My birthplace of Torun was situated at the northern end of the Carpathians, the mountainous border then shared by Czechoslovakia and Poland, but now part of the Ukraine. Carpathia was incorporated as an autonomous region of the Czechoslovakian Republic after World War I. Its official languages were Small Russian (Ukrainian) and Czech, and the alphabet was Russian Cyrillic. With a population of a little more than one million, the area was home to roughly 100,000 Jews, or 10-11 percent of the residents.

Overall, the region was quite poor. Natural resources consisted solely of lumber - huge forests of mainly pine and spruce - and a few salt mines. There was no coal, though we really didn't need any, as lumber was a plentiful fuel source. The area also was excellent for raising cattle and sheep, so dairy products were in abundance.

What Carpathia lacked in natural resources, G-d more than compensated for in natural beauty. The region was an Eden for scenery painters and poets. A green, pine forest fragrance permeated the spring and summer breezes, filling the air with a delightful perfume. Majestic backs of the Carpathian Mountains stretched as far as the eye could see, and rivers meandered through the foothills. Waterfalls filled the serene, quiet forest with a bubbling, rushing roar. This combination of beautiful panoramas, striking fragrances, and soothing sounds was quite literally intoxicating. One had the feeling of witnessing the product of Biblical Creation.

Near Torun, atop the Plashiveh Mountain, is a remarkable natural wonder: a lake called the Eye of the Sea. It measures one kilometer long, but is no more than five hundred meters wide and is about a third of a kilometer in depth. Tourists from all over the Czechoslovakian Republic would come just to see it. To get to the mountaintop, they had to climb three to four hours simply to view it because the lake is surrounded on all sides by pine forest. In the center of the lake is a tiny island, forming the "pupil" that helps give this body of water its name.

Across the valley below, houses were built along a highway running through the foothills. These were primarily Jewish homes. The Small Russians, or Ukrainians, lived by and large in the surrounding mountains and fields, where they farmed or raised their livestock. Torun's entire population totaled roughly 3,000. Many villages this size dotted the landscape. The nearest "official" city, Chust, was 80 kilometers (50 miles) away to the southwest.

In Torun alone there were three synagogues and two mikvahs (ritual baths). Here the Torah lived in great affluence. Jewish holidays reigned supreme. Every Shabbos (Sabbath) was like a new matan Torah, a new giving of the Torah. And while Jewish families toiled hard during the week - "From the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread" - their Sabbaths were restful, rich in spiritual content and contentment. People truly felt as though they had acquired an additional soul - a metaphor for the spiritual enrichment of Shabbos.

Torun was home to 135 tallesim (prayer shawls), our shorthand way of maintaining the tradition of not directly counting the number of Jews. Instead, we counted tallesim; each one represented a married man and his family. (In our region, boys did not wear tallesim before marriage, as opposed to the custom in many places in the United States.) The 135 families, therefore, represented roughly 700-800 souls. On average, families had four or five children apiece, and it wasn't rare for them to have more. By my estimate, only 80 to 100 of my fellow Toruners survived to see the end of the war - and many of these only because they left as pioneers to Israel before and during the 1930s.

Since Torun's only real industry was lumber, there were two lumber mills in town. In addition, there were two grain mills, a few grocery stores and some bars. All these businesses were in Jewish hands; not a single gentile owned a store in town. Local gentiles knew that anything they required had to be obtained before a Jewish holiday or Shabbos, when everything would be closed.

Families in the lumber business were considered upper class. Other families engaged in farming or buying and selling livestock, and could be considered middle class. Another group owned horses and buggies and made their living transporting freight. We referred to them as balegulas, or literally "owners of wheels." They'd transport building materials - two-by-twos, two-by-fours and lumber for furniture - the 80 kilometers to Chust. On the return trip, they'd bring basic food items such as flour, sugar and all kinds of produce, along with kerosene and oil. Normally, the trip to Chust and back via horse and buggy would take three days. If a balegula wanted to make two trips a week, he'd start right away after Shabbos - as soon as a minimum of three stars were visible in the night sky (meaning that the Sabbath had officially ended). If some obstacle delayed his second trip back from Chust, he would show up a little late on Friday evening when the Jews were already on their way to synagogue. When this would happen to one poor fellow, we used to say that he drove his wagon shaft right into the Friday night noodle soup.

In 1925, my parents bought the house in which I grew up, and at one time it had been the most lavish house in all of Torun. What my father bought, however, was a skeleton. World War I battles fought in our area of the Carpathians had left the structure gutted, with only its outer stone walls standing. Houses in Torun were always built of lumber, which was never in short supply. This house, however, was the only one in the area built entirely of stone, like a castle, leading people to call our house the mo'ar (stone house). The only other stone structure in Torun was City Hall. Its status as a skeleton actually worked to my father's financial advantage: there was a national law that allowed a 15-year tax exemption on new houses; my father applied for this abatement and received it.

The restoration took quite a few months, but the house was transformed into a real beauty. There wasn't another like it for miles around. It had massive doors and windows; all the rooms were painted, every one a different color. While other houses in the area were plain white, we had a silver room, a golden room, a green room, and so forth. Circling the wall of each room, up by the ceiling, was multicolored floral stenciling. All the ceilings were painted pure white. For almost two months, a pair of painters had labored to paint the house inside and out.

Not only was our house big and pretty, but it also was cheerful and spiritual. Often, famous rabbis would travel through the region, and invariably they stayed in our home. We had enough spare rooms to host them, and also enough space in the yard to accommodate all those who would come by horse and buggy from the surrounding villages to meet or listen to them. Each rabbi had many followers in the region so sometimes they would stay at our house for a week at a time. My mother loved to prepare meals for them, and especially to prepare the Shabbos tables. It was very spiritually uplifting when the rabbis stayed with us. The majority of people in the Carpathian region believed these were holy men who had the capacity to perform miracles.