Tag #118564 - Interview #91238 (Judel Ronder)

Kashrut was observed at home. When I grew up, mother often sent me to shochet in synagogue. I liked watching him how he made a precision cut on the hen’s throat and hang it on the hook with a special funnel, wherefrom the blood was trickling down. The dentist prescribed me pork’s hat. I liked it a lot. Brother Menachem came to me and brought me a piece of pork fat telling me that it was important for me to eat it to be healthy. I ate it only when nobody was looking. Especially I did not want mother to see it. When I was a schoolboy, German Neiman rented some premises from us. He owned a store, where sausages and delicious ham was on offer. I was obsessed by the smell of that ham. The German guy must have felt it. Once when I came in his store, he started talking me into having a piece of ham. I was adamant saying that it was nonkosher. Then he put pork’s fat on my lips and pressed me against the wall. He was laughing at me being pleased with humiliating me. I did not say a word to my mother about that case. Since that time I had never stopped by that place. When in late 1930s, Hitler called all Germans upon returning to their motherland and all Germans from Baltic countries repatriated to Germany. Neiman also left.