”Artisans, merchants – the entire downtown was Jewish. Jews and Poles lived together in the city and the relationships between them were very good. There were more Poles. The Jews were progressive, but mostly practiced religion – the older ones at least; the younger were starting to assimilate a bit. When you walked on the street without wearing a cap, you stood out at once. There was an elementary school in Bodzentyn (a Polish one, I attended it as well) a teachers’ training college, a prayer house and a mikveh. The owner of the mikveh was called Binsztok. The mikveh was on Kielecka Street. The prayer house was next to the Catholic church, on Boznicza Street.”
 
“I had one close friend, Jankiel, the youngest of the richest family in town, the Szechters. They had a steam mill and hardware stores. With this mill they supplied electricity for the entire town. When there was no electricity in town, the residents arranged it with him, set up the posts and power would go from this mill. The mill would grind grain and supply electricity. They were the richest. They were the only ones in town who had a telephone. The phone was in the hall, next to the door. It wasn't like these modern ones, it had a crank. When you wanted to make a phone call, you had to crank this crank hard and long, and the headphone was separate. Poles – the gentry – had farms and the Szechters purchased all their grain, they’d grind it and sell it. When I was in second grade, this friend of mine got sick and had to have his appendix taken out.”
 
“There was no anti-Semitism at my school. All that was there, was that when they let us, boys, out for the break, into the schoolyard, we'd knock each other down, fight and call each other names. So sometimes one peasant child, when some Jew made him mad, would shout: ‘You beilis!’ And Beilis was, under tsarist rule, a Jew who lived in a small town, somewhere in the east, close to Romania, I don't remember exactly, who was accused of a ritual murder. At that time it was believed that Jews catch children for blood, to make matzah. This case took a very long time, but he was finally acquitted. At the same time in Poland, at Jasna Gora [a monastery] in Czestochowa, there was this Pole, his name was Macoch, who took care of the monastery. And different things got lost there, offerings and gold. Nobody knew who was stealing. And this Macoch was caught. It was at the same time: this case with Beilis for the ritual murder and Macoch being caught stealing. So when the boys were fighting with each other, then all you could hear was: ‘You beilis!’ and ‘You macoch!’ And that was all the quarreling.”

- Jacub Bromberg