One goal of my journey to Zambrow was to see if I could find the home in which my grandfather, whom I called Zaidy (Yiddish for grandfather), grew up. My Zaidy was born in 1900 and left Zambrow in 1920. As far as I know, his parents continued to live in the same home until the outbreak of the Second World War.

When I left for Poland, I did not have much information to go on. I didn’t know the address, let alone the name of the street. What I did have, through my connection with the Zembrover Society, was a map of Jewish Zambrow that was drawn from memory by a person identified as H. Tsour who left Zambrow before the Second World War. Here is how Mr. Tsour remembered his home town:

The map identifies the major streets of the town as well as fourteen important landmarks of Jewish Zambrow.

I also had downloaded a map of contemporary Zambrow that I attempted to match up with Mr. Tsour’s map. Here is what Zambrow looks like today:

Comparing the maps revealed similarities and differences. I used the river, identified as the Zambrzyce in the Yizkor book and the Jablonka on today’s map, as a guide post. Both maps also contain the town center as well as the major street, Lomzynska, that heads out of town toward Lomza. Other details also match up, such as the location of the cemetery adjacent to Lomsynska Street, although the other major street on the contemporary map, Bialostocka, does not appear on the Jewish map, indicating that some street names had been changed after the war.

None of this mattered, of course, unless I could find out what street my Zaidy lived on. Absent this information, I figured that I would just walk around the town to get a sense of the kind of place he might have lived. 

Our first stop in Poland, before I went to Zambrow, was Warsaw. And one of our first destinations in Warsaw was the Jewish Historical Institute. As the website describes it, the institute 

“is the only institution in Poland focused entirely on the study of the history and culture of Poland Jews. It is the largest depository of Jewish-related archival documents, books, journals and museum objects.” http://www.taubephilanthropies.org/node/68

She researched the JRI-Poland data base, which lists Polish documents that have been archived, such as birth and marriage, but nothing that contained an address. I learned the names of relatives going back five generations, but nothing about where in Zambrow they lived. 

She decided to check one last source: a directory of professions. Fortunately, I knew my great grandfather’s profession. My mother had told me, that, of all things, he dealt in flaxseed oil. I recalled my aunt telling me that he was so identified with this profession that he was called “Chone the Oilisher” (Chone, short for Elchanan, the oil maker.) The researcher pulled a book off the shelf that was essentially a yellow pages from Poland from 1930, entitled the “1930 Poland and Danzig Business Directory (Trade, Industry, Handicraft and Agriculture.” The Directory is indexed by town. So we looked up Zambrow. And on the Zambrow page, we found the following: 

And on this page, the following entry, which I have enlarged:

Olejarnie means oil mill. My great grandfather’s last name was Wierzbowicz, his first name was Chone. He lived, therefore, on Jatkowa (pronounced Yatkova) Street. (Interestingly, my great grandmother’s maiden name was Kon, and so it is possible that someone else in her family was also in the same trade.)

And so I had street name. And, sure enough, Jatkowa Street appeared on the Jewish Zambrow map:

As you can see, Jatkowa street runs east and west, parallel to Kosciuszki and Swietokozyska streets, and went into the central market. But, that name was not on the contemporary Zambrow map. However, Kosciuszki and Swietokozyska streets are on the map:

Therefore, the name of the street must have been changed from Jatkowa Street to Mickiewisza Street. (Adam Mickiewicz was a famous 19th Century Polish nationalist poet, whose names appears on many streets in Poland.) 

The town market square, which was adjacent to Jatkowa Street was no longer there. It had been replaced by a park. 

As I reached Mickiewicz Street, I saw the usual Soviet era apartment houses. But then, on the other side, there was a house that appeared as if from a bygone era. If this wasn’t my Zaidy’s home, it probably looked pretty close to how it actually looked.

The house looked even less prepossessing on closer inspection:

Maybe, just maybe, it had, or used to have, enough area around it to house an oil mill:

I may or may not have found my grandfather’s home, but, coming to Zambrow 95 years after he left the town, I probably came as close as I could.