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I remember Horodenka well. Rynek Street was in the center. It was a street of single-story detached and semi-detached houses. There were fewer two- story houses and so ours stood out a little. It was a typical Jewish street. The only non-Jewish resident, Mr Dylewski, a Ukrainian, had a restaurant three doors down from us. The street ran along one side of a large square down to the town bathhouse. Jewish artisans lived and worked on Rynek Street. Most of them were carpenters. Here and there was a cobbler or a little shop where you could buy all sorts of small things. There was a baker, too, and a butcher's shop run by Catholics. They had non-kosher meat and cold cuts: sausage, blood pudding, scraps.
The main street in Horodenka was cobbled. That road was on the route from Kolomyja to Zaleszczyki. There were a few detached houses - one of the people who lived there was the rov, who had a house with a garden and an orchard. And a little further on was the elementary school that we went to before the war. That was a large, several-story building with a large yard where we could play during the breaks. Further on were detached houses; lawyers and doctors lived there. The court and the prison were nearby. On the right was the Ukrainian grammar school, which was converted into a boys' ten-grade school in the Soviet period, and further on, outside town, was the sports stadium, and there football matches and some festivities were held. Three bridges linked the town to its suburbs. The river flowed under the bridges and there were even two mills along the way. In the area around the stadium lived the majority of the Jewish poor in wooden or tin huts. That was stinking squalor - the streets didn't have drains. You didn't even want to walk that way. I had two friends there, brothers; they studied very hard at school. They lived in terrible poverty. Their father traded in old bric-a-brac, he bought old pots, alte zachen. They were killed in the first Aktion [first liquidation of the ghetto]. One of them was called Mojsze, but I can't remember their surname.
On the whole the houses in Horodenka were made of brick or stone, though some, in the suburbs, were mixed, stone and wooden blocks, but most of them were houses with tin roofs. Some of them, like our neighbor's, who was a cattle-food merchant, had shingle roofs. Only very occasionally were the roofs tiled, because that was a material that was unknown then. The street itself was graveled. There were some streets that were so muddy and full of puddles after rain that they were hard to cross.
At the beginning of the 1930s there was no street-lighting, but just before Pilsudski's death [1935] electric lamps started to go up. I remember that once there were electrical wires on the streets, on 1 May we children had fun tying red rags to string and throwing them up onto the wires, and then later the police or the fire brigade had trouble getting the red rags down.
In Horodenka there was a cinema, and it was there that I saw my first film on the big screen. Aunt Frydzia took me with her fiance, who was called Szpilfogel; he was the goalkeeper in the Jewish football team. He was tall and hid me under his coat to go in, because I was too young for that film. The film was called 'Prosecutor Andreyev', Russian. That was 1936, or maybe 1935. And during the Soviet occupation there were barracks in that cinema hall. In the cellars they stored barrels of cabbage, gherkins in brine and tomatoes, and when the Russians escaped and the Hungarians occupied the town, the people brought the food out, and I took home a bucket of green tomatoes in brine, which was something that had never been on our menu before.
I think that in Horodenka and on the outskirts of the town there must have been between 4,000 and 4,500 Jews. Not all of them were artisans; there were a few farmers and petty merchants, who didn't live on the Jewish streets. The whole town numbered 10,000-12,000 citizens. About 3,000-3,500 Ukrainians lived on the outskirts; only the Ukrainian intelligentsia lived in the town itself - doctors, teachers and lawyers. And there were more or less 2,500-3,000 Poles: all the administrative posts, schools, all the civil servants.
The main street in Horodenka was cobbled. That road was on the route from Kolomyja to Zaleszczyki. There were a few detached houses - one of the people who lived there was the rov, who had a house with a garden and an orchard. And a little further on was the elementary school that we went to before the war. That was a large, several-story building with a large yard where we could play during the breaks. Further on were detached houses; lawyers and doctors lived there. The court and the prison were nearby. On the right was the Ukrainian grammar school, which was converted into a boys' ten-grade school in the Soviet period, and further on, outside town, was the sports stadium, and there football matches and some festivities were held. Three bridges linked the town to its suburbs. The river flowed under the bridges and there were even two mills along the way. In the area around the stadium lived the majority of the Jewish poor in wooden or tin huts. That was stinking squalor - the streets didn't have drains. You didn't even want to walk that way. I had two friends there, brothers; they studied very hard at school. They lived in terrible poverty. Their father traded in old bric-a-brac, he bought old pots, alte zachen. They were killed in the first Aktion [first liquidation of the ghetto]. One of them was called Mojsze, but I can't remember their surname.
On the whole the houses in Horodenka were made of brick or stone, though some, in the suburbs, were mixed, stone and wooden blocks, but most of them were houses with tin roofs. Some of them, like our neighbor's, who was a cattle-food merchant, had shingle roofs. Only very occasionally were the roofs tiled, because that was a material that was unknown then. The street itself was graveled. There were some streets that were so muddy and full of puddles after rain that they were hard to cross.
At the beginning of the 1930s there was no street-lighting, but just before Pilsudski's death [1935] electric lamps started to go up. I remember that once there were electrical wires on the streets, on 1 May we children had fun tying red rags to string and throwing them up onto the wires, and then later the police or the fire brigade had trouble getting the red rags down.
In Horodenka there was a cinema, and it was there that I saw my first film on the big screen. Aunt Frydzia took me with her fiance, who was called Szpilfogel; he was the goalkeeper in the Jewish football team. He was tall and hid me under his coat to go in, because I was too young for that film. The film was called 'Prosecutor Andreyev', Russian. That was 1936, or maybe 1935. And during the Soviet occupation there were barracks in that cinema hall. In the cellars they stored barrels of cabbage, gherkins in brine and tomatoes, and when the Russians escaped and the Hungarians occupied the town, the people brought the food out, and I took home a bucket of green tomatoes in brine, which was something that had never been on our menu before.
I think that in Horodenka and on the outskirts of the town there must have been between 4,000 and 4,500 Jews. Not all of them were artisans; there were a few farmers and petty merchants, who didn't live on the Jewish streets. The whole town numbered 10,000-12,000 citizens. About 3,000-3,500 Ukrainians lived on the outskirts; only the Ukrainian intelligentsia lived in the town itself - doctors, teachers and lawyers. And there were more or less 2,500-3,000 Poles: all the administrative posts, schools, all the civil servants.
Period
Location
Poland
Interview
tomasz miedzinski