Tag #118960 - Interview #100488 (Leya Yatsovskaya )

We only had table porcelain dishes. Pots and pans were pig-iron. Malka and I took them to the river and thoroughly scrubbed them with sand. Every corner of the house was immaculately cleaned. The furniture and floors were polished, clean tulle and curtains were hung, the paschal white-starched tablecloth was taken out. Later, our sisters came from Kaunas with presents. In my early childhood we were together. We put on stylish things. My father reclined at the head of the table on the first day of seder. He also dressed up. He didn’t have any festive garment. He just wore a clean starched shirt. He hid the afikoman under the cushion. Usually I was the one who had to look for it and find it. I also asked my father the questions [the four traditional questions at Pesach], which he answered and then carried out seder. Though we were poorly dressed and our parents couldn’t afford to buy presents for us on holidays, the festive table was full of dishes, which even rich people didn’t have, as my mother was the best cook. Shortly before the holiday, my mother bought the best chicken at the market. Besides, she looked at their bottom to see whether they were fat enough. She also bought goose fat. She bought a minimum of 240 eggs. She looked at each egg in the light. She always did it patiently.