[Page 256]

No	Popular Name	Official Name	Name Given to Street in mid 1930's	Comments & Clarifications
1	The Market	Stari Rink (the Old Market)	Platz Pilsutskigo	Named after the Polish leader
2	Plotzki Street	Plotzka	Ridz-Shmigli
3	Dols (Doli)			After the Polish Marshall Descent. An alley that leads down to the river and the “Lava”[1]
4	Dols (Doli)	Shvintago Vazhnitza[2]	P.O.W.	“Polska Organizatzia Waiskovo” – Polish Military Organization[3]
5	Dobrin Road		Piastovska	After Piast – the first Polish king
6	The street opposite the small park	Studolana (Barn Street)	Narotovitcha	After the first Polish president, Narutovitch, who was assassinated by a Polish Nationalist
7	Zhava Street	Zhavia	Pirwashago Maya	May Day, for the international workers' holiday
8	The street near Zelma Beries	Zhelona (Green)
9	The street near the New Market (or: near the “Vanzhnia” – Prison)	Pirogova	Piratzkigo	After the Polish Interior Minister, who was killed by a political opponent
10	The New Market	Novi Rink	Platz Shostego Shrepnia	Sixth of August Place[4]
11	Boborova Road	Tchalpine	Zheromskigo	After the Polish writer Stefan Zharomski
12	The street near the monastery	Klashturna	Tazhchego Maya	Third of May. In honor of the Polish Constitution, which was signed on May 3, 1793
13	Rypin Road		Lipnovaska	The road to Lipno
14	Rypin Road		Ripinskaya	The road to Rypin
15	“Vloka” Road		Biazhonska	The road to Biezun
16	School Street	Shkolna[5]	Shpitalna	Hospital Street, after the hospital on this street
17	Fara Street	Farska
18	The Jewish Street	Varshavska	Dashinskigo	After the leader of the P.P.S, Party, Dashinski[6]
19	“Mikve” Street
20	“Kartofel mit Ferfel Geslach”			Streets of potatoes with barley flakes[7]
21	The street near the “Kamnitza” (the large brick building)		Gurna	An elevated street (spread out on the hill)
22	The street near the synagogue			A small street that led to the cemetery
23	The lane near the house of Dudia Tchernotchepka			A lane that led to the river and the “Lava”[8]
24	The near Horovitz's house			A lane that led to the river and the “Lava”
Vlikes (Vloka) – a (former) suburb that was incorporated into the town and had the following two streets:
25	Bezhiun (Bizhun) Road		Kilinskigo	After the Polish national hero in the Kosciusko uprising of 1794, Kilinskigo
26	Drubnin (Drubin) Road		Raimont	After the Polish author Vladislav Raimont, winner of the Nobel Prize for literature

Translator's Footnotes

1. The crossing over the “Zhika” (Sierpianitza River) between Plotzki Street and the Jewish Street. Return
2. St. Vazhinietz, a Catholic saint. Return
3. An underground organization formed at the end of the First World War. Return
4. The day the Polish Legion, under Pilsudski's command, left Krakow for the front and the war against Russia, August 6, 1914. Return
5. After the school that was on this street. Return
6. “Polska Partia Sotzialistichna” – Socialist Workers' Party. Return
7. Two small streets, made up of poor people, which were called after the most popular food there. Return
8. The crossing over the “Sierpianitza” between the Jewish Street and Plotzki Street. Return

[Page 274]

My birthplace is the village of Kikol, and not Sierpc, but Sierpc is etched in my memories of the first ten years of my life. They are as close to me as Rehovoth is to Sha'arayim^[2]. I feel that I am inseparable from the town of Sierpc, as if I was born there, and the town is very important in my family's history. Sierpc is where my family and my relatives lived. My grandfather and grandmother, my father and mother, my uncle and aunt and cousins - all lived in Sierpc. I remember those far off days, before my father immigrated to the United States, when I was ten years old.

Sierpc and Kikol were part of my being; there I absorbed the Jewish way of life, traditions, and customs - everything that's called “heimkeit”. These two places were more than a geographic unit; they were the essence of Judaism, an inseparable part of “Yiddishkeit” that united and sustained our people in Poland and in the rest of the diaspora, and is the main reason for their existence as Jews.

Like other towns and villages in the diaspora, Sierpc was one of the strongholds of the enlightenment and the Zionist tradition. My childhood memories of the town of Sierpc became stronger and clearer when I visited in 1925. I was about thirty years old then, and this was my first trip to Europe since I came to America as a child. First I went to Poland and Sierpc, and then I went to the land of Israel.

I found that Sierpc had changed a lot in the twenty years since I had left. But there can be no doubt that Poland went through many transformations after the First World War; places changed, there were new people. One figure did not change - that was my grandmother. I found her exactly the same as when we left her to go to America. An elderly women, wise and sharp, but still ready to reprimand a “sheigetz”^[3] like me. She sat on the sidewalk with a copy of “Tzeina VeReina”^[4] in her hands, a pair of glasses perched on her nose, with a look of devotion and piety on her face. She was engrossed in her reading and would stop only to serve the occasional customer.

I was in Kikol and Sierpc for only three days, because I was in a rush to get back. I reviewed my childhood days hastily, and now, after thirty-five years, I see that the real culture of our times and our forefather's' times was there, both visible and hidden to the naked eye. It was rooted deep within the spiritual life of the Jews of Sierpc and Kikol.

Everything is finished and gone, blown away by the malicious waves of an indifferent history. But we, the natives of those small towns in Poland will not forget. We will remember and understand that this was the true significance of our existence as Jews; the heart of a philosophical outlook that is a vision of the true Judaism.

1. Meir Weisgal (1894-1977) was a president of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovoth, Israel. Return
2. Sha'arayim is a neighborhood in the southern part of the city of Rehovoth, Israel. Return
3. non-Jew, assimilated Jew Return
4. A book of homilies in Yiddish for Jewish women Return

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