Papa - The Early Years

A bustling Polish town near the Romanian border was where my grandfather, Leo Erlich (Papa), was born by another name, a red-headed Leib Kwittner, on June 5, 1888, to Mindel (Menie) and David Mayer Kwittner/Erlich. The town, Tysmienica (pronounced Tishmenitza), changed names with the borders, which was frequently, now Poland, now Austria, now the Ukraine, which it remains today. (Papa may have been born in Lodz…Grandma Lucy referred to that once. It is in the Stanislava/Stanislau/called Janowicz region, Ivano Frankivsic now, Galicia/Galizien, Knihininie Koloni area and was part of Poland at that time, now the Ukraine. On official papers, however, it lists his place of birth as Mizon, Galicien. The Ukraine was Greek Orthodox and Poland was Roman Catholic. What chance did we have?

Apparently, the family also had several names, due, in part, to three situations:

• Mindel and David were not married legally, only in the Jewish tradition.
• In World War I, there was a big reason to avoid the draft. The Russian army was abducting Jewish boys out of the villages and raping the girls. Therefore, there was lots of name and birthdate changing, to avoid a possible lifetime in the service.
• Much later, there was an even bigger reason to change your name: to avoid Hitler. Papa was involved in all three. Therefore, the family’s name alternated from Kwittner, to Erich, to Ehrlich, to Erlich. 

Arriving in Vienna just after the turn of the century in 1901, he convinced a hardware store owner to hire him as an apprentice. The conversation with this store owner (called an Eisenhandlung – iron monger/locksmith), perhaps in Viennese, mostly likely in Yiddish or Polish, was pivotal, and, I imagine, passionate.

“Bitte bin ich Leo Erlich, und ich will mit Ihnen heute arbeiten.” The owner obviously liked him. He eventually took over the store at 17 Brietensehrstrasse on 4/28/1913, 12 years later. A solid fixture in his community, Papa ran that store for 25 years, from age 25 to 50, until 10/6/1938. He owned it for 10 years before my mother was born.

Fredi, Berta’s son, remembered the shop as we walked into a replica of it when I visited him in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2001. Rustic, with plain long floorboards stretching to each corner. Barrels dotting the aisles, filled to the brim with sundries. Shafts of light thrown like swords through the tall show windows.

Now Papa was the Eisenhandlung, then a Kaufman, or merchant. Once he became a shop owner, he changed his name again to Adolph Erlich because Erlich meant “honest” in German (Austrian). Also, the German equivalent of Aryeh was Adolph. As Hitler’s influence spread, Papa changed his name for the final time, to Leo.

Papa was a Renaissance man, even then. He manufactured ladies’ blouses and dresses. His active mind led him to invent a poppyseed mill for making hamentashen and a special lock called a Vienna lock. The owner of many patents, he loved tinkering, and once made an iron sled for a nephew, Fredi, for his three-year old birthday.

A godfather of his day, Papa took care of everyone. That’s the way it was for awhile, until the Brods introduced him to their daughter, Melanie (2/10/1894 – 9/18/1967). The Brod family owned a luggage store on Hutteldorferstrasse with which Papa did business.

They were married (insert picture of marriage book and their engagement photo) and had two children, my mother Gittel (Lucy) in 1923 and five years later, her brother, David (Egon).

Insert picture of Papa and Grandma looking at mom in a carriage as a baby.