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Bilder und Träume aus Wien - pp 35
Dort geht ein junger Ehemann "zur schönen Tänzerin"; er hätte lieber die "stumme Portici" wählen sollen, denn die erstere könnte plaudern; wenn du nicht in das kleine Gewölbe zum "Polen" willst, so erfrischen wir uns in dem trefflichen Bierhause "Zu den drei Raben".
Near fragment in space
Then one morning I found my employers' newspaper and in it an advertisement for a seamstress in the teeming textile quarter north of the Hohermarkt.
I worked for Jasha Jacobson for three years. He came from Russian Poland and ran a typical sweat shop - overcrowded, noisy, ill-ventilated. I knew nothing about Jews: their religion, their habits - being there was as strange to me as if I'd gone to work in an Arabian souk. We worked unbelievably long hours and my pay was low, but I've never ceased to be grateful for my time there. I learnt everything there was to know about tailoring: choosing the cloth, cutting, repairing the ancient, rattling machines. At first I was a freak - a schickse set down in the midst of this close knit immigrant community - but gradually, I became a kind of mascot. People passing smiled and waved at the blonde girl sitting in the window beside the cross-legged men sewing their button holes. And I was never molested - I might have been a girl of their own faith by the care they took of me.
pp 63-64 from Madensky Square by
I worked for Jasha Jacobson for three years. He came from Russian Poland and ran a typical sweat shop - overcrowded, noisy, ill-ventilated. I knew nothing about Jews: their religion, their habits - being there was as strange to me as if I'd gone to work in an Arabian souk. We worked unbelievably long hours and my pay was low, but I've never ceased to be grateful for my time there. I learnt everything there was to know about tailoring: choosing the cloth, cutting, repairing the ancient, rattling machines. At first I was a freak - a schickse set down in the midst of this close knit immigrant community - but gradually, I became a kind of mascot. People passing smiled and waved at the blonde girl sitting in the window beside the cross-legged men sewing their button holes. And I was never molested - I might have been a girl of their own faith by the care they took of me.