Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Regina Cohen - April 18, 1982

Typical Shabbos

What was a typical Shabbos like in...

Okay, Shabbos, you--it's beautiful. Um, by Friday um, four o'clock--or thereabouts depending on the time of the year--everything is done and it's cooked and baked. And uh, get all dressed up. The boys went to shul with my father. Girls weren't required to do all those religious things. We'd be all dressed up for Kiddush and Shabbos. And uh, with a large family like that you'd have a party every Friday night. And uh, and that, there was your dinner and zemirots and you would have visitors coming over or we, or my parents would go over to my grandparents for a visit. Shabbos morning is beautiful, you get it, dressed up and you go and visit your grandma. And uh, you don't do any work. You don't uh, we were--religious or not--we didn't touch the candelabra off the table. You'd have a Christian woman come in and in wintertime they would make the fires or uh, turn on the lights or remove the candelabra if you didn't want it there.

Mm-hm.

Um, we didn't clean our shoes or dust our shoes. We just got dressed up and this was a holiday. It was visiting time. Um, cousins would come over, friends would come by and uh, just a nice, a nice weekend. It's exceptional to remember because we don't have that nowadays.

That's true.

We don't, And, uh...


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