Abraham, Majlech and Salomon Krygier

Abraham, Majlech and Salomon Krygier

My parents had seven of us, children. My five brothers, my sister Amalia and me, Salomea. There are three of my brothers in this picture. From left: Abraham, Majlech and Salomon. It was probably taken by one of the professional photographer's in Rzeszow. It must have been taken sometime in the late 1920s, before Abraham left for Argentina. You can also see that Majlech's left eye is sick. I got that picture in 1969 from my oldest brother, Zygmunt whom I visited in England. Abraham, whom everyone called Romek was born in 1904. He was very handsome, with artistic talents. He had a very good voice and everything. He organized theater performances, wrote scripts for himself and those kinds of things. I remember that when I was a little girl he would organize plays in our barn. As a young man he left for Argentina, because he had had enough of life like here, outside of society. And as soon as they were recruiting, he was the first one to apply, because he said he didn't want to live here, in these conditions. Yes. That was the recruitment of some international Jewish organization. There was no recruitment to Palestine then, because those hakhsharas, only started then these preparations for emigration. So he left. And this Romek somehow disappeared in Argentina. Disappeared in unexplained circumstances. They looked for him, but they couldn't find him. My brother Maks was born in 1907. His name was Majlech, but they called him Maks, and he dealt with farming. He managed our entire farm perfectly. There was an agricultural school near our farm and he had some friends there. It wasn't a Jewish school, but a Polish one, famous in all of Malopolska, in Milocin near Rzeszow. It was located in a forest, the school was very beautiful. And Maks had contacts there and that was where he got information from. His left eye was sick - you can even see it a bit in the photograph I have and a famous surgeon from Vienna operated on the eye. I think the surgeon's name was Michorowski, or something like that. And it was a huge family tragedy, because this surgeon cut his pupil. Nobody knew why. And Maks couldn't see in that eye. He was the only one who managed to get married before the war. He had two small children, but I don't remember their names. I don't remember his wife's name either. My youngest brother, Salomon, was seven years younger than I. I remember that when Salek was still very small, he used to walk around the village and there was this Jew there who raised goats, that's what he did for a living. Everyone in the village called him Kozubol [nickname derived from the Polish word for goat - 'koza']. So Salek used to go there, to that Jew, to see how the goats were doing and so on. And he used to address this Jew, 'You Kozubol' and the Jew would reply, 'You, listen, that's not my name.' Before the war Salek studied type-setting, but he later became allergic to this grease and he started working in trade, in a Jewish store. He was the manager of some warehouse, like those Jews used to have in those days, warehouses with textile materials.
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