Tag #107128 - Interview #78446 (Feliks Nieznanowski)

Before the war I attended perhaps two funerals. It must have been some relatives. I remember us walking to the cemetery at Gesia. Members of my family were buried at Gesia, at the Praga one it was mostly Jews from Praga, poor ones, and our cemetery was there [26]. Whose funeral was it? I can’t recall. I only remember everything was clad in black. I remember the crying, there were special weepers that you hired for such occasions. Later, in the cemetery, I asked questions, and they told me – that you bury the person in a shroud, that there is an ablution, the washing of the body, the ritual, but I didn’t see that directly. It never happened in the family, close. I asked why do you place them facing the east. I had such thoughts. But those are only episodes in my mind. I remember that, after some relative had died and we were in their home, everyone sat with their shoes off. You sat [shivah] for seven days. But when you are 10-11 years old, you pay little attention to such things. What has stuck in my mind instead are the merry things, the pleasant memories.