Re: [Cz-L] mehlplatz

My late mother, Pearl Spiegel Fichman, born in Czernowitz in 1920,
wrote, in the first chapter of her memoirs Before Memories Fade,

"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 Piata 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."

A little later on in her book she wrote,

"I remember my earliest playmate, a boy with the nickname Bunziu,
probably Benno, son of a restaurateur. Around the square used to be a
stop for carts, with a pair of Belgian draft horses each. There may
have been 10 to 15 drivers coming out every morning and waiting there
for business. They used to be called upon to move furniture or
transport crates for businessmen. Of course, they would come into that
restaurant for food, but more often for beer. They would sit around,
smoke, talk, joke. When a customer came, he would call on the driver
from this inn. Bunziu Ellenberg was the only child of the owners.

I would come down and we would play together. Sometimes his mother
would call him in to eat and I would share his meal just as he
sometimes ate in my house."

A little further in chapter one she continued,

"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 powerful and would make
me shiver with fright.

Whenever I went to my father’s store, I would have to cross the square
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.

I was also afraid of drunkards and there were some coming out of my
childhood friend’s inn. They were loud, boisterous, would sing and
stagger, but never did any harm to anybody and yet, I was scared. My
father would smile when he heard of my fear and would say: 'If you are
afraid of them when they are sober, that I understand; but drunk? Just
run away, he can hardly move.' It was reasonable advice, yet it didn’t
help."

Eytan

Eytan Fichman, AIA
B.Arch., M.Arch., Ed.M.
 
42 / 11 Tran Binh Trang
Hai Phong, Viet Nam

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Received on 2011-04-16 09:22:32