Page 90 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Zofia Lubińska-Rosset - "Okruchy Pamięci".

and winter periods, especially during the middle of winter. The
cold in the apartment then was hard to describe. Our fireclay fur-
nace, for which there was never enough fuel, was replaced with the
so-called “canon”. It was a single-chamber cooker that was sup-
posed to be more economical, but was better fit to cook a meal on
rather than to heat a room with.
Footwear was also a problem. For a long time I wore the shoes
I came to the ghetto in, and when I grew out of them and they
became impossibly tight and I could not get any other shoes, my
feet quickly got frostbitten.

I associate everyday life in the ghetto with a constant crowding
of streets. People moved through the streets in an incessant rush
in all directions. Small vendors standing at every step were a per-
manent feature of the ghetto street - children with cardboard no-
tices hanging around their necks, with boxes, suitcase lids, whole
suitcases, offering usually useless items, that could bring at least a
few pfennigs of income. I wrote “children”, but it is not exact. It
was probably only boys. Anyway, I do not remember ever seeing
any girl in that role. And something else that stuck deeply in my
memory, and rather concerns the late period of life in the ghetto,
was an unbearable omnipresence of bedbugs throughout the house
(and probably the entire ghetto), accompanied by a terrible stench.
They were particularly annoying at night, crawling out of every
nook and cranny, falling from the ceiling onto the bed and biting
mercilessly.

From time to time, shows prepared by individual departments
were held in the ghetto. Often these were children's shows. I never
had the opportunity to participate in any of those, but once I was
among the audience. I do not remember where and on what occa-
sion this specific show took place. It was a compilation of songs,
poems and skits performed by children, from which I remembered
the song about a bootblack with the repeated words “majn Futer
ist szijechpycer, ain szijechpycer bin ich, ich pyc schijech,

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