarb has produced a prolific body of writing, all of which speaks from her experience during the Holocaust. Her work has been translated into both Hebrew and English. Rosenfarb has been widely anthologized and has had her work appear in journals in Israel, England, the United States, Canada and Australia in Yiddish and in English and Hebrew translation. Among the many prizes awarded her work, she has received the I.J. Segal Prize (Montreal, 1993), the Sholom Aleichem Prize (Tel-Aviv, 1990) and the Niger Prize (Buenos Aires, 1972). She has travelled extensively, lecturing on Yiddish literature in Australia, Europe and South America as well as in Israel and the United States.

Mel Ulm 

Last Love - A Set in Paris Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb - translated from the Yiddish by Goldie Morgentaler - 2004

 Last Love - A Set in Paris Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb - translated from the Yiddish by Goldie Morgentaler - 2004 

Paris in July 2020 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea

This work is included in the collection Survivors

During Paris in July 2019 I posted on a short story, “Greenhorn”,

by Chava Rosenfarb about a Holocaust survivor who spent time in 

 Paris at a displaced persons camp after liberation, later moving to Montreal where he was called a “greenhorn”.  I also posted on three stories by her friend Blume Lempel, who loved Paris but knew she had to leave to survive.  Paris played a big part in the creative life and aspirations of Ashkenazi Jews.  This year I saw this in Marc Chagall by Jonathan Wilson in which he explains how Chagall’s painting of Eastern European settings were transformed by Paris.  Yiddish artists were transformed by Paris while reshaping modern art.

Chava Rosenfarb 

Born - February 9, 1923 - Lódz, Poland

February 1940 - Jewish citizens are impounded in the Łódź Ghetto by the Germans.  When it was liquidated in August 1944 some 220,000 thousand had died

August 23, 1944 - Chava Rosenfarb, her younger sister and her mother were sent to Auschwitz.  As slave laborers, they built houses for Germans.  From there they were transferred to Bergen-Belsen.  The camp was liberated on April 15, 1945 by British and Canadian forces.  All survived.

After recovering from Typhoid, she discovered her father had died while being transported to Auschwitz. Eventually she  relocates to Belgium.  

1950 - emigrates to Canada and begins to write extensively in Yiddish.

1970 Publishes The Tree of Life - set in The Lodz Ghetto, it is considered an essential work of Holocaust Literature 

January 30, 2011 - dies in Lethbridge, Canada

“Lost Love” can only be read in the collection Survivors. The stories focus on Jews who have immigrated to Canada.

I am very glad to be  reading a work by Chava Rosenfarb for Paris in July 2020.   This story will not be accessible to many people so I am just going to brief.

The story centers on a sculpturer living in Paris.  He is involved in relationships with two women.  One is his age, late forties and one twenty years younger.  His artistic work is enhanced by the magnificent art work he sees on his walks in Paris.  The older woman has memories of lost Parisian love from many years ago.  He has a deeper love for the older woman though he rarely sleeps with her.  She has a terminal illness.  She asks him to find her a young man to have sex with.  At first he is appalled and hurt.  Then he does find her a man who agrees.  While he is having sex with her, she dies.  As you might imagine this devastated both men. The older man is so upset he moves to Montreal.

Rosenfarb, I do not as of now think she was ever in Paris after the war, beautifully describes the impact of Paris on the persons in the story.

CHAVA ROSENFARB (1923 - 2011)Prize-winning writer of fiction, poetry and drama, Chava Rosenfarb was born February 9, 1923 in Lodz, the industrial centre of Poland before the Second World War. She completed Jewish secular school and gymnasium in this community where several hundred thousand Jews lived —nearly half the population of the area. The Holocaust put an end to one of the richest centres of Judaism in all of Europe. Like many Jews of the city, Rosenfarb was incarcerated in the infamous Lodz ghetto. She survived there from 1940 to 1944, when she and her sister Henia became inmates of the concentration camps of Auschwitz, then Sasel and Bergen-Belsen. Even in the ghetto Rosenfarb wrote, and she hasn’t stopped since. Her first collection of ghetto poems, Di balade fun nekhtikn vald [The Ballad of Yesterday’s Forest] was published in London in 1947. After the liberation Rosenfarb moved to Belgium. She remained in Belgium until 1950, when she immigrated immigrated to Montreal. In Montreal, Rosenfarb obtained a diploma at the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary in 1954. Rosenfarb has produced a prolific body of writing, all of which speaks from her experience during the Holocaust. Her work has been translated into both Hebrew and English. Rosenfarb has been widely anthologized and has had her work appear in journals in Israel, England, the United States, Canada and Australia in Yiddish and in English and Hebrew translation. Among the many prizes awarded her work, she has received the I.J. Segal Prize (Montreal, 1993), the Sholom Aleichem Prize (Tel-Aviv, 1990) and the Niger Prize (Buenos Aires, 1972). She has travelled extensively, lecturing on Yiddish literature in Australia, Europe and South America as well as in Israel and the United States..  From Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers..  from Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women.

The Greenhorn - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb. - translated from Yiddish by Goldie Morgentaler 2004

Paris in July 2019 -Hosted by Thyme for Tea 

Yesterday my wife invited me to go with her to the SM Mall in EDSA, in Quezon City. There was a big sale and she said I could relax for a few hours at The French Baker Cafe, a very nice place with free Wi-Fi.  I took my Ipad and a collection of short stories about concentration camp survivors living in Montreal by Chava Rosenfarb. Chava Rosenfarb along with her friend Blume Lempel, featured three times during Paris in July 2018, are two of the greatest post Holocaust Yiddish language writers.  Lempel lived in the New York City area, Rosenfarb settled in Montreal. They corresponded extensively.  Both were fluent in French but wrote only in Yiddish. Paris was a first stop for many Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia.  

Chava Rosenfarb

February 3, 1923 - Born in Lodz, Poland

1941 - along with her parents and sister she was incarcerated in the Lodz Ghetto.  Her trilogy, The Tree of Life portrays this period and is considered one of the greatest of Holocaust novels

September, 1944- with her sister and mother she is transported to Auschwitz, their father unknown to them until after the war, died shortly after arrival.  Rosenfarb,her mother and sister were sent to Sasal, a labour camp, to build houses for Germans.

From there they were transferred to Bergen Belsen where they remained in until the camp was liberated by the British Army April 15, 1945.

After spending some time in a displaced persons camp in Belgium, having married another camp survivor, she moved to Montreal.

(For additional details on her life after immigrating and her writings, see the link above.)

The lead story in the collection, "The Greenhorn" centers on a concentration camp survivor in Montreal, Barukh. His wife and children all died in the Holocaust, he spent time in a displaced person camp in Paris waiting to move to Montreal. In the argot of the time such places were just called "dp" camps.  He is on his first day on a job in a garment factory.  The foreman is Jewish as are half the workers.  The other half are young French Canadian women.  We see him trying to adjust, learning the ropes.  A young French Canadian woman strikes up a conversation.  When she finds out he has lived in Paris, she is convinced he must have had a fabulous experience in the world's most, in her dreams, wonderful city.  Barukh has not been around young attractive women in a good while.  We see him struggling to converse with the woman.

"The Greenhorn" was fun to read.  There are seven stories in the collection, at least two more have ties to Paris.

A very good resource on Chava Rosenfarb

“In the Boxcar”. - An excerpt from Chava Rosenfarb’s novel Letters to Abrasha translated from the Yiddish by Goldie Morgentaler.

Chava Rosenfarb on The Reading Life


A Consise Biography-From The Jewish Women’s Encyclopedia

From Tablet Magazine. The Text of “In the Boxcar”

This excerpt from Chava Rosenfarb’s novel Letters to Abrasha is translated from the Yiddish by Goldie Morgentaler.

As of now, as far as I can find, the full work from which “In the Boxcar” was taken has not yet been translated into English. It reads perfectly as an independent work, a Short Story..  As I read this account of transportation to Auschwitz I could not help but imagine my beloved Irene 

 Nemirovsky being shipped from Paris to be murdered.

In my prior posts on Chava Rosenfarb, whose image I have now placed in my sidebar, you will find other links to websites on her.  Tablet Magazine, must Reading for anyone into Jewish culture including new translations of Yiddish Literature, has several articles by Rosenfarb as well as three of her most famous poems.

“In the Boxcar” captures the terror, horror and filth involved in the transportation of people to concentration camps in railroad boxes cars.  Most did not understand where they were being sent. We see what it might have felt like to arrive at the landing dock where men and women were separated.  

Prisoners were divided into those to be kept for slave labor and those to go at once to be killed. The prisoners had been allowed to bring two suitcases, they were told to leave them behind, that they would get them back later.  Children under ten, including babies were sent to be killed.

A very valuable memoir by Goldie Morgentaler, daughter and translator, from The Globe and Mail.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/facts-and-arguments/my-famous-father-swam-in-praise-my-mother-toiled-in-silence/article18193720/

Mel u

“A COTTAGE IN THE LAURENTIANS”. - A Short Story by Chava Rosenfarb

Chava Rosenfarb on The Reading Life



  From The Jewish Women’s Archive. A bio

After The Holocaust Yiddish Literature was very different from before The War.  It became almost entirely a literature written by immigrants to New York City, Montréal, Toronto, Sydney, Buenos Aires, Rio de Jeniro and Isrsel. I recently found  an anthology, first published in 1912 by The Society of Jewish Publications now available as a Kindle on Amazon (free).  It might be the first such anthology.  There are no 

works by women in this collection. Everything was written in Eastern Europe or Russia.  The Holocaust destroyed families, it forced women immigrants, to make new lives in huge cities so unlike their former home towns. Survivors needed to tell their stories. The Holocaust greatly challenged the faith of Jews everywhere.  How could God let this happen to them?  

Chava Rosenfarb survived, with her sister and mother, Auschwitz, moving to Montréal after the war, spending a few years in Beligium first.  All of her very prolic highly regarded multi-genre work involves Holocaust survivors.  

“A COTTAGE IN THE LAURENTIANS” is about a married couple living in Montreal.  As did Chava Rosenfarb and her first husband, they met and fell in love at a concentration camp. One of the things so evident in this story is Rosenfarb’s incredible ability to paint scenes of natural beauty.  

(The images above are of the Laurentians area of Quebec)

We follow the couple from the very early years of their marriage up to it’s dissolution twenty years later.  One thing they both loved was spending time in the Lauerntian mountains at a cottage they bought very early in their marriage.

Here is a sample of how much a master can put in a few sentences.

“Sonia and Victor were born in Lodz, the Polish Manchester. Both were concentration camp survivors who had lost their families, friends, and neighbours during the war. They had arrived in Canada carrying the substantial psychic baggage of horrific nightmares and tragic recollections, but aside from these, they had –in a manner of speaking –nothing else to declare. In their memories, the pre-war childhood vacations which they had taken in the sub-Carpathian regions of Poland stood out like the images of a paradise lost. The Laurentian Mountains reminded them of those enchanted spots, and so, even at a time when they could scarcely afford it, when their children were still small, Victor and Sonia had rented a cottage in the Laurentians when the summer heat made Montreal unbearable. They had borrowed money and renounced small luxuries so that they could rent a small cottage near Le petit lac mirage, which was located in a remote area, far from the bustle of the more fashionable vacation spots, an hour and a half drive from Montreal. Later, when their financial situation improved, they bought the cottage. Victor, who was a Yiddish writer, had been offered a teaching position at the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary in Montreal; Sonia, also a teacher, was hired by a Jewish high school. It was then that they began to spend not only their summer vacations, but also their weekends in the Laurentians.”

As the story goes on with how happy the family, now with a violin prodigy son and an academically gifted daughter, I had the feeling something terrible was coming.  I was not wrong but it was not anything I would ever have guessed.

I was left with two strong wishes after reading this story.  One was to spend an autumn month in a cabin deep in the Laurentians mountains and the other was to read more by Rosenfarb.  As of now I have access to seven of her short stories I have not yet read, including one online “In the boxcars”.  Her trilogy, The Tree of Life is considered by all one of the great master works of Holocaust fiction but at a cost of $57.00 plus shipping, it is about 2000 pages, I probably will never get to read this.  

I read this in The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles Forman. This is a first rate collection meant to show the world the work of Yiddish Women who emigrated to Canada.

The story was translated by her daughter Goldie Morgentaler 

The website below is a wonderful resource, with lots of pictures.

http://chavarosenfarb.com/biography

Mel u

CHAVA ROSENFARB (1923 - 2011)Prize-winning writer of fiction, poetry and drama, Chava Rosenfarb was born February 9, 1923 in Lodz, the industrial centre of Poland before the Second World War. She completed Jewish secular school and gymnasium in this community where several hundred thousand Jews lived —nearly half the population of the area. The Holocaust put an end to one of the richest centres of Judaism in all of Europe. Like many Jews of the city, Rosenfarb was incarcerated in the infamous Lodz ghetto. She survived there from 1940 to 1944, when she and her sister Henia became inmates of the concentration camps of Auschwitz, then Sasel and Bergen-Belsen. Even in the ghetto Rosenfarb wrote, and she hasn’t stopped since. Her first collection of ghetto poems, Di balade fun nekhtikn vald [The Ballad of Yesterday’s Forest] was published in London in 1947. After the liberation Rosenfarb moved to Belgium. She remained in Belgium until 1950, when she immigrated immigrated to Montreal. In Montreal, Rosenfarb obtained a diploma at the Jewish Teachers’ Seminary in 1954. Rosenfarb has produced a prolific body of writing, all of which speaks from her experience during the Holocaust. Her work has been translated into both Hebrew and English. Rosenfarb has been widely anthologized and has had her work appear in journals in Israel, England, the United States, Canada and Australia in Yiddish and in English and Hebrew translation. Among the many prizes awarded her work, she has received the I.J. Segal Prize (Montreal, 1993), the Sholom Aleichem Prize (Tel-Aviv, 1990) and the Niger Prize (Buenos Aires, 1972). She has travelled extensively, lecturing on Yiddish literature in Australia, Europe and South America as well as in Israel and the United States..  From Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers..  from Found Treasures: Stories by Yiddish Women.