Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Helen Lang - February 23, 1982

Education and Religion

What kind of school did you go to? Was it a, a...

In the Czech school.

Czech school? Was it...

Yes, high school.

Uh, not just a Jewish school, it was a...

No, that's a Czech--we went to Czech--I went, I went to Czech school.

Did anyone in your family go to uh, to cheder or...

Oh yes, of course. I come from a religious family. We were religious. My parents were very religious.

So you belonged to a--you went to shul.

Yeah.

How many...

You see, children, children didn't go that time to shul. It just the parents went to shul. We went to visit them, like, you know. That's how it was, you know.

So what, what would a Friday night be like?

Oh beautiful. We had a Friday night dinner, Shabbos, everything with wine. It was like a real, real Jewish uh, event.

And, and you ???.

Oh yes.

And your father would go to shul and you would...

Oh yes, oh yes. My father would go uh, every afternoon uh, in shul there too. Oh yes.

Uh, what did your father do? Was he a...

Well, he had a, a business. You see, my father was an invalid. So my mother took care of it. We had a business, like a restaurant. So my mother, my mother was there in the business and naturally we helped too.

Uh, in the restaurant, you said your father was a veteran...

Yes.

...in World War I, was that...

Mm-hm.

...did he have a tobacco license too, to sell tobacco?

Yes, yes. How you know that? Yes.

Did they take that away from him later?

Not by the Czech.

No, I mean later, the Hungarians did.

Of course, of course, of course. Plus, my father was on pension too because of that.


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