There was this coffeehouse where painters and erudites just like Father used to meet. Mr. Koziol, a Cracow journalist, told me that that coffeehouse was on Dietla Street and was called 'Pod szmatka' [Under the Rag].
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Displaying 7291 - 7320 of 50826 results
Teofila Silberring
So Purim was a fun holiday too. Then I remember the holiday of Pesach. We packed up what was called 'chummes' [chametz], that means crumbs of bread. Because at Pesach you're not allowed to eat bread, only matzah. And in Kazimierz there was this bakery. We used to go, there was this big wooden paddle, and you threw the 'chummes' on it to burn it. I used to go with it, because I liked going there. What tradition that was, what it was based on, that I don't know. And there was Seder, this dinner, I remember; there were definitely matzot. That was celebrated in traditional fashion, and afterwards Father went to a coffeehouse.
,
Before WW2
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I liked Purim too, because you got presents. You got money. We used to dress up, I remember.
,
Before WW2
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My favorite was Kuczki [literally shelter, in this case it refers to Sukkot], the Feast of Shelters. Because then there were these shelters in our courtyard, and we children, not just me, but from the whole house, made colored paper chains and competed to see whose would be the prettiest. Father ate there on the first day or the second. And after that it was a so- called 'free' holiday, so he didn't eat in there. But the shelter stayed up until the end of the festival, so eight days or seven, I don't remember that. [Editor's note: Sukkot lasts eight days]. In any case I liked that holiday a lot, because I prepared things, did things, was very important. When my chain came out better than my friends' from next door I was very proud. And Father was proud of me too, and showed everyone what I'd done. That was my most favorite holiday.
ews weren't even allowed to turn the light on, apparently. She could, because she wasn't Jewish. I knew that on Saturday driving wasn't allowed, that we weren't allowed to do certain things, but the children did everything, because the children were more assimilated. And anyway, Father sometimes even went to work on Saturdays. So Father wasn't traditionally religious. But he kept up the holidays; all the holidays were celebrated.
Downstairs in our house there was a bar [restaurant]. It was run by this Orthodox Jew, with a beard. He was very nice. He made the aspic that I liked so much, and to go with it he baked this special, round, sugar- coated... I don't know what it was, not cake, not bread. He had crowds on Saturdays.
,
Before WW2
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There was definitely fish on Friday evenings. And there were these special challot too. There was always almost the same food to eat, and most importantly, they made what the children liked. On Saturday there was definitely chicken soup with noodles, gefilte fish and aspic jelly. Delicious! Father always had a glass of plum brandy. I didn't get any, of course. But there was beer, which Father really liked. Beer I did sip, because I liked it too, even though it was bitter. As well as that, on Friday evening we would go and take what we called chulent to the bakery on Nowy Square, and give it to the baker. Our maid carried it. This big pot, it was a stoneware one, I think. On Saturday morning she would bring it back warm. I liked it a lot. It was peas, round ones, which the Jews called 'arbese' [der arbes (Yid.) - peas], groats, some kind of fat ... And that, baked like that, was very nice. There was always cake, but especially on Saturdays there was an awful lot of cake. On Monday mornings this lady would come round and we would give her cake all packed up. She was Jewish too, very elegant, who had evidently fallen on hard times somehow. And our maid always gave her a whole package of that cake.
On Sabbath Mom always lit candles and made those movements, I remember, over the candles.
Opposite our house was Tempel Synagogue [the most recent of the synagogues in Kazimierz (1860), a reform synagogue. The rabbi there was Ozjasz Thon (1870-1936), an eminent Zionist and deputy to the Polish Sejm]. Before the war it was a reform synagogue, for wealthier people, who would come in cars and carriages. An orthodox Jew wouldn't have gone in there. My parents went to Tempel at every holiday, definitely. And sometimes, when Father went with Mother on a Saturday, they would take me. Tempel was beautiful. The men were downstairs and the women upstairs, and I used to go up to Mom up these stairs. There was a barrier there, and you looked down, what the men were doing, how they prayed. That all delighted me. I liked going, I remember that too.
Before the war, Miodowa Street was largely a street of intellectuals, better secular Jews. And on the side streets lived Jews in cloaks. Not that the ones with sidelocks, in white socks [Hasidim], didn't walk along Miodowa Street. They walked along it because it was a main street, but they didn't live there.
,
Before WW2
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Upstairs there were these small balconies, and we used to play there too. We played ball, I remember skipping ropes, counting games, hide-and-seek, tag, games like that: but never on the street, we weren't allowed to go out onto the street at all, everything happened in the house and the courtyard.
,
Before WW2
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We had a very nice apartment, eight rooms on the second floor. My brother had his own room, I had mine. The children's maid had her own room. We were well-off, though not potentates. Father loved everything modern. I didn't know that he borrowed money; it was only after the war that it transpired how many debts the house was burdened with. Father was such that whatever had just come out, he liked to buy: the first radio with a magic eye, a wind-up gramophone, with a tube, and beautiful records. There was a bathroom, a telephone, a refrigerator; there was everything there could have been. In my room I had cream and blue furniture built into the wall. Before the war! And I had this bed with a pull-out drawer. Father even had a washbasin with hot and cold water put in my room so that I wouldn't have to go to the bathroom in the morning. So I had this little washbasin with all my toiletries.
The hall was very big. I remember that Father brought me a scooter with chromium-plated mudguards, and we used to ride it up and down the hall. And when my friends came round I used to let them ride on it: for a picture, a candy wrapper, always in return for something. I had a head for business. We had these - not scrapbooks - but notebooks. And we used to make these triangles out of pieces of paper, like envelopes. We would buy pictures of angels or devils, we used to flatten out chocolates wrappers, and put them in those pieces of paper. And then we would swap them at school. I remember that you used to buy Erdal shoe polish. In the packaging there was always this tin badge. So I kept watch on the maid to make sure she only bought Erdal, because there were those decorative tin badges in them. I collected that too.
The hall was very big. I remember that Father brought me a scooter with chromium-plated mudguards, and we used to ride it up and down the hall. And when my friends came round I used to let them ride on it: for a picture, a candy wrapper, always in return for something. I had a head for business. We had these - not scrapbooks - but notebooks. And we used to make these triangles out of pieces of paper, like envelopes. We would buy pictures of angels or devils, we used to flatten out chocolates wrappers, and put them in those pieces of paper. And then we would swap them at school. I remember that you used to buy Erdal shoe polish. In the packaging there was always this tin badge. So I kept watch on the maid to make sure she only bought Erdal, because there were those decorative tin badges in them. I collected that too.
,
Before WW2
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We had a maid too, and a cook. One of them lived in the servant's room and the other in the kitchen, and they stuffed themselves like I don't know what. I wrote the younger one love letters to her boyfriend, because she couldn't write; she was from the country. They were there until the war, literally. The cook was even still there when the war had already broken out.
,
Before WW2
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We had a maid too, and a cook. One of them lived in the servant's room and the other in the kitchen, and they stuffed themselves like I don't know what.
At home there was also a girl to look after the children, who spoke English. She spoke German too. Brandwein, Miss Brandwein. A Jewess from an intellectual but impoverished house. She had to earn a living. She was a chemist and taught in a gymnasium somewhere, and in the afternoon she was with us. She picked me up from school, because my brother was older and went on his own. She did our homework with us and taught us the language.
My brother was a very able student, which always made me furious. He was an excellent physicist and mathematician. I remember that in school they even used to call him 'Fosgen' [phosgene, carbon oxychloride - a highly toxic chemical substance used in World War I as a combat gas]. And I was a little in my brother's shadow, because I was gifted, but not as much. He was always more talked about than me, and that annoyed me a lot. Even though I had good results at school and a great capacity for languages.
,
Before WW2
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She had a lot of interests. She used to go to the theater, to cafes.
Mom had her secondary school certificate. She kept house.
,
Before WW2
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Father was basically a socialist. Mom didn't participate in political life at all, but Father was a socialist, which the family held against him. That's all I remember.
Father had a small - 7 percent - stake in the Cracow Husking Plants and Mills, so he lived off that.
,
Before WW2
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Basically, he worked for the upkeep, I mean to pay for the upkeep of the house.
Father didn't have a degree. He only had his secondary school certificate, but he knew an awful lot of languages. He had simply taught himself. He was one of the first Esperanto speakers in Cracow. Together with his friend, the well-known Polonist Dreher, he wrote pamphlets for learning Esperanto. He also worked on dictionaries, Polish-Hebrew and Polish-French, with that same friend. He was a journalist, a critic with Nowy Dziennik [New Daily, a Zionist daily published in Cracow], which had editorial offices on Orzeszkowa Street.
My parents, Gustawa and Juda Nussbaum, were born in 1900. They were both 20 when they married. They fell in love and had a Jewish wedding under the canopy [chuppah]; there were photographs of the wedding at home.
,
Before WW2
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Apparently there's a cousin living in Israel, the daughter of one of my mother's sisters. But I'm not in touch with her.
The youngest was Hania; she lived with Grandma and helped her out. Uncle Szlomo was older; when the war broke out he could have been 40-something. He had a grocery store on Agnieszki Street.
Aunt Sala lived in Podgorze. I know that she had five children. I didn't even know all of them, because with that aunt we weren't in such close contact. They had it very hard. My parents helped her out, because my uncle wasn't very capable; he didn't work. I think they kept to tradition more than us, because my uncle was very religious.
,
Before WW2
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Aunt Helena's husband was called Srul Weintraub. They were very well off. He was a co-proprietor of the Cracow Husking Plants and Mills on Mogilska Street [a husking plant was a factory that processed seeds, mostly rice and peas].
,
Before WW2
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My uncle had a grocery store. My aunt lived on Dietla Street. I don't remember what her first name was or what her married surname was. She had children, but somehow we didn't keep in touch with her. My aunt was more traditional than my father, but my uncle opened his shop on Saturdays. During the war [WWII] they all died.
My Mom's maiden name was Barber. Her parents had a grocery store. And I know that Mom helped there when she was single.
My Mom's maiden name was Barber. Her parents had a grocery store. And I know that Mom helped there when she was single.
,
Before WW2
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The cheapest rubbish, for poor children. But I liked it a lot, and when I went to Grandma's those 'lodes' were all I wanted. Until the war Grandma ran that shop in her house. Whether she died of old age or whether she was taken into the ghetto, I don't remember.
,
Before WW2
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My Mom's maiden name was Barber. Her parents had a grocery store. And I know that Mom helped there when she was single. I don't remember my grandfather, because when I was born he was already dead. Grandma - I don't even know what her name was - ran the shop herself.