Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Nathan Weiselman - January 1, 1985

They did best work, finish hundreds of dresses and skirts and blouses and even for men who wear some kind of leftovers, some ??? all kinds of work. And I didn't even sew. The only thing that I did, I made the pattern. Then I ask the children, a few children, to put the pattern on the table, and to mark it. I call the ??? mark it with kind of a stencil, you know like in, with, you make, you make the little holes and the ???, you know, ???.

Yes. Yes.

And then that come over it in, in three, four layers, you know, it was cotton material and they asked that it is custom to use chalk.

Yes.

So, the one group uh, copied from the, from the pattern the material, the other group cut, another group sewed. And so the whole uh, uh, clothing was done from the little boys and girls, from the small children. Of course I did have some help because it came after they would have to have a kind of uh, gathering of about from twenty state, probably, or fifteen or twenty state, I don't know exactly, to have challenge each other for different art. One, they, they was challenging for ni..., for who's going to get the children the nicest clothing, who's going to get the nicest shoes, who's going to...

A contest.

A contest, yeah. Who's going to sing the nicest choir, who's it going to be. So, I didn't need help and the teachers from the schools and the children, they teach-taught the children, they, they collected all kinds of fashion books, even kinds from very ancient times, from before from the tsar. And we put together like the dresses, for the one fashion book we, that we took out, had, had nice, you know cuff, or the finish of the sleeve, and the other, we took the color, from another we took other kind of, you know, decorations. And all together we, and from the other ???, of course the Russian symbol was all mostly is, their symbol is red, and mixed with blue. And they got the contest and this orphanage from, from this village where I was took the first place from the dress.

What, what village?

From the clothing, yeah.

What village was that?

This, this was in ???, the, the village close to uh, it was ??? Izobil'nyy, close to Izobil'nyy.

Okay.

Yeah. And they came in from ??? was very nice. And after I continued working, I got connections, since I was a kind of designer, was a kind of ???, one of the teachers come to me, said ??? if I would uh, for them, order a few more yards, they would make them a few dresses, they would have, they would very much appreciate it.

Mm-hm.