Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Harry Praw - June 30, 1982

Was your father religious?

See, in Europe, whether it was in a big city or small town the Jews had only one religion, and that was Orthodox.

Right.

The parents went to shul everyday. And us as kids we went to like the, we went to the like here--not to the Yeshiva, we just went to Hebrew school. If we could get away without going, then we'd try that too.

Uh-huh.

But that was--we weren't strictly Orthodox. We just didn't work on the holiday or anything. When it came to a holiday, any kind of a holiday was a holiday. Even we lived in a country that was Poland, but any Jewish holiday the Jewish kids did not have to attend school.

Mm-hm, mm-hm.

Uh...

Łódź was a pretty big town, wasn't it?

Well, it was a total population was about 600,000 people. It was equally divided. One third was Jewish, one third was Polish, and one third was German. It was a textile city. I think it was probably one of the biggest textiles cities in Poland. In 1938 I worked in a textile mill, even as a kid. I was sixteen years old I started working in a textile mill until--for one year until 1939. And I was a s...what they called a salesman. I was a salesman at the age of sixteen and a half, I was already a salesman in a wholesale, in a wholesale place. I mean this was the type of living that we did in the old country.

Mm-hm.