Sally Horwitz - June 18, 2007
Introduction
Uh, yeah.
The following is an interview with Sally Horwitz at her home in West Bloomfield...
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Michigan. On June 18, 2007, the interviewer is Sidney Bolkosky.
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Uh, okay. I'll do again, I'm just checking, making sure that this works.
Right, that's what I wanted to do also, make sure that it works. [long pause] I have to wait for your question?
Yeah, could you tell me your name please and...
Sally, Sally Finkelstein Horwitz.
And where were you born?
I was born, born in Zwolen, Poland, 1928, July 12.
And where, that's between?
Radom and Lublin.
Lublin. And how large was the...
Central Poland, really central. How large ??? more or less was, there must have been like half and half either uh, I'm talking about non-Jews, Poles.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh, I think there must've been, maybe bout 2,500 uh, each, Poles and Jews living there. Uh, Jews settled there in the 1200s. I remember there was cemetery, which is not there anymore. And something happened, this is before the war in uh, "38 or so uh, our neighbor was murdered. But, just of some vengeance type, some thought he had money or something. Uh, so there was a funeral, which was a big, you know, all the Jewish people practically went, because I never remember anything like that happening before. And my mother told me not to come alone; of course I was a very curious kid. And I won't forget it, it was the first time I ever went to a--inside a cemetery. The trees were very, very ancient and of course nobody touched anything there because it belongs to the dead. Um, and I remember some young men were walking around looking at the stones, and there was a stone very low and they moved away the soil and they said, "look at that," so of course I was looking too. I remember the numbers, 12, 6 something.
Hm.
They must have come there uh, from the pogroms in Germany, in the 1200s when they had there the plague. Um, then of course they were invited in, Casimir the, the Great and he really was very good to the Jews there. I, as a matter of fact, Cazimierz Dolne was his summer place, which was near the Wisła. It wasn't too far from us because we went when we were in school, we went to see Cazimierz Dolne because he had a palace there. And you know I drew my children the place, how it looked like. We went on horse and wagon, it was unbelievable. I remember it because um, some women came um, out, was like a um, a square, the way houses around it, square and then there was uh, uh, that's why we went.
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