Tag #114680 - Interview #102852 (Chaya Sakhartova )

There was a very good synagogue in Roslavl, a big and beautiful one. It was destroyed by the Germans later. The community wasn’t big: there weren’t many Jews, approximately seven percent of the total population. There was also a cheder in town. Though the attitude to the Jews was good and there was no anti-Semitism, still it wasn’t easy to live there. Almost no one had their own place: everybody had to rent apartments, as there were almost no native Jews in Roslavl, only those who came from neighboring villages. It was very expensive to buy a house, that is why everybody rented apartments. The money was mainly earned through carters’ trade and agriculture. We had a very good market-place, because neighboring peasants were mostly engaged in agriculture and took all their goods to the market-place. The market place was working permanently and everything was very cheap.