Tag #121966 - Interview #100403 (Stanislaw Wierzba)

Our family was not very religious, but we did observe all the basic religious rituals: Friday, Saturday, the candles, the dinners, all the holidays. During the meals the men were always wearing their kippahs – without one you would not eat, but otherwise, on daily basis, they did not wear them. And we kept kosher. I often went shopping with my mother. I was not aware at the time whether or not the food was kosher. There was a grocery store ran by a Jew, one had to go downtown, that’s where mother would buy all the supplies: milk, flour, sugar – but did she buy meat there? The meat she would buy from a Jewish butcher. There were no refrigerators or freezers in those days, blocks of ice were brought and meat was kept in the ice. We always kept intervals between meals. When Easter came we only ate what was allowed – you were not supposed to eat soured foods. We were used to it, anyway, so it was never a problem. We also knew that if, for instance, you had milk for breakfast, then you had to wait a certain length of time, before you could eat something else, say, a piece of meat or something of that sort.