Re: [Cz-L] Cold in Czernowitz

Czernowitz winters were very cold indeed, apparently the coldest winter was
the winter of 1940 - 1941, when the temperature went down to -40 degrees C.
Which incidentally is also -40 Fahrenheit. The joke told in Czernowitz, was
that the Russians had brought the cold from Siberia.

During the war, my parents, one aunt, one uncle and I were very lucky, not
to have been deported to Transnistria. We lived in an one bedroom and
kitchen apartment on the Schmiedgasse. In the kitchen there was a large cast
iron stove, which was used for cooking and which kept the kitchen warm.
In the bedroom there was a Kacheloffen in which wood was burned only in the
evenings, just before we went to bed.

One of my fondest childhood memories, is of a very cold and snowy evening,
probably during the winter of 1942 - 1943. We were all of us in the bedroom,
only a small table-lamp illuminated the room, my father was reading to me
from Gulliver's travels and our black cat was purring in my lap.
I can still visualize the room, particularly my beautiful sad looking
mother, the bed-cover which she had cross-stitched in a colorful geometric
design, and the black cat with her white chest and four white paws.
Just before I went to sleep, my father took the Eiderdown coverlet off my
bed , held it against the surface of the oven, till it was warm and then
wrapped it around me and put me to bed.

>From the same period, I also remember a very cold and snowy day, when
sitting by the window, I saw a peasant girl leading a horse who was pulling
a cart laden with firewood. The girl must have been in her teens, she was
calling to the neighborhood that she was selling the wood, but what
impressed me most, was that she did not wear shoes or boots, but had her
feet wrapped in rags.

I saw worse poverty and misery later, when our relatives started coming home
from Transnistria, but this was probably the first time that it truly came
to my attention.

Mimi

On 10/31/10 2:39 PM, "Lucca" <lucca99_at_netvision.net.il> wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lucca" <lucca99_at_netvision.net.il>
> To: "Anny Matar" <annymatar_at_gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2010 8:34 PM
> Subject: Re: [Cz-L] Cold in Czernowitz
>
>
>> When I was six two "big" cousins, one 8 the other 10, took me ice skating
>> for the first time on the Dr, Rothgasse skating rink They said they would
>> be responsible for my safety while my mother would sit there on a bench
>> and watch me from afar.
[snip]
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Received on 2010-11-01 09:34:20