My grandparents spent the summer in the mountains, in Szczawnica. Sometimes they’d also go to Vienna. I went to Szczawnica with my grandmother once, but usually my uncle and his wife would take me to a summer-house near Cracow.
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Displaying 31171 - 31200 of 50826 results
Jozef Seweryn
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When my uncles visited, they played cards with my grandfather – ‘66’ was the game. After supper they’d sit down at the table and play for money, for grosze [Polish currency]. We’d also go to the theater, but not often.
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Before WW2
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My grandparents somehow tolerated all this. When their daughter, Aunt Helena, got married to a Catholic officer and baptized her daughter a Catholic, they didn’t throw them out of the house. Helena and her husband would still visit us. Like all their other children.
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Before WW2
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My grandparents’ house was kosher. People cared about that at that time. There were those who respected the rules, but there were also those who didn’t. In my family my grandmother and grandfather respected them. They only bought things which you were allowed to buy and which you should, but their sons and daughters didn’t. My grandparents kept up what they were brought up in, but the young generation didn’t have time to live like they did. But when they visited my grandparents for the holidays, they behaved properly – according to tradition.
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Before WW2
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A bit later the Festival of Shelters [Sukkot] was celebrated. In our house one booth would be built in the backyard for all the residents. That’s the way it was done then. We would go there with my grandfather when I was a boy. Inside the booth you would eat. It wasn’t very loud and pompous. It was like that in Kazimierz [3]. But in Podgorze the holidays were more modest, quite poor. You’d just observe them for the sake of observance, and that was it.
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Before WW2
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I liked Rosh Hashanah the best, because it was a very joyful holiday.
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Before WW2
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And New Year was celebrated twice. First the religious New Year, Rosh Hashanah, and then the calendar New Year in the winter.
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Before WW2
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At home, the holidays were observed according to tradition. We celebrated Passover like everyone else. Well, perhaps there was one difference; at home only seder dinner was festive and on the following days you’d normally go to work.
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Before WW2
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There were also Hasidim [2] living in Cracow, some even lived on our street. They lived in one tenement house and had their prayer house in that house. That prayer house was completely different than the one we attended. The Jews who came to our prayer house dressed Polish style, not Hasidic style. Hasidim dressed Jewish style; wore fur hats, side locks, chalats. There were few Jews of that kind – Hasidim. There were some, but not many. There were more of them in the east of Poland, in smaller cities, but not in Cracow or Lvov [today Ukraine].
The rabbi from the prayer house lived opposite my grandfather’s hairdressing salon, but I don’t remember him well.
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Before WW2
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The prayer house we went to looked modest. A house where you went to pray and that was all. People from the neighborhood would go there. The prayer books were in Hebrew. Women prayed on the balcony and men prayed downstairs.
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Before WW2
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My grandfather didn’t have side locks or a beard, but he had a moustache. He wore suits – like a barber should. My grandmother didn’t wear a wig.
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Before WW2
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They went to pray on Saturday in the nearby prayer house on Rekawka [Street]. We celebrated Friday and holidays, like all Jews. Like it should have been.
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Before WW2
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My grandparents were religious like all Jews.
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Before WW2
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The housekeeper was Polish. When I was small, I also had a nanny. I don’t remember her name. The housekeeper cooked for the three of us and for my grandfather’s employees. Every morning my grandmother would tell her what to buy at the market. The market wasn’t far, some 100 meters from the salon. That’s where the tram stop was.
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Before WW2
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We lived on 11 Limanowskiego Street, in a tenement house belonging to Mr. Brajer, who was of German origin. There were both Poles and Jews living in that house. It was a large building; there were two wings on both sides. Our apartment was in the back, on the first floor, and the hairdressing salon was on the ground floor, with an entrance from the street. My grandmother didn’t have a separate office. Customers would call her, my grandmother had a telephone and she took care of her business in the city.
There were three rooms in our apartment. My grandmother and grandfather slept in one of them; I slept in the second one and the housekeeper in the third.
There were three rooms in our apartment. My grandmother and grandfather slept in one of them; I slept in the second one and the housekeeper in the third.
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Before WW2
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When I was a few years old my mother left us. She met some Pole – Wladyslaw Seweryn –and married him. When she left I walked her with my grandparents to the tram stop. I stayed behind as she didn’t take me with her. She later changed her name to Elzbieta. Her husband worked on construction sites, she had a stall on the Maly Rynek market square. He didn’t want to keep in touch with our family. They had children, but I never met them.
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Before WW2
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He was badly wounded during the war, he became a cripple and wasn’t of any use after that. He didn’t return to Cracow, what happened to him later I don’t know.
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Before WW2
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Everything changed during that war. Poverty was bad, there was nothing to eat, there was some aid from America and that was when my mother met my father. His name was Adolf Lehr. My mother got pregnant and he left for the war.
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Before WW2
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Everything changed during that war. Poverty was bad, there was nothing to eat, there was some aid from America and that was when my mother met my father.
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Before WW2
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She graduated from high school during the war [World War I] – first she went to an Austrian school, then a Polish one, where she passed her final exams.
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Before WW2
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That marriage quickly fell apart. Later, she married a Polish officer, but she divorced him also.
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Before WW2
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She married a Polish lieutenant. His name was Dzikowski. She converted to Catholicism then.
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Before WW2
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Uncle Jozek, who was born in 1898, learnt driving on his own; he was a car person – a car mechanic, he had a workshop near the Vistula River, he bought and sold cars.
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Before WW2
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Heniek learned barbering; he ran a barbershop near Podgorze.
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Before WW2
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He was the co-owner of the Royal Hotel in Cracow. It was a beautiful hotel, opposite Wawel [Editor’s note: The old seat of the Polish kings in Cracow]. He later opened a colonial store on Wielicka Street, where people from the neighborhood did their shopping.
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Before WW2
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My grandmother was a real estate broker; she sold apartments and even houses. She used to make quite a lot of money; she had a talent for that job. She was a very cheerful and energetic person. She knew how to do business not only with Jews, but also with Poles. She even had her own lawyer – a young and talented Jew.
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Before WW2
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In the 1880s my grandfather opened a hairdressing salon in Cracow, in the Podgorze district [A district of Cracow, set up as a district for merchants and craftsmen; the Austrians exempted the residents from paying taxes, so people from all over the empire settled there. It was a workers’ district. There were some small and larger factories there: Piszinger, Optima – chocolate factories, wine factories, Wassanbergs’ mills, a wire fence factory – those were all Jewish enterprises.]. Several apprentices worked in the salon as well as my grandfather. They learned the trade at his salon and later left to start their own businesses. The apprentices would change every three years. It was a unisex salon. My grandfather had many customers. A cut cost one zloty.
My grandfather was also a feldsher. [The name Feldsher was derived from the German term Feldscher, which was coined in the 15th century. Feldscher means Field barber, and was the name of medieval barber-surgeons. They worked as primitive field surgeons for the German and Swiss Landsknecht until real military medical services were established by Prussia in the early 18th century. The term was then exported with Prussian officers and nobility to Russia. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldsher] He applied leeches, pulled teeth and applied cupping glasses. The leeches would always be in a jar standing in the window of the hairdressing salon. My grandfather would get them from Budapest, Hungary. They would arrive once a week, through the mail. They were special leeches – medicinal; regular leeches could harm a human, bite in too deeply, but these would only break the skin and suck the blood. You put them behind the ear, on the mouth, on the gums.
My grandfather was also a feldsher. [The name Feldsher was derived from the German term Feldscher, which was coined in the 15th century. Feldscher means Field barber, and was the name of medieval barber-surgeons. They worked as primitive field surgeons for the German and Swiss Landsknecht until real military medical services were established by Prussia in the early 18th century. The term was then exported with Prussian officers and nobility to Russia. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feldsher] He applied leeches, pulled teeth and applied cupping glasses. The leeches would always be in a jar standing in the window of the hairdressing salon. My grandfather would get them from Budapest, Hungary. They would arrive once a week, through the mail. They were special leeches – medicinal; regular leeches could harm a human, bite in too deeply, but these would only break the skin and suck the blood. You put them behind the ear, on the mouth, on the gums.
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Before WW2
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After their death, my grandfather sold the establishment and lost a lot of money that way. That was immediately after the war [World War I], before marks were replaced by zloty. The marks, which my grandfather received as payment, lost all of its value overnight.
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Before WW2
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My grandfather’s parents ran a restaurant in Rajsko near Cracow.
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Before WW2
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