Tag #155396 - Interview #103776 (Efim Shpielberg Biography)

We lived in a one-room apartment with a big verandah in the same house where grandmother Tsyvia and aunt Polia lived. My mother said that her apartment seemed like a palace to her, although we were rather poor. The walls were whitewashed and we slept on metal beds like all other neighbors. There were often bed bugs living in those beds and every now and then a housewife put her beds outside where they made a fire and put the beds into it to burn all bed bungs. Afterward the beds were repainted. My father was a tailor.
When he stood firmly on the ground with his both feet he managed to earn enough to buy a wardrobe in the shop. All residents of Moldavanka came to look at this ‘rich purchase’ of ours.

We lived in a single two-storied building in Sredniaya Street. There was a gallery balcony around the perimeter of the house on the first and second floors with front doors of apartments. In summer we used to sleep on the balcony.