My parents knew each other from their childhood. It was a small town, and all people knew one another well. My parents got married in 1921. They didn’t have a wedding party but a religious ceremony.
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Displaying 19891 - 19920 of 50826 results
Maria Reidman
They rented a room in Olevsk. Grandfather Meyer came to live with them. He liked my father a lot, so they had no problem sharing one room. They had no possibility to rent another room anyways. Father continued to trade in live-stock, but this work made little profit.
As long as my grandfather was alive the family strictly observed all religious rules. Cooking for Saturdays had to be done on Fridays, and the meals had to be prepared according to tradition because my grandfather was very religious. Our family followed the kashrut, separated dairy and meat products and the dishes used for them. We made cholent, fruit stew and beans. The number of dishes was based on what we could afford. There had to be chicken broth with golden rings of fat; very rich and delicious. But for the beginning challah and pies had to be baked. My grandmother was very good at making challah. We also boiled milk with chicory. The pot with milk was in the oven for a night, and in the morning, when they took it out, it looked like hot chocolate. After my grandfather died my mother said she wasn’t going to make cholent any more. She said to us, ‘Go to your grandmother, she’ll make it!’ Since then our family hardly observed traditions any more.
In July 1941 she was in evacuation in Vladikavkaz. She finished an accounting course there and worked as an accountant at the mine factory.
My parents bought a house in 1926 sharing the cost with Aunt Eta. We had a bedroom and a dining room but no kitchen. My aunt had a kitchen and two rooms. My parents made a Russian stove in the corner of the dining room to heat the house and cook meals. We also slept on it.
My mother did all the housework herself until she fell ill. She had a heart attack in 1932. She couldn’t work afterwards. Oksana, a Ukrainian woman, came to help us with the washing. She also made boiled potatoes and sauerkraut for us. She was helping us, and we were helping her.
We were living a modest life. But my father had a talent to do business. During the NEP [7] period in 1927 he decided to do something for the family. He found two partners, and they became fur dealers. I have dim memories of bags with fur at home. My father established contacts with Kishinev and they were sending the fur there. It was a profitable business. Our life improved. We bought furniture and wooden beds. But the good times only lasted less than two years.
After the NEP was dismissed in the early 1930s my father was called a ‘nepman’ and deprived of many of his civil rights. However, the district authorities wanted to make him a supervisor of a leather storage facility. In order to do this they had to submit a request to restore my father’s civil rights. Only the 3rd request had a positive result. There were three cultural centers in Olevsk: the Workers’ Club at the china factory, the Craftsmen Center and the Forestry Center, which was the most beautiful of all of them and located in the park. So, they held a meeting at the Craftsmen Center to discuss whether my father’s rights should be restored.
Later, somebody knocked on our window late in the evening and told Mama to tell Iosif that he had gained back all his rights. This enabled him to become a supervisor at the storage facility. Papa worked there until the beginning of the war.
Later, somebody knocked on our window late in the evening and told Mama to tell Iosif that he had gained back all his rights. This enabled him to become a supervisor at the storage facility. Papa worked there until the beginning of the war.
My mother had a poor heart, and in 1936 she could afford to go to the Kislovodsk resort to improve her health.
My parents were far from being interested in politics. They were never members of any party or organization. They always had to work hard and didn’t have time for such activities.
, Ukraine
We communicated with our relatives. We sometimes got together for a birthday party, but this didn’t happen often, as we were all busy and didn’t have much money to spare.
I learned to read when I was small. I took classes from a teacher of the Russian language, who was a Jew. I wasn’t even 6 yet when Mama took me to the Ukrainian school in Olevsk. She had to convince them to accept me and she did. I was accepted because I could read and write well. There were 75 children in the 1st grade because there was only one school in Olevsk. I was told to go home because I was too young for school. I behaved so badly at home that Mama went back to the school to ask them to admit me to the 2nd grade. They did.
I was an ordinary Soviet child. My sister and I became Young Octobrists and pioneers because everyone else did. We took part in all activities at school and celebrated Soviet holidays. It wasn’t politics for us. It was more like entertainment and a day off. We arranged concerts and performances, played volleyball and went to the banks of the river with friends. When we were senior pupils we sometimes went to the cinema or theater. I had friends, but I don’t know of what nationality. It didn’t matter at all at the time. I don’t remember any national segregation.
I finished the 10th year of secondary school in 1937 when I wasn’t even 16 years old. I entered the Department of Literature at the Kiev Pedagogical Institute. The competition was high but I managed. I lived in the hostel and received a stipend. Papa often visited me and brought food to support me. Besides, in 1938 we had to pay for our studies, but after that year education became free of charge again.
Hedvig Endrei
Both Hermina and her husband came to the shop every day. When my mother also joined they ran the shop together. The shop was in the front, the workshop in the back. The shop also had a loft, they made the comforters there. There was also a shop-window, a comforter was displayed there. They had many customers.
We always had a maid, a household couldn’t do without one. She helped my mom with the shopping, cooking and cleaning. Making a fire was also her job. My mom sometimes got hold of them through a domestic servant agency, but mainly through acquaintances. She had many acquaintances, one recommended the other. They were Swabian girls from the Swabian villages around Budapest. They didn’t come to our place as maids but as family members. We knew the family, and they wanted us to teach the girl many things: to sew, to darn, to clean. The maids were usually at our place for a year, then they went home to their village, or those who became pregnant, rather stayed in Pest, because the village would have outcast them. It happened with many, that they became pregnant.
Only this kashrut was always a problem. My mother always had a hard time making the maids understand that they shouldn’t mix up the dishes, until she got bored with it. Not that they couldn’t remember things, but they didn’t think that it was a mistake. They didn’t do it on purpose I think, but somehow they couldn’t remember that it was a religious regulation.
My mother wanted to manage a kosher household, but then she said that she wasn’t going to fool herself. The maid always mixed up the dishes. And so we switched over to Neolog housekeeping. So from then on my grandfather didn’t eat anything else at our place but hard boiled eggs.
We ate challah, too, usually on Fridays. The chulent was made in old times so that they prepared it at home, they put poultry, smoked things, hard boiled egg and beans in it. We put it together in a pot and there was a kosher baker on Dob Street, the Jews from the surroundings took it there. The pots were all covered with colored checked cloths, and everyone wrote their name on it. And when the bread was ready in the oven, they put these pots in, too. We went to get it on the next day, on Saturday. We also had to pay for it.
The washing regulations, the ritual baths were important because of two things. Not only because of the religion, but also so that people would bath every week and wash their hair, their eyes and ears, too. This is why in the ritual bath the women went under. This wasn’t important only because of religion, but also so that the water would reach everything, so that they would be clean. We didn’t go to such a bath, because we had a bathroom. The very religious people thought that this belonged to religion, but many went there to bathe simply because they didn’t have a bathroom. My mother used to go to such a bath when she was a girl, but later she didn’t.
My mother didn’t wear the clothes the religious Jews wore, she was Neolog. My mother was very religious. We always observed the Jewish holidays in my childhood. My mom always made sure we did. She was the most religious person in the family. This wasn’t so important for my father. I always went to the synagogue with my mother, because my father wasn’t religious. I always had to put on my nicest clothes. I still observe everything I can, for example the New Year [Rosh Hashanah] and the Day of Atonement [Yom Kippur]. I buy a seat ticket for the Dohany Street synagogue, and I regularly go there. I have my own seat. In my childhood my mother used to go, and I went with her. At that time we didn’t go to Dohany Street yet. Before the war there were more Jews, and the so-called rented prayer houses existed. We went to Brody Sandor Street on holidays, because there was the Houses of Parliament at the side of the Museum Garden, and we used to go there to pray.
We also held the seder. This holiday [Pesach] commemorates when the Jews were driven out from Egypt and wandered in the desert, where they couldn’t cook. The matzah originates from then, because there wasn’t enough time for the leavened bread to rise and there wasn’t enough time to bake it. They baked it in the sand; it was made of flour, water and salt. [Editor’s note: The matzah wasn’t baked in the sand during the wandering, but in the kitchen in Egypt. And there wasn’t enough time for it to rise, because the Jews had to run away from Egypt so quickly, that they didn’t have time to let it rise.] Before the holiday we always had to do housecleaning. At Pesach we cooked in different pots than on the other days, and we did housecleaning, because we had to get rid of every crumb of bread and leavened cookies in every corner. One could only begin Pesach that way.
We also made a seder plate at every Pesach. This was a big plate with a long-shaped napkin, which we folded in three and put three whole pieces of matzah in each part. [Editor’s note: The three pieces of matzah covered with a napkin stand for the three parts of Israel: Cohen, namely Aron’s descendants, Levi’s descendants and Yisrael, the rest of Israel’s children.] At the end of one of the prayers one had to break a piece, the one that was in the middle, and my father hid it between the two pillows, and the youngest one sitting at the table had to steal it. At the end of a certain prayer one had to break off a piece of this and give a tiny little piece to those sitting at the table. But if the matzah had been stolen, they couldn’t do so and since the youngest child only gave it back if he got something for it, they had to promise him a present. A pair of shoes or a suit for the youngest one, and he had to get it by all means.
We always invited my friend, a neighbor, she was called Gabriella Grosz. We were born approximately at the same time, and we grew up in the same house. She wasn’t Jewish, her parents were very Catholic, but she was my best friend. I always spent Christmas Eve at their place, and she spent Easter at ours. Jewish Easter was at the same time as the Christian one many times, so we often ate ham and matzah in secret. At Christmas we decorated the Christmas tree together, and there was always a gift for me under the Christmas tree. It was customary to give chocolate as a present.
I completed four classes of middle school. This was a mixed school. Quite a lot of Jewish children went there. They always mocked me at school, even the religion teacher did, that I was the odd one out, because I was blond. I had always been blond, and Jews are usually black-haired. They mocked me by telling me that I wasn’t a real Jew.
I also remember that we, young girls used to go to the Muzeum Garden to meet boys. We always had to dress very elegantly. It was in fashion at that time that the tights, the gloves, the hat and the shoes had to be of the same color. My friend’s beau was a famous film director. He was a very handsome boy, with blond curly hair and he always wore navy corduroys and shirt. He wasn’t Jewish. She was my best friend on Vamhaz Boulevard, she was my friend for 23 years.
I often went out with my brother and his friends. In the 1930s my brother had a boat-house on the Romai bank. At that time boat houses on the Danube that one could buy were in fashion. We usually spent the summer there. This was a way of having fun at that time. It was very nice. We went for a row, the boys went fishing, and we had fun. One could sleep there, but we usually went there in the morning and came back in the evening. There was an apartment in the boat-house, with four rooms overlooking the shore, and four rooms overlooking the water. Every room had a separate tenant. Next to the building there was the boat garage, and the boats were there. Everyone had a boat, we had a kayak. There was also a balcony and shower in the boat-house. There wasn’t a kitchen, but we cooked on a heater. We often fried fish. We coated the small fish the boys caught with flour and paprika and fried it. I didn’t like it, but the boys did. At that time the Duna bathing establishment also existed. There were two Duna bathing establishments between Ferenc Jozsef Bridge and Erzsebet Bridge, one for men and one for women. My brother learned to swim there. We also went on hikes in the mountains around Budapest. We always went on Sundays. At these occasions we also picnicked.
In old times every girl had to be good at music, even if she wasn’t a professional musician. Usually one had to be good at everything: cooking, cleaning, needlework, darning, had to know how to darn underwear, and we also had to be familiar with music. That’s why my mother sent me to piano classes. I went to play the piano every Tuesday afternoon, to a teacher on Erkel Street. I learned to play the piano for four years, and I had a piano on Raday Street, but when they assigned the yellow star houses [6], ours didn’t become one, and there was no space for the piano where we moved, so it was left behind. It was a big piano, not a cottage piano. It wasn’t a good brand piano, we didn’t have enough money for that.
They couldn’t give me a job, but I attended different courses. For example I attended the sick-nurse course organized by the Red Cross. I learned window-dressing there, too, which I could use very well later at one of my workplaces, at the cake-shop on Moricz Zsigmond Square. I was a nosy parker, I took part in everything I could. In the meantime I worked in the shop with my brother. After the war my brother opened the shop again on Podmaniczky Street, and when the co-operatives started to be formed, he joined the Budapest Upholsterer Co-operative. He was a technical manager there. He didn’t take me with him, he told me that someone had to help my parents, so I remained here, in the Podmaniczky Street shop.
In 1951 I started working in the catering trade. First I was a managing clerk at Bukarest restaurant, it was Borostyan restaurant at that time, on Moricz Zsigmond Square. The owner of the restaurant was the son of a soap factory owner, who went back to the factory, and they were looking for a manager at the shop. I didn’t really want to become a managing clerk, but the owner really wanted to convince me to go there.