The story of Gizela - Afik Shiraz. Abinun Shmuel

Our house had one floor. Beneath it was a basement where my father ran a kind of a small gas station; He stored fuel in barrels and sold it to the few car drivers who were passing through the town at the time on their way to Belgrade or Sarajevo. Above the living room was a small attic that was used for ventilation only. The way up was by a scale. Once in a while, my father would go up there and remove the birds that came in through the window. My father loved the soil work and our garden was well kept accordingly, with rose beds adorning it throughout the year and varicose veins, which had to be re-planted every year. We had many fruit trees, including three peach trees, three apple trees, which one of them grew sour fruits while the other two were tasty, and one special tree, which my father assembled and carried three fruits: plum, apple and pear, all on one tree. Among the fruit trees were vegetable beds, and so we had a radish, green onions, kale, "head" lettuce, horseradish and cabbage. It was his hobby and I well remember the picture when he removed the snow from the beds in the winter and chop vegetables for us. My mother used to pick the yellow beans growing up, before they grew pods, and then she cut, wash and dry the pods and keep them in hanged fabric bags for ventilation and drying. They were kept that way for months and in the winter days, my mother would cook them. There was a grapevine in the yard with a table and chairs, where we used to sit on Sukkot and summer nights, when it was pleasant outside. A hencoop too was in the garden, but it stood empty most of the year and only on Yom Kippur my parents would bring in chickens and place them inside until the Kapparot – forgiveness and expiatory sacrifice ceremony. The bedroom in our house was huge and very spacious, I and my sister slept there with our parents. I was sleeping on the couch while Cila was sleeping on a children's bed made of copper, much like a baby’s crib. She slept there a long time, because she was small in size. The year 1937 brought with it deterioration in our economic situation. My dad's brother went out of the shared shop, and my father paid him his share and stayed alone in the store. As the result of this move, many common buyers started shopping at the brother's new business, where not yet had accumulated debts, leaving my father to deal with their debts. To increase family income, my parents started to rent the third room in the house to a sub- tenant. It was a beautiful and well-equipped guest room. There was a buffet, sofa and table made of upscale black wood, and two red velvet chairs decorated in black flowers. However, in order to get to this room one had to pass through the family bedroom. In the middle of the bedroom was a clay heater decorated with tiles round ceramics, which I called myself "plates". The oven was fitted with a chimney and door, and during the winter I liked to put apple inside the oven door until it became a baked apple, so I had a real winter delicacy. My parents had many friends and acquaintances from the Jewish community, but most did not come to visit us but would meet at various social and cultural events outside the home, in the school library or in cafes. My mother was very friendly with our Czech

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