When I go to the Nozyk Synagogue in Warsaw [23], my wife always accompanies me.
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Displaying 32161 - 32190 of 50826 results
Icchok Grynberg
We celebrate all Jewish holidays at home. We invite our Jewish friends. I am a qualified cook, so I make challah, fish, purely Jewish food. They like it. On Sabbath my wife lights candles, but she doesn’t pray because she doesn’t know how.
,
After WW2
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I am happy here in Poland. I don’t feel any discrimination. There were no problems to regain the citizenship. Today, my homeland is Poland and Spain. When I left Poland, I forgot the Polish language. I remembered only a little. My wife kept correcting me, correcting, correcting. Now I speak better and better.
,
After WW2
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We bought her a tiny one-bedroom house in Bnei-Brak. She just sat there and talked with God. She read religious books. She had a can for ‘tsdoke’, charity. Money she was getting from her children she used to give away. It was a sort of mitzvah.
,
After WW2
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I told myself: ‘I have a wife now, I won’t be an employee. I will be working for myself.’ I met my future partner, Edward, there. He had a restaurant, but had no cook. He said: ‘Let’s start a company. You will be a cook, I will be a waiter.’ That was our agreement, and all went very well. It was in Mata Lascania, by the Atlantic Ocean, near Portugal. A beautiful place. And I stayed there. I had some savings – 35,000 German marks. Based on this I received a permit for starting my own business. I worked with that Spaniard for a year, and then I told him I didn’t want to do that any more. I was a known specialist by then. I wanted him to rent the restaurant to me. I signed a lease for five years. When he saw how well everything was going, he didn’t want to renew it. He refused.
One day I saw three burnt restaurants between local hotels. They had been standing there for four years and nobody wanted to buy them. I told myself: ‘I’ll do it, I’ll buy them.’ I went to that Spaniard, the owner of the restaurants, and said: ‘Listen, I want to buy it.’ He looked at me as if I was a madman. But I knew what I knew. I took the walls down and made one big restaurant. I called it ‘Alfonso’, from the name of the Spanish king Alfonso. It was very popular. My previous partner, when my old clients were looking for me, would tell them that I had died. But they finally found me and came to me. I already had a good name. Everyone knew me. Usually there were no empty seats in the restaurant. You had to make a reservation. What was the house specialty? Everything was special! In the menu it said: ‘with one day notice, you can order anything you want’. There were Japanese meals, Chinese, Hungarian, Spanish… all! There was nothing I wouldn’t prepare. And so it grew… until I retired in 1987.
One day I saw three burnt restaurants between local hotels. They had been standing there for four years and nobody wanted to buy them. I told myself: ‘I’ll do it, I’ll buy them.’ I went to that Spaniard, the owner of the restaurants, and said: ‘Listen, I want to buy it.’ He looked at me as if I was a madman. But I knew what I knew. I took the walls down and made one big restaurant. I called it ‘Alfonso’, from the name of the Spanish king Alfonso. It was very popular. My previous partner, when my old clients were looking for me, would tell them that I had died. But they finally found me and came to me. I already had a good name. Everyone knew me. Usually there were no empty seats in the restaurant. You had to make a reservation. What was the house specialty? Everything was special! In the menu it said: ‘with one day notice, you can order anything you want’. There were Japanese meals, Chinese, Hungarian, Spanish… all! There was nothing I wouldn’t prepare. And so it grew… until I retired in 1987.
,
After WW2
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In 1976 we went to Spain for holidays. And I liked it there.
,
After WW2
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My wife is very much in love with me. I am her entire world.
,
After WW2
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She’s a Catholic. She has good memories of Jews in Wyszogrod. She used to go to them, and says that as a child she spoke Jewish [Yiddish] as well as Polish.
,
After WW2
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In the hotel in Dusseldorf I met my current wife, Krystyna. She was working there. When I saw how good she was with her hands I proposed. At first she didn’t want to marry me, but eventually we got married.
,
After WW2
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When I came from Brazil, I missed my homeland, the place where I was born. I went to Poland for four days. At the time, everything was relatively expensive in Poland. The dollar exchange rate was unfavorable. So I couldn’t stay long. I went to Goworowo for a day and a half. It wasn’t a pleasant experience. I knew everything had been burnt down in Goworowo. But some local Poles, who used to work at my father’s bakery, recognized me. ‘Oh, you are Gdaluk’s child!’ [changed version of Father’s name – Gedala]. There were two boys…’. They meant me and my brother. They helped me find Father’s birth certificate and they let me spend the night at their place.
,
After WW2
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I worked for an American hotel concern, which had its hotels all over the world. They transferred me to Cologne, later to Dusseldorf. I prepared a hotel inauguration there and became the chief cook.
,
After WW2
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She had one son who is now 16. His name is Domingo Meir Grynberg. Meir is a Jewish name. My grandson is circumcised in a Jewish way, he had a bar mitzvah.
,
After WW2
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She lives in a very luxurious city – San Colorado. She’s very well off.
,
After WW2
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Afer a while my daughter started publishing. Because of her profession she got into ‘Canaglob’ in Rio de Janeiro. It’s a television channel. This is where she gave lectures in psychiatry – twice a week for an hour. Now she lectures at a Catholic university in Rio de Janeiro.
,
After WW2
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She had a true Jewish wedding under the chuppah. After she married, she kept her maiden name – Grynberg.
,
After WW2
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She got married in 1968.
,
After WW2
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After she graduated, she went to a university in Columbia. She was studying to be a psychiatrist.
,
After WW2
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My daughter went to an English school.
,
After WW2
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I subscribed to two Jewish newspapers in Brazil. There was also a Jewish radio, which broadcast in Yiddish . My daughter and I used to go to the ‘Hebraica’ club. It was a huge, three-story building. Jews used to hang out there, play cards, there were some performances … just for the Jewish community. I was always interested in what was going on there. There was one newspaper journalist, a Brazilian of Jewish origin. When the Six Day War broke out [1967] [22], he was sent to Israel as a representative of the Hebraica club. He took photographs there and sent them all to us. A meeting was organized at the club then – we were all told about what was going on in Israel.
,
After WW2
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Back then in Brazil there were only rich or poor. There was no way to get a job. The earnings were very small. I was doing what all Jewish immigrants were doing. I was going from one village to another selling fabric for clothing. I went to each house and asked for double the price. I worked like that until I made enough. Then I was selling gold. Finally, I made a lot of money. Then I got a job in a hotel. I worked there as a cook and was making very good money. I wasn’t a cook, but I told them I knew how to cook. I was very clever. I was observing the chief cook… I learned fast and soon I became a master, a big master! Cooking became my profession and still is until this day. I made a fortune, but I worked very hard for it.
,
After WW2
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There were Jewish committees then that were helping Jews leave [most likely HIAS committees] [21]. I went to see them and asked for help. They took down my information and said: ‘You can only go to Brazil.’ So I went to the Brazilian consulate and got a visa. I left in 1954. That organization paid for my ticket. They couldn’t leave me in a situation like that, because I would have starved. I promised I would return the money. That was the agreement. And that’s what happened.
,
After WW2
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I had a cousin, very religious, who lived near Paris. Her name was Chaja Sara Lis. I had to have an official address, so she registered me in the local yeshivah. I got a temporary identity card, that they renewed every once in a while.
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After WW2
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I lived in Israel for a year and a half. My wife didn’t want to stay there though.
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After WW2
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Brother, because of the illness he went through in Russia, came down with Parkinson’s disease. Brother’s Wife died in 1991. She was constantly dieting and starved herself, they couldn’t save her. A year later Motl also died.
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After WW2
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When Brother went to the States, he also worked in a bakery.
,
After WW2
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They got married and got documents from a rabbi.
,
After WW2
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One day a girl from America came to Yafo. I think it was in 1953. She was religious and she was looking for a husband. She came from a family of Eastern European Jews, who went to the United States. Her name was Miriam, but everyone called her Margy. Mother set her up with my brother Motl.
,
After WW2
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Brother worked as a baker there. I started to do the same thing. It was in a big bakery near Tel Aviv – it was called Degania. Every day I cycled to work for about 12 kilometers.
,
After WW2
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We got mobilized to a kibbutz , but I didn’t want to live like that. My brother had a two-bedroom apartment in the Arab Yafo, where he lived with Mom. He gave one room to me. It wasn’t in Yafo, but not far from it – in Bat Yam.
,
After WW2
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Some of my friends were drafted into the army straight from the ship. And they all died. There was a war in Israel then [Independence War, 1948 [20]. Well, the war is still going on there.
,
After WW2
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