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Part One: The Foundations of the Volftsun Family 13 being especially important, as people were preparing for Shabbat. Around the perimeter of the plaza were stalls and shops. Shmuel started small by opening one of these shops. Every day, Shmuel took his horse and cart around the neighboring countryside, visiting farms and picking up produce. This became the inventory that stocked Inda's stall when the market was open. The farmers were happy with his honesty and gave him their best produce. Shmuel then realized that just as the people in the shtetl needed the uits and vegetables produced by the farmers, the farmers needed the finished products (candles, needles, cloth, tools) produced by the town. Soon Shmuel's cart was never empty. As a true entrepreneur, he avoided excess capacity. On his way out of the shtetl, the cart was filled with manufactured goods made by local bakers, breweries, blacksmiths, carpenters, and leathersmiths for the farmers to buy. On the way back to the shtetl his cart was filled with the best uits, vegetables, cheeses, and other products that the farmers grew or made. He made a profit in both directions. In the next few years, business was good and Shmuel acquired more carts and more horses. He hired drivers and enlarged the stall into a grocery store, which sold strictly kosher food. As the business grew, Shmuel added not just more groceries, but also hardware, a bookstore, and a clock repair shop. He opened a kosher restaurant in the ont, facing the market, and eventually a bakery in the rear. The family lived in an apartment in the same building. Shmuel's enterprise kept growing. He opened up a general store, managed, as were all the other businesses, by the family. Iosif remembers that the store had a huge basement for storage. As their business grew, so did their family. Shlomo Volsun was born in Gorodok in 1878. He was weak and sickly as a young man. When Shlomo was growing up, he had a condition which made his skin look like an old man's. For that reason, he received a childhood nickname: Alta (Yiddish for "old"). His iends called him "Alta Shlomo" (old Shlomo). His daughter Inna recalls that Shlomo was a tall, blue-eyed, handsome man who did not appear Jewish. From him, she credits having an appearance so non-Jewish that many people had difficulty believing she was Jewish. Shlomo was educated in a Cheder (Jewish school) where he studied not only the Torah but also mathematics. Because he was so good at math, he received special instruction in bookkeeping. He could speak Hebrew, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and German. Aer preliminary school, Shlomo went to a commercial school to continue his education. His schooling included time in Bucharest and Warsaw. His mother believed that his destiny was to become a rabbi. While Shlomo was exceptionally well trained, he was never ordained as a rabbi but became a merchant instead. He graduated in 1896, the same year his father Shmuel was killed in a pogrom. A pogrom (Russian: погром; om "громить"—to wreak havoc, to demolish violently) is a form of riot directed against a particular group, characterized by destruction Hava Brandes (Iosif 's mother) in Shtetl Graiding, Ukraine, 1915.

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