As recalled by Ariel Garten and Vivian Reiss, from a trip to find both Schnall and Garten houses taken in early 2000s:
The Garten's house
was right across the street from
Ochronka im. św. Brata Alberta. Dom Dziecka
Wałowa 46, Stalowa Wola, PolandYou can actually see it on Google Maps. As you go east on the street Walowa (which is much smaller that it looks on google maps), you see all the old houses that comprised Plavo. Ours is the traffic island at the top of the street right across from the ochronka, at the top of the street. The traffic island might have been developed by now.
We took a walk down the street. As you go down the street you descend from the soviet style town of Stalowawola to tiny cottages of Plavo. About 10 houses down on the right side of the street was a man who was 74 when we visited in the early 2000s. There was a single tree, likely apple, in his front yard. He remembered the Gartens. We walked down the street asking for the Gartens, and he responded "Chaim Garten?". We were amazed. Chaim was Mayer's father. He remembered the sisters, the "blondinka"- blond ones. And that Meyer had built a brick house for his sister. He showed us the triangulr traffic median where their house once sat. He had a grandson, about 15, whose ambition in life it was to be an English Guide. The grandson took us to his apartment in the societ block building to meet his mother and father and 2 younger brothers. This is what our lives would have been like had Mayer not left Poland.
The man called another gentleman who was friends of Mayers when they were young. Much older man, in his eighties then. He recounted how they went to the fields, at night, with horses. He also confirmed Mayer farmed or owned fields over the railway track. We called Mayer on the cell phone, and the two of them spoke, in an incredible moment of time and space meeting. We set to meet back up with the man later, but he never returned.
The SChnall's house
is in the town of Wielowies, Tarnobrzeg, Poland.
Their neighbours were the Urubans. If you are facing the houses with the street at your back, the Urubans is on the right and Schnalls on the left. When we went to visit in the early 2000s, the daughter of the Uruban family still lived in the family home. We found it by asking for Uruban. the neighbour on the other side was also still alive, she would have been a girl Chaja's age. She had the same colour big blue eyes as Chaja. She remembered Chaja in pig tails. She remembered Chaja's father's funeral, and them carrying the body.
The original house is no longer standing I believe. There is a well at the side of their property, and pear tree. In the back was a vegetable garden, where the vegetables grew especially big because there was a stream below. We took photos of the cabbages in the Uruban's garden, which were big and beautiful, and when we showed them to Chaja back in Toronto without any prompting explained "see how big the cabbage is!" and explained the watering.
It was 28 kilometers from the Garten's town to the Schnalls. And you can see the road that Meyer likely took to visit Chaja!
Interestingly, Plavo was just a few miles to Roswadow, a predominantly jewish town that shows up with significance in some Holocaust histories.