Shulim Chubat

This is my father Shulim Chubat. The picture was taken in the 1920s for the military card, when my father was serving in the Romanian army.

My father was born on 13th August 1902, in a small city in Bessarabia, where my grandfather was teaching. My father finished cheder and a Jewish elementary school, which was customary for Jews. I don't know if he had any further education. I think my father was self-taught. He was well-read in colloquial Russian and Romanian, book-keeping, and simple mechanisms. He was bad at writing, though. The letters he wrote during the war were full of grammar mistakes. My father didn't serve in the tsarist army, though between 1920 and 1922 he was drafted into the Romanian army. I don't know what my father did for a living before he met my mother.

After he married my mother, my father took credit for all our well-being. He worked very hard. He worked at the plant of carbonated beverages. The plant belonged to two widowed sisters. They inherited it from their deceased husbands. Those women weren't knowledgeable about the production and my father did most of the work. He loaded siphons and took them in special wagons to the customers: cafes, restaurants, houses of the rich. My father also worked as a mechanic. He repaired the installations and made sure they functioned properly. He was also a collector and accountant. The owners benefited from that. My dad got half the pay for all those extra jobs and he was ready to assume those responsibilities in order to earn more. The work at the plant was seasonal as in winter time carbonated water wasn't in demand and my father was supposed to earn enough money so as not to work during winter. Apart from my father's salary, we also generated income from our poultry. There was a shed in our yard where we kept the chicken which we raised for sale, and our family was also provided with meat.