A Tale of Love and Darkness

SO THE eighteen-year-old Fania, following in the footsteps of her elder sister Haya, was sent in 1931 to study at the university in Prague, because in Poland the universities were virtually closed to Jews. Mother studied history and philosophy. Her parents, Hertz and Itta, like all the Jews of Rovno, were witnesses and victims of the anti-Semitism that was growing among their Polish neighbors and among the Ukrainians and Germans, Catholic and Orthodox Christians-acts of violence by Ukrainian hooligans and increasingly discriminatory measures by the Polish authorities. And, like the rumble of distant thunder, echoes reached Rovno of deadly incitement to violence and the persecution of Jews in Hitler's Germany.

My grandfather's business affairs were also in crisis: the inflation of the early 1930s wiped out all his savings overnight. Aunt Sonia told me about "loads of Polish banknotes for millions and trillions that Papa gave me, that I wallpapered my room with. All the dowries that he had been saving for ten years for the three of us went down the drain in two months. " Haya and Fania soon had to abandon their studies in Prague because the money, their father's money, had almost run out.