It is a photo of my grandpa Hersz Horowicz, my mom’s father. I don’t know when and where it was taken. He died when I was a little child, so I don’t remember him well.
Grandpa came from Piotrkow Trybunalski. He floated timber from the Skryhiczyn woods to Gdansk by the Bug river. He had some business in Gdansk. He got married to Zlata Rottenberg in 1880s. They had ten children, I remember seven names: Motel, Jojl, Josel, Henoch, Chana, Ita and Mariem Szyfra - my mom. I think they lived at the time in Skryhiczyn.
After Grandma Zlata's death in 1917 he remarried a widow who already had some children, and later they had a daughter. They lived in Lodz. I remember him visiting Mom in Lublin once. I was 6 at the time I think. He brought us some toys. My elder sister also recalled visiting him in Lodz.
All the orphaned children of Zlata Horowicz grew up in Skryhiczyn at Grandpa Rottenberg's manor. Only the youngest daughter, Ita, lived with her father in Lodz. She studied and passed her final high school exams in Lodz. Inspired by a teacher she left for the already Soviet Russia and she lived there until her death. Her husband was called Rylski, he was the then First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party. They lived in Moscow, they had three children. She was shot with her husband in 1937, at the time of the Jagoda trials.
