Bella Gittle Goldmacher

From 'Nashtuit'(Y), Neishstadt (G), Nowe Miastow (P) meaning 'New Town', as were many other towns by the same name in Europe. The story is that this town burned down and was rebuilt and given the generic name of new town. It was about a 6 hour drive from Warsaw and had a population of about 1300 people and one Church.

The family lived in a one room house while waiting for their husband/father Abraham to save up enough money to send for them. The house they lived in was in a Jewish area with a lot of other houses, there were no roads, all the houses were built in a field (like Tobias' cottages) and people walked from one house to another. There were trees behind the house and a train track. A river ran through the town as well. Bella had an auntie who was a prominent business woman who owned a general store in the town selling dry goods and she displayed ladies hats in her window. Her daughters would go and stay in the store in the daytime when they were, I guess, looked after. They went to Polish school and her daughter Sarah once stood up in the nursing home and began to sing the Polish National Anthem when recalling this.

Benjamin recalled how when he was a child a wagon would pull up and a vendor would shave ice from a block and serve a sort of snow cone to them for a small fee. He had a large array of syrups to put on them.

This was, of course, all prior to World War 2 by some 20 years. Bella married her first cousin Abraham, the family has a recessive gene for flat feet and bunions.

Many question my spelling of the name which is also spelled 'Poniachik', I got this spelling when I asked my grandmother Bella to write it down on a piece of paper.