Label Fuchs. (1870-1930) Label chose to stay in Shadeva. He was a flax merchant and the town Hazzen. He and his wife, Ita Riva Berkow, had 7 daughters and one son. His former home can be seen on the Shadeva website. He had a beautiful voice, bright red hair, and loved to sing. Family members remember him as emotional and excitable.  He was supposedly very unhappy with his wife for encouraging their children to emigrate. The story is that he went to the steam bath in 1930 to prepare for the high holidays and died.  His Lithuanian death certificate lists his age as 60 and states that he is buried in the local Jewish Cemetery.  Following his death, his wife Ita went to the RSA to join family who emigrated earlier.  Saul Fuchs paid for her relocation. All of Label and Ita's seven daughters and one son went either to the US, RSA or Palestine.  Ita had at least 2 brothers with large families who stayed in Shadeva. They all perished in the Shoah.

Meyer Janet additional information:  Leibe Meir Fuchs (also known as Leibe Roche) was my grandfather. He was born and raised (as was my grandmother) in Seduva. He had black hair but a red beard. He was a Flax Merchant which entailed some travel out of town. He was musical and played the Mandolin. He was somewhat of a Chazzan or perhaps more of a Bal Tefillah, serving the Stibel Shul Community of the town.  The family lived in Keidane Gas (the street that led to the town of Keidan).They shared a back yard and a goat with the Grasko family. As the story is told, on one Seder night, when the door was opened for Elijah Ha Novi, the children led the goat into the room instead. The reaction to this prank can only be imagined.  Label Meir was a very emotional person and disturbed that his children had been encouraged to leave home. He challenged Ita Riva, saying she “chasing all of the fledglings out of the nest”. Thankfully she prevailed.  He passed away on Succoth 1930. He had gone to the Mikveh to prepare for the Yom Tov where he suffered a stroke. He was brought home and died on Yom Tov. Therefore he could not be buried for two days and his body remained in the house over that period.

Label's widow, Ita Rive left Shadeva sometime after the death of her husband. She most probably moved when the youngest daughter Pesai (Peske) left for Palestine (1935).  Once in the RSA, she moved in with her daughter Freda although she did visit her other children. She, as other women of her generation, did not have a formal education. She spoke Yiddish and understood little Hebrew or English. She prayed out of a Yiddish siddur. Ita Rive was fond of animals and used to feed the cats in the back yard of Freda’s house. I recall her having a bad stoop and deformity of the neck vertebrae. She died after a fall in 1956. (Source Meyer Janet)

Label Fuchs Family Left top: Bilha, Pesia, Sonia, Left bottom: Tziporah, Mother Ita, Father Label and Hadassah - Seduva Lithuania  late 1920s

Yudit Natkin/ Gertie Lipman additional information:   At the beginning of WWI, the Russian Government destroyed the town and exiled Seduva's Jewish inhabitants to the Ukraine.  This caused immediate mass chaos. Our family ran to the railway station where there were thousands of people and very few trains. We were 9 children, the youngest only a few months old.  Eta Riva put the baby in a cardboard box and asked a lady to hold the baby until she returned with all the other children.  When she we

nt looking for the lady and asked for the box only to be told that she had put it with other luggage in the luggage department!  It took the family over half an hour to finally find the baby, safe and well in the box!

In the Ukraine they stayed with a big woman who sat on a rocking chair in front of her house cursing all the Jews, while inside she hid all the family! The situation was so bad that the baby Pinchas died of starvation at the age of 2.  Eta Riva became hunch-backed from the lack of food and was never physically the same, previously she had been tall and straight.

The Fuchs tried to live a normal life in the Ukraine but the economic and political situation was very difficult due to the revolution and civil war. Only Samuel aged 11 found work in a bakery. He earned a loaf of bread a day which helped fed the entire family. He held a second job in construction as a general laborer.  The family lived on his earnings from both of his jobs. 

The Fuchs returned to Sedowa in Lithuania after the war in approximately 1918 and survived on funds sent from South Africa by Uncle Saul.  Sam obtained work in a bakery so that at least the family had bread to eat.  The elder girls were sent to a Russian school.  Though they had next to nothing, they were always neat and clean.  (Source Yudit Natkin)