Tag #121566 - Interview #78114 (Teofila Silberring)

We had a very nice apartment, eight rooms on the second floor. My brother had his own room, I had mine. The children's maid had her own room. We were well-off, though not potentates. Father loved everything modern. I didn't know that he borrowed money; it was only after the war that it transpired how many debts the house was burdened with. Father was such that whatever had just come out, he liked to buy: the first radio with a magic eye, a wind-up gramophone, with a tube, and beautiful records. There was a bathroom, a telephone, a refrigerator; there was everything there could have been. In my room I had cream and blue furniture built into the wall. Before the war! And I had this bed with a pull-out drawer. Father even had a washbasin with hot and cold water put in my room so that I wouldn't have to go to the bathroom in the morning. So I had this little washbasin with all my toiletries.

The hall was very big. I remember that Father brought me a scooter with chromium-plated mudguards, and we used to ride it up and down the hall. And when my friends came round I used to let them ride on it: for a picture, a candy wrapper, always in return for something. I had a head for business. We had these - not scrapbooks - but notebooks. And we used to make these triangles out of pieces of paper, like envelopes. We would buy pictures of angels or devils, we used to flatten out chocolates wrappers, and put them in those pieces of paper. And then we would swap them at school. I remember that you used to buy Erdal shoe polish. In the packaging there was always this tin badge. So I kept watch on the maid to make sure she only bought Erdal, because there were those decorative tin badges in them. I collected that too.