Celina Matusiak, born in 1936

My Grandfather’s Wisdom
GRAŻYNA KOMPEL: Tell me about your family before the war…

CELINA MATUSIAK: It was a large family from Warsaw. Almost everyone, including me, was born in Warsaw. Before the war, we lived with my mom’s father at Zamenhof Street. My mother had two sisters, one of them was unmarried. Of my mother’s three brothers, two were married. The senior of the family was Józef Ubfal from the Kałuszyn line. My grandpa owned the factory of galalith and ivory products, located at Bonifraterska Street. Grandma Cerla (Celina) née Zajdman, born  in 1890 in Warka, died five years before I was born, on March 1, 1931, to be exact. After that, my grandfather remarried Natalia (Nacia) Manowicz, who committed suicide in the ghetto because she was convinced that her husband (my grandpa) had died. My mother, Teofila (born in 1912), was the eldest of my grandparents’ six children. She married Natan Wajnsztajn, my father. One of my mother’s younger sisters, Edzia (Gienia since the occupation), survived the war and then lived in Montreal. The other, Bluma (Blimcia), and her husband were separated from the whole family during the occupation and died. My mother’s eldest brother was Feliks, who had married Stella before the war. Feliks survived, while Stella died trying to leave the ghetto after the fall of the Uprising in April 1943. My mother’s two other brothers, Stefan (Salim) with his wife Charlotte and Bolek (Beniek), survived. Seven of my mother’s eleven immediate family members survived. Four died, including the suicide of my mother’s father’s second wife.

My father was the son of Józef (Josek) Wajnsztajn, whom I remembered as a widower. Grandfather ran a grocery store at Kupiecka Street. The store was close to our house, so I often stopped at my grandfather’s to watch life going on from there. Dad had one brother, Heniek, he died with his wife, but their daughter Lusia (Ala), hidden by the nuns, survived and was later adopted by the Singer family, who had lost their own children. My father had three sisters: Sala, Rózia—married to Binder—and Mania. Rózia had a son, Miecio, and Mania had a daughter, Sabcia. From the thirteen-person family of my father only two girls survived—Lusia and I.

What do you remember from before the war?

In the large family on my mother’s side, I was an only child, so I was spoiled. I remember that the family was very musical. There were frequent get-togethers accompanied by a mandolin. There are also photos from the holidays with my little cousins on my father’s side. Two of them show a tree we are hugging—Sabcia and I. Only the photo was left of Sabcia.

Do you remember your father?

When the war broke out and the Germans established the ghetto in Warsaw, my closest family decided to make their way east, to Russia, to find out if there was a chance to wait through the most dangerous period. My parents and two uncles—Feliks and Stefan—prepared for the trip. I stayed with my grandfather with the rest of the family. Before this trip my father came to us to say goodbye. I remember that we were lying on the floor and my father came up to us.

My parents and Mother’s brothers decided to return to Warsaw. While he was crossing the “green border” on his way back, the Russians stopped my father and sent him deep into the Soviet Union, while my mother and her brothers managed to return to Warsaw. After the war, my mother looked for my father, not only through the Red Cross but also through relatives in Moscow, but he had disappeared without a trace.

What happened to you and your family after the formation of the ghetto? Grandpa’s factory was in the ghetto. Various practical items were still manufactured there, including umbrella handles and cigarette holders. We lived with my mother and grandfather in the ghetto, initially at Zamenhof Street, then at Bonifraterska Street, or more precisely, at the back of the factory. I remember that our apartment had a hidden entrance through a wardrobe with no back. The rest of my mother’s family lived on the Aryan side, but every day they came to the factory to work with the so-called placówka (“outpost”) that is, a large group of people working in the ghetto. Thanks to this, we had enough to eat, because they regularly provided us with food. In July 1942 an order was issued to report to the Umschlagplatz, and failure to comply was punishable by death. Grandpa decided to ignore it. I think that making this very bold decision at the time was influenced by the support of Poles living on the Aryan side and his close associates from before the war. Grandpa also prepared a hiding place for us in the ghetto, in the attic above the factory warehouse. It was a typical reaction. Many families prepared hiding places just in case. It was then that a decision was made to transfer me to the Aryan side.

I was taught to say that I was an orphan, I had no parents, and my name was Celina Wiśniewska. My mother also used the name Wiśniewska, which has survived even in some of her post-war documents.

Gienia took me out of the ghetto in December 1942, together with the outpost. She said we had to find a kind guard to get us out of the ghetto. I remember we were walking around in search of the right one. It was not easy to take a child out, as it was adults who came to work. The idea was to get me from the side of the ghetto which was guarded by the guards to a group of people on the Aryan side. Taking advantage of the inattention of the guards, I was literally pushed through. I experienced this moment very strongly. On the other side, after we were separated from the outpost, we came across a young man. He demanded money from us in exchange for not reporting us. Gienia said that we didn’t have any money, but I—knowing that she had wrapped bills in my hair earlier—touched my hat and said, “Here”. Of course, now we had to pay the extortion money. On the way, Gienia and I stopped at a store to buy some cold cuts. When I saw what the saleswoman was packing for us, I told Genia, “There’s better ones in our ghet…” Aunt gave me such a sharp look that I didn’t finish my sentence.

The first building I was taken to was the apartment of the Kralczyński family. However, I didn’t stay there for long, because they were expecting a child and they entrusted their distant relative, Julia Florczyk, with taking care of me. Her husband was imprisoned in Auschwitz, and she rented a spare room to a Silesian named Emerych, who, as a Volksdeutcher, was an excellent cover for hiding not only me, who was supposedly her cousin, but also a Russian Jewish woman, much older than me (my mother’s age), also named Celina. Mr. Emerych was a nice, gentle man whose job was to inspect Warsaw stores. This gave him extraordinary access to many unobtainable items. Thanks to his contacts and Celina’s cleverness, I had a doll that I hardly parted with. When my mother looked for me much later—it was after the Warsaw Uprising—and saw that there was no doll in the apartment, she was terrified that I was dead.

At Julia’s, who kept me for money, I had to do adult chores—from the basement to the third floor, I carried a bucket of briquettes that were used to heat the apartment, I did the shopping and cleaned. I was often hungry. Sometimes Julia would ask me at three in the afternoon if I had eaten anything, and I hadn’t since the morning. When I once ate a plum I found, I wrapped the pit carefully in a piece of paper and took it out to the garbage can, so as not to leave any trace pointing to my willfulness. The brighter moments of this period were holidays. At that time, Mr. Emerych’s wife and his daughter, Nella, of about my age, came to Warsaw. Nella enjoyed playing with me.

Apart from getting you to the Aryan side, do you remember any particular events from those years?

It was still in the ghetto. I was looking out the window and noticed a little girl with a jar of sauerkraut in her hands. She was running away from a German. A shot was fired as she reached the swinging door of the stairwell. The girl fell to the ground. It was the first death I had ever seen. I also remember the figures of children who were swollen with hunger.

From the time when I lived with Julia, I remember going to a kiosk for something while wearing a red headscarf, and a woman sitting there said, “God, you look just like a Jewish girl.” I came home, tore the kerchief off my head, and cried out that I would never wear it again because it made me look like a Jew.

What happened to your mom?

My mom and Grandpa stayed in the ghetto until the Uprising broke out. Grandpa was taken out of a burning building by firefighters. My mother, along with Feliks’s wife, Stella, was in the group of people led by the Germans to their death. The guards were at the beginning and end of this group, and they were in the middle. At one point my mother saw a chance to save their lives, she tried to pull Stella away, but she wouldn’t go. Mom broke away from the group and hid in some random gateway, from where she went down to the basement. She escaped through the sewers to the Aryan side. Mom had only a purse with documents and family photos with her, but the sewer took it. The photographs that have survived I got many years later from our relative who had moved to Paris before the war.

When my mother was outside the ghetto walls, due to typhus, she was taken to a hospital run by nuns. It was a very difficult period for her. Unable to pray, she hid under the covers. After leaving the hospital, she lived with the Franiak family. However, she had to leave soon because the address was compromised. I remember that she stayed with me for a short time at Julia’s. She was officially employed as a cleaner and relieved me of housework. I had to call her “Ma’am”. Then a nurse from Professor Gruca’s clinic, I called her Aunt Kamińska, took her in. In her home, Mom looked after her infirm mother. We kept in touch with Aunt Kamińska after the war. Aunt lived near Julia, so I used to stop by to see my mother on the way to the store.

How long did it last?

Until the fall of the Warsaw Uprising. During the Uprising, Julia feared for her life because a Volksdeutsch lived at her place, in whose room, by the way, hung a portrait of Hitler. So she left the apartment. The only adult who looked after me during the Uprising and after its suppression was Celina. I remember that after the fall of the Uprising, together with Celina and other civilians, we went on foot to Pruszków. It was in the fall of 1944.

We were in a transit camp, and then the Germans put us in cattle cars, the last transport to Auschwitz. The train stopped in Łazy. The war was still ongoing, but its end was obvious. The residents of Łazy knew very well what a transport to Auschwitz meant. Many of them brought us food and drink. I was a cheerful child, I could dance, sing a song. I caught the attention of one of the women who came to help us. She went to the guard and asked if she could take me. And he agreed. Probably it was then that Celina took the address of this woman, and I trustingly followed her. She was a seamstress, Mrs. Sabina Janus. Her husband was a prisoner in the camp. She had no children of her own. She wanted to adopt me. She took care of me not only selflessly, but also very well. Her plans were thwarted by the arrival of my grandpa at the beginning of 1945. Grandpa took me back to the family. To this day, I am angry with myself, and maybe also with my mother, for not meeting with Sabina Janus after the war. There was also no contact with Celina, I don’t know what happened to her.

After the Warsaw Uprising and the end of the war, my mother, Grandpa, and my mother’s youngest brother, Bolek (born in 1926), ended up in Ursus near Warsaw. My grandfather took me there after he had found me in Łazy. We moved from Ursus to Łódź. We didn’t go back to Warsaw because our homes had been destroyed.

For the period of settling in in Łódź, I was briefly placed in a Jewish orphanage in Częstochowa. Grandpa, my mother, and my mother’s future husband visited me there. During one of the visits, when I was scheduled to return home, Grandpa died of a heart attack. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Częstochowa. It was in July 1946. I was told that Grandpa had left—I loved him very much, he was very good to me and very important in my life.

After my grandpa’s death, my mother remarried. My brother Józef was born from this relationship in 1947. After his birth, I found myself again in the Jewish Orphanage in Wrocław. I was supposed to go to Israel. It was a bad idea. I was twelve then. I didn’t want to go, I was full of resentment and sadness. I didn’t end up going. I returned to Łódź when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. In Łódź, I finished primary school, high school, and then was accepted at the Faculty of Architecture at the Wrocław University of Technology. Due to poor health, I interrupted my studies in Wrocław and returned to Łódź. Here again I enrolled at the Łódź University of Technology, at the Faculty of Food Chemistry. In 1962, I received my master’s degree. I worked in my profession until my retirement.

In 1960, during my studies, I got married. In 1964 I gave birth to a daughter, and now I have two granddaughters who are fifteen and twelve years old. After the deaths of my mother and stepfather (both died in 1970), my brother and I exhumed Grandpa’s ashes in Częstochowa and transported them to the Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street in Warsaw. We also exhumed the remains of Grandmother Cerla from the depths of the cemetery to the grave next to our grandfather’s. The grave of my grandfather’s second wife, Natalia, hasn’t been found. I learned that her ashes had been moved from the ghetto to the Jewish cemetery at Okopowa Street.

We owe it to our grandfather’s deep wisdom that so many of us got out of the Holocaust alive. Although he survived the war, he didn’t get to enjoy his life. He died in 1946, convinced that the war had taken the lives of Gienia, Feliks, Stefan, and Charlotte, while all four of them survived but weren’t found until after his death.

My grandpa Józef Ubfal is buried in the Jewish cemetery on Okopowa Street in Warsaw. On the matzevah of his grave, I placed a plaque in memory of those who had been murdered by the Germans, on both my mother’s and my father’s side.

Interview with Grażyna Kompel

Mrs. Grażyna Kompel works at the Jewish Community in Łódź and the University of Łódź.