Tag #107119 - Interview #78446 (Feliks Nieznanowski)

There was no profound, traditional celebrating of the holidays, typical for small towns, for people who went to the cheder, the yeshivah. It was a middle-class, urban audience, not always educated, but open-minded. It identified with its Jewishness, but didn’t emphasize it with either looks, behavior, or accent. That’s why everyone later always wondered, ‘Your Polish somehow sounds so normal?’ It sounded so because I lived in that community. I only felt Jewish after I crossed Franciszkanska, Nalewki, Nowiniarska. But when I walked down Podwale, around the Old Town – no, that Jewishness wasn’t so laid out into the open.