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I’ll tell you one anecdote: My mother’s brother Maximilian, the pharmacist, was very well off, and he and his wife set out to Opatija, to the seaside. To explain to his parents why they were going to the seaside, he told them that he had to go for treatments, because he had lumbago.
To the end of her days my mother thought that that’s why he’d gone there. Later, long after they were already dead, I told her that if he had wanted to treat lumbago, Piestany was just on the other side of the hill. They lived in Hlohovec.
But I didn’t succeed in convincing my mother. That was a typical Jewish attitude towards vacations back then. Only spas were recognized as being appropriate for vacations. My parents even went to Karlovy Vary for their honeymoon.
We children spent our vacations with my mother’s siblings. Once I was in Hlohovec at my uncle’s place, and a few times in Dolné Otrokovce at another uncle’s. Nowhere else. I was always terribly bored in Dolné Otrokovce, so sometimes they’d also invite my cousin Lilly from Hlohovec.
Once they sent the two of us from Dolné Otrokovce to a neighboring village, Merasice, about two kilometers away, for meat from the ice plant. Back then refrigerators weren’t common, and when someone bought meat for several days, they’d put it on ice in an ice plant.
The Reichenthals had an ice plant in Merasice. On our way back it began to rain. We cried the whole way, until we returned with the meat, soaked to the skin, to Dolné Otrokovce. We were also frightened. Back then I was nine, Lilly eight.
To the end of her days my mother thought that that’s why he’d gone there. Later, long after they were already dead, I told her that if he had wanted to treat lumbago, Piestany was just on the other side of the hill. They lived in Hlohovec.
But I didn’t succeed in convincing my mother. That was a typical Jewish attitude towards vacations back then. Only spas were recognized as being appropriate for vacations. My parents even went to Karlovy Vary for their honeymoon.
We children spent our vacations with my mother’s siblings. Once I was in Hlohovec at my uncle’s place, and a few times in Dolné Otrokovce at another uncle’s. Nowhere else. I was always terribly bored in Dolné Otrokovce, so sometimes they’d also invite my cousin Lilly from Hlohovec.
Once they sent the two of us from Dolné Otrokovce to a neighboring village, Merasice, about two kilometers away, for meat from the ice plant. Back then refrigerators weren’t common, and when someone bought meat for several days, they’d put it on ice in an ice plant.
The Reichenthals had an ice plant in Merasice. On our way back it began to rain. We cried the whole way, until we returned with the meat, soaked to the skin, to Dolné Otrokovce. We were also frightened. Back then I was nine, Lilly eight.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Ruzena R.