Peace! For Dorothy's family, the first reality of their post World War I lives was what she termed Independence: the re-establishment of Poland with its traditional borders, undoing the long-standing Polish Partitions that left Poland a shadow of its former self.
Dorothy, her family, and the townspeople wondered
how Poland would govern: Would the Jews experience progroms similar to those that occurred under the recent Czarist governments? The initial contact with Polish religious representatives were hopeful: the Jews were addressed respectfully. The government officials then presented the town's Jewish merchants with the stern requirement to help Poland recover from a devastating war.
In the aftermath of the war the Wysokie Jews found local Poles absent from the usual cooperative relationships: In particular, shabbes goyim were absent, and so the Jews were forced to deal with Sabbath chores that had long been done by non-Jews. It was done. And some Jews thought of instructing their children in the Polish language.
