I have several class photos from Goworowo. This seems to be from a public Polish school. It is my, Icchok Grynberg’s, sister Sara Grynberg’s class. At that time she was probably 9 years old. The photo was taken in the late 1920s. My sister is the first girl from the right side. Then you can see her friends: Lea Rozen, Zelda Szwarc and Rachel Budna. The man in the first row is the schoolmaster. My sister’s teacher is sitting right beside him.
My second sister, Sara, was studying and working, like me. Like all children in our family she was bahvutsinikh [Yiddish: enlightened] - well read, she had various interests. Sara was born in 1918 and completed 7 Polish grades [in a Polish public school]. Later she went to a religious school Beit Yaakov - Bais Yaakov if I were to speak in pure Jewish [Yiddish]. When she graduated from that school, she was 16. Then she went to Pultusk, to my father's cousin who had a photographic shop. His name was Lis. She studied photography there for two years. She worked when she was 17-18. (She took all the pictures I have from before the war).
Some time later she came to Goworowo with a camera and started fending for herself. With time she opened her own shop and was taking pictures. She took pictures of us, of others. She had her own equipment, although very modest. The shop was in the backyard. She hung a blanket there, as background. She had a chair and her own retouching equipment. I remember when the photographs were lying in water, when they were taken to the darkroom in the vestibule of the house. When the war broke out she was 19.
[During the war] Sara stayed in Magnitogorsk with Mom and Sister Malka. Sara got married there. She met her husband at the end of 1943. His name was Sender Izrael. They didn't take him to the army, just like us, because he was a tailor. And tailors were needed in Magnitogorsk. But his brother was with me in the stroibat [construction battalion, short for : stroitielni batalion], so Sara and Sender married under the chuppah. They didn't have to hide it, but it wasn't officially recognized. They also had a civil marriage. There were no celebrations, there was no money for it. (I wasn't at the wedding, because I was already mobilized to work at that time). They lived in the 5th uchastka [Russian: disctrict]. His parents were elderly and they lived with them. The were no rabbis in Magnitogorsk. There were also no synagogues.
