Tag #141267 - Interview #98619 (Margarita Kohen )

My maternal grandmother's name was Tamar Kohen (? - 1950s)  My grandma is from Dupnitsa. She had seven sisters and several brothers but I don’t know all their names. I remember the names only of the ones who lived in Gorna Dzhumaya. Three sisters got married in Dupnitsa but lived in Gorna Dzhumaya and that’s why I remember their names – Masal, Linda and granny Tamara. My granny was religious too and that’s how she was bringing up her daughters and grandchildren. I recall something that had turned into a law in the family. Yes, if I tell you what it was you’ll be astonished – when the daughters or the granddaughters were in menstruation, granny wouldn’t allow us to touch anything in which food was stored – plates, pots, water decanters. We weren’t allowed to touch and she said that everything had to be clean enough and we were ‘ikoniada’ – which means we were not entirely clean at that moment, so touching was banned – that deep was granny’s faith. She was not only a believer but a house-proud woman as well. I recall that before Pesach all the cutlery was disinfected through boiling. And not only was she very house-proud but she was a great gourmet, too. She was cooking for sixteen people. My mother’s brothers and sisters also lived in the big house of the Kohen family. We were often visited by relatives from Salonika. We were also visited by acquaintances of my grandfather who was selling them dairy products and in those cases cooking was even a greater adventure. My mother told me that when there were guests the children, I mean the younger brothers and sisters – 9 in total, were gathered in a separate room so that they wouldn’t make noise. My mother was in charge because she was the oldest. She entertained them by telling them stories. And all the guests used to say – so many children and it is so quiet… Usually the guests were entertained in a parlor on the first floor. A lot of different people were visiting – my grandpa’s customers and respected people from the town, I had also visited that home often because mum used to go there often with her three children in order not to be sad and bored all the time – she was a widow after all. In my granny’s house kosher was a must. There were separate dishes and plates for the different foods. The animals were slaughtered by a shochet in a special place in the yard of the synagogue.

Apart from her children, husband and wife, mother and father-in-law there were always guests and a servant who helped with the farm work and who was carrying the products from the shops to the house. There were no other servants. I recall that the daughters – mum and her sisters helped granny. She used to get up at 3 a.m. and at 4 a.m. she would say: ‘Come on, daughter, come and help me with kneading this bread, to cook something for the family.’ In the evening the whole family used to gather. I remember that grandpa Bokhor used to put me in his lap and asked me to sing. ‘Come on, Marga, come on, sing a little…’ Grandpa used to always pat me on the head, he used to be very kind with us all. He was more… in the evenings, the evenings, when we were around the table. He was very kind but he was grieving so much about the loss of my father that he caught heart tuberculosis and at the age of fifty-two he left this world.