Re: [Cz-L] Daily life in Czernowitz

Here are some more cold weather memories of Czernowitz, from my late
mother Pearl Spiegel Fichman's memoirs (Before Memories Fade):
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The winters were extremely harsh so that the snow that fell in November
would melt in March. When I was in second grade, in the winter of 1928,
the bitter frosts persisted all through the winter months; the
temperature dropped to -40 degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. (At -40 the
two measurements are the same).

The newspapers wrote about the Danube being frozen solid and that
people from Bulgaria skated across the river to Romania. It probably
happens once in a century for a winter to be so severe. People used to
say that the wolves were coming out from the woods into the villages.

As much as the apartments were heated with fire-wood, the moment we
stopped stoking the fire, the apartment cooled off, at night. One
covered up with featherblankets, over the shoulders, just the nose
stuck out, for air.

On the windowpanes, the indoor humidity froze forming ice flowers, but,
at the bottom of the window, nearer the frame, toward the sill, the ice
got to a thickness of a finger or two. We had double windows and in
between, on the sill, we placed a sort of longish pillow stuffed with
sawdust, to prevent the frosty air from penetrating through any crack.
In order to air the rooms and the kitchen, the windows had a top part,
which could be opened. That was called "Oberlicht" (top-light).

I remember one Saturday afternoon, on my return from school, (school
was on six days a week) Mother and [my sister] Sali were in the
apartment, all wrapped in blankets. Since Mother would not light a fire
on the Sabbath, the person who came around to do it at lunchtime,
didn’t come back again to renew it later. The embers had burned out,
only ashes remained and the room was cold. Mother would start heating
the house again after the first star had appeared. When I came home,
jolly and happy and with rosy cheeks, Mother asked anxiously: "How is
it outside?" She heard the whistling of the wind all around. She
thought that I would be frozen. I answered that it was so nice and
breezy, that I crossed the road a few times back and forth, for it was
windier that way.

I read recently the memoirs of the Bulgarian writer Elias Canetti and
he describes the severe winter of 1928 and how they crossed the frozen
Danube by sleigh into Romania.
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Eytan

Eytan Fichman, AIA
B.Arch., M.Arch., Ed.M.

-----Original Message-----
From: Miriam Taylor <mirtaylo_at_indiana.edu>
To: Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu <Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu>
Sent: Sun, Oct 3, 2010 10:30 pm
Subject: [Cz-L] Daily life in Czernowitz

This morning, as soon as I woke up, I wanted to open the windows, but
it was
quite cold outside and I debated with myself whether to open them or
not.
Then I remembered our Czernowitz compulsion about "Frische Luft".
Czernowitz
winters were quite cold and most if not all homes were heated by means
of
Kachelofen" (tiled ovens in which we burned wood). By morning the oven,
which had been stocked with wood, shortly before we went to sleep, was
quite
cold. No matter how cold it was outside, my mother would open all the
windows, shake out the pillows and the "Steppdecken" (quilted covers),
or
"Uberbett" (down comforters) and put them on the window sill to "luften"
(air out). Even at the end of November 1944 when I was sick with
measles and
had a high temperature, my mother covered me very well and the windows
were
opened as usual.

The next ritual, was to sweep and dust the whole apartment and then, on
all
reasonably warm days, usually around 8 o'clock my mother would go to the
market, which was on the Austria Platz. There she would buy vegetables,
fruit, butter and cheese, from the peasant women who had come from the
villages. I think that each housewife had her favorite supplier and I
remember my mother engaging in friendly conversation with the woman from
whom she bought the butter, wrapped in a large rhubarb leaf. It was the
best
butter, creamy yellow and smelling of red flowered clover. During the
war,
Jews were not allowed to be on the streets before 10 o'clock and
therefore
there was no point going to the market, because by 10 o'clock all
provisions
would be sold. The peasant woman, from whom my mother usually bought
butter
and cheese, even though prohibited by law from doing so, brought the
butter
and the cheese, hidden inside her short fur jacket, to us. She belonged
to
the sect of "Sabotniki" and was very upset at the fate of the Jews.

By the way, does anyone know whether this sect was a large percentage
of the
population? Also, in which villages, most of them lived?

I think it would be interesting if those of us who remember daily life
in
Czernowitz as it was, or as it was described to them by their parents
and
grandparents, would write about it to the list.

Shavua Tov,

Mimi
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Received on 2010-10-04 05:20:09