The story of an innkeeper's daughter from Chochołów

An amazing story about a Jewish girl from Chochołów who married a local highlander before the war. The story is quoted in the book “The Shop of Cultural Needs” by Antoni Kroh, an acclaimed ethnographer who researched, among other things, the Podhale region:

In the middle of the village, where today there is a bus stop and a tin-roofed commercial pavilion, there used to be a Jewish inn. The innkeeper had a beautiful daughter. And the innkeeper's son, Jasiek, fell terribly in love with the Jewish girl, and she with him. Without saying anything to the fathers, they went to see the priest: she to be baptised, he to make an announcement.

A scandal erupted, the likes of which modern man cannot imagine. The wedding, with inquirers, music, the starost, best man and bridesmaids, could still be pushed through, but then came the normal life and work, i.e. coexistence with the whole village. Every day there was a barrage of teasing, drop by drop, like a Chinese torture that makes you lose your mind. Jasiek put up with it worse and worse, and began to drink and abuse his woman. One night, drunk, he returned to the cottage, fell over in a snowdrift and was stiff by morning. The two sons were already grown up, so when the Jewish woman became widowed, she felt free, left the cottage as she stood and walked on her own, to Nowy Targ. She reconciled with her family and the kehillah. This was in the winter of the thirty-eighth.

Soon the Germans came in and announced the known orders. The former farmer’s wife did not try to hide, although she could have successfully pretended to be a highlander. She ended up like the other Jews of Nowy Targ.

Her two sons, Jasiek and Józek, were Jews according to Nazi regulations, Catholics according to their birth certificate, and highlanders in appearance and in life. In the village, just for the pleasure of teasing them, they were called "convert", but no one gave them away. But who could know that in advance? Jasiek lived under the forest, believed in the forest and survived. Józek decided that it was best to hide from the Germans; he volunteered to go to work. They deported him to the town of Kreuzburg, where a bauer took him in as a slave. The bauer had a daughter; when the Germans fled in the winter of the forty-fifth, Józek buried the girl in straw, and as soon as Kreuzberg became Kluczbork, he returned with her to the Podhale and celebrated the wedding. She was later a well-known highland embroiderer and singer in a folk band, I spoke to her a few times and it never occurred to me that she was German by origin.

Jasiek took the farm from his Jewish mother and drunkard father right in his thirty-eighth year. He made a success of his life; he was a good farmer, he was not ill, he did not drink more than others, his woman was good and everything suited him - there was only one thing he did not like very much, when they called his place: Do Przekrzty (To the convert). He was rightly offended and innocently jailed twice for battery, because if you don't want to lie in hospital, don't say: To the convert. After all, he and his grandmother are highlanders, not converts.

Unfortunately, we don't know exactly which family he is referring to, but before the war Lejb Klapholz owned a Jewish inn in Chochołów, so it is possible that he is referring to his daughter.

Thanks to Kuba Busz, who is conducting ethnographic research in Chocholow, for the information about this story.