Poklosie Page #4

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- That's right.

Soil's good there,

you plant wheat this year?

Some...

- God almighty... What is that?

- It's the stones.

What stones?

These are the stones I took drom

the roads, and other places, too.

- I brought them here...

- What for?

Dunno. It just seemed right...

- How many are there?

- 328.

- All by yourself?

- Yep.

In our field.

That's why they're still standing.

Where'd you get them?

In '98 when the flood

swept away the main road

we started using

the old tannery road again.

After we cleared it

we found these stones.

During the war the Germans tore up the

synagogue and the old Jewish cemetery.

They used the gravestones

to reinforce the road

from the station to the tannery.

It stayed that way till '55 when

the county laid the new road.

The old one grew over and folks forgot

about the stones. Until the flood came.

I kind of figured it wasn't right...

You got all of them from the road?

No. A lot of them were

around people's farms.

They used them as thresholds,

work surfaces, flagstones.

Filipowski even had one in his outhouse.

Ostrowski used this one as a work table.

And he gave it to you, just like that?

I bought it off him for 300 zloty.

Most of the ones that

weren't on the road I bought.

Filipowski wouldn't sell the one he had

so I took it from his place at night.

- You paid 300 for each of them?

- Depends,

I got most of them for a 100 a piece,

some for 200, some for 80...

Say 200 apiece.

That makes nearly 70000.

Less than that...

Madame Breida, daughter

of Itzak from Kobryn...

Kobryn... Wonder why her

family moved this far?

But it's all in Jewish.

When I was setting them up

I started wondering what they said,

so I learned their alphabet

out of some pre-war books.

It's Hebrew actually...

Jzek...

What do you need all this for?

I was curious, I guess...

- And this hobby of yours...

- It's not a hobby.

I had to, they were human beings...

- Yids? - Jews.

- That's not what I meant.

- What do folks in the village say?

- They say I'm nuts.

Worst thing is, Jola took their side.

Especially when

I started buying them up...

- Well, was I supposed to steal them?

- You might be my brother, Jzek,

but I'll tell you she had a point...

And now I'm stuck with

your wife and kids.

- Bacon?

- Thanks.

- So, what made you do it?

- Beats me.

So many things aren't right

but we live with them anyway because

there's nothing you can do about it.

But I think that some things

are more wrong that others.

It's like, you see a guy lying drunk

in the street you walk on by,

'cause you think 'he's drunk' and

you got your own problems and all...

But when it's a child lying there

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