Tag #106490 - Interview #78221 (Daniel Bertram)

My wife died on 30th July 1999. I had to organize her funeral. It was very hard for me, because the chairman said the funeral would be soon, and he set the date. I had too little time. Some people came back from vacation especially for the funeral. My wife had an awful lot of friends. And there was a speech at the grave. The chairman's wife, Ribenbauer, spoke. And as well as that there was an article in the press; it could have been Gazeta Wyborcza [a Polish national daily]. And there was one in a Warsaw Jewish paper as well. It was on 2nd or 3rd August 1999. I had a tombstone made, a beautiful one. And I listed all the camps: her name and surname, and her maiden name, and the date of her death. The Jewish community organization took care of funerals. There had to be a minyan, ten people, at least. And there was this one guy, Fogel and either he recited the Kaddish or 'Eyl mole rakhamim' [El mole rachamim - God full of mercy] at the cemetery, or Stein did [Wlodzimierz Stein, cantor in the Cracow Jewish Community]. Since Fogel's been gone [dead], Stein recites it. But it's getting harder and harder to get a minyan together in Cracow.