Stephen Shooster trees causing their sons to go after me, and if they caught me, I caught a beating from them. This did not stop me from trying again as that fruit was beyond tempting and, as you might imagine, this made following my mom’s orders to buy milk and eggs put me into potential harm from those same boys. Also, if those boys did not catch me, somehow, my father would find out about my transgression and he would beat me, too. A few years before the war, the Polish government, adopting rules from Germany, made life for the Jews more difficult than any other race. The worst of these actions were decrees drastically increasing taxes only upon the Jews. My parents, already finan- cially on the edge had a hard time with this additional burden. To ease the situation, they rented out one of our two bedrooms, mine. So, I slept in the family room. My room was rented to a woman named Rachel Griebel. She was mentally impaired but harmless and loved to play with her cats. She had four of them. I think she was sup- ported by her sister in the United States. She did not work. She would receive letters with lots of interesting stamps from far away in America. My family had relatives in America as well, and every year we would receive a large package from them. Inside we would find clothing for my parents and all the kids, plus dolls for the girls. I used to scour that box for a toy or anything that would inter- est me. My parents would send them things, too. This is why I still have a photo of my family. Meanwhile, having a renter may have helped financially, but it was not enough money to make ends meet. So, the local government magistrate sent an officer to our home, and he glued a certificate to each piece of my mom’s precious French varnished pieces of furniture, showing that they now belonged to the State; it was sort of a lien, to settle taxes. After the taxman left my dad explained what the certificates were and I got so angry I ripped ‘em off. I guess you could consider us as lower middle class bor- dering on poverty, but prior to the taxes doubling, we were living a reasonably happy middle-class life. Our horses needed lots of attention on a daily basis. To help manage them, my dad had a dog named Spitz. His name matched his breed, a Spitz. I don’t remember how old he was, but at some point, he had a strange look on his face and started to foam from the mouth. This could only mean one thing, rabies, a disease that manifests itself with uncontrollable anger and frenzy. It was scary. I was the first to notice something was wrong. I told my father and he went to the local magistrate. They sent a policeman to our house. I knew the fellow they sent, Oleksiewcz; he lived near my friends, the Blauner’s, over by the candy store. Oleksiewcz was not a member of the Blue Police
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