CHAPTER 31

Kalmen the Bootmaker’s Death

In the midst of the seething life of our movement, a tragic event once again occurred: Kalmen the Bootmaker died.

On a certain day in the spring of 1926, I was informed that Kalmen the Bootmaker was ill. I went to see him right away. He lived in the very poorest Jewish section of Warsaw, on Niska Street. He rented some space from a bakery worker, a religious Jew with a beard and a long kaftan. The whole apartment consisted of one room and a kitchen. Kalmen lived in the kitchen—that is to say, he had a bed there. Actually not a bed, but a sleeping bench, a bench that served for sitting in the daytime and for sleeping at night. Kalmen had a fever. I immediately called a doctor. The doctor said it was typhus and ordered him admitted to a hospital without delay.

When I dressed Kalmen (he could no longer dress himself), I grew frightened. He was emaciated, hunched over, greatly diminished, hardly a body at all—just a sack of bones with a skin stretched over it. He was full of lice. When I dressed him, he could no longer stand on his own. I took him to the hospital in a droshky. In the droshky I had to hold on to him because he could not even sit up without help.

I came to visit Kalmen in the hospital several times. They wouldn’t let you near a typhus patient, so I could only see him from a distance, through a glass door. His exhausted body could not overcome the illness, and after a few days, he died. The Bund gave him a big funeral and buried him in a prominent place, near Janek Jankliewicz.¹ He was only some thirty-odd years old.

Kalmen was one of the most interesting working class types in our movement. I first got to know him in 1911 at an illegal Bund meeting in Warsaw. He was active among the leather workers. He was intelligent, read much, loved to discuss things, and could do so beautifully. He was a kind of “beautiful proletarian spirit.” Besides appearing at the Bund’s illegal meeting place, he was also often a guest at the Yiddish Literary Club. The Literary Club met at the Golkowa Allee in the Saxon Garden (Ogród Saski). It was called the “Literary Allee” because the great I. L. Peretz² loved to stroll there. Also many Bundists used to come there, especially on Saturdays: Bundists, litterateurs, cultural activists, and the like. Kalmen, as was the fashion then, wore a broad brimmed black cap and a tie in the form of a black bow. In 1912, after Peretz had published his famous article, “Back to the Synagogue,” on a Saturday (Sabbath) morning a group of Bundists approached Peretz—in that very Golkowa Allee—among them, Kalmen, and presented Peretz with a traditional Hebrew prayer book, saying, “You shouldn’t be here today; you should be in the synagogue.” Peretz darkened, but didn’t answer. He published a second article, defending himself for his slogan, “Back to the Synagogue.”

After the First World War, when the Bund’s political wrangling with the Kombund began, Kalmen also belonged to the Kombund Faction, but when it split off from the Bund, he did not follow it, staying loyal to the Bund. He was a member of the Bund’s Warsaw Committee and was appointed Representative of the Union of Domestic Workers.

Figure 50. I. L. Peretz, 1892. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

In the practical, day-to-day work of the Bund, Kalmen did not really participate very much. He loved literature, art, and intellectual discussions. He was a yearning sort of person who was drawn to beauty and to higher things. Though he was talkative and loved to be around people, he was a loner, locked up within himself. He cared little about his material well-being, seldom complained, and never talked to anyone about his troubles.

Kalmen often went to the Literary Club at Tłomackie 13.³ The Yiddish writers there loved to discuss things with him. They treated him with respect and listened to his word, because Kalmen was a person who thought, and what he said was the result of his independent thinking.

Notes

1.Janek Jankliewicz (1887–1920): Typesetter. Led illegal typesetting, printing, distributing of Bund underground press. Member of the Central Committee. Selected as delegate to Bund’s planned 8th convention in Vienna in 1914. Executive Secretary of the Central Bureau of the 20-Craft Association of Trade Unions (1915). Arrested by Germans in 1916. 20,000 Jewish workers attended his Warsaw funeral.—MZ

2.I. L. Peretz (1852–1915): Called the father of modern Yiddish literature, considered one of the three great founding authors of modern Yiddish literature; born in Zamość, Poland, then under Russian rule; lived most of his life, till his death, in Warsaw, his home there being visited by aspiring young Yiddish writers seeking his encouragement and approval. Sympathetic to the Bund.—MZ

3.Literary Club (1916–1939): Fareyn fun Yidishe Literatn un Zhurnalistn in Varshe: Association of Yiddish Writers and Journalists in Warsaw, an advocacy group and social meeting venue for writers. Its initial location was at 13 Tłomackie Street, an address associated with the Yiddish secular cultural movement. The premises functioned as a social meeting place not only for members, but also for actors, artists, teachers, guests from abroad, and others who were interested in Yiddish secular culture. In addition, the Association offered a large variety of literary and other activities, both for its members and for the general public. See Z. Segalowicz’s Tlomatske 13, Buenos Aires, 1946.—MZ