Carl goes AWOL
In the city he saw soldiers with bread, so he went up to them and asked where he could get some. "They pointed out a place," he said, "and they told me, 'You want to eat? Go in and eat.'" Carl entered the place, which turned out to be a synagogue, and it was full of refugees. "There was my mother and brother, and another two brothers and a sister," Carl said. "So I took off my uniform and gun, and I threw them away and went with them."

Bought "papers"
The Germans were "thrown back" a couple of weeks later, Carl said, and the people returned to work. The family's Radoshkovici shop was set up in Minsk, 22 miles to the southeast, where Carl's mother had gone for refuge.  They rented an apartment, and Carl knew he was going to need papers for the government, so for 100 rubles he bought papers.

The Police
The papers said that his army company had sent him to Minsk for three months to recover from sickness. When things quieted down in Minsk, everyone had to register with the police, and Carl took his papers down to register. The man in charge looked at Carl's papers, and then he said to Carl, "Where did you buy these?"

Prison life
Carl was arrested and spent three months in prison awaiting trial. "I was lucky not to be shot," he said. There were 20 soldiers imprisoned in one room with long benches. Conditions were not good. "Once every couple of weeks they would take us to a Turkish bath," Carl said. He was expecting to be sent back to the front, and then to have to serve four years after the war ended. 

Welcome the Revolution
Meanwhile, the Revolution came. "Thank God I had not fought for Nicholai," said Carl, referring to Czar Nicholas II, whom the Revolution toppled. What about Carl's trial for having bought phony papers? The trial never took place; the Revolution had caused a change in agenda.

Straw mats
Instead of a trial, Carl was sent "deep into Russia" where he was put to work for the winter making the mats that soldiers used for sleeping in the trenches. The mats, he said, were one-inch thick and made from straw. Eventually his assignment changed, and he was put to work in a bakery.

The pill
One day Carl obtained from a friend a pill that would make him sick. For three weeks he lay ill in bed in the hospital, and then he was sent to Minsk. "Go home," he was told there. "They gave up on me," he said with a grin.

Multiple dangers
While Morris' departure from his homeland was spurred by the desire to avoid military service and almost certain death in the Russo-Japanese War, everyday life was often fraught with danger. There were the Cossacks implementing the government's unofficial program of pogroms, and also, soldiers and peasants, who, when drunk or with any excuse, could and did make trouble for Jews they encountered. During raids, the Karben family would hide in the basement of the house they rented from the blacksmith, and they would lie on the floor with the lights out until the danger had passed.

Latkes and Cossacks
When Dora had the feeling marauders were about to appear, she would prepare stacks of latkes or potato pancakes, said Shirley, who was born in 1919, and didn't leave Russia until the age of 4. She is the oldest of the three Karben children born in Belarus. (Phil is two years younger than Shirley, and Artie was only six months old when the Karbens left for America.)

Below: Dora with Shirley, left, and Phil.

Shirley said her mother told her that during Cossack raids, she would "stuff the children's mouths with potato pancakes so we wouldn't make any noise."

The Polish soldier
During a period when the Poles had driven away the Russians, a Polish soldier found Carl on the street. "I almost got shot," he said. Dora nodded in agreement. At that time, they were married and had two children, and they were living in Radoshkovici in the house that belonged to the blacksmith. Dora mentioned often having to lie down "on the floor in the basement without any lights on because we were afraid."

Wagon wheels
After the Poles had driven away the Russians, the peasants were able to go looking for their stolen horses. It happened that some peasants told the Polish soldiers that Carl had taken some missing wagon wheels. Quick thinking on Dora's part saved the day. "I went across the street where a Polish man lived," she said, "and I brought him back to say Carl was an honest man." Carl added, "I didn't even know who it was who took what was missing."

And so it was that he and Dora lived during troubled and dangerous years.
     
A Story of Heroism

The Chasmans
Usher Uberstein's granddaughter, Esther -- her mother had married Samuel Kirshner -- was living in Newark, New Jersey, with her husband, Leonid Chasman, when she became very ill with tuberculosis. She arranged to go to a spa in Switzerland, the spa that Thomas Mann wrote about in his novel, "The Magic Mountain." Esther took her four children to stay in Gorodok with her father and mother -- Usher's daughter whose name we do not know -- while she tried to get well in Switzerland. 

Below, The Chasmans of Newark:  Esther and husband, Leonid Chasman, with the two oldest of their four children, Sidney and Randolph. 

Home to Rashka
"Rashka was more like a mother than a cousin," said Shirley, who enjoyed remembering her early family life in America.  The Karbens lived on Essex Street, in a house shared with Rashka, her mother's second cousin. Rashka was 15 years older than Dora, and Rashka's is where the Karben family headed from Ellis Island.

Rashka's husband, Shimsel Kirshner, had come to America some time earlier. He worked at making pocketbook frames, and he lived in a basement while saving to bring over his family, I was told.  By the time the Karbens arrived, the Kirshners and their three children had a two-story house on Essex Street, and for some years, they shared it with the Karbens.  It was just down the block from Morris's house. 

Arrival
Morris was confined to a wheelchair, so his wife, Esther Simon Rubenstein, met the Karben family at Ellis Island.  They happened to arrive on October 12, 1923, which is Columbus Day. In the years to come, that became a matter of great consequence to Shirley and to her father.

In Russia, Shirley had been called "Tziril." By the time the immigration officer was ready to write down a name for this four-year-old immigrant, Esther
Rubenstein had come up with another possibility.  She was reading a novel with a heroine named "Shirley," and so that was the name she told the immigration officer to write down. When it came to a last name, Karbenovich became Karben.  Carl Karben became an American citizen five years later, "to the day," said Shirley. 

A significant day 
When Shirley was in school, the teacher asked the class, "Can anyone tell me about the significance of October 12?"  Shirley raised her hand, the teacher called on her, and Shirley said, "That's the day my father became an American citizen."  The class and the teacher burst out laughing.  But back to her father's story...

Valued worker
Carl Karben was a hard worker, and that's how people described him.  His wife's nephew, Larry Rogers (my father), was impressed that "he went looking for work as soon as he arrived in New York City."  Shirley would often say, with pride, "My father was never out of a job, because he gave full value for a day's work." Carl's versatility also worked to his favor.

Many talents
Carl was a superb lathe operator, and he joined the union as soon as he could. Whenever an opening became available, he was usually the first chosen, which Shirley attributed to his fine reputation. Carl was also a qualified furrier, thanks to his early training in Gorodok. And, Shirley said, he even had skills that enabled him to find employment in the manufacture of children's shoes.

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