This post is dedicated to the memory of Joseph Guttman, a dear friend and esteemed member of the Riverdale Jewish Community who recently passed away at the age of 93. It could not have been written without his kind assistance, rendered just about two months before his passing.
My topic is flax. Yes, flax. It’s a plant. Here is what it looks like when it’s growing:
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| Flax plants |
I’ve never seen flax, or if I have, noticed it, growing. I never given it much thought.
I knew about flax for only two reasons. First, until about 15 years ago, when I bought an Etrog (citron) for the holiday of Sukkot (Sukkos), it came wrapped in flax fibers. The Etrog is one of the four species of plants used on this holiday. Usually it has a pitom or stem. If it breaks, the Etrog is rendered pasul–unusable for ritual use. The flax fibers provided a soft cushion to prevent the pitom from breaking when stored. (Recently, flax fibers have been phased out as protection for the Etrog in favor of styrofoam.)
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| Flax fibers |
Second, my great grandfather had a flax business in Zambrow, Poland. His name was Elchanan Wierbowicz, but he was universally known as Chone. He made a living by processing and selling flax oil. He was so identified with his profession that he was known as “Chone der oley-ash” (Chone the oil maker).
Who knew a person could make money from flax? Who has ever met a person in the flax business? Who has ever had a conversation in which the topic of flax came up? As the Yiddish expression goes, !?פון דאס מאכט מאן א ליבן (from this you make a living?!). But he did, and apparently not a bad living at that.
Amazingly, I was able to confirm his involvement with flax oil from two independent sources. The Zambrow Yizkor (memorial) book has a section on “Work and Industry,” that includes a page on “Small Scale Industry in Zambrow.” It reads in part: “Jewish oil makers pressed and squeezed oil from flax seeds for the entire vicinity. Shmulke Cohn squeezed oil, Chone Wierbowicz fabricated oil, as did Joel Gershonovich, Meir Yankl’s son-in- law and Yossl Cohen” (page 392, italics added).
So Chone was not the only person in Zambrow making a living from flax. He had competition! Even in a small town like Zambrow, my great grandfather was not alone in viewing the processing of flax oil as a viable source of income.
Second, when I was at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (see http://www.jhi.pl/en), the researcher who helped me brought out a guide to industry in Poland in 1930, entitled the “1930 Poland and Danzig Business Directory (Trade, Industry, Handicraft and Agriculture.” The Directory is indexed by town. Here is what the page for Zambrow looks like:
And on this page, we found the following listing:
Olejarnie means oil mill in Polish. So here it was, living proof that the stories about him were correct. Chone Wierzbowicz was indeed a flax oil man.
Chone Wierzbowicz was part of a long history of dealing in flax that is as old as civilization itself. It turns out that flax is kind of a wonder plant, supporting a variety of valuable uses. For thousands of years, it was used to make clothing. The fibers of the plant are strong, quick drying and highly absorbent, making it an excellent source of cloth. As a material for clothes, flax is called linen. The word “linen” is derived from the Latin word for flax, linun, and the Greek word linum. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linen) Other than wool, flax was the mainstay of the ancient textile industry. (https://www.nps.gov/jame/learn/historyculture/flax-production-in-the-seventeenth-century.htm)
To make linen, the outer layers of the stem are removed (a process known as retting) and the stems left out in the field to be softened. The elements dissolve the stem surrounding the fiber (dew retting) which can then be separated and cleaned. (https://en.wikopedia.org/wiki/Retting)
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| Dew Retting of Flax |
Flax is even mentioned in the Bible. (The Hebrew word for flax is פשתן (Pishtan).) Dew retting was probably what Rahav was doing when, according to the book of Joshua, she hid the spies he sent to Jericho, prior to its conquest, under bundles of flax on her roof. (Joshua 2:6.) More famously, the Bible prohibits the mixing of the linen with wool. Mixed garments are called Shatnez. To this day there are people who will, for a fee, check to see if a garment is Shatnez and remove the offending linen.
Flax’s other great treasure lies in its seeds. Flax seeds were “one of the world’s first cultivated superfoods.” (https://activationproducts.com/blog/benefits of flax/) They are small and brown:
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| Flax Seeds |
When crushed, the seeds produce an oil called flaxseed, or alternatively, linseed, oil. This oil has been used for centuries in food as well as for industrial purposes. Flaxseed oil has lately gained popularity as a health product. It is promoted as a remedy to everything from preventing cancer to treating diarrhea and constipation, improving skin health and promoting a healthy heart. (https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/flaxseed-oil-benefits) One web site refers to flax seeds as a “powerhouse” containing omega-3 fatty acids, lignans and fiber, protein, copper, zinc, magnesuim, selenuim, and vitamin B1. (https://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/pregnancy_articles.asp?ID=553) The list of flax-related items available on Amazon include ground or whole flax seeds, flax oil, flax fiber, flax granola, flax meal, flax pita bread, flax crackers, flax shampoo and flaxseed flour.
At Target, I even recently found flax milk for sale:
But I wanted to find out how someone in Eastern Europe would made a living from flax. Fortunately, I was privileged to know Joe Guttman, a longtime resident of Riverdale, the Bronx. Joe was born in Bedzin, Poland, and spent the war years in five different concentration/slave labor camps, miraculously surviving. He suffered unspeakable hardships, but remained a most humble, optimistic and generous person. A few months ago, Joe was gracious enough, despite his declining health, to allow me to interview him.
I came to his home to ask him about something no one else I knew could tell me: the flaxseed oil business. It turns out that Joe’s father also had a dealt in flaxseed oil. I asked him, perhaps one of the last people alive with such knowledge, to describe how flax seeds were turned into oil, and for what purpose.
Here’s what Joe told me: Flax seeds would be delivered by railroad to his father’s factory in Bedzin. They came from flax plants grown in Eastern Europe, perhaps the Ukraine or Belorussia. They would pay about 15 zloty (Polish currency) per kilo of seeds. A train loaded with flax seeds would arrive that would have to be unloaded as fast as possible in order to avoid paying an overtime charge to the railroad company. The seeds would be loaded into wagons which would be transported by horse to a nearby warehouse which his family rented from the railroad company.
The seeds would be processed at his father’s plant where he and everyone else in his family, plus about 18 paid employees, worked. They would take about 15 pounds of seeds at a time and pour them into an electric grinder. After being ground, the seeds came out looking like flour. The next step was to place the flour into a coal-heated oven for about 10 to 15 minutes. The heated flour would be placed into a steam press to extract the oil. They were put in 5 separate layers with steel platters between each layer. For each 15 pounds of seeds placed in the press, about 15-20 pounds of oil would come out.
I had thought that flaxseed oil was used mostly for human consumption, but Joe told me that most of the oil was put in barrels and sold to paint companies. It turns out that the introduction of flaxseed oil “was a significant advance in the technology of oil painting.” Flaxseed oil makes “oil paints more fluid, transparent and glossy.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linseed_oil). Here is an advertisement from World War II that encourages the sale of flax for use in paints:
The oil at the bottom of the barrel was of inferior quality and thus sold for making clay. Flax seeds that were not turned into oil were sold for animal feed.
Joe’s family was planning on upgrading their production process by purchasing a hydraulic press. This would have made the extraction of oil easier by allowing processing of up to 100 pounds of seeds at a time. It would also have generated 30-40% more oil.
But the Nazi occupation of Bedzin in 1939 put an end to these plans as well as, eventually, the processing plant itself. The Nazis placed a German in charge of the plant and eventually sold off all of the machinery.
Joe would almost certainly have died in the next few years but for his work in his father’s flaxseed oil plant. The skills he learned in the plant saved his life. The second camp the Nazis send him to was called Markstadt. It one of the sub-camps of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp system that housed about 11% of all the prisoners of Nazi concentration camps. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross-Rosen_concentration_camp) There, he had his “lucky day,” when the Nazis said they needed two mechanics. Joe raised his hand and was put to work in a shop. His job was to install heating systems in the barracks that housed Nazis and their prisoners. The shop was next to a kitchen. Joe was able to gather food scraps that he smuggled into the barracks to save the lives of others and to feed himself, as the minimal rations prisoners received were enough to survive for only several months. Joe bribed a German officer to look the other way when he smuggled food. Every six months there was a selection, after which the prisoners too weak to work were sent to die in Auschwitz.
Joe was eventually send to Dachau where he was liberated by American soldiers. At liberation, this six foot tall man weighed 45 pounds. Not only had he survived, he had also helped his two other brothers survive. (A fuller version of Joe’s life can be found at https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn78491)
The knowledge Joe Guttman gained from flaxseed oil production saved his life. In turn, Joe saved the lives of countless others. My great grandfather’s flax oil plant, located in a more rural and remote area of Poland, was much smaller than Joe’s family’s plant. It was not powered by electricity, but rather, according to my aunt, by animals. The plant was not enough to save the lives of my great grandfather’s wife and children. (He himself came to America in December, 1938.) But, through flax, Joe Guttman was alive to explain to the great grandson of Chone the Oil Maker how Chone made a living from flax. Now, when I think of flax, I will think not only of the fibers that protected an etrog and my great grandfather’s business in Zambrow, but also how it saved the life of my friend, his brothers and many others.
And I have also learned through my research that flax is not only a source of clothing, food and paint. The flax plant also has beautiful flowers. Someday I hope to see them:
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| Flax flowers |
Unlike my great grandfather, Joe Guttman didn’t have a nickname. But his last name was the perfect description of the man, “good man.” A man who risked his lives to save others, a gentle man, one who bore no hatred or ill will, who always had time for others, a man of immense generosity who donated an ambulance to Magen David Adom (the Israel version of the Red Cross) and for years sponsored communal meals every Friday night meals at our synagogue. His memory will continue to live on. (See https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/riverdale-synagogue-mourns-a-beloved-stalwart/
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| Joe Guttman, z’l |