g which no longer exists.
At our first meeting, we made clear that of all collections for the two projects, not one dollar should be deducted for expenses in connection with calling meetings of the committee or of arranging the Yahrzeit for the martyrs who were slain in the ghetto of Boiberke. Since such meetings entail expenses, our good-hearted Boiberker Sam Marcus, Moishe and Abe Fischer undertook to cover all expenses from their own pockets. We are fortunate that all notices in the Yiddish press as well as on the radio announcing the meetings were give to us gratis.
On June 1, when I returned from Israel, I rendered a report, telling of the Yahrzeit (Memorial) which we attended on April 8th at the Culture House which Abraham Fischer had erected in the colony Raanana. There we met than 100 Boiberker Landsleit who came from all parts of Israel to honor the martyrs. It was good to see that a financial report of the committee in Israel was enclosed to each of their members together with the invitation to the Yahrzeit meeting. The report shows how much money they received from the committee in the United States as well as from Boiberker landsleit in Israel. I was told that such reports are rendered annually. It prevents suspicion that some of funds may not be expended in the best interest for which they were collected.
At the conclusion of my remarks about Boiberker on the American scene, I took the liberty of correcting as to the name Boiberke which the great Yiddish writer, Sholem Aleichem, used a similar name Boiberik in his writings, like he used the names like Yehupitz and Kasrilowky, making them the butt of much of his humor felt it was high time to take the town of our birth from the comic fiction world and explain that in reality, such a town as Boiberke actually existed and that our cradle stood there. Today our town is Judenrein (without Jews) but its Jewish history extends back at least five centuries. According to historic records Jewish merchants visited the Annual Fairs of Boiberke since the year 1469, when the village of Boiberke was proclaimed a township.
As a matter of fact, when I wrote The Odyssey of an American Zionist, several years ago, and since the story in the book begins with the town of my birth, I tried to emphasize the existence of Boiberke which is situated in Eastern Galicia, less than an hour's train ride from Lemberg (Lwow), the then capital of the Austrian Province of Galicia.
It isn't possible to evaluate one's good deeds until they are authenticaled by reliable and responsible sources. This happened at the funeral of my cousin Julius or Yidel Marcus, when the Reverend who euligized him told of how Julius, who was in the milk business, would instruct his drivers who served retail milk stores on the lower East Side, in New York to take along a dozen or more bottles of milk each morning and leave same at the doors of some Rabbis who could ill afford to purchase enough milk for their large families. While listening to the eulogy it reminded me of Julius' visit in 1934 to Palestine in company of his younger brother Sam and a friend, Morris Walter. At that time I was also in Palestine and arranged for the four of us to tour the country.
One day, on a Thursday two weeks before Rosh Hashanah, we visited the Kibbutz Beth Alpha where we expected to meet our Boiberker landsleit who took part in organizing the Kibbutz and were members of the place. We asked a young lady the whereabout of Beril Beker and she told us with a smile to go to look at the small little houses whose doors by the way, stood open, and where we would see a red blanket, that would be Beker's room. We found the red blanket, but not Beril. The secretary of the Kibbutz, Zvi Neumann, also a Galitzianer landsman, (I believe he comes from Tlumach) at first invited us to have a bite and then directed us to walk to Mount Gilboa, where Beril and the sheep were resting. As Sam Marcus and Morris Walter marched ahead of us, Julius began to relay to me what he learned in Boiberke at the Cheder of Efroyim Melamed (the teacher). Julius recall