Tag #133719 - Interview #78150 (Magda Fazekas)

I went to the shochet as well. We always had a servant, but she couldn't be sent to the shochet alone, because she was afraid. It's not a pleasant sight after all. I didn't watch when the shochet was slaughtering the hens; I waited outside. The shochet didn't live in the place where he slaughtered the hens. It was a small building made of wood, and if I remember correctly, there was some kind of hole, and when he slaughtered the poultry, the blood flowed into that hole. And I think water had to be put in there too. We had poultry slaughtered every week, on Thursday, so that we could cook it on Friday. We didn't have a fridge, only a kind of cellar under our house, and it was cool there. Meat could be kept there for one or two days.

These girls served for longer periods - they were from the neighboring villages, but we had servants from our village too - but they were stealing a lot. In any case my father had enough of these girls from Gyergyoszarhegy, and so they came from somewhere else. My parents left to look for a servant girl. They asked her parents, settled the wage they would pay her, and brought the girl back home.

We had this one sweet little girl, she must have been around fifteen - the villagers sent their children to serve at this age, so they would learn a little. Back then they didn't attend schools or universities like today, but they were sent to learn at Jewish families, to learn how to cook, to have some idea about things.