Tag #157493 - Interview #100414 (Michal Warzager)

There was no shul in our village until just before the war. Before that it was in another village, called Majdanek – but not that Majdanek, a different one. [One of the Nazi death camps was located in a village called Majdanek, outside Lublin.] It was a little village. There were a few Jews living there, and that’s where we’d meet. Sometimes there were ten or twelve people. Sometimes someone would come from one of the other villages, even from 5 kilometers away. In those days that’s what it was like: one Jew a kilometer away, the next Jew 2 kilometers away. It was only our family who settled down in a little cluster. The ones from elsewhere didn’t always turn up, so we managed for ourselves. There were seven adults in our community. I went there with father, because he prayed there. And my godfather from my bar mitzvah ceremony would read the Torah. Going there added a bit of variety to our lives – seeing other people and chatting a bit brightened things up a bit. And when they moved the prayer room to our village, it was in our house. There was a room and an alcove, just a small space. We’d clean the room and move everything that wasn’t needed out of it, and set up chairs, and people came there on Saturdays. The prayers would last about an hour and a half, and then we’d move everything back the way it was. There was a special cabinet for the Torah, and it was taken out and my godfather would read.