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My Uncle Shuli
Leslie Rübner
My earliest recollection of my paternal uncle Shuli and his wife, Auntie Ilonka, was when, just after the War, they pitched up on our doorstep in our central Budapest flat, in the middle of the Jewish district. They survived the Holocaust by hiding out in the “Glass House”, one of the Karl Lutz safe houses (Karl Lutz was Undersecretary at the Swiss Embassy). After liberation, there was what can only be described as famine in the Hungarian capital, so they made their way south to Bucharest, Romania. When things started to settle, they returned and rented a flat in the then outer, leafy suburb of Zuglo. A childless couple, they loved kids and who better than their two nephews, my brother David and I. Shuli was a Talmid Haham (lit. "student of a sage" – a Torah scholar), par excellence. His deep blue clever-looking eyes were just as David’s, and he was convinced that my brother looked just like him, so he liked people to think that he was his son.
My uncle and aunt often stayed with us for the High Holidays. David and I shared a sofa bed and, on these occasions, the three of us slept on it; Auntie shared with our mother. Of course, he would not go to our synagogue as it was probably not frum (religious) enough for him, instead going to a Hassidic minyan in one of the blocks of flats (what he called the Wild Ones). I admit that I preferred going with him, because the Wild Ones davened (prayed) slowly, with total absorption in their prayers. You felt the importance of the day. There was the occasional shouting out of a word here and there or a big clap of the hands - an outlet to their emotion. Some were praying with heavenward raised arms, whilst others were just crying. It was quite an experience. In those days, Zuglo was not developed and my uncle and aunt’s block of flats looked down on the bungalows and cultivated fields surrounding it. For us, living in the middle of a concrete jungle, it was heaven to spend Shabbat with them - one week David and one week me. Zuglo had no Orthodox synagogue, so we had a long trek to shul, unlike where we lived in the 7th District where there were synagogues on most corners. But we didn’t care. The Neolog (conservative) rabbi of Zuglo also stayed with them on Friday nights, and when he left at the end of the Sabbath, Shuli had to deal with the sofa bed he slept on by smothering it with disinfectant. All his life, he had a mortal fear of bacteria. On Shabbat afternoons we went for a walk in the fields. This was, for me, the highlight of the day. As Motzei Shabbat (Saturday night) was approaching, Auntie said the Tzenna-renna: “G-t fun Avrohom, fun Yitzchok und fun Yankev” and so on. After Shabbat terminated, we went out for the evening, usually to a beer garden, where he ordered a beer for himself and his wife and an ice-lolly for us. In Hungary in those days, you were expected to take off your hat when you took a seat in an establishment. Being very religious, there was a problem with not covering your head whilst drinking, so each time he sipped his beer, he wiped his head with a handkerchief.
At one point, both my father and Uncle Shuli were arrested by the People’s Republic Police for smuggling down feathers to Israel. Whilst awaiting trial, they were constantly cross-examined. According to my father, he was never even touched, but Shuli, because he would not give a straight answer, was beaten. The communist Judge found them not guilty, and they were freed. Subsequently and surprisingly, Shuli was allowed to open a feather steam-cleaning operation near the Western railway station. It proved to be a good business. As the commuters were streaming out of the station, they dropped their dirty duvets at the shop and picked up the cleaned ones on their way back to the countryside. As I remember, a notice on the wall warned customers that there could be up to 10% weight loss after cleaning (and low and behold, the 10% was always missing).
With the Hungarian uprising against Communism on 23rd October 1956, Uncle Shuli was caught up in the events and suddenly became a Hungarian patriot. He was writing pamphlets, poems and prose about the great and free Hungarian nation (but at the start of Communism, he edited a sort of newspaper called the “The Working Feather Wholesaler” and filled it with the then customary Communist diatribe, sending copies to his customers in the West). My mother’s brother, then living in Madrid, found a people-smuggler to collect my parents and brothers to smuggle them across the border. Auntie Ilonka was keen to come with, but Shuli was not so much. Ilonka won, so they decided to accompany my parents. My father’s reaction was that if Shuli and Ilonka were not coming, he and his family were staying put. The smugglers wanted their money and therefore agreed to escort out the extra people. So Ilonka and Shuli appeared in front of our family flat wearing umpteen layers of clothing looking like a couple of human balls.
In London, Shuli tried to reconnect with his old customers, but they were not interested. Having read the ‘Working Feather Wholesaler’, their reaction was: “What is this Communist doing here?”.
Shuli realised that the Charedi community of Stamford Hill had no access to kosher milk. He approached my father to jointly start up a Chalav Yisrael (milk that has been collected under the supervision of a religiously observant Jew) milking and distribution business. Negotiations were instituted with the Milk Marketing Board to this effect. As neither Shuli nor my father could speak good enough English at that time, either my brother or I had to attend to translate to Hungarian. The chap representing the Board advised, as milk retail prices were controlled, that business was not viable. So, my father bailed out, but not Shuli. He called his business Hatsloche (meaning good luck) (the English had a problem with the pronunciation). Shuli did not have the resources to install a pasteurising unit and on the bottle (amongst all the adverts) it said: “Tuberculin tested”. I can tell you that the milk tasted wonderful and had a thick cream on top, if you let it stand. Ilonka and Shuli asked us youngsters to collect the moneys owed, but they seemed to keep no tabs, counting on the honesty of customers. We were told “to accept anything they give”. In 1964, retail price maintenance was abolished, opening a possibility to turn the business into a success. Suddenly others also saw the opportunity in the kosher milk business and, to limit the competition, he had to go into partnership with another person from Stamford Hill. In the late fifties the Milk Marketing Board ran an advertising campaign to popularise drinking milk. One of those leaflets, saying “Drinka Pinta Milka Day” ending up on the synagogue notice board. One clever dick scribbled in the word “kosha” and then “Rubna” and finally the last joker “deara”, ending up with “Drinka Pinta Kosha Rubna Deara Milka Day”. Once his driver forgot to deliver to one of the Jewish Primary Schools in Stanford Hill. When they phoned to complain, his response was: “Never mind, we’ll give you double tomorrow”.
When I was engaged to my first wife, I was sitting on the bus at Camden Town, waiting to go to Stamford Hill, and she said to me: “There is a tramp wanting to talk to you”. Low and behold, Shuli was jay-walking toward the bus, wearing some old overcoat he received in Vienna, reaching to the ground. One trouser leg tucked into his wellington boot and the other not. By this time, he had a long beard with a knot in it to make it look shorter. Unfortunately, the knot was not in the middle. Well, he was quite a sight. After my children were born, my aunt and uncle’s love and adoration was transferred to them. Our twins called Ilonka, ‘Auntie Chocolate’, because she was always ready for them with a fistful of the stuff.
Ilonka suddenly had a stroke and was taken to St Ann’s Hospital. Her face had terribly distorted. She was longing to see the twins, but my then wife objected on the grounds that the kids would get a fright. Well, they did not. Not much later Ilonka passed away.
Shuli bought a house in Stoke Newington and occupied the ground floor. The two floors above were let out to some West Indian immigrants. These lucky tenants paid no rent, because Shuli was too afraid to collect from them.
Shuli became a Satmarer Chassid and therefore fiercely anti-Israel; we just could not resist reminding him that in Budapest he used to write songs about returning to Israel, where the grapes are sweeter and orange trees are flowering and so on.
When I lived in South Africa, I came to London for some family affair. To visit Uncle Shuli was a must. When I entered his house, the smell of sour milk and cat, in a room that was never ventilated, assailed me and I had to run out. He felt it was his duty to feed the numerous feral cats in the street, so they were in and out slurping up milk, eating up dairy products and also doing other things.
As the years passed, Shuli developed health problems and was my brother’s patient. My brother’s policy was that Rabbanim never had to queue, but of course Shuli was the exception and entered the consulting room in front of one leading Rabbi, saying “hurry up, we mustn’t keep the Rav waiting”.
Shuli lived to be well over 90 and he passed away in his sleep. Even without having direct descendants, every time I visit his grave in Enfield, the more and more little stones bear witness that he is not, nor will be forgotten.
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