Tag #106011 - Interview #78259 (Alina Fiszgrund)

For the summer vacations I often went to Spala [small town 50 km east of Lodz]. It's near Lodz, you went by bus. The bus service was privately- operated those days. There were Polish bus operators, and there were Jewish ones, so you had two buses a day 'hin und zurück' [German for there and back]. A nice place, beautiful forests. There was a little palace there where Moscicki [Ignacy Moscicki (1867-1949): president of Poland from 1926- 1939] used to come. I remember Mrs. Moscicka riding around on a horse. She was always escorted by cavalrymen, the 'uhlans' [traditional Polish cavalry formation, equipped with lances, sabers, and pistols]. The popular notion was that they were 'beautiful as dolls,' and they were indeed handsome, and were great horse riders. And those uniforms with the blue stripes, 'himmelblau' [German for 'skies-blue'].