The black notebook.
I have a book. It is small. About eight inches by nine inches. It has a black cover. Inside are 33 lined pages, so total of 66 pages that can be written on.
It seems to be a diary. Most of the pages, about 40, have entries that are dated in 1921. So my book is almost 100 years old. Two of the names I recognize. My grandmother and her first cousin, Abraham, who perished in the Shoah. The other names I am not sure about. But these entries, even though they have different names, seem to be written by the same person. My grandmother perhaps? Or are they really two separate handwriting. Now that I look at this page below, it seems as if two different people wrote. But many of the pages have the same writing and not changes like this one.
Entries from March 1921 with my grandmother Tala Szenk and her cousin Abram Prentki’s names.
Some of the entries look like they could be poems. Did they write these poems, or did they just copy them from some book? It does show how my grandmother was educated in Poland. Her father was a teacher. Grandma could read, write and speak in Polish, Hebrew and Yiddish. After she came to America, she went to night school to learn English.
See Lipka, her relatives she stayed with when she arrived in America.
In the middle of the book are names and addresses in English. Names of people living in New York and New Jersey. Hidden, I think, in the middle of the book. Her escape plan? My grandmother came to the United States when she was 16 in 1922. I see the last name of the aunt and uncle who allowed her to live with them in the United States. They must have sponsored her as well. The name is Lipka.
It is all written in Polish. But I can understand the names, because I recognize them. And the name of my grandmother and her cousin jump out at me. Especially since I have written about this cousin and not knowing who he was at first. And then here he is embedded with her in this book.
Who wrote these pages?
After the journal entries, if that is what they are, comes some blank pages, and then six pages written in a different handwriting. It looks like a poem. But I am not sure. I am not sure what any of it is.
The last four pages are in Yiddish. Those I have had translated. We think it is a story, perhaps not true, perhaps yes. About a girl who meets non-Jewish man and how it ends in sadness. The beginning reminds of the story of Tveye and his daughter Chava. But this story does not end happily. Did she read a book and decided to write that story? I don’t know. I don’t know if she is writing about someone she knew or making up a story. Perhaps the other entries would give me information. Perhaps.
Why did she save this receipt as well?
Inside the book is a receipt for registered mail sent on November 16, 1922. Did she send something back to her father and her siblings after she arrived in America? I wish I knew.
My grandmother passed away 38 years ago. I wish I had seen this book when she was alive so I could ask her what all this is! We found it long after she died and my parents died. It was hidden in the bottom of a box in the attic of their Catskills home. Not thrown away, but saved for me to one day find.
This book is a mystery to me. I need someone who reads Polish and can translate this book for me. I love a mystery, but even more, I love the solution to a mystery!
Two blogs about Abraham Prentki:
https://zicharonot.com/2018/06/04/the-mystery-of-abraham-prantki/
https://zicharonot.com/2018/06/26/amazing-what-information-two-photos-can-provide/
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