Tag #157537 - Interview #78085 (mojsze sznejser)

After the war there were a lot of Jews here in Legnica. The synagogue was on Chojnowska Street. I used to go to the synagogue on the holidays. I didn't go on Sabbath. There were lots of people, see, and sometimes I was at work. Now on Saturdays I go to the synagogue, well, got to help keep the ten up [the minyan]. I know how to pray: I've got my prayer shawl here too, and I put it on, but not all of it, because I've forgotten it now. Back then there were lots of people. There was a synagogue and a SCSPJ club [see Social and Cultural Society of Polish Jews] 5. I went to both. I always went to the SCSPJ on an evening: we'd come, play dominoes, and there was a buffet bar. Life was different - lively; we'd go to the club, to the park, once in a while to the cinema. The club was on Nowy Swiat Street. You could go every day of the week. They'd have an act come in and play; there was a Jewish theatre. The theatre was on Nowy Swiat Street as well. They'd come from Warsaw, from Wroclaw; the shows were in Yiddish. There were Poles that sang in Yiddish there too. One time they came up from Wroclaw, and I said: 'Listen up, I'll sing you a song, but without the piano, so everyone can hear.' And I sang for them, and they clapped.

On the holidays they would organize something in the synagogue, but it was the same folk who came here to the club. And there were Jews who didn't go to either, didn't want to let on that they were Jews. But I went to the club from the beginning; I never thought of letting it go. You can't change what you are. A man who changes is a good-for-nothing. Because he'll change all the time. But I will always be who I am, what's the point of going round lying? I can't, that's my nature. My kids are the same. My oldest son was called Dawid Berek, after my father and my granddad from Radzyn, and my second son Szama, after my other granddad - Szymen, and my daughter Syma too.