Re: [Cz-L] conscription

Dear Eytan,

Thanks for the insight- according to his passport, my grandfather was 25 in
1921. That's not quite what his social security records in this country
indicate, but it's close. I think the hardship related to conscription was
severe conditions, and also probably worse for a jewish man.

I have a question someone else may know... there is a picture of my
grandfather, of course, on the passport. Was it common at that time for a
Ukrainian/Jewish man 25 years old to be clean shaven?

Mia Noren
Toms River, NJ

>
>Dear Mia,
>
>Regarding your question (if I understand it correctly) regarding whether
>Jews
>were commonly emigrating to avoid conscription at that time, I offer this:
>I
>guesstimate that my mother's (Pearl Fichman's) oldest brother, Elias
>Spiegel,
>might have been several years younger than your grandfather and I
>understand
>from the Shoah tape she made that he left Czernowitz for South America at
>least
>in part to avoid conscription. In that tape my mother characterized
>military
>service as being a very hard requirement. In her relating of this, I am not
>remembering if the severity of the hardship had, in her mind, to do with
>one's
>being Jewish.
>
>Eytan Fichman
>
Received on 2007-01-17 05:56:00