Tag #107725 - Interview #101359 (Helena Najberg)

So my husband had a traditional burial. There was a rabbi [chairman of the Community Symcha Keller] and he spoke very nicely. First we said goodbye to him at this funeral parlor. The coffin was there and the rabbi said something there as well, but I wasn’t listening. Later, we went to the cemetery. My husband is quite far from the gate. There were quite a few people at the funeral. Even our daughter came from Canada. We waited especially for her. Because there is this custom in Jewish tradition that someone who dies should be buried the following day. So he should have been buried on Sunday, because he died on a Saturday, but the funeral was put off until Friday because of my daughter. Oh, how she cried. She really loved her daddy. His death was very hard on her. My son with his family also came, of course. My son held one of my arms and a friend of my husband’s, Mr. Bromberg [the Centropa Foundation has also recorded an interview with Mr. Bromberg] the other. There were also those who read the obituary, because I placed one in ‘Dziennik’ [Dziennik Lodzki, one of the oldest newspapers in Lodz, published since 1884, cooperates with Wiadomosci Dnia]. I called some closer friends, all my daughter’s friends came. Friends from university or from work. And later the rabbi asked my son if he would recite this prayer for the dead, the Kaddish. He didn’t know it. He said that he wouldn’t recite it, unfortunately, but there was this cantor there who sang it. But I had to give him 200 zloty for that. But the rabbi didn’t even take a penny from me.