The water carrier was a familiar figure in the shtetls. This statue, on a side street in Vilnius, Lithuania, commemorates the "vasser treger" - or water carrier - whose job appears simple but was in no way easy. My grandmother once told me that drawing water from their town well was a dangerous task, especially in the winter. Any water that spilled from the buckets would quickly turn to ice around the well, making the ground slippery and very difficult to negotiate.
In our new book, Woven Roots, we write of the forgotten "parnassos" - livelihoods - in the former Pale of Settlement, including that of the humble water carrier.
