Home

We lived in the Russischegasse nº 89. This property belonged to my grandfather, Joel Kuperman (mothers side). It consisted of two buildings. Two stores in the front. One, a hardware and the other of grain and feed items, and a kerosene pump. Beneath this building was the “Keller”, a basement that was used as a storeroom during the winter and as a frigidair or a cooler during the summertime. Behind this building was an empty green space, maybe a litle garden and finaly, the house where I lived during my first eight years. It had five bedrooms and two kichens, one for the winter time and the other for the summer. Behind the home we had a big wooden table and two benches fixed in the ground. On top of the table, a big samovar. The photo of the house was taken in 1968 when my uncle Frank Cooper (Froicic Kuperman, see my Transnistria story) and Fanny visited Czernowitz. In the space between the buildings, I used to play with my Mutti with a kind of a big “O” ring. She used to throw it in such a way that I should slip my hand into the ring. In the same space, Froicic build a dovcote fixed on a height wooden pillar. This was his hobby. In the house lived my grandfather and my grandmaother, Dora Kuperman (neé Budieiski), Froicic the youngest, his sisters Rachilia and Sonia (tween of my mother) and me Dow (ex-Boris), my mother Genia and my father Itzik Friedman. In the summertime were prepared many food items for the winter time. Big copper vesels to boil the “povedel”, sweet made of plumes. Conserve cucumbers , pickels, herring and other items stored in wooden barrels in the basement. I remember, my mother used to feed gooses to obtain “foi gràs” for her litle boy, me! Every day I had to eat a “Butterbrot mit Schnitlauf”, Bread and butter and litle onions looking like grass with the taste of onion, and banana and olives......... In the heavy winters, on Sunday morgning, I used to run to my grandhathers bed and slip under the featherbed.  The breakfast was served in the bed by by one of the daughers. It consisted of “koilici”, and a glass vessel with hot whater. In it garlic and hard egg-white. He used to drench the koilici in the water for me to give a bite then a peace of egg-white. In front  where we lived, on the other side of the street  was a street with a declivity, named Wollangasse. In the winter time, I played with my “schlitale” sled down the street  ,toghether with my friends, Turi and Heinzl. They used to live up the Russuschegasse, at the corner on the way to Horechawald.

☚   ☛