Tag #120168 - Interview #78478 (Edit Deutsch)

We went to the synagogue on Gyorgy Dozsa Street once in a while. But we went more often to the movie theater, which was there, too. We weren’t religious. My mother fasted duly. My father drank water occasionally, sometimes in secret, during the fasting. But my mother was kosher, she knew what to do and how to do it. She also knew that the liver has to be made kosher on the cooking-plate. So, she was kosher. It wasn’t like it was in many Jewish houses. In our house things weren’t separated so that there were special dairy utensils – but we didn’t wash the utensils used for meat products together with those used for diary products. I have never washed them together to this day. There was no pork, there was no lard, but mostly poultry. But there was no rigorous observance of the kashrut, only that this cleanliness had roots in the kashrut. I remember, there were special cakes at Yom Kippur, Purim and Rosh Hashanah.

As I went to a state school, religion classes were held separately, and I had to go to another school for those. I know that my mother was good friends with the mothers of the children I went to religion classes with, but there was no special circle of friends. My mother had one girlfriend; she was Jewish. In the evenings she played merils or other similar games with my father by the light of the oil lamp.