Tag #117608 - Interview #100514 (Frieda Shteinene)

In 1937 my younger sister Nina was born. When she war born, my grandmother Chaya took me in her place (at that time she could still walk). She and Basya lived not far from us on the bank of the river. It was a tiny house with a week floor. I remember when I was a baby, I put my feet between the boards. Basya bathed, combed me. Later she took me to school. In general, she was like a mother to me. Basya was a very good cook and grandmother was also a coryphaeus of the Jewish cuisine. My mother merely did not have chance to cook complicated dishes, which were time consuming, because she was busy with work. Fortunately, she was a high-class milliner and she had many orders. Often grandmother Chaya came to us to cook dinner, then I lived with her, so it is hard for me to say what dishes my mother cooked. At any rate, it was a true Jewish cuisine. I am still using their recipes. We observed kashrut - bought meat in special stores and took poultry to shochet. When I grew up, it became my duty. I remember the house where shochet lived. It was a two-storied redbrick house in downtown. Shochet lived on the first floor. He cut the fowl there. There was a so-called counter to the left, with two hollows. He cut fowl’s neck over one of the hollows, having cut couple of the plume and read a special prayer. Then he put the fowl in another hollow and waited for it to stop moving. After that he gave it to me and I went home.