Annie and Max

Lachowicze is a small town in Belarus with a population about 10,000. It is 5 km from Baranovich, 107 km from Pinsk, 150 km east of Poland. It was part of Poland until 1795, when it came under Russian rule. In 1921 it reverted to Poland and was ceded again to the U.S.S.R. in 1945.

Throughout the centuries, the area has had a certain strategic importance.  Situated not far to the north of the great Pripet Marshes, it lies on the axis between Warsaw and Moscow, through Brest-Litovsk, Minsk and Smolensk.   It was traversed by Napoleon’s armies on their vain march to Moscow in 1812.  Over a century later, during World War I, it was the scene of heavy fighting between Russia and Germany.[1]

In the second half of the 19^th century Lachowicze was a predominantly Jewish town with 58% of its population of 4000 Jewish. Jews had settled there by the first quarter of the 17th century. During the second half of the 18th century, the city’s annual fairs were important meeting places for Jewish merchants. The stone buildings, imposing for their time, surrounded the “Market Square”, the heart of the Jewish life of the town. There was the guesthouse where itinerant preachers, cantors, travelers, Zionist speakers and propagandists were found, as well as brides and grooms who used to meet there with their future spouses. Right in the corner stood the two-story house of the wealthiest Jew, with a whole row of shops on the lower level. Another two-story building housed the state liquor store. Then there was another guesthouse, more modern, where landed gentry, government inspectors and other state officials lodged. Further along stood the wooden building with the tailor shop, then the hospice for the poor, and the house where the Stoliner Chassids congregated. There was the imposing house of an important merchant of wax, pig's bristle and wood, and further along the shop of the fish merchant, the furrier, and the supplier of cobblers’ needs.[2]

Hirsh lived somewhere along there with his wife, Zlata and their five children, two sons and three daughters. Chaya Toiba was the youngest of the three girls.

She was a short, slim girl, with a proud bearing. She looked like someone who knew where she was going and what she wanted from life. It was said that she was very attractive, indeed vivacious. There was probably something about her personality, perhaps an assertive streak of rebelliousness as seen in a photograph taken some years later that appealed to young men. Suitors who came to see her sisters with a view to marriage wanted to marry her instead, something unacceptable in that traditional Jewish world; the older sisters had to be married off first. To get her out of the way and arrange a marriage for her Chaya Toiba was sent off to an uncle in Mogilov, some distance away in the Ukraine.

Mogilov was a much larger Jewish centre, with a number of yeshivas, rabbinical seminaries. There her uncle found a suitable match for Chaya Toiba, a rabbinical student, a yeshiva bocher. Marrying a scholar was considered to be a great honour, the best marriage a girl could wish for. Chaya Toiba would have been no more than fifteen or sixteen and her groom not much older. Being a pious boy he had probably never looked at a girl, had kept his eyes averted in the presence of girls. He might have been well versed in the arcane arguments of the Talmud, but very likely didn’t know how to talk to his young wife. They were just teenagers, but lived very different lives. It was understood that the wife of a scholar would earn a living, perhaps run her own little business, support her husband and enable him to continue to study for the rest of his life. It was an accepted view among pious Jews that there was only one achievement in life a woman could hope for – the bringing of happiness into the home by ministering to her husband and bearing him children[3]. This is how things were done. But Chaya Toiba had other ideas. She insisted that her husband should work and support her. Perhaps some of the modern notions on the role of women percolated through even to this remote corner of Eastern Europe. Chaya Toiba had older sisters. They must have talked about their lives and aspirations. Rachel, one of the older sisters, was to go to America. There was change and restlessness in the air. Chaya Toiba wanted to strike out on her own, live her own life. She sought a life beyond the confines of the traditional Jewish world. She had enough of her scholar husband and wanted a divorce. According to Jewish law, it is the husband’s prerogative to grant his wife a divorce and this Chaya Toiba’s husband refused to do. Perhaps he thought that he was on to a good thing, or the shame of parting with a wife whom he had only recently married was more than he could bear.  There might have been also the important matter of the dowry, which would have gone some way towards supporting him. So Chaya Toiba threatened that unless he agreed to a divorce she would go to the Cossacks and tell them that her meek, quiet, scholarly husband was a revolutionary. But who knows, perhaps Chaya Toiba didn’t make this up. New radical ideas were sweeping Russia. Czar Alexander II was assassinated but a few years before, and his successor was even more autocratic. Violent pogroms followed the assassination and became a regular feature of Jewish existence.  Jewish young men and women were discussing the life and fate of Jews, Some believed that Jewish life was doomed under the oppressive regime of the Czar, that the whole autocratic regime had to be overthrown. Others had argued that there was no future for Jews in Russia at all, that Jews had to pack up and move to Palestine, the backward province of the Ottoman Empire, to the settlements that a British financier funded. Perhaps Chaya Toiba’s young groom had dangerous ideas unbecoming to a Jewish religious scholar, or Chaya Toiba herself wanted a different life for herself and was determined to move on. At any rate, she had her ways of getting what she wanted.

Leaving her husband and the scandal of her divorce behind, she took off to Yekaterinoslav, now Dnipropetrovsk‎, the third largest city of the Ukraine. It was an important centre of Jewish life, with the history of Jewish settlement going back to the foundation of the city in1776. We don’t know whether she moved there with Menachem Mendel Darevsky, or the two ended up there separately. Nobody seems to know how or where the two had met.  He might have been the cause of the divorce. Menachem Mendel, though originally from Mogilev, had family in Yekaterinoslav. He fell in love, like others before him, with Chaya Toiba, and wanted to marry, but the father of Menachem Mendel thought that his son could do better than marrying a divorced woman without a substantial dowry.[4]

Menachem Mendel was born in Mogilov in 1876, son of Shlomo Darevski. He seems to have come from a relatively well-to-do traditional Russian Jewish family.  On a photo that survived he is seen sitting in front of Chaya Toiba, a handsome, sensitive looking young man, looking more like an earnest schoolboy than a newly married man. Chaya Toiba stands behind him, erect, confident, clearly the dominant partner. He was three years her junior.

There were Darevskys in Lachowicze. The name derived from Darevo, a small hamlet near Lachowicze, where there were Darevskys who were publicans.

We don’t know what Menachem Mendel was doing in Yekaterinoslav. Yekaterinoslav was a rapidly growing city, with new industries founded or managed by Jewish entrepreneurs. Although Menachem Mendel was hardly more than a teenager, either business or educational opportunities might have brought him there. He was described as a tailor in the passenger list of the ship that brought him to New Zealand, but we don’t know whether he worked as a tailor in Yekaterinoslav. He might have had other ambitions and a glowing vision of his future.

Not having had the family’s approval, Chaya Toiba and Menachem Mendel eloped and planned to head for America. Jews were leaving Russia in large numbers. Life for Jews was becoming increasingly intolerable. There were pogroms, and constantly promulgated new regulations limited the educational opportunities for Jews, limited the places where they could live and how they could earn their living. After the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1861, and the Polish revolt of 1863 the oppression of Jews accelerated. By the 1890s well over 100,000 Jews left Russia every year. Most of them headed for America, but some went to South Africa, to Britain, and to various countries of Western Europe. Chaya Toiba’s older sister, Rachel might have already gone to America. Chaya Toiba and Menachem Mendel might have thought of joining her. However they only made it as far as London. There they found that the foggy climate, the damp polluted air didn’t agree with Menachem Mendel’s weak chest. Perhaps life in Whitechapel, the impoverished, crowded Jewish quarter of London was not what they had in mind when they left Yekaterinoslav. Someone had told them to move to New Zealand for a better climate and a better life. A new sanatorium had just been opened in Otaki, an old Maori settlement 70 km north of Wellington. Between Yekaterinoslav and Otaki  Max Darevsky became Max Deckston and Chaya Toiba became Annie.  They sailed to New Zealand on the Ionic, a ship that left London on 20 December 1899, and arrived in Wellington on 5 March 1900. They appear on the ship’s log as Morris Dickstein, tailor, not yet Max, and Annie Dickstein, occupation none. Among the many Irish, some Scots and quite a few English, they were some of the very few described as ‘foreigners’.[5] You leave Russia, you leave the world where you are known, and you can become anyone you choose to be. They went Otaki when they arrived. Otaki was a centre of market gardening. Resourceful young couple that Annie and Max were, they set up on a small farmlet grew their own produce, had a cow and generally must have sold some of their produce and the couple prospered.[6] Max’s health improved. They moved to the Hutt Valley, and leased a farm, known as Captain Mann’s property, in Orr’s Road.[7] We don’t know how they got into farming, or how much they knew about farming. One of Annie’s uncles was a dairyman.[8] He had perhaps a few cows and sold milk, cottage cheese and other dairy products. A cow in Lachowicze is not that different from a cow in Lower Hutt. Annie must have thought that there is more of a future in farming than in tailoring. There were too many poor Jewish tailors in London. By the time the lease on their farm was up in 1904, only a few years after they had started, they owned 15 dairy cows, 15 heads of young stock, 1 light draught mare, 1 trap horse, a dog-cart with harness, and lots of furniture. These were the items listed to be auctioned at the end of their lease.[9] They left the farm. They were well established, but they traveled light. They must have moved on to another farm, because in February 1906 Max Deckston was convicted of allowing cattle to wander.[10]

Annie and Max were clearly difficult and cantankerous people, or perhaps they just stood up for their rights and would not put up with insults. Recent arrivals though the Deckstons were, they went in for litigation. This was not Russia, Jews, like everyone else, had rights, and Annie and Max relished these rights. In February 1902 they charged Benjamin and Jacob Semeloff, fellow members of the small Jewish community in Wellington with assault.[11] The Semeloffs had been in New Zealand longer than the Deckstons. They were established businessmen, pawnbrokers, auctioneers, and later building contractors and property developers. They were not averse to litigation either. It is possible that having initially fallen out, the Deckstons later learned from the Semeloffs. They both acquired property in Newtown. Max and the Semeloff brothers were also involved with the Wellington Zionists’ Social Club, the precursor of the Wellington Jewish Social Club.[12]

Annie and Max were not prepared to tolerate any slight or aggression. They kept laying assault charges against various people. In August 1905 four men were charged with assaulting Max Deckston, a dairy farmer, but after hearing evidence, the bench dismissed the case. In 1910 they charged three brothers with assault. Two of them were convicted; the charge against the third was dismissed. The brothers, in turn brought countercharges against Max. Though this was dismissed, clearly there were two sides to the story.[13]

In 1906 Annie and Max were naturalised. They were very proud of their British nationality. To the astonishment of the officers, Annie insisted on getting her letter of naturalisation in her own name, even though being married to Max, who was himself naturalised, she was automatically a naturalised British subject. Unlike other women of her time she insisted on being treated as a person in her own right.

In 1908 Annie and Max were on the move again. They leased another farm, this time in Taita, about three miles, five km from Lower Hutt, adjacent to the Taita Hotel. There was a problem with the lease; it was executed by the Pakeha wife of a Maori. Pakehas had no authority to dispose of Maori land, but ultimately the matter was resolved and they leased the land as long as they lived.

Max and Annie appeared to have prospered, but in 1913, they decided to sell up, give up working on the farm themselves because Max’s health was no longer up to it.  They sold their chattel, which included by then, among other items, 25 cows, three horses, and a five-bedroom house with a piano. After that the farm was worked by hired hands, local Maori, and later by their relatives who arrived from Russia.

Annie was 40 years old, Max 37. They were childless. Having no children they found fulfillment in working and making money. They opened a fruit shop in Wellington,[14] perhaps to sell the produce of their farm. They also bought some property. It was a period of rapid growth of the city, buying property in College Street, Vivian Street, Courtenay Place, Newtown and Berhampore, proved to be good investment. They also bought or leased more farmland. Most of the property was in the name of Annie Deckston, though there was some in Max’s name. They didn’t own property jointly. They accumulated considerable wealth. They also had significant debts.[15]

Max and Annie had lived a rather isolated life for some years, in the Hutt Valley, far from any Jewish community, yet keeping an observant, kosher Jewish home. They obviously traveled to Wellington whenever they could to participate in Jewish life. In 1908 Max was given the honour of finishing the writing of the Sefer Torah, the scroll, presented by J. E. Nathan to the Wellington Jewish community.[16]

Once Annie and Max moved to Wellington they became involved in the Jewish Social Club. In 1919, Max, by then clearly wealthy and happy to show off his wealth, offered a portion of his land in Vivian Street for the club on which to erect a suitable building. This offer was turned down, the cost of the building was estimated to be approximately £7,000, way beyond the resources of the Club, but later the Club bought a property 86 Ghuznee Street for £3,000. Max was co-opted, together with his former adversary Ben Semeloff, by then a builder and property developer, on to the building fund committee.

Annie and Max lived through the war years, Max too old and probably not robust enough to serve in the army. When the war was over and life started to return to normal around the world Annie decided to find out what happened to the family they had left behind. They had been in New Zealand, cut off from their home for over twenty years. Annie could neither read nor write, certainly not in English. Jewish girls of her generation, growing up in the traditional Eastern European Jewish world were taught practical skills, such as running a home and a business. Reading and writing and the study of the holy books were left to the men. Annie was a shrewd businesswoman, but she could not write letters home to her family. She knew that she had a sister in America. To find her she and Max went to Chicago, in 1924, called on the Landsmanschaft (Society for Expatriate Compatriots) who helped her to track down her sister, Rachel. When Annie turned up on her doorstep Rachel didn’t recognise her. She was suspicious. She had assumed that Annie was dead. Annie managed to convince her that she was indeed who she said she was by showing her an identifying birthmark. From her sister, Annie found out that her younger brother and his wife and family were alive and living in Bialystock in Poland. Annie went to visit them in 1924 and persuaded them to move to New Zealand. She held out to them the prospect of a better, more prosperous life. Ultimately more of the nieces and nephews came to join them, while Max got in touch with his sister’s family in Russia and many of these also moved to here.[17] Annie and Max paid for the passage of many of these relatives. They brought over a few years 45-50 of their family to Wellington. These formed a significant Russian Polish sub-group within the local Jewish community.

Annie and Max had hoped that having a large extended family around them would break down their isolation. Somehow things didn’t work out well. Annie was a strong-willed domineering woman. She knew how to get by in New Zealand. She could tell her greenhorn newly arrived relatives how to live their lives.  Some of the relatives resented that they were put to work on their farm or in the fruit shop. Perhaps they thought that they had not given up their moderately comfortable life style in Poland to do menial work here. It is possible that some expected more help from their wealthy benefactors. They deferred to Annie and Max, called the Auntie and Uncle, they visited them in their spacious large home on the hill in Hataitai, but could not help but compare that with the austere, small simple homes that they themselves lived in.

Annie believed in hard work, frugality, and making money. She didn’t approve of higher education. When one of the nephews wanted to go to university and study medicine she refused to help. They put on a splendid wedding with 300 guests for one of the newly arrived nieces. The wedding was as much a celebration of the opulence of Annie and Max as a celebration of the marriage of a couple starting a new life together in a new country, but Annie thought that having a photographer take pictures at the wedding was a frivolous waste of money. The couple resented this petty penny pinching. Annie was insensitive to the feelings of others.[18] Over the years Annie and Max fell out with the many of relatives whom they had brought out from Russia and Poland. If they had hoped to surround themselves with a warm loving family they were disappointed.

When in the 1932 Annie and Max returned to Poland for a visit they were shocked by the plight of some Jewish children in orphanages. On their way back home they picked up an eight-year-old orphan daughter of a relative in London and adopted her. They now had an adopted daughter. Later, being the practical, can-do people that they were, they approached the Labour Department, responsible for immigration, to allow some of the Polish Jewish orphans to come to New Zealand. They got the president of the Wellington Jewish Community to lobby on their behalf;[19] Annie herself called on the officials and thumped their desks until she got what she wanted.  They arranged for the immigration of at first eight children from Polish orphanages in 1935 and later a further twelve in 1937. They bought a large property in Berhampore, and set up a Jewish orphanage, where all the kosher dietary laws were observed, and daily prayers were recited. It was a little island of Jewish observance. Annie and Max were now aunt and uncle to a large family of orphans. There were little girls who sorely missed the homes they came from, unruly teenagers who felt out of depth and bewildered, some resented that they were rescued their brothers and sisters, the rest of what was left of their families were abandoned. There was a lot of bitterness within this large, chaotic home.  Annie and Max didn’t know how to manage children, they never had any of their own and being in their sixties they didn’t have the patience that bringing up children required. Some of the children remembered Annie with little affection, as a tough woman. She beat them, locked them up as punishment, she was frugal to the point of meanness. Max was kind to the girls, but tough on the boys, whom he taught the Jewish prayers, and tried to provide them with a rudimentary Jewish education. Her taught them harshly, demanding attention and application as probably he himself had been taught. These children had to learn to survive in two different worlds, in their secular schools, where they were probably bewildered not only by the language, but also by the strange customs of New Zealanders, subjects new to them, sports and games unknown in Poland, they were probably bullied, picked on, ridiculed,  then back in the orphanage they had to cope with the harsh regime imposed on them by their elderly guardians and the strict uncompromising Jewish observance of the home. It was a hard life for these children, but Annie and Max possibly provided a better life for them than the life in the poverty-stricken orphanages in Poland. Although at the time they  could not have realised this, they also saved them from the Holocaust by bringing them to New Zealand.

When Annie was interviewed after the arrival of the first set of orphans she said ‘I have had a sorrowful life’. The interviewer assumed that she was thinking of the hard life of Jews in Poland, but who knows, perhaps she was thinking of her almost forty years in New Zealand where she struggled to earn a living and make enough money to be able to help her family, perhaps she thought of their isolation in this country where they stood out as being different, where Max faced assaults repeatedly, though possibly he invited these assaults, where they were too foreign, too Jewish not only for the New Zealanders around them, but also for the local, largely British Jewish community. Eastern Jews, Polish Jews were a source of embarrassment to the assimilated Jews of the colony.

Annie died in 1938 aged 67, Max died a year later. The orphanage was neglected, mismanaged by a series of unsatisfactory matrons. It was put in the care of trustees, who managed it until all the orphans grew up and left to live lives. Most of them left New Zealand; some became very successful entrepreneurs, businessmen, the girls married, brought up families.

When in the end there were no orphans left to justify keeping the orphanage going, the property was sold, and the money was used to establish a Jewish old age home, in Naenae, which to this day is called the Deckston Home, though it is no longer a Jewish home that provides kosher meals and Jewish pastoral care for its few Jewish residents.

Annie and Max were not much loved in their lifetime, and they are scarcely remembered in the annals of the Wellington Jewish community. There is a street named after them in Taita, Lower Hutt, but few know who the street was named after. Yet Annie and Max cast a very long shadow and their legacy continues to this day, many years after their death. There is still a wing of an old age home named after them, their substantial legacy is used partly to assist the elderly Jewish residents of Wellington, partly and very appropriately, to further Jewish education in this remote part of the world.