Tag #106472 - Interview #78221 (Daniel Bertram)

All the men in the family wore head coverings. Only my father wore a hat; all the others wore yarmulkas. Today they're round, but then they were different - these forage caps like the army wore. Usually they were black, sometimes dark blue. There weren't any others, round ones. These forage caps were in place of yarmulkas. My dad didn't wear the gabardine [caftan] and he didn't wear the streimel. Only my grandfathers wore the streimel. They had gabardines too, but they didn't have side locks, just beards. Dad didn't have a beard, he didn't have side locks; he shaved. My family was Ashkenazi Jews, because we're all Ashkenazim here in Poland. And the ones who used to wear the streimel, they were Hasidim [3]. My one Granddaddy, and the other, wore the streimel, but they weren't Hasidim. They wore it for tradition; only on Saturdays did they wear the black gabardine. But their sons didn't wear it; they dressed in the European fashion. My father dressed in the European fashion too. It was when my father went to Belgium that he stopped wearing the gabardine.