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This was called the wood market.
There was a fish market too
The lumber market was full. Fish was sold there where you see the stones
There were different...But the curses! Do you know what a klole (curse) is?
One heard lots of curses here.
The YIVO institute sent people out to collect the curses here.
Man/Woman: For instance, let's hear some good examples.
Well someone would show a fish to show that it was fresh.
And then someone would raise an onion and say "that's fresh! May your head live like this onion"
"May an umbrella be opened in your belly"
Man: I heard this one a little differently once.....
"You should be rich and have a thousand cities."
"and in every city may there be a thousand streets"
"And on every one of the streets one thousand houses"
"And thousands of apartments."
And in each apartment 1000 rooms and in each room 1000 beds.
And you should throw yourself delirious from one bed to the next!
Just a small example. It was terrible, trully terrible, how they used to speak.
But they sent people here because YIVO needed to have the curses (recorded).
Facing us you see a house with a gate.
The yard was very interesting because this was the children's library.
The Jewish children's library from CBK (Jewish education agency)
The professional union of Jewish teachers in the Yiddish schools was located in this courtyard.
This courtyard was strongly linked to Jewish culture.
Now it is, actually it was, a school for some type of ministry (government agency).
I'm not sure what it is now because it changes practically every day.
Whereto now? Eliot: Hospital? Fania: No. We'll go around, here's what we'll do.
We'll take devali (sp?) street, go to the (former) Rom Publishers and then....
There was a hall where we used to have weddings.
And this is where we had the Sholem Aleichem performances.
Because there wasn't enough room in all of the schools.
All of the Yiddish schools would do a Sholem Aleichem performance in that hall.
Eliot: You should know that we're walking through a large area.
But one needs to understand that this was a Jewish city.
Where Jewish life could be find in every little corner.
I'll tell you that we put on the performance and there was a friend of ours.
He was colorblind but we didn't know.
We sent him out to buy red balls.
And he ended up at a merchant who was also colorblind who said "pick them out yourself!"
Eliot: What is a "daltonist?" Answer: Someone who can't distinguish colors.
Eliot: I don't know that word.
Woman: Say that again.
(Man explains that daltonist means a colorblind man). Fania: Confuses red for green