Life in the Old Pale

...Those thousands of union members and leaders who knew Rose Pesotta, vital, fearless and colorful agitator, in the days of the sitdown strikes and the bloody clashes between picket lines and strikebreakers in the '30s, will have a special interest in reading this idyllic picture of her childhood written in her leisure hours as a dressmaker...

...The forces of rebellion which were trying to overthrow the Tsarist tyranny are indicated in her reading, her associates and her activity, but with no detailed description either of the revolutionary ideals or methods...

...In Days of Our Lives Rose Pesotta begins with the story of her happy childhood in Derazhnya, a bustling market town in the Ukraine, part of the vast ghetto known as the Pale of Jewish Settlement...

...Her recollections close with her arrival in the United States, her first participation in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in 1913, and the outbreak of World War I. She gave a charming and detailed description of her family, her neighbors, and particularly of the Jewish holidays and their joyous feasts and celebrations against the background of recurring pogrom and persecution...

...They will share the indebtedness expressed by Norman Thomas in his introduction for these memories of a family and community life gone forever, yet remaining part of our cherished human heritage...

...Ladies Garment Workers Union This book meanders quietly through a valley of pleasant nostalgic remembrance in contrast to the author's earlier Bread Upon the Waters, which dashed violently through the rapids of the upsurge of labor unionism initiated by the New Deal and the CIO in the middle Thirties...

...She followed her sister and other relatives to the United States when she could not accept her parents' choice of a bridegroom for her, but the break brought no bitterness...