In the first years of their marriage, my parents ran a kosher household. I can still remember the two kitchen tables, one for meat and one for dairy dishes. After kosher slaughtering was banned with the Nazi seizure of power, my parents began to eat a new kosher diet; meat was bought at the butcher store, but pork and other meats forbidden by Jewish law were avoided. However, in the home of my Aunt Martha and Uncle Siegfried, where we were regularly invited on Friday evenings and holidays and celebrated the Passover supper, the Seder, Jewish customs were strictly observed. My father went to the Orthodox Bornplatz Synagogue on High Holidays and on the days of his parents’ deaths, but stayed only during a small part of the long service. Instead of Christmas, we celebrated Hanukkah with candlesticks, the Trendel game and nuts, and believed in the Hanukkah man. Very early on, we children thus became aware that we were Jews, and we talked about it quite unabashedly with our Christian playmates.
Source: Wilma and Georg Iggers, Zwei Seiten der Geschichte. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, p. 56 (translation)