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Hello, I'm Nitsana Bellehsen.
I'm interviewing Menucha Benziman, née Zelcer.
It's January 11, 2011.
You begin? -I begin.
Menucha, please tell us
the names of your parents
and how they reached the Old City of Jerusalem.
My father's name was Hayyim.
My mother's name was Alte,
that's a name that was added
after she had been in danger so many times.
She had other names,
but in Yiddish, Alte means old, it's a prayer that she reach old age.
This name was added
after several names and after she was out of danger.
She was born after 4 children
who died of an epidemic within a very short time.
Her parents were despondent.
Times were very hard in terms of medicine.
Raising children was difficult.
I was the eldest daughter.
We were four girls and two boys.
The eldest son was from Mother's previous marriage.
She married a man named Moshe Fishman.
He had a partner
and they were in the wine business.
After my brother was born,
my mother went to Tiberias on vacation,
when he was a baby.
His father smoked a cigarette next to a barrel of ethanol,
the barrel caught fire
and he was burnt.
Her world collapsed all at once.
That was my big brother.
His name was Avraham.
I was born in 1927,
at "Misgav LaDach" hospital in the Old City.
I was the eldest daughter.
We lived in the Old City across from the Hurva synagogue.
In a courtyard with stairs.
There were several courtyards.
The building had two floors.
We lived on the second floor.
There were many rooms and storerooms
scattered up and down the stairs.
My grandmother... Mother's parents,
came from Poland.
Grandmother's name was Esther Hanni.
Her father's name was Aharon.
They came from Poland, presumably after the pogroms.
They came as youths with their parents.
With Grandfather's parents, not Grandmother's parents.
Grandfather's father was called Rav Velvel, Mintzberg, I think...
He probably came from...
that city.
Which city?
I think it was Mintzberg, I don't remember...
Do you remember, I heard that...
Grandfather was...
Which community did he come from?
He was a Karlin hassid.
That grandfather.
He was a Karlin hassid.
Once he went...
Grandpa Aharon was an only child at the time.
Once he went for a walk with a friend
and the friend was kidnapped.
Taken to the army.
His parents said
we're not staying any longer, we're going to Eretz Israel.
So they left and brought the grandmother too.
How they brought her,
whether as the future bride or not,
that I don't know.
Another thing about grandmother is...
her father remarried and she had more sisters.
She also had a sister from the same parents,
her name was Kayle, she came to Israel too.
Grandmother had a pastry shop
in the Old City, across from the "Hurva".
The pastry shop was close to home.
In one of the rooms of the courtyard,
there was a baking room.
There were sacks of flour and tables.
She used to bake there.
Cakes, bread, challah.
And they'd take them to the oven.
She would get up early. They didn't have an oven.
They would take them to the oven.
Grandmother would get up at 2am to make the bread.
It was taken to the oven and baked.
It was a famous pastry shop in the Old City.
The courtyard wasn't ours.
But we had lawful possession.
I think it was leased from an Arab institution.
An Arab man would come once a year,
he was fat, tall.
He got rent for the entire year.
Some of the rooms downstairs were leased to old people.
They did what they wanted with the house the entire year.
There was no water or electricity at the time.
There was a well.
We pumped water from the well to bathe.
We bought drinking water from the Arabs.
They'd bring clean water from the Temple Mount.
There was a clay pitcher in the kitchen called a Tanaja.
The water was filtered through a cloth
into this pitcher
and every few days the pitcher got washed
otherwise there would be worms.
They used the water from the well for washing clothes and dishes.
The pipes were on our roof.
The well was in the courtyard.
Water flowed through the pipe into the well.
Okay, so now we're describing the house.
You said you had legal possession.
So, if I understand correctly,
you rented the entire courtyard? -Yes.
You leased the entire courtyard from the Arab?
The entire courtyard, yes. -And some of the rooms?
We lived in them.
So if you can, please explain
what legal possession means,
and describe the house,
who lived there besides you, and does anyone still live there.
In this house...
Legal possession means it was passed on
from one generation to another over time.
They never moved, they always lived there.
Probably from the previous generation, first Grandmother, then Mother.
They'd pay him rent once a year for the entire year.
So we did whatever we wanted with the house.
We lived on the second floor, there was a living room and a kitchen.
One room was my parents' bedroom
and there was another room where the children slept.
In this house that we slept in,
across from my grandmother,
Binyamin Hoizman's mother had a shop.
He had a bakery.
He also grew up in the Old City,
they were friends of my parents.
He grew up in the Old City and she used to live...
She had a shop across the way from my grandmother.
He used to bring his bread to her shop.
She didn't bake.
She would take cakes from Grandmother and sell them.
Of course, her son made all kind of cakes.
She had a small area in the shop
where she warmed up tea, food.
I guess her son brought her cooked food.
But at night she slept at our place.
She was like a second grandmother.
She slept with us in the children's room, upstairs.
My grandparents lived downstairs, in a room on the first floor.
So the parents had one room,
the children had another room with this grandmother
and your grandparents were downstairs.
Who else? Were there more rooms in the house?
There were more rooms in the house.
They were rented.
They were for temporary neighbors.
A family or an old man.
These were rooms that...
I think there were 2 rooms that were rented.
Who did they rent the rooms from? -From us.
So if you could say that...
There was another room with a neighbor in the middle of the stairwell.
It looked out on the "Hurva".
It was right across from the synagogue.
Her name was Esther Malul.
She spoke Yiddish. She was a seamstress.
I'd visit her often and watch her.
She was the best neighbor.
When we were little and we had sore throats,
she would come in
and give us hot compresses
with Arak.
She would moisten the cloth with Arak,
rub it in real well
and put it on our throats. It would warm the throat.
She would give us massages too.
She was like a mother.
In the yard, in the courtyards,
they would do the laundry.
A laundry woman would come,
light the Primus stove in the morning,
and there was...
In the courtyard there was a small storeroom.
They'd light the Primus stove in there.
They used to pump water from the well
then dump the dirty water into the toilet.
There was no running water in the toilet of course.
There was no toilet bowl.
So what did you use? -There was a sewer with a hole
and that's where we went to the bathroom.
And that's where they dumped the water.
Can you describe your room?
Can you close your eyes
and tell me about the room you grew up in with your siblings?
There was a closet, there were beds,
a clothes closet,
a book shelf, perhaps.
There were all kinds of cabinets.
Beds, a table. That's what there was.
Was there room for all the beds?
It was a big room. Our room was quite big.
It was big enough. It was even divided into two.
There was enough room, yes.
How many rooms were there in the entire house?
How many rooms?
Around six.
There was also a room that was... there was a storeroom.
And there was the baking room.
A room where the baking was done.
So when you say "baking room",
do you mean all the neighbors used this room for baking?
No, no. Only the grandmother that baked.
A woman used to come
and make the dough for the bread in the evening.
Then Grandmother would get up at 2am and make the bread,
then it would be taken to the oven.
In the morning they took it to the shop.
The fresh bread.
I'll ask you more about the shop and what you did,
but now I'd like to focus on the location and then we'll talk.
You said a laundry woman came once a week.
Did she do the laundry for your family only? -Yes, yes.
So, please describe
the laundry woman's job.
Did you get things ready for her? Please describe it for me.
They lit a large Primus stove with a piece of iron
and placed a vat of water on it to boil.
This water was used for washing clothes, in tubs.
She would wash the clothes by hand and Mother would hang them out.
There wasn't enough room to hang the laundry in the yard
if it was a big load.
We also did the smaller laundry ourselves.
For the laundry, Mother used to climb a small ladder,
not a tall one, there were a few rungs.
She would climb onto the roof. There was a dome on the roof.
The house had a curved structure.
We children would climb onto this dome and slide down.
The Habad synagogue was on one side.
The window of the synagogue was parallel to our roof.
It was also connected to the roof of another house on Habad street
where a Christian family lived.
They were connected.
The railing was made of wood on the side of the courtyard.
But there were sides facing the street that didn't have a railing.
To this day I don't know how we survived,
how we didn't fall from those roofs into the wells.
There was no railing.
As kids, we would slide down there and play.
When you think about this house,
how does it make you feel?
Tell me how you remember life in that house,
how did you feel?
Inside the house, in my parents' room,
there was no electricity. There was a rod in the middle
and a structure made of wires,
set up in 2 or 3 rows.
That's where they put the dishes and the Shabbos candles.
They put oil in these dishes,
with wicks, I think it was olive oil.
And they lit the candles.
And there were 2 lamps on the wall.
Oil lamps. We had to keep the glass clean.
It wasn't an easy task.
On Friday night, Father had to reach up
and fill them with oil.
You could walk under it. It was higher than a person,
so no one would bump into the candles.
And then...
In addition,
we had to light kerosene burners.
Some people put the food
in ovens.
There were these large ovens
so people would come and put the sabbath stewin the oven.
We had an oven in the kitchen.
An oven made of tin
that we ordered from a blacksmith.
It was square, maybe 50 by 80.
Something like that.
There were two tiers.
They put 2 large kerosene burners on the lower tier.
With oil.
In the middle there was a shelf with holes.
And inside this shelf, on the upper tier,
they placed the cholent with glass bottles of water.
Water from the tap. No, not from the tap,
from the Tanaja.
If someone wanted coffee it was Turkish coffee, of course.
They'd put cold coffee in the bottles
and they would heat up slowly
until it was... They could make tea or coffee.
On the third tier above that, at the same height as the table,
they would place the soup and kugel for Friday night.
These were eaten when Dad came from the synagogue and recited the Kiddush.
This was covered with many pieces of cloth
and it would remain hot all night.
So how did you prepare food during the week?
You described how it was on Shabbat. But if you wanted coffee or food,
how did you prepare it? -I'll tell you.
To avoid lighting the Primus oven for every glass of water,
I remember
there was a kerosene burner on the living room table.
They heated a kettle of water
on the Primus, put it on a low flame on the burner.
Dad loved to study,
he studied Talmud whenever he could.
That was his love.
If he wanted tea, the tea was on the burner.
There was a kettle with tea for whoever wanted to drink.
We would put cold water in small clay pitchers
because we didn't have a fridge.
Later, we had a small fridge,
with ice.
We put ice in it.
So if there were stuffed fish
for Shabbos, it kept well until noon.
On Friday night we could eat fried food.
Sometimes we even put...
We would take a bucket
and put the food inside
and drop it in the well where it was cool
so the food kept until the evening.
The food always had to be cooked fresh.
Tell me how you did the cooking,
where you got the food from, the groceries,
how did that work and who did it?
Groceries? There were shops for that.
There were shops with dairy products,
where they must have had a fridge.
There were vegetable shops and we bought from the Arabs.
Before the pogroms.
We'd buy fish from the Arabs. They had sea fish, from Jaffa.
Mom would grind them up and make stuffed fish.
We used to light the Primus and cook.
Then the food was moved to the kerosene burner.
After it came to a boil on the Primus.
They used to cook...
They didn't cook enough for several days.
They cooked soup, in particular.
Lentil soup with noodles,
things like that.
Since there was no fridge, we mainly ate salted foods.
We ate a lot of salted foods.
Like herring for example.
Today's it's a delicacy, but back then it was cheap.
Yes and... when...
That's it. That's how we'd cook.
Describe a routine family meal.
What did you eat, what was it like? What was the experience like?
I don't recall the entire family having lunch together
in an orderly fashion.
I don't remember.
We ate, whatever there was.
We always had fresh, tasty bread.
I loved when my mom baked pita bread with onion.
We loved pita bread with onion.
We ate lots of salads.
Vegetables.
It was all organic at the time.
It was all grown naturally. Chicken too.
Mother would always invite a guest over for Shabbat.
Some old man who didn't have a home,
who didn't have anywhere to stay on Shabbat.
So they'd come over.
Even the neighbors downstairs, if they were old,
before dinner on Shabbat
we would bring them chicken soup,
some food, so they'd have something to eat.
So they'd have food.
You could say there was a lot of giving.
Where did you eat? In the house?
Yes, in my parents' room.
There was a large table
and chairs and it was the dining room too.
Did you cook there too?
Did you cook in that room too? -No, we had a kitchen.
There was a small kitchen by the room
with the Tanaja with the water,
the oven and the table.
There was a bucket under the table
for the water from washing dishes, and then it had to be poured out.
You can imagine the amount of work on Friday night.
Setting up the burners so they burn nicely, Dad would do that.
Preparing the Shabbos candles.
I remember when my sister was born,
she always looked at the candles.
So I asked Grandmother:
"Why do babies look at the light all the time?"
She said they can see the angels hovering around the candles.
Not just the candles.
What was your job?
What did you have to do at home as a little girl?
As a little girl I had to help with the cleaning.
Very simple. And go to school.
We went to school and helped around the house.
We pumped water from the well, we went up and down.
If we were sick,
we would go to Dr. Shabtai to cure our sore throat.
That was at the old Sha'arei Tzedek hosp.
The hospital was named after Dr. ... Dr. Wallach's hospital.
There was a Dr. Shabtai.
Dozens of people would come in the morning.
They would buy a ticket which cost one grush I think.
They bought a ticket to see the doctor and be healed.
They'd admit some 20 people into the doctor's room at once
and he would put an ointment on the throat.
If the situation was more severe he would give them an injection too.
And that's it.
Dad would take me often,
from the Old City to Sha'arei Tzedek
to heal my throat. Many times.
I often suffered from angina (strep throat).
And it helped... -Yes, it helped.
Lemon juice too, we drank a lot of that.
That was the cure.
That was the Health Clinic.
Did you like going...
When you went with your father to Sha'arei Tzedek,
do you remember it as being fun, scary?
I don't know, it was what it was.
It wasn't fun, it wasn't bad, it wasn't good.
We had to go, so we went. What could I do?
It was a fact.
We weren't spoiled.
There was this thing... My sister says it was against...
Sometimes we would do this thing,
I don't know if it was to prevent fears
or instead of a therapist, or against the evil eye.
This woman would come to the house
and take... She would light a burner
and melt...
What's it called, the stuff inside the thermometer.
Mercury. -Mercury.
She would melt mercury in a pan
and put it in cold water.
It took on all kinds of shapes,
and she would...
she would put a sheet
over the head of the girl this was intended for
and put the end of her hand in.
Then the woman would say:
"Oh my, what fears she had, oh my."
I remember that.
I don't know what they did it for.
My sister says it was against the evil eye or against fears,
I don't know what exactly.
But it was one of the ways to cure someone at that time.
Was it ever done to you?
Maybe. I remember they did it to my sister.
Maybe me too, I don't remember.
You told us a bit about your mother's family
and how they got to the Old City.
What about your father's family? Where is he from?
How did he come to the Old City?
Yes. Father studied in Lithuania. He was, it went like this:
My father's story is very tragic.
When he was born, at childbirth,
9 hours after he was born, his mother died.
He grew up with his grandparents in the country.
I don't know the name of the village.
He went to school there. He grew up there.
I think until he was 9 or 10, I don't know.
When there was no longer a school for him in the village,
they sent him to Yeshivas and boarding schools.
How did they do it? -I don't know.
However it was customary then.
But I do know that ultimately, he studied with Hafetz Hayyim.
He was one of his best students.
At that time, military enlistment was compulsory.
His original family name wasn't even Zelcer.
I think it was Yershovitz, a different name.
There was a military draft and they had to go to the army.
This was the Russian army.
Obviously, they didn't want to be soldiers in the Russian army
and eat non-kosher food and so forth.
So what did he do? He decided to run away.
But getting out was impossible.
They had to be smuggled out illegally
because they weren't allowed to leave.
They didn't let them leave.
So he was smuggled a lot,
he experienced some miracles, he said
that he was on the train that traveled to a location
on the border.
A guard was patrolling and almost saw him
and by some miracle he didn't arrest him.
He didn't arrest him so he got off the train
and from there he was smuggled with another young woman.
I guess there were smugglers that got paid.
His father met him before he escaped.
He asked him: "Where do you want to go?
"Where will you escape to? The United States?
"Do you want to go to the States?"
His father was a wealthy man.
He also had business in Africa.
His stepmother
wanted him to go to Africa and help his father with the business.
So his father asked: "Where do you want to go?"
And he said: "Nowhere but Eretz Israel".
The Talmud says: "Better is a dry morsel in Eretz Israel than plenty overseas".
I'm not going anywhere.
There was no problem getting into the country at that time.
Entry was permitted, because just a few came.
Everything was neglected. There was poverty, no place to work.
Who came here? Only old people, who came here to die.
What year was that?
I don't know exactly, but it was before WWI.
So he came to Israel,
to Jaffa.
He said that Tel Aviv was being built at the time.
He was told: A Hebrew city called Tel Aviv will be built here.
He rode all night from Jaffa to Jerusalem on a donkey.
If there was a hill to climb,
the donkey wasn't able, so they had to go by foot.
He arrived in the early morning.
He said Givat Shaul already existed at that time.
They said: This is Givat Shaul.
The newspapers even published that an important man had come to town
and that's how he came to Jerusalem.
I suppose he studied here somewhere.
I don't know exactly what he did.
I do know he got married,
but before that,
WWI broke out.
So all the foreign residents
were exiled to Egypt.
So he was in Egypt.
My mother said they were spared the hunger, when the Turks were here.
Actually, the Arabs worked the land.
There should have been wheat and vegetables, not hunger.
But mother said the Turks drafted the Arabs
so there was no one to work.
There was very grave hunger in the land.
People actually died of hunger.
But in Egypt, there was no hunger. There was plenty.
He even said he heard
Jabotinski's speeches in Egypt, when he was there.
He returned after the war, only after the war.
My father was married. I don't know for how long.
His wife was sick.
They had a good relationship. Her family loved him.
But his wife died.
Somehow, a match was made between Mother and Father.
That's how he got to the Old City, to Mother.
What luck.
That's the story of how he got to the Old City.
And Father wasn't a hassid, he was a Litvak.
For example, Mother was used to hand made matzos.
He said there's no need, machine matzos are more kosher.
And that was that. He helped Mom a lot.
There was a story with Grandfather too.
Because Grandfather had eye problems.
He had to be operated on.
How does he get operated on? I don't think there were doctors.
(Dr.) Ticho wasn't here yet, I don't know what their consideration was.
They went to Vienna,
to have an operation on his eyes, to heal.
The doctor made a mistake and removed the pupil instead of...
and he came back blind.
So he was blind.
I'm sorry to hear that.
I want to go back to your parents' wedding.
Was it routine?
That a Litvak (not hassid) marries a hassid?
I don't know. Dad wasn't strict, neither was Mom.
No, it didn't matter, they didn't...
There was no such thing as following the rules blindly...
And he wasn't your typical Lithuanian.
Anyone could eat what they want...
So what were the customs in your home?
What community were they based on?
Well, Father was a scholar.
People used to come by
and ask him questions about kashrut
because he was a learned man.
They would ask questions
and he was always happy to help.
Still, did you practice hassidic customs in your home?
How were you raised?
Look, Mother prayed at a Habad synagogue.
Father prayed at a synagogue, I don't remember the name,
a Lithuanian synagogue.
The Habad synagogue was closer than Dad's synagogue.
The windows of the Habad synagogue
faced Ha-Yehudim Street.
It was in earshot from our house.
We were surrounded by synagogues on all sides.
So describe what it was like
being surrounded by these prayers.
We took it for granted.
It was great hearing the prayers.
It was beautiful.
Now, the neighbor, Esther Malul,
her house was right across from the Hurva.
And there...
The"Hurva" consisted of many synagogues.
Later, the pogroms broke out.
We went to a school
that the principal told me was called
School for Girls' Education.
This school was founded
and administered
by a single woman called Rachel Prizant.
She had one school in the Old City
and another school in Sha'arei Hessed.
Her name in Yiddish was Rashke.
She ran the school.
We had to pay tuition, at the time education wasn't...
We had to pay tuition.
This school was crowded with children,
It was...
It wasn't a school with hundreds of children.
More like dozens of children,
there weren't many rooms, there was a kindergarten too
and a nurse's room.
The children would visit the nurse in the winter
and she would give each girl a spoon of cod oil,
with an orange. We would drink that.
There was also a health clinic for children nearby.
Some girls would go there every day to get eye drops.
I never did, because...
When I was 2 years old,
my eyes were very diseased.
Full of ***.
I was in danger of becoming blind.
I didn't want to open my eyes.
It was dangerous not to open your eyes.
Someone sat by me all night and cleaned my eyes,
but I don't remember that.
But all in all, when I was a little girl, my eyes were healthy.
I didn't need glasses.
I never went to get eye drops.
I could see far, close up.
Tell me about the interaction between the siblings at home.
Did you play together? Did you work together?
How did you and your siblings get along?
Look, my sisters were younger than me.
I always took care of them.
I even took my youngest sister to the health clinic.
With my other sister, I remember she studied...
I went to her parent-teacher meeting, I was like the mother.
I was more mature at that age.
Why?
Grandmother died. She was sick.
This was before the pogroms.
We were little girls when Grandmother died.
When she died, Mother took on Grandmother's work.
She had no choice.
There was no one to support the family.
So Mom got up at 2am to make the bread.
She carried on Grandmother's work.
Later she also...
I think they baked cakes less then.
But she opened a grocery store.
They sold herring, dates, cocoa, coffee,
tea, lentils, things like that. Oil too. Olive oil.
They even sold it by weight.
Even kerosene, all kinds of things.
So Mother tended the shop.
I was the eldest, I had to help out a lot.
After Grandmother died.
During the pogroms...
How old were you when your mother worked in the store?
I think... the pogroms broke out in 1936,
so I must have been 10 years old.
We were little when Grandmother died
and she was sick for quite a while before that.
She had hardening of the arteries, she couldn't work anymore.
And when she was sick...
After that, there was no medical insurance.
After working for 40 years,
Dad had to take out a loan to put her in the hospital.
She eventually died of pneumonia.
And when the burden fell on Mom, and then the pogroms...
During the pogroms the city emptied out.
We were surrounded by Yeshivas and synagogues, praying and studying,
and suddenly during the pogroms, many people left the city.
People worked outside the Old City. The road was dangerous.
They couldn't go to town because they had to go by Jaffa Street,
which was an Arab area.
So people left the Old City.
Schools also moved.
Talmud Torah relocated to the city.
Etz Hayyim Yeshiva was across from our house.
They all moved to the new city.
And the Old City emptied out.
The atmosphere was rather gloomy.
My parents were in financial straits
because when there are no buyers, there's no money.
Their financial situation was bad.
It was rough during the pogroms.
We would stay at home at night, there was a curfew,
and we heard shooting all night.
But in the homes
there was no danger a stray bullet would penetrate.
We weren't in danger thanks to the narrow alleys and thick walls.
But the situation was depressing.
The school emptied out too.
No students.
The school emptied out.
One day the principal came around and gathered a few girls.
Most of the girls lived in Batei Mahse, not on Ha-Yehudim Street.
I had one friend on Habad street.
There were not many families with children on Ha-Yehudim street.
They lived in Batei Mahse.
Most of the girls lived there.
So she gathered a few girls
and got a teacher.
During a lull in the pogroms, she said she's reopening the school.
Then a teacher arrived.
She came by bus,
the number 2 line that traveled from Jaffa Street
right into the alleyways,
after Zion Gate, it's inside,
inside the Old City, near the Jewish Quarter.
This bus was accompanied by a policeman.
He would guard the bus.
The bus would come in the morning and return in the afternoon.
The transportation was erratic.
She managed to get teachers
to come on this bus.
A teacher, not teachers, I remember a teacher came.
We studied in one classroom, three...
We were three older girls,
in the other classroom there were four girls,
and in the third classroom... She used to give us homework,
she told us to study,
then she'd go to the second class, then the third class.
That's how we studied during the pogroms in the Old City.
That's if there was no curfew all of a sudden.
Because sometimes there was an attack.
At the end of Ha-Yehudim Street, there was...
a border between the Jews and Arabs.
Because Jews could no longer live in the Arab Quarter during the pogroms.
Where the Tfutzot Yeshiva is now located
there was also a big Yeshiva.
"Hayyei Olam" Yeshiva.
I used to go there with a friend to bring her brother a sandwich
while he studied there.
That Yeshiva also had to be vacated, of course.
British soldiers used to stand
behind sandbags
and they would shoot every once in a while.
I remember them joking about hitting a cat.
They used to shoot in our direction, as if they were protecting us.
But they conducted searches in our homes too.
The British soldiers.
The Arabs did the shooting but the British searched our homes.
I remember they came to search Grandfather's room
and we couldn't find the key. He had a closet full of books.
They didn't move away from the closet until they found the key.
What were they looking for?
Weapons.
In our house. They were looking for weapons.
The Arabs were shooting and they searched our home.
The Arabs were shooting and they searched our home for guns.
Who? -The British. Who!
Okay, I want to go back to the beginning of the pogroms.
You said the city emptied out all at once.
Do you remember the beginning?
Yes, I do. I was in the street.
People started running, they were terrified,
and Father said: Come home quick.
It started unexpectedly. Shooting, tension.
And people... The Hurva was empty.
There was this family, Shechter, I remember,
they lived in the Arab area
and they couldn't stay there.
So they moved into an empty room in the Hurva.
There was a girl my age
and we always snuck in.
It was a narrow street.
She used to come to the Hurva during the curfew
and I would stay with her.
Once, the British soldiers held a parade in the Old City.
They wore red berets and Scottish kilts
and we'd sit on the balcony of the Hurva,
and watch these parades.
Then the papers said that Britain had conquered the Old City.
But we were really isolated,
we lived in isolation,
because we couldn't go to town if we needed a doctor,
everything was a big deal.
The day the shooting began
and everyone ran for their lives,
Why did your family decide to stay?
Where would my family go?
They couldn't. First of all,
they wanted to ...,
but my grandparents said we're not budging from the Old City.
We're not moving away from the Western Wall.
On the other hand, there was nowhere to go,
because their livelihood was there.
And this was their home for many years.
Where will they start over?
Where will they go?
I remember Mother sold her necklace.
She had a pearl necklace.
To pay off debts.
But I used to go with Mother,
even when there was shooting.
We used to take sardines and all kinds of things to sell.
We would go to the Batei Mahse and sell them there.
To the people who lived there.
So they could buy...
when they couldn't leave when there was a curfew,
when there was shooting.
So she sold her...
pearl necklace.
Though the standard of living was poor,
what did they have to eat?
Some lentil soup, bread.
There wasn't much food.
There were vegetables. That's it.
And fruit, mainly oranges.
Oranges and grapes, that's what I remember.
Because oranges were cheap.
And there were plenty, in the winter.
In the summer there were watermelons.
To keep the watermelon cold,
we'd put it in a bucket down the well
and it would stay cool and not go bad, the watermelon.
We're talking about the pogroms
so I'd like to remain on this topic.
You stayed.
Did your parents or the government give specific instructions
on how you were to handle yourselves during the pogroms?
No. I don't recall.
There was no government!
The British were in charge.
You said there were nights when there was a curfew.
Yes.
Did your parents tell you when you could go outside?
No, we couldn't go out. They didn't have to tell us.
They didn't have to tell us. -But on a regular day?
We only had kerosene lamps, no means of communication.
We were closed up in our house.
What did you do?
We listened to the shooting. That's what we did.
We read, we studied. What could we do?
Were you afraid?
We were afraid. I can't say we were terrified
or that we feared we're going to die,
because the weapons at the time weren't sophisticated.
They used to throw hand grenades at the border.
They couldn't throw them into the closed homes.
And bullets whistled by all the time.
A stray bullet could never penetrate the house.
So we weren't in immediate danger.
We weren't afraid, but it was depressing.
Did the family discuss this?
What was there to discuss?
The Arabs were shooting, there was a curfew. What's there to say?
Did your parents say anything to reassure you,
or did the children discuss it among themselves?
I don't remember talking about it.
We accepted the situation for what it was. That's it.
And how did you feel when the British searched for weapons?
It wasn't pleasant. -What wasn't pleasant?
That they searched for weapons in our home. It was a crime.
It wasn't fair, because the Arabs were the ones who were shooting.
We didn't shoot.
I remember that, at school, in the nurse's room,
young men came to guard.
And I heard stories,
from people who... from friends of my brother
who knew my grandmother,
that during the pogroms in 1929 they also came to guard
and my grandmother gave these young men linens
so they'd have what to sleep on.
That's what he said.
But in our time... We gave the other family beddings too
because they didn't have enough.
The family that came to live in the Hurva.
So you say when you were...
During the pogroms,
there were people who guarded you?
Tell me about that.
The British were officially in charge.
But there were, in the nurse's room,
there were young men from the Hagana who protected us.
But they didn't have weapons. It wasn't allowed.
During the British rule it was very dangerous.
When you saw the police or the British soldiers,
did you feel they were protecting you? How did you feel about them?
I don't know, I didn't feel anything.
We took it for granted. They were there, that's it.
Most of the time they sat by the sandbags.
They were entrenched.
We could see them.
Our windows faced the Hurva.
The windows are there to this day.
By the way, the external structure is still there.
Inside, they connected it to Habad Street
and you enter from there.
We went there with our children, our grandchildren.
They saw the house, they saw the windows.
But we didn't go inside, we couldn't say "Hi, I lived here.",
and see what it looks like. I don't know the people.
But outside it stayed the same.
The structure is there to this day.
The windows downstairs too, from my grandparents' room.
Upstairs too.
We're going to take a break. We completed the tape.
We'll change the tape and continue. -Okay.