Tag #133332 - Interview #96190 (Maria Koblik-Zeltser)

During that time the position of our family had changed. My brother Leibl sent the money from Belgium regularly and finally Father was able to save money to buy his own apartment. He purchased a part of a house with a basement, which belonged to our distant relative. We had a separate entrance in the house. The apartment consisted of three rooms. As usual, there was a store in the first room. The second was a bedroom with three beds: two for my parents, and one for me, and the third one was a sort of a drawing-room combined with a kitchen. Since we didn’t have a separate kitchen Mother placed the primus [Primus stove: a small portable stove with a container for about 1 liter of kerosene that was pumped into burners] behind the curtain. The next year Father hired some workers and they joined the kitchen with the balcony to our apartment. We had a wonderful yard. There was a chicken coop in the yard. We also had a wine cellar. We didn’t have our own grapes. Father bought them at a cheap price and made wine. We drank homemade wine on Sabbath and on holidays.