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earth to a great thickness on all sides, and on the
topmost layer stretched out over the entire area
were chestnut trees, widespread and lovely to
behold, in whose shade many young people rested
and spent time during the summer months.
This basement-mound formerly served as
storage space for fruit, potatoes, and more. During
the Austro-German occupation, part of it
served as a prison and after that as a storage place
for potatoes (when the Austrians evacuated the
city in the fall of 1918 and the Poles took over,
many Jews were killed and wounded by the
Polish police when hungry masses burst into the
cellar to get potatoes).
A number of stories and legends were woven
around this basement-mound: stories of spirits
and ghosts that lived there, of its rooms and
countless hiding places that twisted around and
made their way to the center of the marketplace.
All efforts to penetrate it were unsuccessful, and
anyone who tried did not come out the same as
he went in.
The Jews lived on the seven major streets of
the city and its many alleywaysabout 14 in
number. The non-Jewish residents also lived on
seven streets and a number of alleyways, some of
which were the continuation of the streets where
Jews lived. Most of the houses were single-story
THE EARLY DAYS 45
Partial northeasterly view of
the marketplace in 1917.
wooden structures, and a few were brick, called
"walls." Most of the roofs on Jewish houses were
shingles (shindlen), and of the non-Jews, straw.
Fires were a frequent occurrence, and the biggest
became a kind of historical landmark by which to
date birthdays and various other events. Often we
heard from our grandparents: "This happened in
such and such a year, after the big fire."
The elders of the city and recorders of its
history figure the beginnings to have been in the
15th century, and perhaps even before, if one
relies on oral history passed from generation to
generation.
To support their words they would bring
proof from the old cemetery. There were two
cemeteries in town, both quite large; the first, the
old cemetery, spread out within the confines of
the city near the road leading to the railroad
station, was estimated to be hundreds of years
old. Its southern portion had almost no remaining
headstones, for most had sunk into the ground
over the years or had disintegrated because of
rain and wind.
In this section there were a few great oak trees
whose crowns spread wide and that were thought
to be hundreds of years old; in the northern
section, where thick trees grew very close together,
many tombstones still remained, as did a