Bubby
2,147 views · Published 20 May 2010 · 4:12 · Indexed 6 November 2026
Channel: folkstreamer · 2010 · Film & Animation
This film was completed by me in 1964 as part of a film workshop with Roger Larsen, from the 92nd Street Y in New York City. I was 18 , and very concerned about life and death; my brother and I were staying at the Cruger Avenue, Bronx apartment of my grandmother, Clara Fishman, to check on her safety, as she was starting to wander at that time, at the age of 84. Clara Fishman was a remarkable woman, who shepherded her 5 children to safety from Russia in 1920 to the United States, several years after her husband, Morris had ventured across to the U.S., to get established as a carpenter, prior to sending for the rest of the family. She earned some kopeks in the little shtetl of Felshteen where the family lived, by selling bread and rolls- but also, whiskey to the local Cossaks, a dangerous, illicit trade activity. There were waves of pogroms that the Jewish population had to endure at the hands of the Cossaks, and their close collaborators, the Peklura, a Polish infantry. Shetls were invaded by roving bands who would rape women, and kill men and boys. In one such event, that lives on in the collective family lore, Peklura, with bayonets fixed, came to the small house where the family lived. Bubby first hid the children in closets and under beds, and then stood in the doorway, and would not let the Peklura in. They stabbed her repeatedly, and left her for dead in a pool of blood. The children crept out, after the wave of violence had subsided, and somehow were able to get help for their mother by having her transported with the rest of the wounded to the estate of a well-to-do landowner in the area, who was sympathetic to their plight, and allowed many Jews to stay there until the danger had passed. And here she was, at the age of 84, alone in her apartment with her memories of the past, mourning forever the death of her son, Murray Fishman, who had fallen on the beaches of Normandy in 1944. Her husband, Morris, had died in 1952. The surviving children, Martin, Sylvia, Doris, and my mother, Vera, were soon to reluctantly conclude that safety required that my Bubby be placed in a local nursing home. This indomitable woman, Clara Fishman, Bubby, died in 1972, at the age of 92. Murray Kramer
