Tag #134784 - Interview #101637 (Edit Grossmann)

Pesach was terrible! Pesach was very-very hard in those times, it meant a great circus. Everything had to be taken out from the house, the house had to be whitewashed, the pockets of clothes had to be turned out, everything had to be cleaned, absolutely everything.

When all the cleaning was done, mom gathered all the chametz – which wasn’t a Pesach food – and sold it. Not for money, this was just a symbol, she gave it as a gift for somebody in the neighborhood. Everything [chametz] left at home had to be given.

We had pasta, if some food was left, cakes, I don’t know what, we gave it. And we gave the house a good seep again, and so the chametz went out, there was no chametz left. What we swept and what we didn’t give away – pieces of bread, papers [which might have touched bread] –, we had to burn it.

We brought it out in the yard, and lit it, burnt it. The day before the last day we didn’t take lunch inside the house, because it was cleaned up, and we weren’t supposed to bring in something. We ate out, in the summer kitchen, no matter if it was cold or hot, there was a stove, and we made fire, we took lunch and dinner in the summer kitchen.