Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Sally Horwitz - June 18, 2007

Tell me what would happen at Easter time.

Eas...uh.

Easter.

Oh God. After we were afraid to go out. "You killed Jesus, they were screaming at us, the teachers were screaming at us. They were screaming at us and, and we were sitting, we were, we didn't sit at the same places as they did. This way, this way they could--this way were the Polish kids, this way were the Jewish kids, on this side. And we had, you know, little things but not together.

Hm.

And the teachers, God forbid there was a bad Jewish teacher. Uh, and they were miserable, really miserable anti-Semites. one of them was vicious, vicious. "You killed Jesus, you killed Jesus." And I asked my dad, at first I, I scary. We lived amongst non-Jews and we had very wonderful neighbors. As a matter of the fact that they were very friendly with my mom, she had a lot of friends. You know, in, in Poland a, a midwife was educated, a teacher was educated. They lived in the same area it seems forever, my bubby lived there and she was old, she was living with us. Uh, they were very friendly towards us, very friendly, she was very good to them too.

Did...

I mean, we, we--I didn't feel it really, except when I went to school.

So what, was there street violence at Easter time?

Um, not that they were killing people. It was violence, they were throwing stones, the kids. They were throwing um, uh, whatever, whatever--throwing water at us. Because they used the holy water at the church at the time...

Mm-hm.

whatever they were doing. So they were throwing water at us. We had a, we--Zwolen a church which goes back 1200 years, too. Was very--and they had uh, one of the poets besides all the priests, were buried there. And they took us to, to see certain things at the church. Again, we saw those skeletons, oy vey, you know their heads just make go down the stairs, but uh, always the same. And Sienkiewicz was buried there, he was a poet, he lived in ??? uh, like forest, they had a lot of forest. I hate to say this, but they had a beautiful country. Uh, every city was surrounded with the villages. And on Thursday's the villagers used to come uh, to the city with produce. And the people would buy it. And the Jewish people would, they had like uh, they were, they were making tables, or beds or--so, so they had a, out there. And some of them grow things, made um, so they, they either bartered or paid for money. I don't know with cows, ???.

Thursday was market day?

Yeah, yeah.