Dov Bar's Volchin - The Shenk

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Dov Bar's Volchin

The Shenk
My maternal grandmother, Mindl Stavsky, was of the Kupershmit family. The Kupershmits shenk-- a bar-restaurant. Rachmil Stavsky came from Wysokie Litewskie to marry Mindl.

In my childhood, I overheard my mother's conversation with her sister, my aunt Nechama. The word Podatkes [taxes, levies] occurred often in their conversation. Naturally I did not pay attention to it. Now, much later, I am reminded of this recurring word after having seen the 1928 Polish Business Survey entry for Volchin: We are talking about the Stavsky Shenk (bar-restaurant) and hardware store [called an iron shop] in Volchin. These are additional points from which I will try to assemble a narrative which is the true story of the businesses of our families in those far days of 1928.

In the Business Directory we can see an entry describing R. Stavski as a vendor of food products and F. Kuperszmidt running a Herbaciarnie, tea-house.When I contrast a Shenk -- a bar serving alcoholic drinks -- to a tea-house, the distance between them is not that big. The family probably managed to substitute “tea-house” to avoid the taxes and levies imposed on bars since the time of the Russian Tsars. Feige Malka Kupershmit, my grandmother's sister, was the only member of the family whose name started with F. I do not know the reason for the Shenk being registered to her name. Her mother, Sure Hinde, was a woman of valor who became widowed from my great grandfather – Shmuel Berl – in 1915. She was the one who managed the place -- and she managed it with an iron fist.

My mother, Tema, and her aunt, Feige Malke, were of the same age and they helped Sure Hinde a lot in the Shenk.

My mother learned to drink beer in the shenk. She loved to drink.

My mother used to prepare the famous treat made of potatoes – ilnik (It is ilnook in Belarusian; when I visited Volchin in 1997, I asked about ilnik: they corrected me and said it is pronounced ilnook.) That was a large pancake or pie the size of a frying pan, like a big latke. It was cooked in the oven. When done, it was cut into triangles, like pizza in our time. That was a delicacy for the customers of the Shenk, who were mainly Gentiles.

They also offered herring with the drinks.

The 1928 directory describes my grandfather Rachmil Stavsky's business as “food products”, but I know it was a hardware store, a village shop that probably sold farm equipment such as plows. I know he used to deliver his goods to the Gentile villages in the neighborhood using a horse-and-carriage. I don't believe that on such a business they would impose a heavy tax load, so this definition of food products is a mystery to me. Perhaps it is just a mistake in the directory. I also don't believe that there was any tax imposed on the product of the small dairy farming that the family owned.

Editor's Notes: Dov's wife Esther interjected during the interview: “A shenk spelled money and that's why he came there to marry her. ” She also said, “My mother-in-law was a wonderfyk cook” and Dov added that she had run a home-style restaurant in Israel. Latke: A traditional Eastern European Jewish potato dish, usually fried; see, for example, here. Perhaps it was a large baked latke.

Page Last Updated: 28-Mar-2012