Recently, some relatives were relating stories about Charles Korim and his father Benjamin Korim
On the fifth night I once sang the song "O Ir Kleyne Likhtelakh," to Jean and she remembered the song and her tate (our zeyde Ben Tzion Korim) blessing the candles on the fifth night in Dabeik. She was listening and watching, with a very little girl's amazement, the lights reflected on his face. She had never seen him cry. She found out later that he was crying because he was keeping the secret that his oldest son, B'tsalel (aka Tsali, aka Charley) had left Dabeik that day, to escape being drafted into the (Russian or Lithuanian?) Army. (Meanwhile Sam was drafted and DID serve in one of those armies). B'tsalel secretly, without goodbyes even to his sisters and brothers, traveled via sleigh and train to Hamburg, and was crossing the North Sea to England when a great winter storm arose and the ship almost went down (of course no one knew this till long afterward). He survived. He boarded a ship in Liverpool to sail to America, the first of the Korim siblings to emigrate to the US.
