Stephen Shooster the Jewish children were given the choice to be excused from class. I, of course, had no problem with this practice, as I was always glad for any reason to be excused from class. Everything seemed normal enough for me, but I had a very limited understanding of how such subtle discrimination prepares the groundwork for more extreme practices. I was soon to learn just how extreme those practices could be. Looking back, no one would have guessed that my world was as fragile as crystal. It did not take much for everything to shatter. It started with the authority figures in my life. They became weak and helpless, seemingly overnight. Then, before long, my race was despised, ridiculed, restricted from basic essential products, like food and soap, finally to be killed at random, deported, and concentrated like rats into ghettos only later to be treated far worse. With all of this my somewhat peripheral awareness of myself as a Jew suddenly became my most defining characteristic. My home was a small house made of wooden logs with clay forced between them to seal the house from the cold. It was a sturdy building with four rooms, an attic, and a cellar. The construction method was common for the area. The only thing different about our house was a roof made of tin; it made rainfall sound like a clattering sym- phony. Our home rested on a quarter of an acre of land with a small attached stable where my father kept 6 to 8 horses, all of which were for sale, except for one my father used for his own purposes. On the opposite side of the stable was the outhouse that drained into a cesspool below ground. Luckily, we did not have to go too far in the cold of win- ter to use this. But, more likely we would just use a chamber pot inside the house and throw it out in the morning. The heart of the home, like most homes, was the kitchen,
and the main feature of the kitchen was a brick and clay stove that doubled as a heater. We spent many nights gathering around that small heater. I was born in this home on October 30th, 1926. When you first walked into the house, there was a foyer. It provided a little bit of protection from the cold and snow and served as a place where we could hang up our coats and take our snow- covered shoes off, so they wouldn’t make the house a mess. This front entrance served a dual purpose. There were two
The Schagrin Family Home 149 Hungarian Street, Grybow, Poylan
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