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Part Two: The Braverman Family 75 winds. They took the Metro to Abel's brother's Rue de la Garde apartment, on the sixth floor of a walk-up tenement building. Zhenya, wracked by pain and feeling that she could go into labor any minute, somehow made the journey. A few hours later she was taken by ambulance to the Rothschild Hospital where her firstborn, Leo, entered the world on February 14. They returned to a cold, cramped room in the Paris suburb of Livre-Gargan. They had no money, no jobs, and were living Above: Zhenya and Abel Fajerman in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, 1945. Le: Leo and Joel Fajerman in Paris, 1958. Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish: שלום־עליכם, Russian: Шолом- Алейхем, Ukrainian: Шолом-Алейхем) was the pen name of Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich, a popular Russian humorist and Jewish author of Yiddish novels, short stories, and plays. He was born on February 18, 1859, and died on May 13, 1916. At the time of his death, his funeral was one of the largest in New York City history, with an estimated 100,000 mourners. The next day, his will was printed in The New York Times. Sholem Aleichem did much to promote Yiddish writers, and was the first to write children's literature in the language. His work has been widely translated. The 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof, loosely based on Aleichem's stories about his character Tevye the Milkman, was the first commercially successful English-language play about Eastern European Jewish life. At first, Sholem Aleichem wrote in Russian and Hebrew, but om 1883 on, he produced more than 40 volumes in Yiddish, making him a central figure in Yiddish literature. Most writing for Russian Jews at the time was in Hebrew, the liturgical language used largely by learned Jews. Sholem Aleichem wrote in Yiddish, the vernacular language oen derogatively dismissed as "jargon," but which was accessible to nearly all literate Eastern European Jews. Sholem Aleichem on a meager diet provided by a rationing card. Zhenya continued to suffer om malaria and baby Leo was also sick most of the time. Finally Abel managed to find a job, and they rented a tiny, one-bedroom apartment with a communal toilet in the hall. But at least it was in the city, on Rue Charles V. And even though Zhenya, who had studied German at school and spoke little French, found it hard to get by in stores and hospitals, at least they were ee. As time went by, Abel could not get a raise, and Zhenya was pregnant again. Joel was born in 1948. Again Zhenya was assailed by gloom: Her children were constantly sick, the family went hungry, and there was no hope that life would get better any time soon. Something had to be done to force a change. To li her spirits, Zhenya joined the Jewish Choir at the Communist Party Clubhouse on Rue de Paris, leaving the children to the care of Auntie Sure, Abel's distant relative. An American uncle gave them a sewing machine as a gi, and Zhenya began helping her husband. In 1952, their third child, Sylvia, was born. Zhenya was a very conscientious mother, but one day, her husband told her: "Enough of that Yiddishe

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