Stefa (Sarah) Sprecher Kupfer - July 24, 1987
Relations with Non-Jews
Did your father, or you, or your mother have any relationships with non-Jews in Sanok?
My father was in the store and he had a lot of non-Jewish customers. Um, I don't think my mother did, I went to a Polish school so I knew Polish children, there was some that their parents had stores across from my father's store and we would meet in the afternoon when our mothers would come and visit the husbands in the store and then the children would meet in the street, too.
Do you remember any anti-Semitism that your family felt?
Not personally, but I remember it was shortly before the war and before the Christmas holidays the college students that would come home for vacation would stand in front of the Jewish stores and boycott and not let non-Jews go in. They wanted them to buy from Polish people.
How about your parents or your grandparents, did they experience any that you know of?
Many times, when my grandfather would go to shul in the evening for evening prayers, Grandmother would send me and my cousin to go pick up Grandfather because they used to throw stones at him. He was wearing ear locks and long beard and we sort of protected him. We walked with him home.
What do you remember about your grandfather besides that?
He was most of the time, he was learning, he was a business man, he was in the store, but then he would come home and sit with a great book in front of him and learn. That's the picture of him I remember mostly. We would have our Purim in my grandparent's house and the whole family would get together there, it was a custom. They only went to well-to-do people and there was a group of performers and they would come and do the Purim spiel. And, I remember that from my grandfather.
Did they live near you?
The lived very close, my parents were neighbors.
So on Friday night would you be at their house or at yours?
Friday nights before the war, we would spend separately, but during the war after my father wasn't there anymore, we would go to my grandparents' house because it was only Momma and my sister and me.
When was your sister born?
My sister was born in 1938. Right before the war. A year before.
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