Lest It Be Forgotten After I Am Gone: The Extremes - 2
Raymon Benedyk played an active part for 29 years in a B'nai B'rith lodge.
To read earlier episodes of Raymon's engaging autobiography please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/lest_it_be_forgotten_after_i_am_gone/
In 1968, Elsa persuaded me to accompany her to an inaugural meeting of a new B'nai B'rith lodge being formed in our area. I had never heard of the organisation, and learned that it had been founded as a Jewish help and welfare group in New York around 150 years earlier to assist Jewish newcomers to the States and aid those of their members who fell on hard times. Since then it had grown worldwide as a cultural and social organisation wherever there is a Jewish community.
I knew that in those years I could not participate in most of the events and functions arranged, since the hours of my work effectively prevented it. Nevertheless, we became Founder Members of this new lodge where Elsa's worth and ability was immediately recognised when she was elected to be Vice President in the first year of its existence and President for the two following years. Despite my inability to participate in lodge affairs at first, when in 1973 I changed my mode of employment, I began to take a full and active part. In 1975 I was elected to Council, working on several committees and, from 1980 elected lodge Secretary, a position I retained until I relinquished it in 2004, having been on Council in one capacity or another for 29 years.
During the four years I worked in this casino, there was constant rivalry between the two partners who owned the place, one Jewish and the other Yugoslav who, everyone quietly suspected, had underworld connections. All of the staff was expected to be in one camp or the other. I, being Jewish, found myself to be with the Jewish partner. On more than one occasion when the Yugoslav fired me for no other reason than that he had had another row with 'my' boss, I was immediately reinstated by 'my' boss and told to disregard the previous instruction. I assume it was the other way around when 'my' boss sacked someone from the other side. We were all in that volcanic atmosphere and it was certainly exciting but very disconcerting, never knowing if you had a job or not.
**
If you wish to make a donation to the Elsa Benedyk Memorial Fund, set up by her friends and colleagues entirely without Raymon’s knowledge to provide funds to support the children's ward of the Shaare Zedek Hospital in Jerusalem to commemorate her life of work with children in her nursery schools, it would be most gratefully received. The amount that you give will not be revealed to Raymon. He is not a trustee of the fund. Your cheque, payable to the Fund, should be sent to the fund's Treasurer Mrs I Dokelman, 14 Charville Court, 30/32 Gayton Road, Harrow, Middx HA1 2HT.
