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Grandpa ran a pub at home, and Grandma [Ester Fejga] ran the kitchen, for the guests, right. That was how they made their living. The pub occupied part of the house, in a big hall. You could eat [there], drink and sleep over. Grandma took care of it all. [The pub] was a rather crude place, I’m not sure how to put it, but a rather simple one. There was one long table and three or four smaller ones on the other side. No big parties there, they were rather focusing on the market days, the fairs. [The Ukrainian peasants] would come to have a cup of tea, or some beer, or a shot of vodka, to eat something, to snack. The pub was in a very good spot, right next to the market square. I’m sure it wasn’t kosher so Jews didn’t have any use of it. A Jew might have come by once in a while to have a beer but the place was generally for the non-Jewish.
Grandma had four, maybe six beds [at her disposal]. Meaning there was a separate room for the guests. You had to cross the pub to get there. More or less twice a week people would come to the town from wholesalers, from [various] cities, middlemen between the wholesalers and the stores. Traveling salesmen. They usually stayed in town for a day or two. They collected their orders from the stores, and they needed a place to sleep. Grandma would make them dinner and offer them a bed. I don’t know if it was official, legal, or just like that, but I’m sure the pub itself was legal. There weren’t too many pubs like that [in the town], only some little cafés, but those were rather for the Jews, right. The cafés were rather [fancy] social places. Only the socialites sat there. The well-read, the cultured ones. Well, and not everyone in the town was so exclusive [socially prominent], so to speak. For most of the Jews religion was the center of their lives, they wore payes. The Jewish schoolboys also had payes, right. I remember Grandpa’s pub was doing pretty well. Well, you could see a decent crowd sipping their beers. There even was a beer pourer. The keg was in the basement. Those were wooden kegs. And they were connected, right, with a rubber pipe to the tap in the pub. Upstairs [at the bar] there was this hand pump that filled the keg with air and the compressed air pushed the beer up. When you opened the tap the bubbly beer would flow, already with a head. A very common device those days.
There was also a store in Grandpa’s [Benjamin Menczer] house. My father ran it. Grandpa asigned a nook of his house as the store, right. It was a long store. The width was maybe 4 meter and the length could be 7 meter, more or less. Well, you could find there groceries, exotic spices, some industrial goods, and what not. You know, you could buy a penknife by my father’s, or a pair of stockings. Well, all the everyday, little town stuff, right. As for the groceries, father was supplied by a wholesaler, there was a local one. And it was a Jewish wholesaler. As for other things, the salesmen came [to town] every other week. I don’t know if all the stock was kosher. I think the groats are all kosher, as well as sugar, and also flour. And anyway, Jews were not the only customers, there were Poles, too. Father’s store was more elite compared to the rest of them, he had good clientele. Many Poles did their shopping there and they were [usually] town’s teachers but also landowners from the surrounding area. Their administrators used to come once a week to cater. Well, and there were the market days apart from that, and everybody would [come]. Everybody liked my father, he had a lot of customers. Every one of them had his own book, right, with his name on it, and at the end of each month the clients came with the money and settled their bills. I helped my father at the store sometimes. When I was 14 I carried the sacks from the wholesaler’s on my back. Flour, sugar, salt.
Apart from that Grandpa Benjamin and my father also had some fields. They didn’t farm them by themselves, the land was located 6 or 7 kilometers from the town, in Kudrynce near the Russian border [Editor’s note: USSR]. It couldn’t have been large. I don’t know how did they end up owning it. I just remember the balk of, I think, Father’s field was lined with walnut trees. They bore beautiful walnuts.
Grandma had four, maybe six beds [at her disposal]. Meaning there was a separate room for the guests. You had to cross the pub to get there. More or less twice a week people would come to the town from wholesalers, from [various] cities, middlemen between the wholesalers and the stores. Traveling salesmen. They usually stayed in town for a day or two. They collected their orders from the stores, and they needed a place to sleep. Grandma would make them dinner and offer them a bed. I don’t know if it was official, legal, or just like that, but I’m sure the pub itself was legal. There weren’t too many pubs like that [in the town], only some little cafés, but those were rather for the Jews, right. The cafés were rather [fancy] social places. Only the socialites sat there. The well-read, the cultured ones. Well, and not everyone in the town was so exclusive [socially prominent], so to speak. For most of the Jews religion was the center of their lives, they wore payes. The Jewish schoolboys also had payes, right. I remember Grandpa’s pub was doing pretty well. Well, you could see a decent crowd sipping their beers. There even was a beer pourer. The keg was in the basement. Those were wooden kegs. And they were connected, right, with a rubber pipe to the tap in the pub. Upstairs [at the bar] there was this hand pump that filled the keg with air and the compressed air pushed the beer up. When you opened the tap the bubbly beer would flow, already with a head. A very common device those days.
There was also a store in Grandpa’s [Benjamin Menczer] house. My father ran it. Grandpa asigned a nook of his house as the store, right. It was a long store. The width was maybe 4 meter and the length could be 7 meter, more or less. Well, you could find there groceries, exotic spices, some industrial goods, and what not. You know, you could buy a penknife by my father’s, or a pair of stockings. Well, all the everyday, little town stuff, right. As for the groceries, father was supplied by a wholesaler, there was a local one. And it was a Jewish wholesaler. As for other things, the salesmen came [to town] every other week. I don’t know if all the stock was kosher. I think the groats are all kosher, as well as sugar, and also flour. And anyway, Jews were not the only customers, there were Poles, too. Father’s store was more elite compared to the rest of them, he had good clientele. Many Poles did their shopping there and they were [usually] town’s teachers but also landowners from the surrounding area. Their administrators used to come once a week to cater. Well, and there were the market days apart from that, and everybody would [come]. Everybody liked my father, he had a lot of customers. Every one of them had his own book, right, with his name on it, and at the end of each month the clients came with the money and settled their bills. I helped my father at the store sometimes. When I was 14 I carried the sacks from the wholesaler’s on my back. Flour, sugar, salt.
Apart from that Grandpa Benjamin and my father also had some fields. They didn’t farm them by themselves, the land was located 6 or 7 kilometers from the town, in Kudrynce near the Russian border [Editor’s note: USSR]. It couldn’t have been large. I don’t know how did they end up owning it. I just remember the balk of, I think, Father’s field was lined with walnut trees. They bore beautiful walnuts.
Period
Location
Poland
Interview
Samuel König