The Girl in the Cellar

by Gerda Krebs Seifer

  Around 1937, our store’s window was covered in black paper. Holes were cut in the paper to represent eyes, nose and lips, through which people had to peer in order to see the display inside. The holes suited both tall and short people, drawn to the mysterious window, because they couldn’t see anything unless they looked through the cutouts of the eyes, nose, or mouth. The black paper display became the talk of the town for some time.

  There were few cars in those days; doroźki, horse-drawn carriages, clip-clopped across cobblestones. During the daytime, people loved to window shop on the street. Nighttime drew young people to gossip, discuss daily events, politics, new clothing styles, or just stroll with friends. Often, they’d end up in cafés, having coffee and ice cream, talking for hours. Franciszkańska was also the place to show off their new shoes, suits, hats, and the latest hairstyles.

  A few doors up from the Krebs store stood the 18th century Catholic church, St. Francis. Beggars, mostly old, toothless, disfigured women, sat on the lowest step of the church, hands outstretched. On Fridays, the beggars would come to the stores, and each storeowner was expected to give them some money. The beggars were religious about the handouts and never missed a Friday. They knew they could beg on the street anytime, but Friday was a special day for them.

  My father was a sweet, good-natured man. He had blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and was bald. I used to call him my sweet “baldy.” He told me that he had had blond wavy hair before he had gone into the Austrian army during World War I, and that wearing a helmet caused his hair loss. I don’t know if the helmet caused his baldness, but Daddy had a photograph of himself as an Austrian high school student in a sharp uniform and he did, in fact, have wavy blond hair at that time.3

  My father was a respected merchant with a stylish clientele. He’d studied textiles in Paris before he worked in his father’s business.

  Each day, the store would remain open until 2:00 p.m., at which time Daddy would come home for dinner, the main meal of the day. He’d rest a bit until 4:00 p.m., then return to work and keep the store open until 7:00 p.m. He was a polite and solicitous salesman. He didn’t hurry his customers along or act impatiently, and he was most understanding about payments, about customers changing their minds, or about colors and textures. He had good taste in clothing, knew the quality of fabrics, and always carried the latest merchandise. He was tactful and skillful at making each customer feel comfortable. Daddy worked every day but Sunday; on that day, he liked to play card games like gin rummy with friends at the club. He never played cards at home.

  Not only was my father a good businessman but also a very honest man. My mother helped out in the store part-time. Many women knew that she had refined taste and sought her advice in selecting just the right fabric or style for them.

  Once I asked my mother how she and my father had met, and she jokingly said, “Well, there was a big long line of men waiting to meet me, and I just picked Daddy.” They both grew up in Przemyśl.

  I loved my father and was always confident that he’d take care of us under any circumstances, that he’d manage any situation, that he’d rescue us from any difficulty. I had complete faith in him. Once in a while we would have a father-daughter outing. He’d take me for walks on Sunday mornings. As we walked, Daddy would pose mathematical questions that I had to solve. I really enjoyed those questions and tried to solve them quickly to show him how good I was in math. “If you’re traveling by train and you leave at such and such time, and the train goes so many miles per hour, how soon would you get to your destination?” It was fun for me and we enjoyed each other’s company. In the park Daddy liked to give business to all the little merchant stands that we passed, stands that sold pretzels, halvah, various candies, and chocolates. He made sure to visit every stand. I loved getting all the goodies, but when I got home, I sometimes felt sick from eating too many sweets and snacks; Mamusia would get angry with Daddy for indulging me too much. But I was his little girl and I could do no wrong.

  We were a middle-class family. Like most middle-class families in Poland, we had a maid. The maid I remember best was Julia, who lived with us for about seven years until the outbreak of World War II. She came from the countryside, and my mother taught her to cook, polish furniture, buff the parquet floors, vacuum Persian carpets, polish brass knobs, wash windows, and many other household chores. Back then, young women came to the city with little experience and education and learned their skills by working in private homes, including how to prepare meals and serve them properly. The maids went to church on Sunday, their day off. Usually they dated policemen or soldiers. Eventually these maids got married and started their own families. By then, they had learned how to cook and to manage their own houses and children of their own.

  I cannot remember where Julia slept while she lived with us. Next to my bedroom was a guest room, although we didn’t often have guests. Instead, the room was used annually to store matzos, baked just before Pesach and delivered to households in a huge basket to be stored in our guest room a week before the holiday. The matzos were fresh and crisp and round. Often, Daddy would sneak into the guest room to nibble on a fresh matzo, but by the end of the holiday, he’d get tired of eating them, yearning instead for a piece of fresh rye bread. It so happened that Julia was allowed to keep bread in one kitchen drawer during the Passover holiday. Daddy would slip into the kitchen when no one was around and filch a piece of her bread. We all knew what he was doing, but we pretended not to notice.

  We had a tradition for Mother’s Day. Daddy and I would buy a bouquet of peonies and hide them in our cool cellar, since we had no refrigeration. On the morning of Mother’s Day, I’d run to the garden cellar, scoop up the flowers, and present Mamusia with the peonies. She always acted surprised and delighted upon receiving them.

  As a family, we didn’t vacation together because Daddy felt that the store must be open year-round and that he should be there to oversee things. In his thinking, it wasn’t right that three or four employees would run his store without his supervision. It was an old-fashioned, old world idea but also a shame we couldn’t enjoy glorious trips together.

  Mother and I took summer vacations of four weeks to different health resorts in the Carpathian Mountains. So off we would go to the Carpathians—Rožlucz, Zakopane or Szczawnica—in the south of Poland. These were beautiful areas, with many small hotels, mineral waters, hiking paths, and thermal baths that reputedly had curative properties, especially for lungs and digestive tracks. We walked and hiked a lot, breathed the fine mountain air, took mineral waters, and enjoyed the company of friends.

  But in the summer of 1935-36, instead of a trip to the mountains, we went to the Baltic Sea. Just that spring, I’d had a bout with pneumonia that made me miss many days of school. My mother made me drink a lot of hot fluids throughout the day, such as hot tea with lemon and honey or hot milk with whipped egg yolks and honey. On rare occasions, Mamusia would whip egg yolks, sugar, and sweet wine for my sore throat—a delicious treat that worked wonders. I had to stay in bed and found it very boring, especially when I was getting better and stronger. My mother would let me look at lexicons written in German. Although I couldn’t read German, the books had interesting pictures, which kept me occupied for several hours. These books were like encyclopedias, very heavy, leather-bound, and kept in a cabinet with framed glass doors; they were to be treated with respect. I tried hard to keep myself occupied by looking at pictures, wondering what the explanations in old German print meant.

  One spring, I spent several weeks in bed. I was sick, bored, and miserable. I remember having Banki cups put on my back and even a treatment with leeches, in order to suck the “bad blood” out of my system—quite an ordeal. Though painless, cupping was somewhat scary because I had to lie still during the procedure. My mother was adept at heating each cup with spirits lighted by a match, which she quickly placed on my back. The hot cup would adhere to the skin, and after a while, it would fall off, leaving brown circular marks that fad
ed with time.

  Leeches, on the other hand, were black, squishy, worm-like things. They crawled and tickled my back and after a short time, when they had had their fill of blood, they’d fall off. I remember my mother and Aunt Helen sitting by my bed, making sure I didn’t wiggle or throw the leeches off my back before they’d worked their magic. They told me all kinds of stories to keep me still; Aunt Helen even promised to give me her gold wristwatch! Of course, I knew she didn’t mean I could keep the watch permanently; it wasn’t a gift but something to wear on my wrist during treatment to divert me. We thought the treatments were quite effective.

  During my long illness, my mother ordered me a “grown-up” pair of custom-made shoes. You couldn’t buy ready-made shoes in a style you wanted back then. Shoes had to be crafted by a well-trained shoemaker. When my shoes arrived, they were absolutely gorgeous, made of navy leather with a T-strap and a higher heel. I couldn’t wait to wear them to school, parading them in front of my peers. It took a long time before I could return to school; it felt like I’d been away for months but perhaps it lasted only a couple of weeks.

  The doctor suggested that we go to bathe in the Baltic Sea, no matter the weather. In this way I might develop an immunity to frequent chest colds and infections. For a young girl in the 1930s, visiting the sea was unusual, as people didn’t often travel such great distances for vacations, especially to the Baltic.

  I loved the beach with its clean sand and colorful shells that I’d collect at the water’s edge. I placed the shells next to my ear, listening for the hum of the sea. I never tired of watching the waves. I loved the long silky seaweed and round jellyfish that swam with the waves, carried back and forth by the tide. Long squiggly eels washed up on the beach, looking kind of icky, but after they’d been smoked, they were delicious to eat.

  Another Baltic treasure was amber, formed millions of years ago from pine trees that exuded sticky resin, entrapping insects, leaves, seeds, and feathers. Over time, water flooded these areas, compressing layers upon layers of living things together until they fossilized. It took thousands of years for such processes to occur and eventually, people living near the Baltic and other north seas found chunks of amber washed up on the beaches.

  My mother and I took a side trip to Gdańsk-Danzig, an old port town at the mouth of the Vistula River on the Baltic. People spoke both Polish and German in Gdańsk. The city made a powerful impression on me, especially when I saw young men in brown shirts with swastikas around their arms. They acted militaristic, marching all over the city, raising their arms, saying “Heil Hitler.” It was an unusual sight in Poland. Gdańsk was a free city, considered more Polish than German at that time, but the Germans were increasing their hold on the city as the German National Socialist Party, the Nazis, won more assembly seats in government.

  Hitler had managed to get his foot in the door as early as 1933. Seeing Nazis was frightening; the swastika represented power and in some unexplained way, it also seemed evil. When we returned home from vacation, my mother took over managing the store, and Daddy would go on his own vacation for two weeks, generally to a spa in Czechoslovakia or Austria, such as Marienbad or Carlsbad.

  My father suffered from a weight problem, and it was on his spa vacations that he would follow a rigorous program of swimming and exercise as well as a strict diet. He came home looking fit and slimmer, quite proud of his svelte figure. Then as soon as he returned to the store, his stepsister, Berta Oberhard, who lived upstairs in the same building where the store was located, would send him a “second breakfast” of scrambled eggs and a crispy buttered roll. My mother was not really happy about it. She felt that Aunt Berta should not be sending such tempting second breakfasts. On the other hand, my Daddy did not feel comfortable in refusing the maid who brought the food on a tray. Soon enough, the weight he’d lost would go back on… until the next year’s vacation.

  Our daily routine began with breakfast: coffee, rolls, and homemade jams. Though young, I drank coffee too. On some occasions, my father would eat soft-boiled eggs, depending on what fresh items the farmer from a nearby village might deliver. Daddy was what we called a Feinschmecker, German for gourmet. He’d often take a bite of his soft-boiled egg from the egg cup and ask my mother, “Dear, do you think this egg is fresh?” Mother would assure him that the egg had been laid the day before, “Yes, it is very fresh.” At about 10:00 a.m., a light second breakfast was served, consisting of a sandwich, a roll with cold cuts or cheese; I took my second breakfast to school as no food was served there. Dinner was our main meal, served around 2 or 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Polish cuisine was quite gourmet, as well prepared as French and German food, but never given the same measure of respect. Soups were often served as the first course. Chlodnik, fruit soups, such as strawberry, blueberry, or raspberry, were served in summer. The berries were lightly cooked with sugar and vanilla, then blended with sour cream and served chilled. Since ice was not available, a cool drink of fruit soup really hit the spot on a hot afternoon. In other seasons, vegetable, mushroom-barley, tomato, or chicken (rosół) soups were offered.

  One particular soup in wintertime rarely mentioned in cookbooks was made with well-blended prunes, served with a freshly boiled potato. It was comfy and satisfying on cold winter days, thick and sweetish with a hint of vanilla. In the evening we had kolacja, a supper consisting of a sandwich, soup, or leftovers like vegetables, noodles, kasha, pierogi, dumplings, or paluszki, fried dumplings, followed by dessert or fruit. Sometimes my mother made the collation, and other times the maid prepared the food.

  Friday was washday; Ruzia, our concierge, had a small apartment in our building. In addition to her duties of keeping the stairs clean, the doorknobs shiny, and the windows sparkling, she also washed our laundry once a week.

  Washday was quite an undertaking because we had to first heat gallons and gallons of water in a separate laundry room. Laundry was done on a washboard, a laborious job in a time before the modern washing machine. After scrubbing each piece by hand, the laundry would be rinsed in a large tub. It was necessary to boil the white linens in two round huge kettles on the stove, heated by wood or coal that filled the washroom with steam. On washdays, as I entered the corridor to our apartment, I’d be engulfed in a cloud of steam and soap.

  The final step was drying, another arduous task, as the laundry was hung outside on a line in the backyard. Some of the pieces were large and heavy. In winter, the laundry was carried up to the attic and hung on lines there; otherwise, it would freeze solid in the cold air outdoors.

  My mother’s linen cupboard was a picture of neatness and elegance. All the sheets and pillowcases had to be folded evenly, with the fold facing front, all tied with wide pink silk ribbons. The sheets were embroidered with my mother’s monogram, the cotton as fine as silk.4

  Since Ruzia was Catholic, we cooked meatless dinners on Fridays—meat being forbidden to Catholics on Fridays. We usually served pierogi stuffed with potatoes, white cheese, and fried onions or, in summer, with blueberries or cherries, sour cream, and powdered sugar, all very delicious. Other washday dishes were kluski, noodles, served with farmer’s cheese, or kasha with bowtie pasta, soup, bread, and dessert. Nalesniki, blintzes, were a summer specialty served with farmer’s cheese or filled with fruit. Pasta was made from scratch, mostly eggs, flour, and a pinch of salt. Pasta noodles, once sliced and dried, could last for a long time. If noodles were made with just one egg and water, they had a shorter life. I remember my mother and Julia rolling dough on the table into huge, thin circles. Each circle was rolled up and sliced thin like angel hair or into wider noodles. They were then dried on the table and boiled for the next meal or stored in individual mesh bags for later use.

  Markets teemed with freshly picked vegetables in summer: green peas, carrots, kohlrabi, cabbage, asparagus, cauliflower, beets, squash, bib lettuce, radishes, whole cucumbers, and tomatoes. Poziomki, wild strawberries, were sweet and flavorful, served with sugar and sour cream. They were picked i
n the woods and came to market wrapped in a big cabbage leaf or in a small enamel container. No strawberries ever tasted as sweet as poziomki.

  Vegetables were stored in the cellar in the winter months to keep them from freezing. Readying vegetables for winter was another special task, repeated each year. The washroom became a second kitchen. There, heads of cabbage were shredded into a large wooden tub for preparing sauerkraut. The cabbage was layered with sliced carrots, cucumbers, dill, dill seeds, garlic, and salt. When the tub was full, it was covered with circular wooden boards that fit inside the barrel. Heavy stones were placed on top of the lid, squashing the cabbage, and the long process of pickling began. It took some time for the cabbage to become sauerkraut, but my mother knew just how to care for it. Cucumbers and green tomatoes would be pickled as well, given the dearth of fresh produce before summer.

  Naturally, my mother made her own jam; there was no such thing as store-bought jam. As different fruits ripened and were available in the market, she’d make strawberry, blueberry, sour cherry, and blackberry jams. Later in summer she’d make golden jams of peach and apricot.

  I well remember fish being cooked a la Jewish style—Po Żydowsku—and served hot. At each dinner Julia would bring the food on a tray to the dining room. We sat at the large dining room table, properly set with a tablecloth, matching napkins, and silverware. Mother served my father first, then me, then Julia, and finally herself. Julia ate her meals in the kitchen. My father was a fast eater, so by the time my mother had a chance to eat, he was often finished, ready for the second course. Mamusia objected to that on occasion, but Daddy was never curbed of the habit.

  Once I remember mumbling under my breath that I didn’t like the fish I was served and that “I got all the bones.” Mother stopped eating and asked me, “Do you really believe I gave you the worst part of the fish?” I realized that it wasn’t entirely true because the whole fish was bony. I felt ashamed that I’d grumbled like a spoiled child. I knew that my mother always gave me the best pieces of whatever food we had. Our food was always delicious, fresh, and well prepared. I felt very guilty about my complaint for a long while. Later I apologized to my mother and begged her forgiveness.5