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20 Ellul 5762 - August 28, 2002 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family
DAYS GONE BY
Remembrance

by Mrs. Hess

My mother ran an open house and enjoyed entertaining guests. Mutti learned with my sister and me and taught us how to daven, to kasher meat, and to make the arba kanfos on the tzitzis. Every summer, our family vacationed in the mountains with Mutti's family.

On more than one occasion, my mother took other children into our home, an opportunity which also offered the potential of opening their hearts to Yiddishkeit. When I was 11 years old, my classmate's mother asked if we could take in her daughter and a 7- year-old son for a while after the children's father had died. Daisy and her brother lived with us for a year and a half.

Daisy's mother was a member of the Reform temple. Before Rosh Hashanah, Mutti informed Daisy, "I'm not going to buy you a ticket at the Reform temple. We daven at the Orthodox shul." Daisy decided to attend the Reform service in the evening and the Orthodox service by day.

After the holiday, she declared, "I'm not going back to the Reform anymore." Although her mother was furious, Daisy clung to her newfound beliefs. At the age of 17, Daisy left Germany on the last aliya train to Palestine, a week before Kristallnacht. She married a frum Yid and raised four children in Eretz Yisroel.

*

At the age of three months, I was diagnosed with an eye problem that severely limited my sight and required my wearing strong glasses. But in those days, there was no such thing as `baby glasses.' I had to wait until I was 6 to wear frames that fit me, and another year to get used to the glasses before I was allowed to start school.

The Jewish school was located too far away for either my sister or me to attend. When I was 7 1/2, I had to enter a Catholic public school, but I never attended school on Shabbos. Four years later, I graduated to secondary school. My parents found a private, non- sectarian school that had only 12 girls in my class, in which I was able to sit close to the blackboard and participate in the lessons.

Hitler ym's became Chancellor of Germany shortly before my twelfth birthday, in 1933. Soon after, the new Nazi government began to implement anti-Jewish decrees. One of those edicts forced Jewish children out of the public schools.

The private school that I attended wanted to get rid of me, their only Jew. In the fall of 1933, my teacher informed my mother that the curriculum would change in the spring and that the important subjects would henceforth be taught on Shabbos. Mutti immediately transferred me to the only Jewish school, Adas Yisroel, which had 50 girls to a class. I was not able to keep up with such a huge class and had to leave school altogether when I was only 14 years old.

Hashgocha Protis intervened to find me a profession that would stand me in good stead for nearly 50 years. Knowing that my poor vision could not tolerate close work in an office, my parents enrolled me in an 18-month home economics course. In April 1937, at the tender age of 16, I assumed my first job in the kitchen of a 50-bed hospital run by Adas Yisroel, the government-recognized Orthodox organization.

At first, I worked under two cooks, one a religious Jew and the other a gentile. After a while, the gentile was dismissed, since Nazi laws forbade gentiles to work for Jews, and no Jewish cooks were available. Since the Jewish cook could not work full-time seven days a week, she sometimes took off for the evening meal and left me in charge.

A nurse was assigned to help me, but one time she made a mistake on a diet. She ordered black bread for a kidney patient, whose salt intake was strictly limited. "His diet is not supposed to have that," I told her. "Yes, he can," she argued. She was fired for making that mistake. I stayed on and learned all about diets and how to set up the trays for the patients.

In June 1938, I moved to an old age home run by the Grossgemeinde. My parents wanted me to broaden my experience with patients and diets, and this new job involved working in the kitchen and serving the patients. But I abruptly left this job four months later.

One of the first decrees passed by the Nazi leadership was a ban on kosher slaughter. Other Jews began importing chicken and meat from Holland. The more lenient Grossgemeinde started a special method of government-approved shechita which they called "New Kosher."

On October 8, 1938, during my tenure at the old age home, the order from the Grossgemeinde came through to change over the kitchen to "New Kosher." I left that job for religious principles, just as I had left school six years earlier. From then on, I filled in at the Adas Yisroel hospital whenever they needed me. I even worked on one of the first days of Pesach and walked an hour and a half each way to the job. I did that mitzva because they needed me.

 

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