‘You can’t live in Siberia without a sauna.’

Abraham Lenkawicki was raised by his grandmother in Warsaw, lived in Siberia for a year during World War II and went to Israel after the war. He moved to Brooklyn in 1972 and to California in 1976. Lenkawicki, 72, is semi-retired and a college student. He and his wife, Sabina, live in Burbank. I grew up in Warsaw in a Jewish family. I was orphaned at 10. My grandma raised me to be a good man. Old people were a big part of life in Europe. We’ve lost that here in the United States.

We would have less suicides from the youth if there would be in the family a grandma, sleeping and preparing food. We break up the family. Two incomes and nobody’s there when the child comes home from school, around his neck a key. There’s not a grandmother to open the door, fix hot chocolate for the child.

Those girls who finished their life in New Jersey, the one was pregnant and the second had a bad love. If they came to grandma, she would find the words for them. Parents don’t have the time and patience. People go to psychologists and psychiatrists for their children, and grandparents find themselves isolated in homes for the elderly, far from their flesh and blood. My grandma lightened up my life.

In 1938, they drafted me into the Polish army. Later I was a POW, and then I was a driver in a Russian compound in the Ukraine. Sabina joined me there. On June 15, 1940, the Russians put us on a train and sent us to Siberia. We were 2,000 displaced persons running from the Germans. We knew nothing.

At Biysk, they loaded some of us on a truck and took us 150 kilometers to a logging camp. The next day we went out to be loggers. We cut trees and pulled them with a horse to the edge of the river for the spring flood. In the winter, it was 40 degrees below zero.

I decided to build a one-room log cabin very much like the American settlers built. The Russians gave me a week’s paid vacation. I cut down 24 trees, and they loaned me a horse to pull in all the wood that I needed. I burned out the stumps and cleaned out the area. They cut pieces for the floor that were one yard across.

Between the roof and the ceiling, we put soil from the outside about half a yard deep to push the house down so the wind wouldn’t blow us away. It was also insulation so the warmth didn’t go out. There were no nails in the whole house. The door was one piece of wood. The Russian people were so friendly, and they were bringing us everything we needed. Our cabin was near the bakery, the barracks and the sauna. You can’t live in Siberia without a sauna.

Sabina and I decided we will go how conditions direct us. There, because we were believing in the tomorrow, was born to us a daughter, a Siberian girl, a POW-nik. We named her Ruth. She is today a lady living here and working as a manager in a bank.

Three years ago, I had my third heart attack. The doctor told me, “You can’t work anymore.” So I took a 20-hour-a-week job as a caretaker on the Encino golf course, and I have time to study. Forty-six years ago I didn’t even know what was a school bench, but I was reading. My university was good newspapers and books. I have a beautiful library. I have Churchill, Greek philosophers, I have Aquinas. But this is like you have a wall of bricks and sometimes it is missing some mortar. That’s why I take the classes.

I got good teachers at Valley College, and they supported me. I was afraid to talk. They said, “Sit and listen to people talk and learn gradually.” And, in fact, it was so. It took more than a year before I got courage to open my mouth, and today I forget to close it.

This semester I’m taking seven classes--Hebrew, philosophy, political science, speech, English and, in the evening, Literature 208 and Literature 214. When a hungry man comes in and finds food after a long time being hungry, he wants to grab all he can.