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And then there were the other festivals, of course – Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah and others. At Purim, the Megillat [Megillat Ester] was read out in the synagogue. We, children, had special twirlers and at the word ‘Haman’ we would shout and make a huge noise. In the end they would shout at us to stop, but we didn’t want to, and that was a kind of game. There were Purim plays, too. King Ahasuerus sat on a throne with a paper crown on his head, and a minister came to him and reported something or other. Then the beautiful Esther came and said, ‘Why do you want to exterminate my people?’ The king changed his mind, and at the end there was a scene where Haman is already in the ground and in his place comes Mordechai riding on a horse. At Purim it was the custom to eat these triangular little cakes with poppy-seeds – they were triangular because they were supposed to resemble the hat that Haman wore. Those cakes were called ‘humentashn’[Galician Yiddish for hamantashen].
Period
Interview
Mieczyslaw Weinryb