Born in 1902 in Chumalovo{Comolovo} to
Israel Slomovic and Pessel{Pepi} Motjovic. There were five
daughters in all. No sons that I know of, although there may have been
a still birth and an infant death. My mother was the third in line.
Peril and Sura came before her and Rachel and Mariam followed. My
mother's yiddish name was Rifka. The birth certificate was sent for in
1931 when my mother decided to become an American citizen.
In 1902, Chumalovo was in the Maramoros province of Austria Hungary. My
mother called herself Hungarian.The Slomovic family spoke yiddish and
Hungarian. They were also able to converse with their Ukrainian
neighbors in a kind of Russian which they called "goyish". In order to
exist, they needed to be multi lingual. They were agrarian. My
grandfather owned a plot of land and they grew most of their food
supply. They raised geese and had chickens, a cow and a team of horses.
I know that they had an apple tree, because my mother confessed to me
that she ate most of the apples that were stored in the hay during the
winter. I don't know much about the shtetl at all. There are no
pictures or post cards. Was there a shule? How about a Cheder? or a
rabbi? It was a true Shtetl buried in the Carpathians.
My mother talked about the Tereblya River which separated
Chumalovo {Somanfalva} from Krichovo where her grandmother lived. Her
grandmother was Chaya Broina Motyovich {I'm named for her}. If Rifka
wanted to visit her grandmother, there was no bridge, so she swam
across in the summer and walked across the ice in the winter. She was
feisty, my mother was! When I was growing up in Detroit, we had a
little farm in Michigan and my mother grew all her own fruits and
veggies and canned everything for the winter. She even knew how to pick
mushrooms in the woods. She always said " I haven't poisoned you yet."
My father trusted her. My brother and I weren't too sure.
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