Manya Auster Feldman - August 11, 1998
Rations in Ghetto
So no one, no one was...
No. Everybody received the same ration from the Germans, the ration that was 200 grams of bread, which was a piece, it was like a piece of brick. And that was the rations. There were--that's where hunger started uh, coming. And a lot of people died of hunger. In our case, we had--we had some um, merchandise that we--there was black marketing going on even in the ghetto. You walked out to the gate and gentile people came and they exchanged vegetables or some products for salt, for instance. Salt was a very expensive commodity. You couldn't get any salt. And they needed it.
Hm. Did this put your father in a, in a...
In a horrible position of not being able to provide for his children a...and, and uh, uh, and resort to not having enough food. You know what we had in the ghetto? Just bread and potatoes. That was all. We didn't have any fats, any milk products, nothing. But we were, we were happy to have grits. We made even, you know, we made like what do you call kashas. You know, kasha.
Kashgrits.
Yeah. And...
Like grits...
Like--yeah. And, and bread and potatoes. You did--you improvised. You did from potatoes, you made a, a roast. I mean, that was the life. And, and we had to go, we had to go work. It was extremely hard work.
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