The story of Gizela - Afik Shiraz. Abinun Shmuel

Among my parents, my mother was more devout in her religion than my father, but she also knew to demonstrate flexibility at times, as the following case illustrates. My father suffered from the water accumulated in the lungs, as a result of his extended stay in the Russian cold. Every few months he had to go to the hospital in Belgrade and spend a couple of days in it for pumping the liquids from his lungs, but quite quickly they would come back hard on him breathing. My father was a light smoker, no more than five cigarettes a day: up to lunch he did not smoke at all. In the afternoon he used to smoke a cigarette with coffee. Then, if an acquaintance came to visit the store, they would sit for coffee and he would smoke another cigarette, and after dinner was coming in the last cigarette queue of the day, so I find it hard to believe that was the cause of the problem. Fortunately, for my father, there was a doctor who told him, “Do you want to get rid of this water one and forever? After all, you get them and every time they come back. I know that you Jews don't eat pork, but if you want to get well, you have to start eating”. My father did, and he healed. Since then I don’t remember him traveling to Belgrade even once. He had his own plank and a small knife that he kept in his pocket. He used to wrap the pork meat in a lot of papers, so that nothing will touch. My mother would spread bread for him and served him the salt in a piece of paper so that he would not touch by hands the salt cellar, and he sat on a low stool next to our dining table, holding the board and food on his laps. We, the girls, were told that our father ate frog meat, so, God forbid! we wouldn’t ask to taste. Once, I went to a birthday party with one of the non-Jewish friends and she served us sandwiches and said, "But you know that the mold is greased with pork fat”. I said to myself, what do I care? and decided not to tell Mama and see if anything happened to me, because always we were so scared with the various bans. As a child, I believed in the God and even dreaded it, but for the first time that I fasted on Yom Kippur occurred later when I was already staying in Bergen-Belsen. That day, the Germans took us, the fasting, early morning to the baths and kept us there until evening without food. Those who did not fast remained in the camp and received their meager dose of food. If we had not declared that we were fasting, we could have kept the food up to the fasting day end. Luckily, my father stayed in the camp and managed to keep a little food for me that day. Despite the pious house where I was raised and educated, I left the war without a drop of faith. Until then, I believed in complete faith and was afraid of what will happen if I go through one of the many prohibitions. I remember well one Friday evening at our house. I opened the oven lid and tossed a piece of paper to it, and my mother shouted at me. For five Saturdays then I had to stand by the “candillo” (candle), an oil vessel containing oil and thread, light them up and say prayer together with Mama to atone on the act, my mother was so devout. Today I do not keep and can't believe it, because where God was during the war and what did all those little murdered children to him? I know many Jews who lost their faith following the horrors they saw in the war, among them even my husband, who came

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