me at all, they attracted a good many others from Galicia who had served in the Austrian army before they came to America. They dressed in regular soldier's uniforms and paraded in the streets and especially in the park of the lower East Side.
Katz who had been a sergeant in the Austrian army, became the head of this unit. He always headed the parade astride a big white horse flanked by one or two aides. Their greatest, glory each year was on August 18th, the birthday of the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I, whom many Jews of Galicia admired and loved as a friend of the Jews. On that day Nissan Katz, would be attired in an expensive new uniform, which he could ill afford to pay for. He and his unit would pass in review before the Austro-Hungarian Consul General in New York and from there they would proceed to the Dukler Mogen Avrohom Shul on Attorney Street (on the lower East Side), where the Cantor would chant a Mishebirach for the Emperor. Some days later, Nissan Katz would proudly display a letter of thanks from the Austrian Ambassador in Washington. But the turnover in the regiment was high. As soon as a recruit received his United States citizenship, he would discard the uniform and ultimately, with few members remaining in the ranks, the entire organization disbanded and disappeared.
In the summer of 1909, two days after the election to the Austrian Parliament in Boiberke, at which Dr. Gershon Zipper was the candidate on the Jewish National ticket, I arrived in Boiberke. There I learned that the previous day, my father had been called to the office of the District commissioner. He was asked why he, as the Gabbai of the Beth-midrash had permitted the place of worship to be used for mass-meetings in connection with the election to the Parliament. Father pointed out that the Jews in Boiberke had to use the only place available to them, adding that the Beth-midrash was not merely a synagogue, a house of worship, but a place for learning and study. It was as well a gathering place for the Jewish community -- in fact, the only one open to them. Since the vote total which Dr. Zipper received in Boiberke was the largest ever received there, it reflected badly on the Commissioner's competence in controling his own political domain.
In the summer of 1914, I again visited the town of my birth. No sooner was I ready for my return to the United States, when the war broke out. Although I was a citizen of the United States, I found myself pinned down like a butterfly on a collectors board, unable to take one step that would lead me closer to securety. With the Russian army drawing nearer to Boiberke every day the future looked grim indeed.
Remaining in Boiberke all through the first month of the war, I saw hundreds of wagons with Jewish families and some of their belongings passing through or rather, fleeing through the town on their way to Bohemia, Hungary, or Upper Austria including Vienna. They had ample reason for their flight as the Russians, under the command of the Czar's Uncle, Nicholas Nicholewitch, were arresting Jews right and left. Soon most of the Jewish inhabitans of Boiberke had fled. Only at the last moment before the Russian army entered Boiberke, did I receive permission to leave the town. When I reached the United States, I began to realize that the Jews in the United States would be called on to help them to rebuild the Jewish institutions and Jewish life which the Russians destroyed.
Several months before the United States entered War War I in April, 1917, a group of Boiberker Landsleit of the Maskilim (enlightened men) type, met to discuss the best method of honoring one of the most renowned intellectuals of Boiberke, Chaim Aaron Hafner, a Yiddish as well as a Hebrew scholar. At the suggestion of his closest friend, Joseph Margoshes, who at the time occupied a prominent position in the field of Yiddish journalism, it was decided that a fitting tribute to Hafner would be to organize a society in his name to consist of intellectual landsleit, who originated from Boiberke and other places in Galicia.
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