Tag #134803 - Interview #101637 (Edit Grossmann)

I went there, I set in the mikveh, I washed, I didn’t immerse, but when I came out, there was a woman, who had to comb me – I brought a comb –, she poured some water above my head, and she said something [a prayer].

Then I was in the mikveh here, in Des, because the husband of a girlfriend – she was called Fani Izsak – was the mechanic there, and she kept on inviting me: ‘Come, let’s go to the mikveh a little, you don’t have to pay anything.’ So we went there with the children.

Here in Des there was a large mikveh, there was a separate one for men, and one for women. Where the community’s office is, the mikveh was there [opposite to the synagogue]. Where they are selling bread today, that was the mikveh. But it was very nice, the cabins were made of timber, there were separate bathtubs [in each cabin], and there was a bench, a coat-rack, one could hang on their clothes, and the hot water was flowing, and one could take a good bath.

It was called the Jewish bath, Christians attended it too, everybody who didn’t have a bathroom bathed there. That was the bath. So that’s how it was back then. And it was very cheap. It was a smart thing, the mikveh, because people didn’t have the possibility to bath, and it maintained washing.