Meanwhile, she got a job in the dean's office at the university, where she met a lot of foreign students. She ended up with a Greek one, nine years younger than she was, and the marriage ended. Edward was very affected by all this; he had a nervous breakdown. He was in such a bad shape, I had to commit him to a hospital for two weeks, and feed him very well - which back then was a real problem - to heal him. [Editor's note: food was scarce during the last years of the communist regime; bread, milk, meat were given on food stamps.] He also stayed at Paraul Rece [resort and sanatorium in Transylvania] for two weeks, and after that he was okay again.
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Displaying 12181 - 12210 of 50826 results
Melitta Seiler
In that time, Edward got involved with a girl, she was a colleague of his from university. Her family was rather well-off, and they ended up living together in her apartment. After Edward graduated, he wanted to marry her. I didn't exactly approve, because she was as vain as she was beautiful, but I was old fashioned: they lived together, they have to get married, I thought. So they did, and they stayed together for two or three years.
All this time, Edward lived with me. But our living conditions were terrible because we didn't have a private toilet or a hallway; so I decided to do something about it, got the necessary approvals and started to build a toilet and a hallway.
He did as I told him, including the military service. I was the one who insisted on that as well, I thought it would make him more of a man, because in his childhood he was rather spoiled, but it was a mistake on my behalf. His father, as a doctor, could have given him some papers saying that he was sick and he would have dodged the military service, but I threatened to denounce him - my ex- husband - if he did so. So after Edward graduated from high school, he was a pontoneer and a sentinel at a prison in Braila. He told me that there were a lot of fights, with knives even, among some militaries. But he managed, and after that he went to the Faculty of Wood Industry here, in Brasov.
My son, Edward, was a sincere enemy of the communist regime since he was in high school, and I told him to be careful about what he said or did, because he could get into serious trouble. But he still insisted that he wanted to go to Israel. And, since he was in my care, I told him that he would have to graduate from university first, and after that, if he still wanted to emigrate, I wouldn't stand in his way.
Edward also took some classes of Talmud Torah with somebody from the community, I don't remember with whom. He didn't study with his father, but he had to know a few things for his bar mitzvah.
I went to the Jewish theater only once, when I was little. It was a big event, a very famous artist from the Yiddish theater was going to perform and sing as well, Sidi Tal. My mother took us girls to see her. She also took us to the cinema; we never missed a movie with Shirley Temple. After the Russians came, it was compulsory to go with the school to see Russian plays, Lev Tolstoy especially. I enjoyed them, too.
Father also bought a cottage piano for us girls, and once or twice a week we took piano lessons for two or three years, before the war started. We would go to an elderly Polish lady to learn, and could practice at home, because we had the cottage piano at home.
I finished my first year of high school in June 1940, and immediately after that the Russians came. We had to repeat the year, they brought new teachers from Russia and every school had to study in Russian. They also imposed mixed classes, boys and girls together. At first we laughed, made fun of the teachers, we didn't know Russian and the teachers didn't know German, so they couldn't understand us. But I never got into serious trouble with my teachers. We went on for a year and I could already speak Russian in 1941.
I did the first grade of high school in the Holy Virgin high school, a nuns' high school. Each high school had a different uniform back then, and each pupil had a number. Half of our class was made up of Jews, and the other half of Romanians and Poles. We had religion classes, and we, Jewish girls, had a teacher of Jewish religion, and anti-Semitism was never an issue back then. All students paid a tax; and they all studied the same subjects in Romanian, except for religion, of course. I remember in high school I had thick, beautiful, chestnut-red hair, and I wore it in two plaits. During the breaks the boys were chasing me and pulling my plaits, saying, 'Melitta, du hast einen Wald im Kopf!', that is, 'Melitta, you have a forest in your head!'
I was good at mathematics, but I especially liked literature and history; I read a lot about famous painters and writers, I enjoyed it.
I was good at mathematics, but I especially liked literature and history; I read a lot about famous painters and writers, I enjoyed it.
Then I went to the state elementary school for the first four grades.
After the synagogue was razed to the ground during the persecution, before the war, the rabbi was murdered.
The town I grew up in, Cernauti, was large, cultural, very cosmopolitan. There were six or seven cinemas, the National Theater, the Jewish Theater, and other wonderful buildings, like Dom Polski, that is the Polish House; one could even find symphonic music. The Jewish community in Cernauti was very large and powerful; however, I don't know exact numbers. There was the synagogue, very beautiful; I remember I was there for the last time when my cousin, Ani, Uncle Max's daughter, married there before World War II started. The rabbi, I don't know his name, wasn't very old, and he was the same who had married my mother. After the synagogue was razed to the ground during the persecution, before the war, the rabbi was murdered. There were mikves in Cernauti, but we didn't go.
There were several hakhamim in Cernauti, and no Jew ate poultry or veal if it hadn't been butchered by the hakham. There were also many functionaries: hakhamim, shochetim, rabbis. [Editor's note: in smaller Jewish communities the hakham could assume various functions, among them, that of a shochet, however in this case the interviewee probably missed to say shochet.] There were no Jewish neighborhoods in Cernauti, Jews lived scattered across the town. Jews had all sorts of jobs: tailors, watch menders, shoemakers, shopkeepers, doctors and lawyers, they could be anything before 1939, when the persecution under the Goga-Cuza government [6] began. And there was something else: Jewish restaurants, some of them with kosher food. My father worked for a quality restaurant, very central and fancy, where he made up the recipes for cold buffets, and important people came in to have an appetizer. The owner of the place was a Jew named Beer. And there was also a well-known Jewish restaurant, the Friedmann's. I still remember where it was. If I got off the train in Cernauti now, I could still find it, it was 'auf der Russischen Gasse', on the Russian street. It was a lacto-vegetarian restaurant, and everybody in Cernauti, Jewish or not, came to Friedmann's, he had wonderful delicacies with dairy products. It was a fashionable meeting place for ladies, who came there, ate and chatted for two or three hours. My mother also took us there a few times, and we always had maize cake, which was very popular. It was a dish made of corn flour, with a cream cheese filling, and sour cream on the side; it was awesome, I can tell you! There were also other recipes, and all kosher, nothing with meat was served.
There were several hakhamim in Cernauti, and no Jew ate poultry or veal if it hadn't been butchered by the hakham. There were also many functionaries: hakhamim, shochetim, rabbis. [Editor's note: in smaller Jewish communities the hakham could assume various functions, among them, that of a shochet, however in this case the interviewee probably missed to say shochet.] There were no Jewish neighborhoods in Cernauti, Jews lived scattered across the town. Jews had all sorts of jobs: tailors, watch menders, shoemakers, shopkeepers, doctors and lawyers, they could be anything before 1939, when the persecution under the Goga-Cuza government [6] began. And there was something else: Jewish restaurants, some of them with kosher food. My father worked for a quality restaurant, very central and fancy, where he made up the recipes for cold buffets, and important people came in to have an appetizer. The owner of the place was a Jew named Beer. And there was also a well-known Jewish restaurant, the Friedmann's. I still remember where it was. If I got off the train in Cernauti now, I could still find it, it was 'auf der Russischen Gasse', on the Russian street. It was a lacto-vegetarian restaurant, and everybody in Cernauti, Jewish or not, came to Friedmann's, he had wonderful delicacies with dairy products. It was a fashionable meeting place for ladies, who came there, ate and chatted for two or three hours. My mother also took us there a few times, and we always had maize cake, which was very popular. It was a dish made of corn flour, with a cream cheese filling, and sour cream on the side; it was awesome, I can tell you! There were also other recipes, and all kosher, nothing with meat was served.
On Sukkot we went to the synagogue and celebrated, people danced with the Torah in the synagogue's courtyard, but we didn't build a sukkah ourselves.
Both my parents fasted on Yom Kippur, and so did I when I turned 13. But at that time, we were already in Transnistria, so food was scarce anyway.
, Ukraine
On Jewish New Year's Eve there were always big preparations, everybody went to the big synagogue, and then we were invited to a party to one aunt or uncle, and there was a lot of food and drinking.
My mother also baked kirhala, that is some sort of cookie: it was a dough with many eggs, I think, and it was cut into pieces before putting it in the oven. There was sugar sprinkled over them, and when it was done, the sides of the cookie would rise, so the cookie looked like a small ship. They melted in one's mouth, they were delicious.
I remember vaguely, that on Purim, it was customary for masked people to come to visit. Generally they were well received, people weren't afraid of letting strangers into their house back then. Mother used to tell me that the masks made fun of the hosts, cracked some jokes or were ironic, and the host had to guess who was behind the mask, if it was someone known. I don't remember them coming into our house, it may have happened when my mother wasn't married yet. But there was a lot of joy and celebrating in our house. We kids didn't dress up though, but I remember that there were Purim balls in town, and people were allowed to wear masks in the street.
Of course we baked shelakhmones, and we gave them to neighbors; they came to us as well with gifts, even if they weren't Jewish, many Christians knew our holidays and respected them. We usually received eggs from them when it was the Orthodox Easter.
There were several sweets made on Purim: we cooked the traditional leika. We also did fluden, I think here in Transylvania it is called kimbla. This fluden was somewhat similar to strudel; it was made up of dough that was spread very, very thin on tablecloths in the house, thin as cigarette paper, and left to dry. Then there was a filling of ground nut kernels, mixed with sugar and honey. This filling was wrapped in the dough like a strudel, put in the griddle and cut into pieces before putting it in the oven. It can be served with jam as well, my mother did that when I got married, it was delicious! But it's very hard to make, I never made it. Of course we baked shelakhmones, and we gave them to neighbors; they came to us as well with gifts, even if they weren't Jewish, many Christians knew our holidays and respected them.
We went to the big temple on special occasions, like the high holidays or a wedding, and it was always full, you had to buy seats for this beforehand from the Jewish community: women sat on one side, and men on the other. My parents were always careful to buy seats before any high holiday. But there were several synagogues in Cernauti, apart from the big temple, and on Saturdays my mother took us girls to the one closest to our home. There was no difference made between Neolog [5] or Orthodox Jews, I first heard about it when I came to Brasov.
On Pesach, the cleaning was done the day before, there was the searching for chametz, and there was special tableware we kept in a trunk in the attic. My mother used to throw out or give away all food, like flour, which she hadn't bought recently. She cooked on a kitchen range that was built into a wall and on Pesach she cleaned it, rubbed it, and put hot embers all over it, so that it was kosher. My mother always bought one hundred eggs: the hard-boiled eggs were minced together with small cut onion, oil and pepper. This appetizer was served with matzah. There were guests over at our house, or we were invited to my uncles, but I don't remember my father leading the seder. It was too long ago.
On Chanukkah, we always received presents, like this dirndl dress we liked so much.
My father was a good Jew as well, but he only went to the synagogue on the high holidays.
My mother was rather religious, she cooked kosher food and baked challah on Fridays; she observed Sabbath, she didn't light the fire on Sabbath, somebody else came to do it.
And on Thursday, mother took us to the fish market. It was very impressive for us, because the fish was brought alive. They were swimming in some large tubs filled with water, and mum chose one, and said, 'I want this one!' Then the merchant got the fish out, hit it, and gave it to my mother, who took it home, and made the fish kosher. I don't remember exactly what she was doing, but I know she cleaned it, salted it and washed it several times.
My mother bought poultry on Wednesday, and she took it to the hakham; back then we had no refrigerators, so it had to be well cleaned and well cooked. [In smaller places the hakham assumed several functions in the Jewish community, he acted as shochet, mohel, shammash, etc.] The hakham cut the bird, salted it, put it in water. Only after that it was ready to be cooked.
I used to accompany my mother when she went to the market. She always went on Monday, because Monday was the milchik [Yiddish for dairy products] day. The market place was very picturesque; the peasant women were dressed in their national costumes. I remember the women from Bukovina, from the outskirts of Cernauti, who wore their beautiful hota, their national costume. My mother bought a large piece of butter, wrapped in a bur leaf, and cheese in the shape of a pellet, because it had been kept in gauze.
Every spring, before Pesach, or fall, before the holidays, my mother had something elegant ordered at the tailor's for her and for us. She had good taste, and she was a very elegant woman, very up-to-date with the fashion. When she went for a walk, she always wore gloves and a hat. Back then, there was a dress in fashion for young women and children, which came from Vienna I think, a Tyrolean model: the dirndl; it had a pleated skirt and pleated sleeves. It was worn with a small apron. My mother used to make one for us every summer, and she had one as well.
We also went to some place, I don't remember the name, near Ceremus [river near Cernauti, today in Ukraine]. It was nothing fashionable, but it was very nice: we stayed in a rented house, and my mother didn't have to cook; my father sent us packages with fine delicacies.