The Hushaks had a house close to the Ramistz river. It had a high brick foundation and high wooden veranda, unlike the other houses. Leibe Hushak had 3 sons. Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur they came to pray in the Tailors’ Shulkhl. They sat separately with big prayer books that had a stale smell. The father wore a white linen robe [customary for the High Holidays] and a yarmulke [cap] on his head, he did not observe all the other customary manners connected with the prayer. The way the 3 sons looked at the prayer book made people suspect that they did not know to read Hebrew.

The family was a river family from way back even great=grandfathers. The river was their whole world and livelihood.

In an isolated, deserted nook of the river, where various wide-leaved water plants grew, the Hushaks built sturdy wooden crates in which they cultivated crawfish. They owned 3 small boats tied with chains to the river-bank. In summer, when the river was not frozen, the young Hushaks rowed the boats several times somewhere far away, returning with straw baskets full of crawfish that crawled backwards one on top of the other, one over the other..

Nobody knew what they did with the crawfish. Rumors said that they shipped them to some place in Germany.