Stories by author "Tosia Schneider": 17
Stories
German Occupation
"Well, the first week that they were there, they erected eight gallows in the city center and just randomly selected eight Jews and hanged them. They came to the Jewish synagogue and trashed it, burned the Torah scrolls and the prayer books, and…
World War II Breaks Out
"In 1939, I was eleven years old, and our family happened to be vacationing in the Carpathian Mountains... Life seemed absolutely beautiful. I splashed in a brook, and I just thought the future was full of promise. Somehow in the middle of…
Expelling Polish Jews from Germany
"I had an uncle who lived in Leipzig, Germany, and the letters were coming from him, and the family would get together and worry what’s going to happen. And he used to say that his boss was a Nazi but that he would protect him. He liked him…
Moving to Horodenka
"When I was six we moved to my mother’s hometown of Horodenka., At that time I started elementary-- Polish elementary school-- every morning, and every afternoon from three to five, Hebrew school."
Anti-Semitism in Poland
"It was subtle but it was there. In 1935, when President Piłsudski died, and the right wing party took over, there were some, laws propagated that were definitely anti-Semitic, like ritual slaughter forbidden. What I recall that was really painful…
A Holiday Memory
"One beautiful memory is going traveling to the neighboring town of Horodenka, my mother’s home place, for a Passover seder-- for a Passover meal. And the whole family, my mother’s family was there. My grandfather in a white silken robe as was…
A Happy Childhood
"I was born in 1928 in a little resort town Zaleszczyki on the Dniester River, in Poland. Today this is part of the Ukraine.
In that little town lived my [paternal] grandmother, my uncle Rosenbaum and two cousins. My father worked in export…