TORONTO — Rose Frydman, who turns 100 next month, credits her long life to her family and to hard work.
Rose Frydman is seated beside granddaughter Orlee Roza. Bottom row from left is son-in-law Allan Roza, daughter Pam Frydman-Roza, and granddaughter Shira Roza.
“Now, I’m trying my best to keep going,” said Frydman from her home at the Apotex Centre.
Rose Frydman at age 18
Born in Poland, Frydman came to Canada with her uncle when she was “15 or 16” and immediately went to work in a pants factory.
“It was a real sweatshop. We made very little money, and the owner’s wife kept complaining that they were going broke,” she said.
She worked there for 10 years and then went on to a purse factory. “I was paid piece work, and my first week I made $19. I felt rich.”
The matriarch of a five-generation family, Frydman, whose room is filled with family pictures, talks to her daughter, Pam Frydman-Roza, in Milwaukee by Skype regularly. “She makes me feel alive.”
Frydman-Roza said her mother lived independently until she was 92. “She walked five miles a day, and she sang in a Yiddish choir.”
Now, said Frydman-Roza, 57, her mother stays interested in what’s going on.
“My daughter sends me e-mails of articles I might like to read, and I always have a book. Now I’m reading Joshua Then and Now [by Mordecai Richler].”
She reads The CJN and the Jewish Daily Forward. “I’m not happy when I read about what is happening in Israel. Why are they having so much trouble?”
She also likes reading the short stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. “He is my favourite Yiddish author. I love his short stories,” Frydman said. “He has children’s books that are as good as his adult books.”
Frydman-Roza said that her mother is a worrier, “about her family, and about about the rest of the world. She’s a big believer in workers’ rights, and once tried to start a union in her workplace. It just never happened.
“My daughter, Shira, works for a labour law firm in New York City, and my mother is very proud. She says that it is in [Shira’s] blood.”
She said that her mother even worries about the other Baycrest residents. “She wants to know that they’re being taken care of properly, and that they have visitors. She wants them to be treated with dignity.”
Frydman, who was born “two weeks after Passover on Thursday in 1911,” said that the party her family is planning, “is not for me. It’s for the rest of the family to get together and have a good time.”
