[We started a discussion of what happened to the pieces of gravestones that were used to pave the court in front of the Town Hall. More on this later.]
Sidney Herbst is credited as the filmmaker. [Note: I talked to Noel Herbst today. He found his father's film in the basement and made it available. Thanks, Noel.]
About the Herbst name: Tante Feige Herbst was married to Marcus Herbst, so I bet that these are the same families. Several Herbsts were guests at my great-grandparents, S Josef Kreinik and Fannie Krantz Kreinik's 50th wedding anniversary. "Mr. and Mrs. Marcus Herbst, Mr. Joel Herbst, Mr. Pincus Herbst,..."
One sequence in the film is labeled "Kreinick Family Residence" and there is a shot of a building and this family standing in front. Can we identify these people?
The child might have been born around 1930 or '31.
There is an index of people registered in Sedziszow at the USHMM. Link and Here.
There is a description of the film project below.
Kreiniks who might be in this frame.
Here is a copy of the video on YouTube. The cover shot is of the Kreiniks.
From the Sędziszów Małopolski website: "As with other cities, accurate data on Kawęczynie provides census of 1933, the village was then 142 buildings, of which only one was a brick. 102 houses had only one room, 122 hid thatch, in 105 there was no floor. Population was 864 people."
Stanley Kreinik visited Sędziszów in 2004, and reported that there was still no running water. Maybe the pump you see in the film was still in use.
More Photos from JewishGen.
I am pretty sure that Sędziszów we are talking about is Sędziszów Małopolski, because it is only 16-18 kilometers from Zgłobień where my grandmother Leah Kreinik Jacobowitz was born:
Stanley Kreinik visited Sędziszów in 2004, and reported that there was still no running water. Maybe the pump you see in the film was still in use.
More Photos from JewishGen.
I am pretty sure that Sędziszów we are talking about is Sędziszów Małopolski, because it is only 16-18 kilometers from Zgłobień where my grandmother Leah Kreinik Jacobowitz was born:
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"The city of Rzeszow, known to its Jewish population as "Reishe".
My grandmother also refers to it that way in her memoir:
"We went to the big town at intervals by horse and wagon to sell our dairy produce – a big city called Rzeszow, which, in the way of Jewish folk with all names, they pronounced “Reishe.”
[There is a description of Rzeszow at the Holocaust Ghettos Research Project Rzezsow. On that page we read, "By June 1940, the number of Jews in Rzeszow had decreased to 11,800, of whom 7,800 were pre-war residents of the city. At the same time, the number of Jews in the towns and villages of the Rzeszow region were (with the number of refugees in brackets):
Blazowa – 931 (139), Czudec 428 (33), Glogow M. – 806 (87), Kolbuszowa – 1,427 (700), Lancut – 900 (502), Niebylec – 570 (20), Ranizow – 620 (63), Sedziszow – 110 (81), Sokolow M. – 1,700 (186), Strzyzow – 1,238 (174), Tyczyn – 500 (140), Zolynia – 700 (103), Lezajsk – (500)."]
So Sedziszow Malapolski is near enough to Rzeszow to conveniently bring their Jews, for Leah to visit from Zgłobień when Uncle Aaron married Tante Gittel in 1899, and for Leah to go to Reishe on market day and to see the Good Kaiser Franz Josef once when he passed through.
TODAY
Look at the building in the Herbst video (above) at 1:30 and compare it with this image from the cam at
From the Sedziszow Web Site, http://www.sedziszow-mlp.pl/pl/0,25/25/
"The Town Hall was built in the seventeenth century, in the nineteenth century, it was rebuilt. It is a building storeys, cellar, built on a rectangular plan. It is located in the middle of a large, rectangular market. The front facade is distinctive, northern, dominated by the tower, separated from the walls of the building two pilaster strips.Above the entrance bears the coat of arms of the city - Odrowąż above - two Gothic arched windows, covered arcade (the effect of the reconstruction of the nineteenth century).The upper part of the tower has a square shape with bevelled corners. Is covered with a high, pitched roof with dormers, from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, while the body of the building is hidden roof. The interior layout is trójtraktowy. In the basement and on the ground floor have been preserved barrel vaults. There is reason to believe that the Town Hall is a multi-level basement and connect with others, which are under houses, standing in the market."
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3 comments:
Andrew Kreinik, Feb 16, 2013: "David,
Thanks for this email.
I know that Stanley has a longer video because I have seen it at his house. Perhaps, he would be willing to palce it in the archives so that all can see it.
The picture on your blog of the Kreinik family are undoubtedly Kreiniks the family resemblance to my grandfather of the two men on the right is strong. The woman in the photo may be my great grandmother Frimet.
About the town square. You'll not in the pictures from 1935, it is unpaved. In fact one of my cousins Jean Chall, described to me that it was always muddy. According to Pani Plata Urbanska who I met in 1975 in Sediszow and testified to me about the fate of the Kreinik family, the town square was paved during WWII by taking the gravestones from the Jewish cemetery and laying them in the townsquare. The Jewish cemetery stilll exists but in place of gravestones, there are two large mounds. These were the sites of the mass graves of the Jews executed in Sediszow in 1942. Pani Plata described in grisly detail about the executions and the mass graves. It is a description that I will never forget and have not shared with many people because it is very difficult to find the words without feeling the pain. Pani Plata cried while she descibed the events and stopped several times stating that she couldn't go on...then she would take a deep breath and tell me that she needed to tell me so that I would know.
Pani Plata as a Catholic Pole survived but she told me about her own survival and how she had to crawl with her baby to avoid the Nazis.
I corresponded with her for a few years, in German, but have lost touch though I did correspond briefly with her daughter who was with us at the time Pani Plata testified to me. Matt Yospin and Stanley Kreinik have met the daughter when they visited Sediszow.
Andrew"
More from Andrew Kreinik. These all can be reframed and posted on another place for posterity
"Yes, David, feel free to post the email.
I looked at the video and when you see the long shot of the Kreinik family, you can see the Plata house to the left. It was a distinctive house because it is made of brick with stone trimmed windows. I believe that at one time Pani Plata's father was the mayor. so the house is a bit fancier than the rest. The Kreinik house was destroyed either during World War II or just after it. When I was there, the site housed a restaurant. Pani Plata took me to her backyard and told me that her garden was unchanged since the Kreiniks were neighbors so that I was looking at what they also saw.
During World War I, the Kreinik house had been turned into a stable for Russian horses. The family had fled to Prague during the war and found in bad repair when they returned.
The economics of Sedsiszow changed dramatically after World War I because it was no longer part of an Empire and travel to Germany, Austria and Hungary were much more restricted. My great-grandfather could no longer travel to Berlin, Vienna and Budapest where he bought old clothes from nobility and sent them back to Sedsiszow where his wife (Frimet) and my grandfather, as a child, repaired the clothes for resale. Pani Plata told me that she remembered that the shop had beautiful things. After the WWI, the Kreiniks in Sedsiszow faced financial ruin and were dependent on remittances from America.
Is it possible that the men in the "Kreinick Family Residence" photo are Chaim Kreinik's sons?
http://www.geni.com/people/Chaim-Kreinik/6000000010841676300
Chaim's Birth: estimated between 1844 and 1896 Sędziszów, Poland.
Father of Manny Kreinik; Morris Kreinik; Marcus Kreinik; Joseph (Ida's) Kreinik and Helena Kreinik
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