Aleksandra Leliwa-Kopystyńska, born in 1937
Don’t tell anyone!
Who am I?
I don’t have a birth certificate. Not a real one. The most reliable document, according to which I was born in Warsaw on August 20, 1937, is a certificate from the Obstetrics and Gynecology Ward of the Military Hospital on Aleje Ujazdowskie. This fact was confirmed by the personal signature of the head of the ward and the commandant of the hospital, Colonel and Doctor Garbowski. The document reads that Irena Ś., the wife of Senior Sergeant Józef Ś., gave birth to a daughter. I also have my mother’s Personal ID no. 325 with her picture, issued by the Ministry of Military Affairs, where the column “Children” has two entries: Stefan, born on 24.02.1930, and Aleksandra, date of birth 20.08.1937.
The original birth certificate surely included my mom’s maiden name, which could have been a fatal stigma during the war. But a birth certificate is required so finally, I have one. It is a document issued on September 11, 1943. For me, this fraudulent birth certificate was a pass to my survival. It was signed and stamped by Father Lechowicz from the parish of Życzyn, the district of Puławy—the General Government. My parents’ names are stated as Józef Ś. and Irena Ś., née Bednarska.
By a strange coincidence, which completely muted my and other people’s suspicion regarding the authenticity of my mom’s maiden name, her only surviving brother Artek had fake papers in the name of Kazimierz Bednarski. For a long time I couldn’t understand why Artek was a nickname of Kazimierz. The short form of Runia, which they called my mom, didn’t seem off to me.
Before the war, we had lived in Żoliborz, at 2A/31 Krajewski Street. We vacated it in the early July of 1940 and never went back. Despite this, even if I was woken up at night, I could recite this address. My mom etched it on my mind because she feared that the war turmoil might separate us. Years later, she told me that during air raids on Warsaw, we got buried in the basement of a bombed house. When we were dug out, I was unconscious. Some man grabbed me by the legs and shook me until I came to. I don’t know if there was a specific reason why we left Warsaw, but anyway we avoided going to the ghetto.
I was born a little by accident, perhaps as a “replacement product.” My brother Stefan had been very sick for several months and was treated at the same hospital where I later saw the light of day. He underwent several operations, among them, a cranial trepanation. Miraculously cured, when he was leaving the hospital, the doctors told him that he owed a debt to medicine. And indeed, after the war he graduated from the Medical Military Academy in Łódź with honors. He served for several years in military units in various places in Poland, and later worked in a military hospital in Warsaw.
After he left the hospital, he worked in a medical co-operative. After some time, it turned out that he had a brain tumor. Within a month of discovering the tumor he had an operation. Only nine months after our mom’s death, and several days after the surgery, on October 4, 1991, my brother and my caretaker and best friend both died. My mother was lucky she didn’t live to see it.
Sometimes I wonder how it was possible that we weren’t affected by the events of 1968. Stefan was an officer, while my mom worked at the Office of the Council of Ministers and was one year from her retirement (in her fake papers, she stated that she was born in 1909). Paradoxically, we might have owed the calmness of that period to her. She was a member of the Polish United Workers’ Party, and earlier the Polish Socialist Party. She was also an activist in the Women’s League. I worked at the university and was busy with my life. My son was 3 years old, and I was taking doctoral exams and dealing with financial issues. On top of that, my husband, instead of supporting me, continued to cause me grief.
Stefan and my mom probably agonized over the March incidents and decided not to let me in on the danger that we were facing. My mom, who had always lived in fear, had dreaded (not without reason) that the information about my Jewish origin would have completely destroyed my marriage.
Ironically, I entered a family which before the war had had connections to Falanga—the Polish fascist organization with an antisemitic bent. Somehow, I earned their fondness and respect. Maybe that was because in one discussion, I “showed them my claws” and strongly opposed their views, which incidentally became much less radical after the war. I’ve been divorced since 1980. I wonder how they would have treated me if they had known about my origin…
Who am I today? I feel uncomfortable in a Jewish environment. I don’t know the history, tradition, or religion, so I’m an alien. I also don’t feel good among the friends who don’t know about my origin. Sometimes I wonder if they do know something about me, after all. I have mentioned it to a lot of people. However, I believe that announcing this fact publicly would be stupid, to say the least. I’m a “statistical” Catholic. I don’t go to church, I don’t like the clergy and I don’t try to hide it. Luckily, my son, my daughter-in-law, and my teenage granddaughter also rejected religious practices and share my views in this regard. My father’s family tolerates me but we’re not friendly. Our children don’t know each other.
My parents
My parents met in Warsaw in the 1920s. It was a great love. My mother’s brother wrote spitefully on the picture taken before their wedding: “Runia and her slave.” In order to get married, they had to overcome their families’ opposition.
My mom converted to Catholicism. Moreover, she degraded herself socially by committing a misalliance, as they used to say. My father, Józef Ś., was born on January 25, 1899, in the Nowe Miasto district of Płońsk. His father, Teodor, had a farm on which he had to support four sons and two daughters, if I remember correctly.
In the Polish countryside it was then customary for the eldest son to join the army or become a priest. According to the certificate issued in 1934, my father joined the army on May 19, 1917. His cousin, Kazimierz Wasiak, who was later our benefactor, became a priest. Maria Wasiak, Kazimierz’s sister, was supposedly in love with my father but married Stanisław Pac, a man with a soft heart, the owner of a watermill and a sizable piece of land (meadows and woods) in Życzyn near Dęblin, around a hundred kilometers from Warsaw. It was thanks to the help of the Pac family and Father Kazimierz Wasiak that we survived the war.
My father’s siblings stayed in the country or moved to Warsaw and sold meat. They were simple people. I think they resented their brother for marrying a girl from Warsaw who was a teacher and, to make it worse, a Jew. I know that my mother endured all kinds of affronts from them, but she always made efforts to get on well with them.
My father was intelligent, talented (he drew beautifully) and had a great sense of humor. He loved his wife and adored his son. He didn’t enjoy me much. I regret to say that I don’t remember him nor Grandma nor Uncle Lutek or Aunt Donia. I know from my mom and Uncle Artek that my father quickly won over the hearts of his wife’s parents and siblings.
My mom spoke reluctantly about her family. All I know is remembered from bits and pieces of conversations. It must have been hard for her to omit the truth, which she tried so desperately to hide from me. Today, having only fragmentary information, I’m putting together my mom’s carefully concealed past and the family history. If I don’t learn about it, I will never know who I really am.
The war
My father was a professional soldier, so when the war broke out, he went to the front. Soon he was taken captive. He was aware of the danger his wife and children were in, and he fled at the first opportunity. By escaping Russian captivity, he probably avoided Katyń. From this period I have a Russian postcard from Uncle Lutek written on March 5, 1940, and addressed to my mom. It was written in the town of Brody located between Lwów, Równe, and Tarnopol. My uncle wrote that not getting news was making him anxious. At that point everyone was still alive. He can’t believe what his younger sister wrote him and asks: “Runia, write me the whole truth because it’s better than this anxiety. You must know what it feels like to be here and not know anything about your loved ones. Artek and Donka write so cryptically that, after what we heard about you here, it just confirms my suspicions.” He goes on: “I know that Józiek is at home…” and closes: “Write to the address: Ludwik Suski, Brody- Zamek.” This was the last message from him. He was executed. My mom claimed it was the Germans but I don’t believe this. He perished because he was both a Jew and a Pole. It’s ironic that he was also a communist.
None of the preserved pre-war documents of my mom’s contain the entry: “maiden name.” The personal ID issued by the Ministry of Military Affairs in 1935 stated the name Irena Ś., the wife of the senior sergeant of the 21st W.P.P. —the Administrative Company. I also have my father’s ID issued on November 20, 1939, (hence, issued when he was back home) by the City Board of Warsaw. The photo depicts a noble, handsome, 40-year- old man wearing civilian clothes. The section “profession” reads “clerk.” This document was good for one person.
At that point, there was already talk of organizing the ghetto. We couldn’t stay in Warsaw. My father went to Życzyn, to his cousin Maria Pac’s, in order to inspect the territory. Życzyn and Wola Życka are two villages tucked away in the forest, separated by the small Okrzejka River. They are five kilometers away from the Życzyn train station, located en route from Warsaw to Lublin. The closest asphalt road at that point was five kilometers away.
It seemed that we would be safe there. Aside from the Pac family, no one knew us there. Stanisław and Maria Pac had three sons: Stefuś, Andrzej, and Jurek. Stefuś was a little younger than my brother Stefan. Andrzej, whom I called Jędruś, was born in 1926 and Jurek in 1925. The Pacs owned a considerable estate and a watermill that made use of the current of the Okrzejka. The village had no electricity. The Pacs’ house was small, so there was no room for us there. My father rented a room at a farmer’s in Wola Życka, in a house at the edge of a forest. We arrived there in the summer of 1940.
As a child, I was a blue-eyed blonde so I aroused no suspicion. Moreover, we were part of the Pacs’ “family” and this generally guaranteed us security. For me, this was a time of continuous play with the local kids, who spoke the local dialect. I quickly picked it up, but to the joy of the adults, I spoke it as if it were a foreign language. At home, I spoke correctly.
I was terrified of geese, with which one of the few memories I have of my father is connected. One morning I got up and went outside in my nightgown. These monsters got me there. I was running away while they honked, chasing me with their outstretched necks, nipping at my nightgown. I remember Papa laughing at this and later, comforting me. I was 4 years old at that time.
My father managed the mill. The Germans didn’t allow it to be used, so it was sealed during the day. It worked only at night. I remember Papa saying that in the mill, “all you need to do is sweep up the floor and money comes pouring in.” I was terribly curious how that worked. So I went to the mill and asked Papa to take a broom and show me. Peasants were used to cheating the owner but my father wouldn’t let them.
In Życzyn, there was a gorgeous manor surrounded by a park. It was owned by an elderly lady—Miss Wanda Herse. She was a wealthy and mysterious person. She came from the family of a famous Warsaw fashion house “Bogusław Herse.” I suspect that she was a lesbian and probably that’s why she wasn’t accepted by the local “intelligentsia,” that is the Pacs, the priest, the teacher, and a group of several fugitives from the Poznań region. She treated everyone like air. She had servants, dressed in bizarre clothes, and for that reason, she was feared by all the children. Whenever we saw her, we scampered.
Miss Herse’s property was surrounded by a mirabelle hedge. In those times, there was no fruit in the village and these mirabelle plums were the objects of our desire even before they were ripe. Miss Herse and her servants would drive us away, but we’d always come back led by Stefuś, who terribly impressed a youngster like me. I mention this because these unripe plums were supposedly the cause of his death. Stefuś got appendicitis. There was no doctor or phones in the village. My father jumped on a bike and rode to the station to call for help. The ambulance didn’t come until hours later.
Unfortunately, it was too late and Stefuś died. It was September 4, 1941. Maybe these plums had nothing to do with Stefuś’s death, but we stopped stealing them. My father dealt with all the burial formalities. He planned and supervised the construction of a large family tomb at the local cemetery. No one suspected that only half a year later he would lie in there himself…
The local forest swarmed with partisans and various bandits. They’d come to the village at night and often take peasants’ flour from the mill. They’d take food supplies that they found in the pantries of the Pacs and other wealthy farmers. Each time, they asked who had “visited” the village before them and when. You oughtn’t to reveal this to them, the more so that German informers could be among them. Uniformed Germans entered the village only in daylight. After dusk, they left because they were afraid of the partisans.
The train station manager in Życzyn worked with the partisans. He inspected the letters sent out from the village. One day, he came across a letter addressed to the Gestapo denouncing us. He immediately informed my father about it. As it turned out, the letter’s author was Zygmunt Pietrzak, an assistant at the mill who resented my father for not letting him cheat peasants or the owner.
Several days later, on the night of February 24/25, 1942, there was a knock on our window calling my father to an emergency at the mill. Years later, my mom noted that before he left, my father said goodbye to us even though he was supposed to come right back. The mill was working even though no one but the assistant was there. It’s unclear who started the fight but he ended up pushing my father into the mill’s gear. In the trial that took place after the war Pietrzak was sentenced to death for killing my father and collaborating with the Germans. Later his sentence was changed to life in prison. His sister testified that that night, he burst into the house with madness in his eyes, and said: “I killed Ś.” He grabbed a few things and fled. As it turned out, he left for Germany.
My mom didn’t learn about what happened at the mill until the next morning. She was devastated. She locked herself in the room and didn’t react to anything. Stefan, whose twelfth birthday was the previous day, took part in collecting our father’s remains from the partly frozen waters of the Okrzejka.
I was sent to the nuns. In Życzyn, there was a small congregation of the Albertine Sisters who nursed abandoned children and the elderly. I think I spent several weeks there. I didn’t see my mom nor my brother. I remember being treated like a sick person. I wasn’t allowed to go out.
I also didn’t go to the funeral. Several acquaintances of my father’s and his siblings came from Warsaw. I heard they mistreated my mom, blaming her for their brother’s death. Despite knowing what danger we were in, they didn’t offer to help.
We couldn’t stay in Życzyn any longer, and going back to Warsaw was out of the question. After some time, our father’s friend from the army, Mr. Okieńczyc, who had come to the funeral, took us in. Before the war he had won a state lottery and bought Przyłęg, an estate near Życzyn. He said he had unpaid financial obligations towards my father and that’s why he decided he should take care of us.
I don’t remember much from our short stay at his house. I know that my mom and Stefan went through hell there. Mr. Okieńczyc was an advanced alcoholic and slipped into delirium. His wife was a really young girl whom he beat up when he was drunk. He resented the fact that she didn’t match my mom’s intelligence and looks. He’d invite the Germans to the libations and force my mom to hold court. One time, he sicced dogs on Stefan, who barely escaped them. My mom kept me out of Mr. Okieńczyc’s way so I don’t remember him at all. Luckily, the news about how we were being treated by our so-called host reached Życzyn. A horse cart was sent and we simply escaped under cover of night. As Andrzej Pac recently told me, after the war Okieńczyc disappeared from the neighborhood where people knew about his contacts with the Germans.
We had to leave Życzyn and return to Warsaw. All the more so because, according to Andrzej Pac, a certain Grabarczyk, the commandant of the Kriminal-Polizei in Dęblin, took an interest in us. He came to the Pacs’ and inquired about a Jew with a couple of kids who were said to be hiding in the village. He claimed to have a keen sense of smell that allowed him to sniff out a Jew from five kilometers. My mom and I were in the adjacent room when Uncle Pac assured this character that it wasn’t true because otherwise he would have been the first to know. In this situation, we left Życzyn as soon as it was possible.
The parish priest, Kazimierz Wasiak, the brother of Maria Pac, took my mom and me in. In Warsaw we lived in the rectory in Grochów, right next to the Wedel chocolate factory. Stefan couldn’t stay with us, and when Father Wasiak intervened, our father’s youngest sister, who lived in Wola, took him in. She and her husband ran a butcher’s. Our Uncle Artek, who had stayed on the Aryan side and could move around the city quite freely, was the liaison between us.
I remember my stay in Warsaw very well. The priests in the rectory liked me a lot and gave me sweets. I had a vivid imagination and I purposefully embroidered the stories about my adventures in the country. I was delighted that they wanted to talk to me and that I was able to make them laugh.
Father Wasiak’s nephew, Jurek Pac, also lived in the rectory. We became great friends. During the war schools were closed, so a tutor would come to Jurek’s. At Jurek’s request and in secrecy from other household members, I would often inform the tutor that “Jurek is very sick and can’t take the class.” As a reward, Jurek would buy me my favorite treat, that is, a packet of sunflower seeds, and take me to a place where, for a small fee, I could watch a pet monkey jump around in a cage. One time, unaware of what I was looking at through the window, I watched an execution. I saw people lined up by the wall and the Germans holding up their machine guns. Before they fired, Jurek burst into the room and covered my eyes.
I went to a kindergarten which was right next to the rectory. There was a gate in the wall separating the two premises. The route was short and safe so I went there by myself.
One day before we left the kindergarten, the alarm sirens went off. No one came to pick up my friend. Some commotion ensued and the kindergarten teacher didn’t notice us walking out into the street, holding hands. I don’t remember what our intentions were but I do remember some Germans riding slowly in an open limousine. One of them was saying something through a loudspeaker. The limousine pulled over next to us and a German got out. He asked us in Polish where we lived and where we were going. He was nice so we weren’t scared. I probably said that we lived in the rectory because this is where he escorted us to. One of the priests watched the whole scene. He was paralyzed with fear and didn’t come out to rescue us.
After the war, I learned that the Home Army’s contact point was there in the rectory. That time, I got a spanking and even Jurek couldn’t prevent it. What’s worse, it was decided that we had to leave the rectory. I don’t think it was all because of me. It was getting dangerous to stay in Warsaw. Before we left, Uncle Artek took me for a walk around the city. We reached the walls of the ghetto. I was shocked by what I saw—the sky covered with smoke and burning houses. My uncle held me tightly by the hand and cried. It was the spring of 1943.
Until we left Warsaw, I had seen my brother only a few times. His situation wasn’t enviable. Our aunt took her pre-war visits in our home out on him. She called Stefan a “lordling” and forced him to do hard physical work. Uncle Artek brought him food from time to time because our aunt didn’t believe he deserved it. He was only 13 at the time. I think he missed us. Unlike me, he was fully aware of the danger we were in.
Uncle Wasiak decided that we should return to Życzyn. In the early summer of 1943, we left Warsaw again. Our mom regained her confidence and started fighting for our survival. She taught village children. Stefan painted birthday cards and wrote out customized wishes in exchange for foodstuffs: potatoes, eggs, or milk. Uncle Pac was dying with tuberculosis so my mom helped my aunt take care of him. They got really close. I suspect that for the locals, this friendship was a sign that everything was in order and they didn’t inquire who was staying at the Pacs’.
The war continued. From time to time, the Germans and the Vlasovs entered the village. The Vlasovs were the units formed under the Wehrmacht, made up of “various kinds” of Russians, mostly slant-eyed Kalmyks who had joined the German side. They were especially cruel. At times, the Germans had to hold them back. They rode horses, which in that territory gave them a big advantage over other units.
In the village a signal was made by a special observer when the Germans were coming and all the men would run to the forest, including Stefan. Only women stayed behind. I remember three situations like that. All the village women were the members of a church group, and on special occasions they dressed in black. When a division of the Wehrmacht came to the village, everyone was forced to leave their home under threat of death and go to a pasture—a vast open space in the middle of the village.
The local women went there dressed in black, loudly saying the rosary. My mom and I stayed home. The Germans went from cottage to cottage looking for the partisans. They found us and escorted us to the pasture. I can only image what my mom went through. I kept saying: “What will Stefan do when they kill us and he’ll be all alone?” But these were soldiers, and not the Gestapo. They could tell we weren’t from the village but they didn’t ask who we were. The whole action was directed against the partisans. In the pasture, they fired over our heads hoping to lure the partisans out. Perhaps the husbands and sons of these women would come to their rescue and they would take them then. But it didn’t happen and after a while the Germans left the village.
Another time, the Kalmyks burst into the village on their horses. The men, as always, had made it to the forest. The Kalmyks rode in twos immediately surrounding the entire village. The women, including my mom and me, were herded all the way to the train station, where they selected people for forced labor in Germany. It’s noteworthy that my mom qualified because, at the time she was only 39.
The Kalmyks dragged Maryla Rybakowska with Kasia, her disabled daughter (from polio) from Miss Herse’s manor, and herded them to the station. Mrs. Rybakowska was a beautiful, elegant woman who spoke perfect German. A German officer was in command of the Kalmyks. Mrs. Rybakowska talked to him and he released her and her daughter as well as my mom and me. (Mrs. Maryla Rybakowska was Jewish. Her real name was Winiewicz. She was the wife of an industrialist and owner of pharmaceutical plants on Grzybowska Street in Warsaw. Her husband perished in Katyń. After the war she married Mr. Graf and left for Rio de Janeiro.)
Before they forced us out of our cottage, I could see them hunting down two Italians who had fled the transport to the front and had been hiding at Miss Herse’s manor for some time. It was the middle of the summer. The Italians hid in the nearby rye field. From the level of the horses, the Kalmyks could see the rye moving and they shot in that direction. It entertained them and they laughed out loud. But they gave up their prey. They probably suspected that the people in hiding could be armed.
We survived another much more dangerous “adventure” with the Germans only because it was the Wehrmacht, and not the Gestapo. This time, having learned that the Germans were heading towards Życzyn, we fled to the adjacent village. Unfortunately, it turned out that the Germans were going exactly there. We hid in a shed but it was a mistake. They dragged us out of it. My mom pretended that she had gone there only to get a hoe for digging potatoes. They didn’t believe her. They shook her and screamed at her while I was wailing. We were saved by a peasant who swore that we were his relatives from Warsaw. I doubt that the Germans believed it but they left us alone and took off. Someone supposedly tipped them off that a partisan division was approaching.
These are my personal memories from the war. Only these dramatic events got etched in my memory. I didn’t understand what was going on. I was a child protected by the love of her mother and her elder brother. I felt safe. I experienced the surrounding world as a natural habitat. I didn’t know any other. I can only recall the summers. In the winter nothing happened, so I erased all that time from my memory.
The only thing that I’ll never forget happened at the end of the winter of 1944. The Pacs rescued a dog, a German shepherd abandoned by the retreating Germans. Around that time, my mom would often go to Warsaw for “goods,” mainly sweets, which she later sold from the window of our apartment. This is how she supported us. Stefan went to school in Dęblin and lived there with somebody. Before going to Warsaw, my mom dropped me off at the Pacs’. The dog was ferocious outside, but inside he played with me. It seemed that he got attached to me. One Sunday I was playing tag with my cousin Krysia, diving in the deep snow. It was a lot of fun. The dog sat beside us and watched. Suddenly, when I was running away from Krysia, who was shouting something, the dog launched himself at me and tried to bite my throat. Krysia was trying to pull him away but in vain. I was dressed warmly and shielded myself with my leg, which the dog was yanking like a log. I didn’t feel pain, I was terrified. Luckily, people started leaving the church. It was freezing and the village women wore huge, warm shawls. One woman wrapped her shawl around the dog’s head while the other one picked me up. The dog was still attacking me, yanking at my leg. Finally, someone pulled him away and the woman took me to the Pacs’. Only then did I feel immense pain. They couldn’t take the stocking off my leg because big chunks of flesh were peeling off the bone. I was treated for several months. The bite has left me scarred to this day. The dog was shot. He probably remembered what he was trained for and that’s why he attacked me.
The spring brought the liberation. The Soviet divisions entered Życzyn. My mom suddenly became an important person. She spoke Russian and wasn’t bourgeois. The soldiers carried me in their arms and fed me. Stefan wandered around their camp and made friends. Only the Pacs were in danger. My mom had a chance to repay them somewhat, protecting them from idiotic communist attacks on “Polish lords.”
One day the tragic news about Jurek’s death reached Życzyn. He perished while pushing through the Neisse on April 17, 1944. He was decorated posthumously with the Silver Cross of the Virtuti Militari. He was only 20 years old and we all loved him. My mom and aunt tried to hide the news about Jurek’s death from my very sick uncle. The only reason he was hanging on was to see his son return. Soon, however, he figured out the truth and died. The war experiences made the Pacs our closest, and fundamentally, our only family. As a schoolchild I spent all the summers at my aunt’s in Życzyn. In Warsaw we spent all the holidays together. I am still in touch with Andrzej, who moved out of the capital when he retired.
The mysteries of my Jewish family
A lack of information about the family on my mother’s side keeps haunting me. I have conducted research whose results, partly filled with guesswork, I present here. If the ancestor of the Centnerszwer family was Jakub (1789–1880), a mathematician and Polish teacher born to an Orthodox Jewish family, whose information I found in one of the encyclopedias, he could have had at least two sons: Gabriel and Ludwik.
It’s my pure invention, but it is supported by evidence found at the Jewish Historical Institute, which says that this Jakub lived together with Gabriel. However, he could have been a single man or a childless married man. So I still don’t know if he was the antecedent of my family. What I do know is that he was one of “my” Centnerszwers, and not some other, of which there were many. His name drew my attention because it recurs in our family, and the fact that he was a mathematician, and not, for example, a musician or poet.
Gabriel Centnerszwer (1841–1917), married to Rebeka, had one son, Mieczysław. Artek, my mom’s brother, mentioned that when he was a little boy, he visited his uncle’s bookstore with his mother. Gabriel was a bookstore owner and publisher from Warsaw known in all of Poland. I know that one of his legs was a little shorter and he had a visible limp, just like my grandma Matylda. In 1903, he sold his famous bookstore to Jakub Mortkowicz but he still frequented it. His son, Mieczysław (1874–1944), was a professor of physical chemistry at Warsaw University. He didn’t have children.
In 1954, when I passed the entrance exam for the Department of Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry of Warsaw University, my mother told me with pride about her cousin, a professor of chemistry, but she didn’t mention his name. It was my Uncle Artek who showed me a long biographical note in Wielka Encyklopedia Powszechna and said that he was our relative. Mieczysław Centnerszwer was murdered by the Gestapo. The author of Dzienniki getta warszawskiego, Adam Czerniaków, refers to him as Professor Cent.
I assume that Ludwik was also Jakub’s son and had children—among others, the daughter Matylda, who was my grandma, and I believe the son Samuel, who was the grandfather of my cousin Rysia, who currently lives in Melbourne, and Joe Cent, who lives in Glasgow.
After the war, Jakub Centnerszwer—the father of Joe and brother of Henryk (Rysia’s father)—found my mother and they corresponded. Their beloved sister, Celina Centnerszwer, perished during the war. In Great Britain, Uncle Kuba changed his last name to one that was more easily pronounced—Cent. I don’t know how they were related to the late Uncle Heniek Czarnecki (his real name was Henryk Erensztajn)—the father to Małgorzata, Mietek, and Stefcia, who now live in Australia. The fake last names are muddying the waters…
Here’s another family mystery. In the spring of 1967, Artur Majman—my mom’s cousin—visited us from Paris. Until recently, I couldn’t place him in our family. He must have been rich because he stayed at the Hotel Bristol in Warsaw. Having returned to France, on July 20, 1967, he wrote a letter to my mom which I hadn’t read until several years ago. I thought back about his visit. He would only talk to my mom or Stefan. I didn’t know who he was and I didn’t know his last name. After the visit, when I was driving him back to his hotel, to my surprise, he said that he was my uncle and he wanted to speak with me. At that point, it didn’t cross my mind that it was the only opportunity I would get to learn more about my family. Back then, I simply wasn’t interested in that and I interpreted his invite to meet at the hotel as a “pick-up” and I ran.
The letter, which I found years later, was written right after his return from Poland. It was very warm. Uncle Artur wrote, among others things: “… I have to say, dear Runia, that I returned with a heart heavy with experiences and memories after this trip.” A little farther, he said: “We’re one and the same family, but regrettably so far apart from each other. My brother is doing very well. He has a dear son who is a good student—the first Majman university student.” These are direct quotations.
Aside from the letter, I also found an envelope addressed to Stefan stamped in Paris on September 26, 1977. I checked and learned that the return address was the same and was written in the same handwriting as the letter to my mother. It means that Uncle Artur was still alive, still lived in Paris, and perhaps corresponded with my brother. I wish I had known that. In those years, I went abroad quite often, including to Paris. And I think I already knew of my origin.
I must say, the fact that we were rather easily tracked after the war by Uncle Niutek (Henryk Centnerszwer who changed his last name to Stanton) with his wife Edzia and daughter Rysia, who were all returning from their exile in the USSR, as well as Uncle Kuba, who lived in Great Britain, or later Uncle Artur Majman, seemed a little odd to me, but my mother approached it as such a natural thing that I didn’t inquire about it. It wasn’t until my visit at the JHI in 2004 that it all made sense. As it turned out, on June 7, 1945, my mother filled in forms at the JHI, where she gave our real personal data. She also included a brief overview of where we lived during the war and our address at the time.
I also found the form filled in by Artur Majman. That’s how I know that he was the son of my grandfather Leon Waksenbaum’s sister, so my mom’s cousin. Finding these forms was an intense experience and a real discovery. I think that my mom left her data there primarily hoping that her sister Donia, who was said to have died in Pawiak (but there was no proof), would contact her. Unfortunately, I don’t know what last name she used.
Another mystery that is still unresolved is connected to France, and perhaps my uncle Artur. I found a letter written to my mom by a woman whom I knew but could barely remember. My mom met her in Słupsk where we had lived for a while after the war. This lady was a repatriate from France. It’s a letter to my mom from November 12, 1969, which refers to an inheritance from France. Mrs. Ziuta, the author of the letter, claimed that she had informed my mother via her acquaintance about the administrative decision regarding the inheritance. It’s possible that Artur Majman came to Warsaw in connection with that issue.
I don’t think that my mother would have dared accept this inheritance. She was too honest to take it illegally. However, in order to do it legally, she would have had to “reveal herself” and state her real name, and she feared that almost until her last breath. Before she died she pleaded with me not to tell anyone about my origin.
My grandma, Matylda Centnerszwer, was married to Leon Waksenbaum. They had four children. Once Uncle Artek told me that they were born every four years. Hence, I suspect that Uncle Lutek was born in 1900 (he probably died in 1940); my mom (Róża) in 1904 (she died in 1990); Uncle Artek in 1908 (he died in 1995); and Aunt Donia in 1912 (she probably died in Pawiak in 1941). Unfortunately, I haven’t found any evidence to confirm their dates of birth.
My grandfather Leon died in 1935. My mom never told me about him. I think she resented him, perhaps because he didn’t accept her marriage to my father. It’s possible she blamed him for the family’s bad financial situation. They lived on Brzeska Street in a house where my grandfather, an electrical engineer, wired the building and as remuneration he got an apartment. It seems that this was the only success in his life.
My grandmother deplored the fact that, unlike the young Centnerszwers, none of her four children could earn a higher education, so she made sure that they got a professional education. I know that she was in favor of assimilation. The Germans murdered her in the Warsaw ghetto, probably in 1942. They bludgeoned her in her bed with the butts of their machine guns. I still have her photographs splashed with blood, which were found on the floor of the room where she died. It’s possible that Irka, an Aryan and later Uncle Heniek Czarnecki’s wife, who was hiding him during the war, transferred them to Uncle Artek and that’s how they ended up with me.
After the war
After the war, my mother decided to leave for the Western Territory. On August 3, 1945, the Board of Warsaw, and the Resettlement Committee, issued a “Resettlement certificate no. 30” to her and her son (aged 16). I stayed in Życzyn at the Pacs’.
Our pre-war home in Warsaw was still there but it was completely plundered. My mom didn’t want to return there. We settled in Słupsk.On August 29, 1945, the local Housing Committee directed us to the apartment at 15 Otto Strasse (later Bolesław Prus Street), which was still inhabited by its owner, an old German woman. I remember her. She was short, plump, and gray-haired. She wouldn’t let us in. Oh, the irony! She called Soviet gendarmes for help. They came at night blind drunk. They wanted to throw us out on the street immediately. Fortunately, my mom spoke Russian and firmly opposed their intervention. They left without a word and we stayed in the apartment, with the enemy on the other side of the wall.
In the morning, my mother called the Polish police. They were young men from Warsaw with armbands on the sleeves of their jackets. They didn’t have uniforms yet. They searched the woman’s apartment thoroughly and found the photographs of two or three Germans in SS uniforms. Asked who they were, the German woman proudly responded that they were her sons. At that point, the police officers became so enraged that even my mom had to defend her. I was there and perhaps my presence stopped these young people from doing something awful. That same day, the German woman disappeared and we never saw her again. It was a real “wild West.”
On September 7, 1945, my mother took an administrative position at the State Enterprise for Tractors and Agricultural Machinery. Stefan went to middle school and I to elementary school. My mom would spend a lot of time doing social work. In May 1950 she was appointed the chair of the Presidium of the National Council (an equivalent of the district starost) in Myślibórz in the province of Szczecin. In June 1952 her office was moved to Warsaw, where she took the position of the department head at the Council, and after the administrative reform, she moved to the Office of the Council of Ministers, and she worked there until retiring in 1969. She never revealed her Jewish origin. That is how we returned to Warsaw, which at that time was a closed city.
My mother was an exceptionally decent person and never harmed anyone. She helped a great number of people. I owe her a lot and I regret that I appreciated it so late. Perhaps it was thanks to her demeanor that we weren’t persecuted in 1968. I also don’t rule out that our records had simply been lost.
The war scarred me psychologically. I was raised without a father and, essentially, without a mother, because my mom would work day and night to support her children and provide them with an education. I didn’t experience my grandmother’s love. I’m not pitying myself, only analyzing the effects of my childhood circumstances on my current life.
