Kazimierz Szczerbatko and his wife are happy to host us in their home even though we are six people who have arrived uninvited. It is difficult to fit us all into their small living room but our hostess immediately takes six fine crystal glasses out of the glass-door cabinet and offers soda water and cake. Kazimierz shows us a few books he has written about Zakroczym and tries to explain to us a little of the town’s history with the help of Izio our guide and interpreter. Kazimierz was not born in Zakroczym and didn’t know the residents before the war. He takes us for a tour of the town and shows us the school that received a direct hit in the war but was rebuilt at exactly the same spot. Grandmother Shoshana’s school! The same school where Moti Pelva told a joke in Yiddish and was punished and forced to stand in the corner beneath the statue of Jesus on the cross.

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Grandmother Shoshana: “Every Shabbat we walked to the home of my grandparents Abraham Eliyahu and Rachel. Sheindle, my mother’s sister, was always there too. Together we would go down to the Vistula Fridays to wash in the ‘mikve’. It was about a 2Km walk. My grandmother would prepare delicacies stuffed with wild blackberries that everyone loved. Friday night we all sang psalms and songs competing who could sing louder. It was always very happy and there was plenty of delicious food. Shabbat mornings my father and grandfather would read from big holy books bound in luxurious leather – books like I have never seen since.

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We part from Kazimierz Szczerbatko and from Zakroczym’s rynek (town square) that is tiled with the original stones grandmother Shoshana often spoke about. There are things that don’t change over time. It’s too bad grandmother Shoshana could not be here to see it today.


Nine days of an exciting and binding expedition are coming to an end. It is difficult to digest all we have learned and experienced. It is difficult to comprehend how a whole, culturally rich, Jewish world was destroyed with a strike of Nazi cruelty.

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