Felix Smud

He was born roughly between 1860 and 1868, probably closer to 1860. We do not have his birth record, and it is the piece most missed: without it we cannot fix the exact date or place. Everything else about him is fairly well established.

He was a butcher, or slaughterer. It is neither an isolated detail nor an anecdote: butchery was the Zhmood family’s trade. Reconstructions of the Jewish colonies of southern Ukraine record that the Zhmood brothers worked together in that line, and that a brother-in-law who married one of Felix’s sisters made his living with them in the same trade. When he reached Buenos Aires he went back to it: he found work as a butcher with the help of other immigrants from the same background who were already in the business. It was, quite literally, the trade he brought from home.

He served in the Russian army. During the war between Russia and Japan, in 1904 and 1905, he was mobilised, which is why he could not travel with his wife and children when they emigrated. His time in the army may have been longer than the war: Chaim Freedman’s reconstruction lists him as a soldier, not merely as mobilised. It is an open point, and worth keeping in mind when reading the dates attributed to him. When the war ended he was not discharged. He had promised Malke he would join her in Argentina, and to keep that promise he deserted. He reached Buenos Aires in mid-1905.

He died around 1909, about four years after arriving. He was a little over forty. The cause was tuberculosis contracted at the front, worsened by the strain of the war and the journey. He lived only a short time in the country he had deserted to reach. His three children were young: Alejandro was twelve, Marcos ten and Aida five.