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Across from our house there was a grocery store, ‘at Rudele’s’. Rudele was a red-head. It was a Jewish store, you could cut big pats of butter with a wire, like a bow. And we kept going to Rudele’s, there were no fridges, you had to buy everything fresh. I liked going there a lot. The smells! Incredible. Next to it there was a soap store [a soap store - store with cleaning articles], there was everything, soap, kerosene. A dark store, an older woman stood behind the counter, she must have been very religious. Her sons with sidelocks were there, in caps, that store was connected to their house.
At the corner of Sliska and Komitetowa Streets they used to sell ‘baygels’, that is bagels, if I remember correctly, 3 for 10 groszy [Polish change]. Today’s bagels are not the same thing. Baygels were braided, and the whole thing was to sell them while they were still warm. I know how they made baygels, because later we lived on Niska Street, where Uncle [Gefen] had a bakery: they made dough, quickly rolled out, the baker braided – two braids, then they threw it on the boiling water, fished it out with a long rod and put into the oven, it sat in the oven briefly and was taken out with a shovel. It was crunchy, brown. I never experienced that taste again.
Every once in a while peddlers would come to the yard. Among others a juggler. I was happy when they gave me some pennies, I stood and watched next to that blanket where he was showing tricks. Sometimes an old Jewish woman came, pulling a barrel on a small platform with wooden wheels and shouting: ‘Uliki, uliki’. A type of a herring, uliki.
In our part of Warsaw everything was around Twarda, Sosnowa, Zlota, Wielka, Sliska, Komitetowa Streets [before the war these streets were located in the Jewish district]. On Komitetowa Street there was an extraordinary Jewish cold cuts shop. On the way to school I often dropped by in there, bought a Kaiser bun and so called ‘varieties’, that is, scraps of various cold cuts. There are no ‘varieties’ today any more, like many other things.
At the corner of Sliska and Komitetowa Streets they used to sell ‘baygels’, that is bagels, if I remember correctly, 3 for 10 groszy [Polish change]. Today’s bagels are not the same thing. Baygels were braided, and the whole thing was to sell them while they were still warm. I know how they made baygels, because later we lived on Niska Street, where Uncle [Gefen] had a bakery: they made dough, quickly rolled out, the baker braided – two braids, then they threw it on the boiling water, fished it out with a long rod and put into the oven, it sat in the oven briefly and was taken out with a shovel. It was crunchy, brown. I never experienced that taste again.
Every once in a while peddlers would come to the yard. Among others a juggler. I was happy when they gave me some pennies, I stood and watched next to that blanket where he was showing tricks. Sometimes an old Jewish woman came, pulling a barrel on a small platform with wooden wheels and shouting: ‘Uliki, uliki’. A type of a herring, uliki.
In our part of Warsaw everything was around Twarda, Sosnowa, Zlota, Wielka, Sliska, Komitetowa Streets [before the war these streets were located in the Jewish district]. On Komitetowa Street there was an extraordinary Jewish cold cuts shop. On the way to school I often dropped by in there, bought a Kaiser bun and so called ‘varieties’, that is, scraps of various cold cuts. There are no ‘varieties’ today any more, like many other things.
Period
Location
Warsaw
Poland
Interview
Izaak Wacek Kornblum