This is a photo of my mom’s mother, Sara Zlata Horowicz, née Rottenberg. She was very young at the time, when the photo was taken. I don’t know when and where it was. Grandma died before I was born, I didn’t know her.
Grandma Zlata died during labor, giving birth to her next child, she was twenty-something [According to the family saga Nad Bugiem - Rottenbergowie ze Skryhiczyna (By The River Bug - The Rottenbergs From Skryhiczyn) Zlata Rottenberg died in 1917. She was born in 1870s.] She managed to give birth to ten children. My mother was the oldest.
Grandma Zlata was born in Skryhiczyn, in Rottenberg family, which had a big estate there all the family lived at. As for Mom's uncles Rottenbergs, they were very religious. They wore beards, no payes as far as I remember, but they observed all the regulations. I remember there was no cooking on Saturdays, only the meals prepared the day before were kept in the oven. The dinner was very early in the day and before it Mom's aunt Hena used to call me over to have some gingerbread and milk. There was a small room in the manor, a synagogue of sorts, where Mom's uncles prayed together. They were very pious and used to go to a rabbi, tzaddik, to Gora Kalwaria I think. People in Skryhiczyn spoke Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish, with no Jewish accent but rather the rural one like everywhere in the Lublin region. Mom used to live there until she got married.
