Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Joseph Klaiman - May 4, 1982

Religion Before the War

Okay, um, I think we--let's just see if we covered a lot of the things.

Maybe my, my, my wife can remember.

Let me just ask you one thing I didn't ask you. Do you remember what the synagogue was like? Was it a shtiebl? Was it a synagogue when you were a little boy?

Yeah.

What do you remember...

Yeah, yeah.

...about it?

My--when I was a little boy we went to a little shtiebl.

Like a yeshiva.

Like a yeshiva here, it was going that--that's right. Later on my, my father went to a big shul like B'nai Moshe or B'nai David where I belong all my life in the B'nai David and he was going in. It was a beautiful feeling. I still enjoy now to go every, every Saturday to go to and I need to enjoy that and I'm relaxed, everything. It was very nice. All over there the people was coming together and they was talking. All the Jewish people like to talk and they was talking about politics. As a little kid I remember where they was talking about. They came together. And it was a good feeling. I was--we came home, we had lunch, and it was beautiful on Saturday. And it was a nice thing in life. I remember we always Saturday we come, all the family came together. Or sometimes we went to my, to my mother's family--to uncle and aunt. And they came with the children, we ate. You know about a cholent?

Sure.

Every Saturday was cholent. Was twelve o'clock and pick up from the bakery. It was a beautiful, it was just a beautiful. We don't have it this here now. I cannot uh, it was a more, more family tight in Europe than here. Maybe I don't have the family, that's why I say. But I feel it was more closer family than it's here.


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