Selected text
Back when I was growing up, it was very difficult. We went to school six
days a week then, and my father made a shaygitz carry my books on Saturday.
We had a soup kitchen here in Kosice all during the Communist times, but we
called it a restaurant. Naturally, it was kosher. The Goldberger brothers
ran it. Up to 100 people ate there every day. And when I was young, whoever
needed to pick up dinner cheaply because they didn't have the money, could
do so.
Even in the 1950s, we had a strong community. My father was one of the last
of the Hevrah Kadishah. Up to the end, he would get on a bus or a train and
travel to some small town in Slovakia to prepare the dead for burial.
One day my father came back from a Hevrah Kadishah meeting - they met every
Sunday - and he was enraged. The Communists had made them sell the Neolog
synagogue, the great synagogue in the center of town. And they took it for
almost nothing, he said.
He was a baker by trade, and baked challah. Everyone would buy from him.
Every Friday he would be busy at home baking, but he had another bakery
help out and they would prepare around 200 challahs.
We had a great deal of trouble from the Communist government here. In the
1960s, the Jewish community received medicines donated by a Swiss charity,
and the Party made all sorts of problems. But still, for all the holidays,
children my age would attend synagogue and we had community seders as well.
For the holidays, our big synagogue, the old Orthodox one, was always full.
We continued to have services there, even though the crowds got smaller and
smaller, until five years ago.
days a week then, and my father made a shaygitz carry my books on Saturday.
We had a soup kitchen here in Kosice all during the Communist times, but we
called it a restaurant. Naturally, it was kosher. The Goldberger brothers
ran it. Up to 100 people ate there every day. And when I was young, whoever
needed to pick up dinner cheaply because they didn't have the money, could
do so.
Even in the 1950s, we had a strong community. My father was one of the last
of the Hevrah Kadishah. Up to the end, he would get on a bus or a train and
travel to some small town in Slovakia to prepare the dead for burial.
One day my father came back from a Hevrah Kadishah meeting - they met every
Sunday - and he was enraged. The Communists had made them sell the Neolog
synagogue, the great synagogue in the center of town. And they took it for
almost nothing, he said.
He was a baker by trade, and baked challah. Everyone would buy from him.
Every Friday he would be busy at home baking, but he had another bakery
help out and they would prepare around 200 challahs.
We had a great deal of trouble from the Communist government here. In the
1960s, the Jewish community received medicines donated by a Swiss charity,
and the Party made all sorts of problems. But still, for all the holidays,
children my age would attend synagogue and we had community seders as well.
For the holidays, our big synagogue, the old Orthodox one, was always full.
We continued to have services there, even though the crowds got smaller and
smaller, until five years ago.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Marta Gyori