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Jews differed from the other village inhabitants in the clothes they wore. This was also the case with my parents. My father always wore dark clothing and wore a hat on his head. My mother’s hair was cut very short and she wore a kerchief on her head. My parents were strictly Orthodox Jews. Now I’ll mention one touchy subject. There’s a rule that after menstruation women have to wash in running water. My mother took this rule so seriously that in the winter, together with one of her daughters, she’d chop a hole in the ice on a nearby stream and bathe, because that’s what the rule said. The result was that towards the end of her life it caused her to have serious rheumatism. During her last years she just laid in bed. The Bergmans from Senne, who brought her food, also helped her. Her strict observance of religious rules indirectly resulted in her becoming an invalid, and during the deportations they just threw her, crippled, into a wagon. People didn’t pay her any heed and trampled her.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Bernard Knezo Schönbrun