Sunday October 21, 2007: On Visiting Szczuczyn

View From The Church Plaza

Szczuczyn Yard

View From Village Square

SZCZUCZYN STREETS

Dasia On Church Steps

Pawel on The Square

Pawel and Dasia Church Plaza

Szczuczyn Road

Old Szczuczyn Home

Mark and Dasia

Szczuczyn

Camera Discussion

Szczuczyn Village Coat Of Arms

Szczuczyn Home

Roadside Cross

Dasia's Pretty Smile

Szczuczyn Road

Steps To Church

Szczuczyn Village Hall

Szczuczyn Road

Szczuczyn Church Interior

Church Entrance Dated 1705

For the longest time in my life I had only sketchy information concerning where my father’s family originated. As I advanced in age this information became somehow important to me. It is the kind of knowledge that doesn’t change your life but rather helps to complete the circle. I began to questioning my father’s surviving relatives and through my Aunt Rachel I verified that the family originated in Russia, a small shtetl in Russia. Something did not set correctly with me as I remember my father saying that it was Poland, but not at the time that the family resided there. During the years that I have spent with my mentor and collogue, Dr. Kazimierz Braun, he has carefully taught me the history of Poland including the terrible partitions of the Polish nation by the Austrian Hungarian Empire, the Prussians, the Germans, Russia, and the Soviet Union. This is a nation that has suffered through the centuries and has emerged as a stable democracy. My Aunt continued to provide details of the family and how they were unable to locate the shtetl in the former Soviet Union. The only location that they were able to find was too far in the east to have been the point of origin for our family. I informed her of my research on Szczuczyn in eastern Poland, specifically in the Podlasie Voivodeship, which is similar to a county. I had contacted the author of a web site specifically about Szczuczyn and through his records and that of Vital records in Szczuczyn, I discovered that my surname, spelled with a single “T” in the middle of the name was indeed recorded in Szczuczyn’s vital records. Living here at the Academy here in Bialystok, my friends Pawel and Dasia made is possible for the three of s to visit Szczuczyn which is located west of Bialystok and south of Grajewo, Poland. The drive was very pleasant and in short order we arrived in Szczuczyn. Through the kindness of my friends I was able to walk the village square and streets of my ancestors. Szczuczyn was once a thriving shtetl until the dark days of the Second World War. Jewish life in Szczuczyn was extinguished in just a few weeks with the German invasion. Please follow the link for the Szczuczyn web site to learn of the fate of the approximately 3,000 Jewish souls that perished in the Holocaust. This web site contains pictures and testimony from the few survivors. Also contained on this site is the text of the Yizkor book for Szczuczyn. As a historic researcher I am compelled to study these texts, as a human they bring tears to my eyes from the horrors contained within the pages of this book. I am truly fortunate knowing that my family had left Szczuczyn long before these horrors began. My great grand father Isaac and his brothers, along with my grandfather Stanley left Szczuczyn in the late 1800s. Isaac and his three brothers Moe and another who’s name escapes me at the moment, were bakers in Szczuczyn and had decided to immigrate to America in the immigration that was occurring at that time. I had wanted to stop at Grajewo to check on my great grand mother’s family but time did not permit. The family immigrated to New York, specifically Brooklyn, where they operated a Bagel and Bialy bakery with ovens that were in the basement of the building and the ovens extended under the street. My grand father Stanley grew up in Brooklyn and at age 15 or 16 enlisted in the U.S. Army and went to France to fight in the Vosges Mountains where he met and married my grand mother Bertha in the small village famed for its violins and other stringed instruments known as Mirecourt. In a short period of time the Army discovered the shenanigans that my grandfather, the under aged soldier, had perpetrated upon them and sent him back home to America, without Bertha. In a years time Bertha was sent to America on a ship out of the port of Amsterdam. I often wondered why I like Amsterdam so very much. Could it be the family history there? All the preceding aside, I was walking the streets of my ancestors village. You will notice that all signs of shtetl life have been erased, never to return. The church there is lovely and was constructed in 1705 and would have overshadowed my family’s life in Szczuczyn.

Szczuczyn, Poland