Selected text
I didn’t have close friends in the village, though I got along with all children. I had friends in Uzhgorod. Not all of them were Jews, but my parents didn’t mind it. They taught me that it wasn’t nationality that mattered about a person, but his human virtues.
I was quite young when my grandfather began to teach me veterinary discipline. He was with him at his work and he commented me on what he was doing, but then something happened that I gave up the thought of becoming a vet. An apple stuck in a cow’s throat. The cow was suffocating. Its owner was trying to push the apple inside with a stick, but it even got worse. The owner called my grandfather, and my grandfather took me with him. My grandfather put a ring from a wagon’s wheel into the cow’s mouth to keep it open, and then probed for the apple in its throw. Then he told me to try take it out, but I failed. What were we to do? My grandfather told me to bring a tea spoon from home – we were the only family in the village who had tea spoons. My grandfather tied the spoon to my hand and told me to try and make a hole in the apple with this spoon. I did manage to make a hole, my grandfather hit the cow on her head so that the apple fell out of there, and the cow’s stomach content poured all over me. It took me half day to wash it off me, and this was the end of my veterinary career.
I was quite young when my grandfather began to teach me veterinary discipline. He was with him at his work and he commented me on what he was doing, but then something happened that I gave up the thought of becoming a vet. An apple stuck in a cow’s throat. The cow was suffocating. Its owner was trying to push the apple inside with a stick, but it even got worse. The owner called my grandfather, and my grandfather took me with him. My grandfather put a ring from a wagon’s wheel into the cow’s mouth to keep it open, and then probed for the apple in its throw. Then he told me to try take it out, but I failed. What were we to do? My grandfather told me to bring a tea spoon from home – we were the only family in the village who had tea spoons. My grandfather tied the spoon to my hand and told me to try and make a hole in the apple with this spoon. I did manage to make a hole, my grandfather hit the cow on her head so that the apple fell out of there, and the cow’s stomach content poured all over me. It took me half day to wash it off me, and this was the end of my veterinary career.
Location
Ukraine
Interview
Laszlo Ringel