Mrs. Roemerfeld - 1982?
Religion in Ghetto
What about the rabbi of the town and the synagogue? Um, what happened during the um, Nazi um, involvement in your community? Did they, do you remember them?
No. I only remember sitting with my mother in shul every Saturday and we were...
Do you remember...
sitting upstairs.
the rabbi's name?
No, no.
None of the elders of the synagogue.
No. I remember my father was sitting downstairs and uh, my uh, mother was sitting upstairs where the women. And uh, it was a beautiful shul. As a matter of fact, my oldest daughter drew a, a painting of it. I had a little uh, picture and uh, she made a drawing--it's in the basement and uh, it was just a beautiful shul.
Okay um, do you remember first wearing the yellow star? You were a young child, you must have had some questions about that.
Well, actually if anybody tells you they had some questions, it was maybe for the moment. It wasn't realized. It was just like a game. But it wasn't realized how serious the situation was because we were too young. Uh, and you know, at my level--the age of my level, you know, uh, uh, people... You know, the older people probably uh, were frightened and scared more because they were aware of what's going on. But me, as being the way I was, ignorant to it, because I was too young.
Um, what about friends--social life in the ghetto?
They were getting together playing cards and discussing all kind of things. But I, I really uh, can't tell you uh, their discussions because it was, it was just over the war, you know, that uh, my uh, mother lost one brother in the war, in the Polish war you know, they were fighting the Germans. And uh, uh, it was only talks about the war. And naturally uh, I remember that uh, the poverty started hitting everybody. Because I remember, you know, we uh, had to cook uh, on a small stove because we couldn't get the coals to put in the other oven to cook on the bigger stove. And uh, I remember fried onions with potatoes. You know, that's how I remember, you know, that uh, we didn't have too much of a choice what we wanted to eat.
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