Zapiecek - A special fireplace that was part of a typical Russian home circa 1905. Brings to mind stories of immigrants who had to sleep above fireplaces. J. Gotr Preiss, Osten 1910
1970’s Dora Shooster as Interview by Dorothy Shooster 2016 Transcribed and Abridged by Stephen Shooster
I would like to start telling the story of my life. My mother took ill when I was a year and a half from a sickness that was called in Russia, the holeria (cholera), here it is called diarrhea. They didn’t know what to do. There were no doctors. She didn’t have to die, but she died. We were left: three children, two boys. I was just a baby. The oldest took sick two days after they buried my mother. Mine brother had terrible cramps. My father didn’t know what to do, so he asked a neighbor. The neigh- bor said, ‘Just heat up a brick and wrap it around with something, and put it across his stomach.’ This little boy was eight years old.
I guess that was the wrong thing to do. He had appendicitis, and you mustn’t do that. The next day he was dead. They didn’t even make him a funeral. They dressed him up and ‘digged’ my mother’s grave and put him right against her.” My father was left with two children, Boruch and me. The neighbors helped him out. I was so young. After a few weeks, people were trying to match up my father. He was in the grocery business, a neighborhood grocery. He had a little income there like they all did. Anyhow, he had something in his mind. My mother had four sisters. The youngest
22
Made with FlippingBook. PDF to flipbook with ease