Re: [Cz-L] Sunset on Mehlplatz

My late mother, Pearl Spiegel Fichman, born in 1920 in Czernowitz,
wrote about the Mehlplatz in her memoirs, Before Memories Fade:

p. 15 Czernovitz, my hometown, was my universe, the place to be. It was
a
hilly, densely populated town. We lived in a centrally located square. I
remember the house where I was born and where I lived up to the age of
fifteen. I was surrounded by parents, older brothers and sisters, very
friendly
neighbors - the youngest child among them all.
It was an old three-story building, situated on Mehlplatz (Flour
Square).
It must have been at one time a square, where traders in flour would do
their
business on market days. By the time I grew up, the old Austrian name of
the square had been renamed by the new Romanian administration Piat¸a
Dacia (Dacia Square). Dacia was the Latin name of the territories,
North of
the Danube, conquered by the Romans during the reign of emperor Trajan,
about 100 A.D.

p. 21 However, Mehlplatz with the horses around the square was also a
very
scary place for a little girl. I feared those big Belgian horses with
their
heavy, hairy legs and heavy hoofs. Their manes were long and thick and
when a wagon passed by, the clanking of the hoofs on the cobblestones
was
hard and metallic, their nostrils would quiver and they would emit heavy
breath, the manes would shake. Some of these horses were of chestnut
color,
sprinkled with white; they were=2
0powerful and would make me shiver with
fright.
Whenever I went to my father’s store, I would have to cross the squ=
are
and pass between two carts, in front of a pair of horses. I never dared
tell
my parents how scared I was, but often, in a nightmare throughout my
life,
to this day, I’ve been trampled by such horses.

p. 27 The neighbors on Mehlplatz 3 were like an extended family. In the
three
story building lived eight families: the owners, the Welts, whose sons
were
the first people in town to own a motorcycle, a car, a radio. We were
among
the seven tenants. Our next door neighbors were the Gottliebs, who had
four sons and a daughter. When I grew up, the older sons and the
daughter
were married; the youngest two sons were ten and eight years older than
myself.

p. 28 Our upstairs neighbors, the Korners, were the first to acquire a
Victrola.
Their youngest son Joseph, [my older brother Eli’s age], bought als=
o
one record. It had two
songs sung by a famous soprano of the Vienna Opera - Selma Kurtz. One
was an aria, the other: The Bird In the Forest, a bravura soprano song,
with
endless trills. Whenever he played the record, with windows open, of
course,
the entire house would listen, all the neighbors. The trill were
stupendous
and we told him how much we admired his eminent taste. Soon after, he
bought another one, the Caucasian Suite by Ippolitov-Ivanov.

0AEytan Fichman, AIA
B.Arch., M.Arch., Ed.M


-----Original Message-----
From: HARDY BREIER <HARDY3_at_BEZEQINT.NET>
To: Miriam Taylor <mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu>; CZERNOWITZ-L
<Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu>
Sent: Tue, Jun 23, 2009 10:55 am
Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Sunset on Mehlplatz


http://is.gd/1ajW2%c2%a0
 
 The Mehlplatz is the older name.I think. 
  The Rumanians called it Piatza Dacia and it was a Ghetto limit.Â=
 
  As you can see ,in our time it was not an open space like it is toda=
y
; 
  It was a built -up square of small houses with an inner court as you=
 
  can see on the slide. 
  Hardy 
-snip-
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Received on 2009-06-24 01:42:12