The Story of Leah Satanovsky-Goldstein

This information was gathered from hundreds of letters that were kept by my grandfather Baruch, Leah’s husband.

Baruch and Leah were both born in Ukraine and met in Palestine. They each left their families behind and gave heed to the Zionist call to move to Palestine.In my research I found that the Zionist movement was quite active in both towns, but mainly in Ekaterinoslav where Leah was born.Baruch was born in a smaller town called Ilintsi and traveled to Kiev for his Zionist activities. When he was 18 years old he walked from Ukraine to Palestine with a group of men who later became known as the Zion Mule Corps.

Their love story grew side by side with the story of the young state of Israel; from their letters I realized that they created a completely new life in Israel. They left behind not only their traditions and their language, they left behind the image of a meek Jew! They turned their backs to everything that their ‘old country’ represented. With amazing courage they changed the concept of a shtetle Jew who is working as a tailor (as in the case of Baruch), who is speaking Yiddish and adheres to Jewish religious traditions, and who is not physically strong. This new Jew speaks only Hebrew, builds an army, works and farms the Land and feels ownership and pride in their new country.Leah was the only member of her family who left Ukraine and was the only one who survived the Pogroms, and Baruch and his brother Chayim were the only two members of their family who left Ukraine and were the only ones who survived the Pogroms.This is a story of two people who chose to leave their Ukrainian hometowns as pioneers and with burning ideology, stubbornness and strength they created a new home; no longer a shtetle, but a homeland for all the Jewish people.

Leah (Liza) Satanovsky was born in south-central Ukraine in a town called Ekaterinoslav1 around 1895 to her father Isaac. As a young woman she arrived in Lwow (Lviv) where her sister Yehudit was living with her husband Shimon Levine. They ran a school and Shimon was a Hebrew teacher.Leah rented a room at Mrs. Zilbershtein’s and started working as a nanny. At that time she befriended local Jewish girls her age (15-16) and joined H’chalutz. At age 16 Leah traveled to Palestine with a group of friends and stayed in Rechovot. She soon returned to Lwow after she got sick with pneumonia. She was sent to a sanitarium outside Lwow to recover, and spent a few months in and out of it.

In her letters from the summer of 1912 she starts talking about going back to Palestine again, and sure enough in the winter of 1913 she officially moved to Palestine with a group of H’chalutz members. She ended up in the Galilee at a small village called Yavniel where she lived with a host family and worked on their farm.In 1914 at the eve of WWI, Leah’s letters to her family both in Ekaterinoslav and in Lwow started returning unopened.Leah permanently lost all contact with her family.

Near Yavniel was another village called Saronah, and there was a group of young Jewish men and women who were working the land and growing vegetables. It is there that Leah met a tall, dashing young man who also came to Palestine from a town called Ilintsi2, Ukraine in 1913.

1. Russian city founded in 1787 during the reign of Catherine II.; capital of the government of the same name. It is one of the most important commercial and industrial centers of southern Russia, the census of 1897 crediting it with a population of 121,216 persons, including 36,600 Jews. The latter are actively identified with the trades and industries of the city, about one-third of the entire Jewish population (2,388 families; in all 11,157 persons) deriving its income from commercial pursuits, and another third (2,712 master artisans and 480 apprentices) being engaged in industrial occupations. The city has more than thirty shops and factories, mainly grist-mills, lumber-mills, foundries, machine-shops, and tobacco-factories. Almost all of these establishments are owned by Jews, but the number of Jewish factory employees is comparatively low, although in one cigarette-paper factory and in one tobacco-factory the workmen are all Jews. There are 847 Jewish day-laborers, mainly drivers, porters, etc.Source: Jewish Encyclopedia2 According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, Jews began settling in Ilintsy in the mid-17th century and by 1765 numbered 386. After its incorporation into Russia in 1793 it belonged administratively to the Kiev province. In 1790, the Jews numbered 423. In 1852 all of the town's 76 artisans were Jews. The community numbered 3,407 in 1847, 4,993 (49.7% of the total population) in 1897, and 5,407 (46.8%) in 1926. Before

This young man was named Baruch Goldshtien.In the winter of 1915 he became ‘her man’ and she ‘his girl’, and they remained that way until day she died—November 1st, 1922 and until the day he died fifty one years after her – October 28th, 1973.

Their story together started to unfold during the days of WWI: at the end of 1916 and the beginning of 1917. The British army was coming from Egypt and had occupied Rafah. The rest of Palestine was still under Turkish rule.

While working in Saronah Leah met and befriended young men and women from H’shomer, and those friendships lasted for the rest of her life. Leah stayed in Saronah until April of 1917, when she suffered from malaria, and with her weakened lungs she was unable to work as hard as the ‘rest of the girls’.The situation in Palestine was not good; there was not enough food and not enough work.Leah moved around from one farm to the next, looking for work, and ended up in Poriya with her good friend Pasha. They lived in a tent and they picked almonds. In her letters to Baruch she describes the hard work and the satisfaction of strong Hebrew hands reclaiming Eretz Yisrael!Baruch worked as a guard at the time with a few other H’shomer members; they protected a farm north of Tiberias. Leah and Baruch visited each other and exchanged many letters; Baruch wrote in beautiful clear Hebrew and Leah wrote mainly in Russian3 although she knew Yiddish and Polish as well. Baruch encouraged her to write in Hebrew, and she tried, but her Hebrew was poor and she became quite frustrated with the effort it took to express herself in Hebrew.

Leah eventually joined a group of young women and they called themselves "K’vutzat HaEsrim", "The Group of Twenty." This was a group of 20 women who did not have work or food or homes and they traveled together from farm to farm and tried to find work, as migrant farm workers.

WWI almost all the shops belonged to Jewish merchants, among them were 36 textile stores, 19 groceries, and 11 stores for leather products. At this time there were six synagogues and a private school for boys in operation.The town was liberated in 1944. In 1970 the Jewish population was estimated at approximately 100 (20 families). They had no synagogue and most left in the 1990s.3 I had the letters translated from Russian and Yiddish.

They were starving and quite vulnerable, and when one of their members committed suicide, one of the big farms gave them a plot of land for a vegetable garden and helped them build a shack to live in. Leah stayed with this group until 1918. It was one of the only women’s farmers’ co-ops in Eretz Yisrael.In a document I found about this group I found the following description:“This past summer 40% of the women were sick with Malaria, there was very little food and they worked in the fields with no shoes.”But one of the women wrote:“The vegetables garden is doing quite well, and the group was able to purchase 2 donkeys. We are loading the donkeys with fresh vegetables and bring them to the market is Tiberias; we sell our goods to American agents (?) and to workers who come through Tiberais. We are supporting ourselves and we are farming the Land of Eretz Yisrael!”

Once again, she was unable to work as much as the others because ofthe Malaria and the fevers kept coming back. She was sent to recover at a makeshift hospital in Tiberias and her letters indicated that she felt awful about not contributing to the ‘effort’ as much as she should.As the British forces advanced and took over Jerusalem and the central part of Palestine, the Turks ruled northern Palestine and Baruch tried to decide whether to join the 38th Jewish Legion which would help the British forces fight the Turkish army. Leah strongly supported the idea of joining the Legion but Baruch felt that he had to wait for the Party’s decision; he is a long time member of Poale Zion and so he waited for their word.While he waited, Baruch decided to go to Metula (Northern Israel) with several other H’shomer members, among them his friend Alexander (Yisrael) Zäid. Here is a letter from July 27th 1918:

Shalom Leah,Yesterday I wrote to you that I am going to Tel Adash and today everything changed because I was invited to join the group that is going to Metula. Zäid himself invited me. I am asking that you get ready to come up north as well, in two weeks you will be picked up.I wanted to tell you about everything right away and I wanted you to come with me now, but I do not have time as the wagon is loaded and waiting for

me outside. When I get to Metula I will write you and tell you all about the place and also the exact date that you will be picked up.Leah, this is a really good group (kibbutz) for now what I want you to know is that we are going to be here forever! Not for only one year or two. The group is growing and at this point there are already 20 men and women up there. Of course things run in a communal way, and they have already built a real building for a dining room. I will write more when I get there or you will find out yourself when you get here and we are together.-GoldshtienMake sure you are ready when they come to pick you up.

Leah was on her way to Metula when the Malaria flared up and she could not continue on her journey. Her old friend Pasha picked her up and she stayed with her and her husband. Baruch was trying to pull all his connections with H’shomer and with Poale Zion to try and get Leah extra Quinine but without much success. With the strong belief of equality for all, Baruch is unable to pull any strings; it is a principled choice that that he will never forgive himself for, for the rest of his life!

While Leah recuperated, Baruch followed the party vote and joined the 40th

Jewish Legion; he now got paid real money - 8 funts4 per month. He felt good about his service, his income and his contribution to the "effort."

In the town of Tiberias by the Sea of Galilee was a seat of a Scottish church; they owned a large property and several buildings, one of which was used as a hospital. It was the only hospital for all the inhabitants of the Galilee, both Jews and Arabs. In 1914 when WWI broke out the director of the hospital and the rest of the staff (mostly English) abandoned the hospital and went back to England, thus leaving the whole population of the Galilee without a hospital.On the 25th of September 1918 the British took over Tiberias during an outbreak of Cholera and a nurse and a doctor from the American Red Cross decided to reopen the hospital and to try and stop the outbreak.

4 Funt is Egyptian currency also called Egyptian pound. At the outbreak of WWI, the Egyptian pound was pegged to the British pound sterling at par.

At that point a group of A.Z.M.P5 sent supplies and personnel to the abandoned hospital and they restored it. It is staffed it with 3 doctors and 3 nurses, all of them Americans. Leah was one of their first patients. She was admitted with high fever, chills and severe dehydration.

Baruch was losing touch with her; he was in Egypt with the Legion and sent letters to different friends trying to locate Leah. Finally Pasha wrote to him to let him know that Leah was now recuperating in a hospital in Tiberias and the letters between the two continued.Leah told Baruch that she decided to become a nurse, heeding the call of Henrietta Szold.Baruch thought this was a bad idea because the work was too hard and he was worried about Leah’s health. He was not thrilled about ‘his girl’ going to nursing school and he was not thrilled about being in the army. The war was over, Turkey was defeated and he could be discharged to go to an agriculture school Mikveh Yisrael and study Agronomia. Leah objected and advised him to sign up for another year in the Legion; he could earn a living while she studied nursing.

Things were getting tense between Leah and Baruch; she had a suitor who was studying in the Gimnazya “Hertzliya” but her heart was with Baruch.They visited each other while she studied in Jerusalem to be a nurse and whenever his Legion was in the area. It seemed that Baruch made friends with a few of the nursing students and stated corresponding with them. Leah was furious!Baruch wrote her on the 28th of May, 1919:

Shalom Leah!Your letters are plain. They are monochromatic, just like the sand in the desert. I am especially saddened by your jealousy! If you only knew how your words caused me to not appreciate you any more, you wouldn’t have written them!The next day he regrets his words and writes:Shalom Leah,

5 Sponsored by Hadassah and forced to await the war's conclusion, the American Zionist Medical Unit embarked in 1918 with forty-five doctors and nurses and four hundred tons of supplies. The unit transformed medical care in Palestine, introducing equipment that had never been seen in the region before. Jewish Women Archives. http://jwa.org/historymakers/szold/american-zionist-medical-unit

I knew how my words cause you pain and how much I insulted you. But when can I do, you are at fault. You are a bad girl!!You give me too much trouble and suffering. Soon I will replace you with another…We are together for three and a half years now and when I see that you still have doubts about my intentions…my heart breaks!You know me and you know that I do not get angry easily, but this time I could not control my emotions and I wrote what I wrote.Goldshtien

When the British took over the Northern part of Israel (from the Turks) Tz’fat suffered under a severe typhoid epidemic, and the A.Z.M.P decided to step up and open a hospital in that city together with the American Red Cross.There had never been a hospital in that part of Israel before, and under the guidance of Henrietta Szold equipment was brought over by ship from America, unloaded in Haifa, loaded on a train, arrived in Tiberias and from there it was loaded onto the back of mules and finally after some weeks arrived at the Kabbalist city.

On June 25 1919 the hospital was officially opened and Leah was sent there to work as nurse and to upgrade her training to R.N. The move to Tz’fat was hard on Leah and she was sick with fevers for several weeks.

Baruch was still a soldier in the Jewish Legion and occasionally visited Leah but their relationship was still tense and Leah wanted to break up! They still wrote each other but only as ‘friends’ and the separation between the two got deeper and deeper.Baruch was stationed in El-Arish (Egypt) and wrote the following letter to Leah:

Shalom Leah,If you have any doubts about my feelings towards you that it is all over between us, because I will not want to cause you pain by staying with me. But if the only thing that is standing between our future together are those unfortunate letters then we need to look at it.I am ready to tie my soul to yours for eternity.

Goldshtien

When he does not hear back he writes another letter a few weeks later:…I always knew that you and I cannot be separated…we souls are intertwined forever…

Leah soon requested a transfer to Hadassah Jerusalem so she could be closer to ‘her man’.Baruch was now sick with T.B and was sent to recuperate in Alexandria; from there he sent a string of letters and encouraged her to create a nursing union, (he used the word Agudah.) He talked a lot about the strength of unions and pointed out that the doctors in Israel were (already) unionized and that the nurses should do the same. It was very important to him that the workers (poalim) should have the same rights as the more educated people.

The ideology of his party runs through his letters; it is all about the Yishuv, the Party, Hebrew and self reliance. Baruch did not like Hadassah as those women are not from here; instead they choose to stay in America. As far as he was concerned they should stay there! He said that they feel that because they were giving money to the ‘effort’ they also gave themselves permission to tell the people who were living in Israel how to run their country. He felt that they had no right to do so and warned Leah against their influence.News of Pogroms in Ukraine6 reached Israel and Leah became very worried about her parents and the rest of her family. Baruch was also worried about his family and together they placed an ad in a special booklet named "The Palestine Division for Locating Relatives."7

Leah was looking for the Mendel family from Ektarinoslav and for Solomon Satanovsky, Moshe Duktch and Yaakov Lishinski from Nikolaev.(I have no indication that any connection was ever established with Leah’s family. Baruch later found some of his family in Odessa.)In December of 1919 Baruch got to Jerusalem and Leah took a few days off, and they spent a precious week together in snowy Jerusalem.

6 Two pogroms, perpetrated by Denikin's army, occurred in 1919. During the interwar period many Jews left Ilintsy, and by 1939 their number had dropped to 2,217 (total population 3,484). (Yizkor book Ilintsy)7 It is hard to translate but it is an important group (המדור לחיפוש קרובים) that continued to work until 2002!

Baruch was back to ‘his business’ in H’shomer and he disappeared for weeks at a time for ‘secret missions’ (?) Leah was very worried.

Leah and Baruch’s love story continued to unfold and to get deeper amid constant Arab attacks on Jewish settlements in the Galilee, hunger and Malaria which seemed to affect all of Eretz Yisrael. The morale was very low and Baruch kept sending encouraging letters to Leah who was struggling with her health.Baruch managed to come and visit Leah in Jerusalem in early February of 1920 and they spent a happy weekend together; spring was almost there and there was a brief hopeful outlook.When Baruch returned to duty he wrote Leah:

Shalom Leah,Maybe there is such a thing in this world that they call love?...If there is Leah’le, I love you!Nothing will stand between you and me ever again…Leah’le…these moments, if there is such thing in this world they call happiness, then I am happy! My life would be perfect if I knew for sure that you are happy.Leah, you must believe that these words are not just prose, this is my promise to you and I will prove it to you in deeds during our life together.GoldshtienThe 3rd Aliya was arriving in late 1919 and with the immigrants arriving from Eastern Europe came the horror stories about the situation of the Jews in Ukraine. War and revolutions were raging in parts of Ukraine, everyone was suffering and Baruch once again tried to get in touch with relatives.He wrote Leah a letter and asked her to check out the list which was published by the International Telecommunication Union, he had heard that they published a list of the latest casualties in Ukraine.Baruch asked Leah to look at lists from Ilintsi near Kiev and from Dashev also, near Kiev.They also published a notice from ‘Liza Satanovsky and Goldshtien’ who were looking for any relatives; they gave the names of their towns and the names of their relatives. In the notice they also gave their address:

Leah Satanovsky,

HadassahJerusalemPalestine

Baruch GoldshtienPalestineThe date of the notice is February 26th 1920.

Leah and Baruch continued to write many letters to each other. Leah’s Hebrew was improving and she used less and less Yiddish which made Baruch very happy.

From his letters I can see that Baruch was moving around Israel, as he was officially a part of the Jewish Legion but was also doing a lot of work for H’shomer. He was very active with the ‘party’ and sent Leah letters that are full of Zionist ideology. He refused an offer from his brother Chayim who lived in Canada to come and ‘join the business’8 and in fact he got angry with his brother who was trying to take him away from the Zionist effort.There is a gap in the letters from Leah; I was not able to find any letters between June 25th, 1920 and August 2nd 1920. Something bad must have happened because the next letter I have is from Baruch to Leah in which he is comforting her.

Leah,I don’t have the right words that could bring you comfort. I do not know how to comfort you at this time. Please do not despair! You must not give up! These are the ways of the world…but your future is still ahead of you.You will find comfort through your work.

Did she hear some bad news about her family? It is unclear from the letter what had happened.Baruch in the meantime decided to leave the Jewish Legion and actively looked for a place where he and Leah could settle and where they could

8 From the Yizkor book of Ilintsy I learned that the shopkeepers disappeared from the scene by the end of the 1920s and the artisans were forced 10 join cooperatives. Some of these cooperatives developed into garment and shoe factories. At the end of 1931 there were still 500 unemployed Jewish youngsters in the town. There existed a Yiddish school with about 250 pupils and a Jewish local council operated in the 1920s. My great uncle Chayim who was in the garment business left Ukraine and settled in Canada. There he continued to work in the garment business until the late 1970’s.

both find work. After six moths he found Kibbutz Machnayim in the Galilee; it is near Tz’fat and Leah could work as a nurse and he would work as a farmer.Baruch and Leah were starting to make real plans for living together but I found the following letter from Baruch to Leah dated February 4th, 1921:

Shalom Leah,You have no idea how the bad news are hard for me. I almost became sick from despair.It is very bad news that we will not have children.I had some hope earlier and now it is gone.But if the doctor is saying that getting pregnant will put your life at risk, then we now know that we will not have children. Your life is more important!We need to have hope.If there is no hope then why even live??? We must look forward into the future.Leah, I decided to share my life with you for better or for worse. We have hard work ahead of us and we can do it when we are together!I have been working hard in the fields, planting trees. I am glad I have work; it helps me forget and helps me move forward.Yours,Goldshtien

On Wednesday March 1st, 1921 Leah and Baruch were married!The chief Rabbi of Tz’phat performed the ceremony.(I have the Ketubah and cards from friends)There was small party on Friday March 3rd at the Kibbutz.Leah then became ill again and was hospitalized, and Baruch was quite worried about her. She continued to go in and out of the hospital but in between she worked as a nurse and found happiness and satisfaction in her occupation.(There are less letters at this point as Leah and Baruch are finally together)

Despite the doctor's warnings Leah becomes pregnant and on October 24th,1922 she gave birth to a son.I found the following letter:

October 28th, 1922Shalom Goldshtien,We heard that Leah’s situation is not good. I am waiting every day to hear from you how she is doing, I feel that I have become crazy from worry.You need to let us know how Leah is doing and how the baby is doing!Pasha

The following letter was not sent to Kishinev:

October 30th, 1922My dear mother, brother and sister,Mazal Tov to you.I am letting you know that I have a son.The birth was difficult but fast. Leah is still in the hospital where she is recovering. She is feeling good. The baby is feeling good as well.Our son does not have a name yet.Yours,Baruch

There is an identical letter that was not sent to Moscow to some other relatives.

But Leah was not recovering, and passed away some days later from complications of the birth.

A draft letter to Leah’s supervisor:November 11th, 1922To Mrs. Garry,I am sending you Leah’s Nurse Bag with everything in it. Please keep it so you will always remember Leah.Thank you for your devotion to her.Goldshtien

Baruch wrote:(Not dated)

She went, she went, she is goneAnd her clear voice cannot be heardThe pure sparkle in eyesThat shone like a star for meIs extinguished.

The son was named Amos and in 1958 he and his wife had a daughter.They named her Leah.