My Mother and Our Town Suffer
I noticed a great change in mother after my return from Pruzhany. She looked older, she didn't sing songs as of old, and she lost interest in political events. She complained about her schicksal (fate), that her youth was gone and what had she accomplished? Nothing! If only she had been smart and courageous and followed that boy who fell in love with her. He offered to take her to Warsaw, to educate her, develop her. He kept writing letters but she never answered. She remained in Wysokie Litewskie until father came along. They fell in love and married.
The war had lasted so long that people lost the desire for socializing. Life just went on without meaning or hope. The only concern one had was to survive. One never heard laughter in the street, nor even at home. I had always been a great one for making mother laugh. I was good at imitating people, especially those we did not like. So I tried doing it now. When I succeeded, mother had to run outdoors until she got over her fit. But now when she returned she was angry and scolded me:
“What is there to laugh about? What will people think of us?” she asked, looked at me desolately.
How did we live? How did we survive? Questions hard to answer. I do recall that mother pawned grandfather's personal belongings -- pillows, sheets, blankets. And later when we tried to retrieve some of these objects we had a hard time obtaining them. The pawn-brokers evidently liked our things and did not want to part with them. Or maybe they had already sold them.
How did we live? We did not starve to be sure, but most of the time we had to make-do with a very modest supply of food. Our main sources were potatoes and chicken. A large part of our diet consisted of different preparations of potatoes. Mother would make potato pancakes, potato knaidlach (little round balls used in soup) and sometimes a potato kugel (mashed potatoes with chitterlings). On special occasions she would substitute lockshen (noodles) for potatoes, which were always welcome.
Editor's Notes: Use the search facility, here, to locate other references to foods in the memoir.
