Tag #153486 - Interview #103503 (SIMA-LIBA NERUBENKO )

We didn’t have a house of our own and we couldn’t afford to build one – every year we moved from one house to another. In those years when my father had a rich harvest and managed to sell fruit and jam well our family used to rent a small apartment, but when there were no crops we had to stay in poor houses and sometimes we even had to live in just one room. We usually rented houses from people that leased their gardens to us. Our landlords were not necessarily Jews – they might be Moldavians or German colonists 2. Houses in Kamenka were made of brick and whitewashed. This was a special style in Kamenka. Richer houses had wooden floors and poorer houses had clay floors. When my father earned more we rented two rooms and when a year was not very successful we rented one room. We tried to rent smaller areas to pay lower rental amounts. There were no comforts in those houses. Toilets were outside. We washed in big bowls and in winter. Fortunately winters were usually mild in the south of Russia, but sometimes it got cold and there was snow this process took a while – heating water, taking turns, etc. In summer we left some water outside and it got warm on hot days.