Later his son said that he was indeed a mixture of the old and the new, keeping up tradition while taking an interest in the culture of the big, wide world. His mother kept all the mitzvot small and big but his father, although religious, was attracted to modernity. Pinhas (Pinye as he was called by family and friends) grew up in a religious family. This also happened to the Kozlowski family of Suvalk. Most of the time the father was absent, at first because he served in the Russian army and later, because he had to travel all over Russia for his business.Īfter the war the family members returned to Suvalk but their financial situation wasn't as good as before, especially since Poland had been struck by galloping inflation and a significant number of small and medium-sized businesses were ruined. The Kozlowski family, like many other families, escaped eastwards and for about a year lived in bad living conditions in Brest Litovsk. First, one of his father's debtors went bankrupt causing a big upheaval in the family finances and then, after the summer of 1914, the situation got worse: Suvalk was located near the German border and when the First World War broke out the town was conquered by the Germans on the first day of fighting. In spite of all the above young Pinhas' childhood was not easy: he was a sickly child, very attached to his mother, seldom saw his father, and before he reached his 7 th birthday the family came to face two major crises. With such a background it was no wonder that young Pinhas was gifted with a business sense since childhood.
His mother, Malka Toybe, ran a feather business and frequently visited fairs in towns like Nizhny Novgorod and Berdichev. His father, Mordehai Kozlowski, owned a textile factory and a floor-tiles factory in £odz and was absent from home most days of the year. His parents were considered by the town as business and finance people. Pinhas Sapir (Kozlowski) was born in Suvalk on October 15, 1907. Suwalki, Poland (Pages 186, 197-201) « Previous Pageįrom Suvalk to the government of Israel: Pinhas Sapir
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