Edward Mersyk (Malinowski), born in 1939
Violin and Medicine
My name is Edward Mersyk (Malinowski). I was born in Warsaw, at Wielka Street. This street no longer exists. You can find it on old city maps of Warsaw. It was basically an extension of Poznańska Street. The Palace of Culture now stands in its place.
I was born four months before the war broke out, on May 14, 1939. I chose a “great place” and time to be born. My parents (Stefania and Marek Mersyk) lived at 13 Nowolipie Street. I found their exact address, phone number, and occupation in the 1939 telephone book of Warsaw. This book can be found on the website of the Library of Congress, USA.
great place—he author is making a play on words here, as the name of the street, Wielka, means “great” in Polish.
Both my parents were attorneys and earned degrees in law from the University of Warsaw. As my mother told me, my father had already run a law office, my mother was still doing apprenticeship with the attorney Kaliski. He is said to have been a very famous lawyer in pre-war Warsaw. My father was born in Kowel in 1903. As far as I know, his parents and one brother lived in Warsaw at the outbreak of the war. One of the brothers had emigrated to the United States in the late 1920s.
My parents were still at the beginning of their careers, but Father’s practice was doing well. I heard that he was a very smart and cautious man, especially when it came to the family, but more on that later. Besides, he had a hobby—he studied Esperanto and spoke it very well.
My mother, Stefania, was born in Warsaw. Her parents came from Kielce. Grandpa was an accountant. Grandmother Esterka was a very modern person and—as one might say today—a feminist. She took great care of her daughters’ education. She sent both my mother and her sister Janina to a private school in Warsaw. She was very assimilated with the Polish culture. At the same time, she ran a “Jewish” home and wanted the same for her daughters. Apparently, she often took them to concerts and exhibitions. I didn’t know my grandmother, she died of heart disease at a relatively young age, probably in 1936. I have one photo of her with my aunt. Grandfather Jakub is also said to have been a modern man, but also very religious. I’ll say more about him later. Both my mother and aunt received an excellent education in Polish, as evidenced by the fact that both graduated from the University of Warsaw in law. Their maiden name was Frendzel.
Now, a little bit about my aunt. Why am I mentioning her? Well, in the later years of my life, I had basically two mothers and our fates became unbreakable. My aunt was an extremely beautiful woman. Please look at the photo. Elegant, stylish, and feminine. My mother was more of an intellectual person. My aunt got married at the beginning of the 1930s and had one daughter, Krystyna, born in 1933. My aunt’s husband was Mieczysław (Mojżesz) Kohn.
The story of the Kohn family is also very interesting. Their grandfather, who had lived somewhere in the Warsaw Governorate, went to do “business” in Russia. They say that shortly after the end of World War I, he returned from Baku with a pouch of diamonds. He had three sons and two daughters, but apparently, only my uncle, Mieczysław, had a knack for business. The younger brother knew how to spend money between “Ziemiańska” in Warsaw and “Patria” in Krynica. Today, he would be called a playboy. Before too long, however, he married the daughter of German Jews who owned a wool spinning mill in Bielsko. She was also said to have been a famous “beauty” in Warsaw and already then, she drove around the city in a white Stayer convertible.
Ziemiańska—a famous pre-war cafe at Mazowiecka Street, which was also a cultural center of Warsaw.
Patria—a sanatorium.
Going back to my uncle. He invested mainly in sugar factories and was, it seems, one of the main sugar producers in pre-war Poland. In the mid-1930s he decided to build an apartment building in Warsaw where his family would also live. And this is how the building at 56 Marszałkowska Street came to be, along with a movie theater, known before the war as “Imperial”. The construction was completed, I think, in 1937. My fate is also connected with this building. At that time, it was one of the most modern, luxurious buildings in Warsaw. You can read about the so-called Kohn House on the website of old Warsaw architecture. Their apartment, specially furnished, was on the fourth floor. As far as I know, the same architect also designed the building at 18 Marszałkowska Street and the so- called Wedel House on the corner of Puławska and Madalińskiego Streets. We—my parents and I—didn’t live in this building before the war. As I mentioned, in the building’s old annex a movie theater was established, supposedly with the most modern projectors. My uncle wasn’t interested in running this theater and handed it over to Mr. Serek. Why am I writing about this? Both my mother and aunt knew that this man sent all the money he earned to support his son’s musical education in Paris. Has anyone heard of a violinist named Serek? I suppose not. But does the name Szeryng ring a bell? Henryk Szeryng, one of the best known and prominent violinists, was his son.
I won’t talk about Szeryng’s life story here. You can read about him on the Internet and it’s truly an extraordinary story.
Coming back to the Kohns and my aunt’s house on Marszałkowska. My uncle was a great Polish patriot and city councilor of Warsaw. This information is confirmed in the 1939 telephone directory (page 214). He was also associated with Jewish organizations. His mother was a very religious person. My aunt said that there were almost always some rabbis on the stairs in front of their apartment waiting for donations from her. Uncle cared a lot about the growth of Poland and wouldn’t invest any money abroad. He always said that the country needed his money. I don’t know how, but I stumbled upon a savings book kept by my aunt. It was chewed up by rats or mice and shows his contributions to the sugar bank account and only one large withdrawal in the first days of September 1939. My mother, who was only starting her professional career, also decided to invest, and together with my aunt and my uncle’s elder sister, they founded the Warsaw Stocking Industry at Ryzewska Street in Warsaw (page 418 of the 1939 telephone directory). They brought the best machines from Germany (!) as well as mechanics, and they allegedly produced the best stockings, the so-called gazówki. A note for younger readers—nylons weren’t available yet. This street doesn’t exist today. It was in lower Mokotów. The last time I looked there, there were some garages.
The factory was completely destroyed during the Warsaw Uprising, but the machines were supposedly moved by the Germans to Żyrardów.
Coming back to the German “connections”. Coincidently, the Kohn brought a professional nanny from Germany to look after my cousin Krystyna, and it is thanks to her that my aunt learned perfect German.
My parents were very close to them and the only photo of my father I have shows him, Krysia, and my aunt, who at that time was mourning her mother (my grandmother). I suspect that the photo dates from 1936. I don’t have any other photograph or memento of my father.
The war broke out. My parents decided to stay in Warsaw in their apartment, where they’d lived since 1936, at 13/5 Nowolipie Street. My aunt and her family decided to follow the rest of the family East and ended up in Lvov. There, they were “liberated” by the Red Army. Then they were in Lida for some time, and next, they wanted to flee towards Kowno, and it seems that it wasn’t until the outbreak of the Russian-German war that they returned to Warsaw. I think my aunt worked in a library in Lvov for a short time. Uncle got seriously ill with tuberculosis and diabetes. The rest of their family ended up in Siberia. The younger brother, who had liked to have fun and had a Jewish wife from Bielsko, lost his daughter to the NKVD, they never found her again. One of the sisters died in Siberia. The two brothers later ended up in the Anders Army and finally, via Palestine and China, they ended their post-war emigration in Australia.
NKVD—the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs in Soviet Russia, forerunner of the KGB.
Coming back to the matters in Poland, my aunt, my cousin, and uncle returned to Warsaw. Their apartment was already taken and they initially lived with us at Nowolipie. This address appears on later documents from the ghetto. My father was seriously ill, probably at the beginning of 1940, and had surgery at the “Omega” clinic, on Jerozolimskie Avenue. He had a perforated appendix, at least that’s what my mother told me, but somehow, he recovered without much trouble.
After the ghetto was established, our apartment was located in the center of this enclave. My mother and father started working in the “shops”, at the brush-maker’s, I think. My aunt and uncle worked at Ochman’s. To this day, we have the documents from that period. How did my aunt manage to keep them all these years? I have no idea. I read in some historical materials that out of about one hundred employees at Ochman-Leszczyński’s, no one survived. It turns out that this is inaccurate information—my aunt survived. Initially, as far as I know, the manager of the stocking factory named Piątkowski sent some money (the factory worked for some time). Also, the owner of one of the stores at 56 Marszałkowska Street, Mr. Wiśniewski, paid the rent. After a short while, it stopped.
Uncle died before the liquidation of the ghetto and was buried in the Jewish cemetery. My aunt’s mother-in-law had also died—she was found shot on the stairs. It happened while my aunt was working at the shop. Fearing for the whole family, the sisters decided to split up and my aunt and her daughter moved to another apartment. My father’s parents and his younger brother, who, as it was said back then, was crippled, also died in the ghetto in circumstances that were unclear to me. I don’t remember if they lived in our apartment—a lot of people lived there, including my grandfather (my mother’s father—Jakub Frendzel).
During one of the round-ups, at the end of the ghetto’s existence, my grandfather and I escaped to the attic during a “selection”. Grandpa looked after me while my parents were working in the shop. I remember that scene like it was yesterday. My grandfather was praying, he was wearing a prayer shawl. The sun shone through some openings in the roof. At one point, the Germans burst in. One in a leather overcoat, a civilian. The second, a soldier, was wearing a helmet and holding a rifle. I remember him as the so-called tin man. He wore a tin plate with an inscription on a chain around his neck. I found out later that it was a badge of the field gendarmerie. He started to hit my grandfather with the butt of this rifle and they chased us out of the attic. The next thing I remember is sitting next to my grandfather in a place full of people, and at one point someone pulled me away from him and I never saw him again. I still remember that I was lying in a kind of small hospital, when my father came for me and took me out of there. Later, I learned from my mother’s stories that we had been taken to the Umschlagplatz. My parents, who at that time were working in the “shop”, somehow found out that we had been taken during an “action”.
My father dashed to get us out of there. Most of the Jewish policemen in the ghetto were pre-war lawyers. One of the most important people in this organization was the well-known lawyer, Mr. N. My father had known him a little before the war and noticed him near the Umschlagplatz. First, he pleaded with him and then he bribed him to get us out of there. He managed to do this with me. He said that he wouldn’t get my grandfather out for any amount of money, and my grandfather went to Treblinka. I also know that my aunt and cousin were twice at the Umschlagplatz during other actions, and they got out of there in a similar way.
My parents understood that we wouldn’t survive in the ghetto. I don’t know how, but my father found a hiding place for us in the Aryan part of Warsaw. It was an apartment at 104 Grójecka Street. As far as I know, the buildiing had been partially destroyed during the fighting in September 1939. At that time, it seems it was the last building in Grójecka Street in the direction of Okęcie. He made an arrangement with the apartment owners, Mr. and Mrs. S., I remember their surname, but I don’t know if any of that family is still alive and I wouldn’t want them to have to go back to those days. He promised to pay them to renovate the apartment if they let us stay there. He said we had a “good” look. But they said that my father couldn’t stay there—he didn’t have a “good” look. I only partially remember leaving the ghetto. Apparently I was first packed in a backpack, after the appropriate dose of luminal. I remember that I woke up on a cart, under the boxes in which—I was sure—there was beetroot marmalade. I was very hungry and wondered how to get my hands on it. Through the cracks in the planks, I could see some streets. Then I remember the room in the building at Grójecka Street. The window overlooked Opaczewska Street. I remember clearly that whenever the door to this room opened, my father would immediately turn his head so that his face wasn’t visible.
As I mentioned, Mr. and Mrs. S. didn’t agree for my father to live there. Anyway, my father wanted to join the partisans. After a few days, two men came and said that they would take him to the partisans. Father went with them. And that was the last time we saw him. One of them came again two or three days later and said that it was cold in the forest and father asked for a coat. On the same day, shortly after he left, my mother began to despair. The owner of the apartment said that they were blackmailers who took my father straight to the Gestapo, to Szucha. And that’s the end of my father’s story.
Szucha—during the occupation, the headquarters of the Sicherheitspolizei and Sicherheitsdienst police forces were located in Szucha Avenue, where people were brutally interrogated and tortured.
At about the same time, my aunt and cousin also escaped from the ghetto. For a few days, they hid in the basement of the building at Marszałkowska Street—they were helped by the superintendent, Mr. Pietrzak, who also kept their family album, which is why we have these pre-war photos. However, they couldn’t stay there, and later they took refuge somewhere near the Polish Theater, at their former seamstress’s. However, there was a problem there. The seamstress’s husband came back drunk one evening and started yelling, “I have Jews here,” and they had to run. My aunt went to the lady who had done their laundry before the war, and she gave them the keys to her apartment in Targówek. However, a navy-blue policeman came there, my aunt even told me his name—S. After having some vodka, he started blackmailing them and wanted to sleep with a pretty “little Jew”. If not, he would hand them over to the Germans. My aunt somehow got out of this, saying that she was very tired, which was true—they had basically been wandering the streets for a few days—and had persuaded him to come back the next day. Immediately after he left, they fled. I don’t know where they were for the next few days, but somehow they ended up with my mother, who brought them to Grójecka Street. The owner, Mr. S., wouldn’t let them stay with us, especially my cousin, who also had a “bad” look. Then my mother told her: “We won’t make it through this war. I lost my husband and I don’t care anymore. If you don’t let them stay, I myself will go to the Germans and tell them you’ve been hiding Jews.” So they stayed in our apartment. My cousin didn’t leave this apartment even once until the Warsaw Uprising. I spent most of my time by the window, looking at Opaczewska Street. I remember that trams used to run that way. I remember the night when the Russian planes bombed Warsaw. In fact, I wasn’t even scared. I was more interested in the so-called chandeliers (illuminating flares dropped by airplanes). Opposite, there was a building which you’d call today a wedding palace, where carriages with young couples would pull up.
My mother and aunt had to make a living somehow. They started buying cakes in confectioneries in Warsaw and distributed them for sale to towns on the EKD line—mainly to Grodzisk and Milanówek. Sometimes they took me with them. I had a “good” Polish look. The only problem was that when I saw the Germans, I hid under the benches. In addition, I had difficulty remembering our surname in a given week. I only knew that I was “Edek”, and when they asked me, “Edek what?”, I’d reply, “I don’t remember.” I was Malinowski, Fabiszewski, and I had some other surnames on false papers. Malinowski recurred most often.
EKD—Electric Railways.
One time, my mother came back from town very distraught. Someone started chasing her in the street. It was a man named Błażejewski, who had known her before the war and knew that she was Jewish. Eventually, he caught her in a building entrance and said, “I know you’re a Jew,” and took her coat. He especially wanted to know where my aunt was, because he knew that she’d been rich before the war. For some time, my mother was afraid to go downtown. But in the end, she had no choice. After a few days, someone approached her again on the street. It was a different man. She started to run away. He caught up with her and asked why she was running. He was with an organization that helped Jews and wanted to help her. He gave her a chicken and some money. I have no idea if it was someone from Żegota or another organization. It seems she met with him a few more times.
Once, both my mother and aunt noticed that Jews had been caught and taken away from the Wolskis’. It wasn’t far from us, at Grójecka Street (diagonally across from our apartment). It’s possible that they saw the apprehending of Ringelblum.
Emanuel Ringelblum was in hiding at 81 Grójecka Street and was arrested there on March 7, 1944. Ringelblum Archive. Dzień po dniu Zagłady, p. 210. Ośrodek Karta. Warszawa 2008.
I remember when the Warsaw Uprising broke out. I saw that in the afternoon people started to behave differently on the street—they were all in a rush. Mom and Aunt were in the apartment, but soon they all started running to the basement. I don’t remember how long we stayed there, but at least one night. Initially, I was very pleased. At that time I often went hungry, and the outbreak of the uprising found us with an unsold batch of cookies, especially my favorite wafers with some terrible filling (at that time, I thought it was delicious).
Probably all the residents of the building were in the basement. At one point a panic broke out—“the Germans are coming”—and people started to stampede. Most of them went one way. The four of us, probably because we were “different”, went another way. We reached a dead-end corridor. Just then, we heard some bangs, screams, and explosions. After a while, it all went quiet. All those residents were killed on the spot. We got through some hole in the wall to the back of the building and to the allotments there. We were lying there not far from the house, thirty to fifty yards, among raspberry bushes. I remember we spent at least one night there. I think a German soldier stumbled upon us the next morning. Today I think he was from the Luftwaffe, his uniform was more gray than blue. He started talking to my aunt and said he would help us. Indeed, he came back after a while with bread and coffee and announced that he would come back in the evening with food and try to take us out of there. Unfortunately, another soldier found us shortly after him. At the time,
we thought he was a Ukrainian. We now know that he was a Gestapo officer from RONA, which then operated in Ochota. Readers can learn about them in many historical sources or on Wikipedia. In a nutshell, it was one of the most criminal and bloodthirsty ethnic paramilitary organizations in the German military. They were responsible for the Ochota slaughter. This soldier immediately began yelling at us and urged us with a grenade (he had no rifle) towards the wall of the building on Opaczewska Street. There we saw a whole group of these soldiers. One of them, probably their commander, was sitting at a table by the wall. Aware of the gravity of the situation, I was still fascinated by a gramophone which was sitting on that table. Somehow I knew that you could hear music from it, which I liked very much even back then. This officer gave my cousin one look—“Jude”—and had us put against the wall. My aunt and mother started screaming that we were no Jews, that we knew the prayers, which we started to say (we were prepared for that). At that point, something completely unexpected happened. Near these RONA soldiers, towards Opaczewska Street, a group of German soldiers were playing football. They were probably the same ones as the one who had previously found us. They stopped the game and started shouting something. Later, Aunt translated for us that they had said, “Enough with the killing!” and that they should let us go. The RONA probably didn’t want to mess with the Germans and instead of the wall, they took us to the other side of Grójecka Street, to Zieleniak. I don’t know if the Germans knew we were Jews or if they simply had had enough of women and children being murdered.
Ochota—a district of Warsaw.
Zieleniak—a former vegetable market called Zieleniak, today known as Hale Banacha.
Zieleniak also went down in history. Approximately 1,000 inhabitants of Warsaw died there at that time, mainly at the hands of the RONA troops. I remember that when we got there, I was terribly thirsty and someone gave me some smelly water in a tin can. My cousin passed out and then, when she came round, was very terrified that they would cut off her finger, on which she wore a very small ring that wouldn’t come off. And these RONA soldiers wouldn’t think twice about it. I even remember in which part of Zieleniak we ended up—diagonally across from the main entrance.
The next thing I remember was marching in a column from Zieleniak, I think towards the Western Warsaw Station. There is a well- known photo that shows these columns marching down Opaczewska Street. I also remember being angry with my mother. Through all this, I was wearing a coat which started to bother me, especially during this march (it was very hot) and I really wanted to throw it away, but, of course, my mother wouldn’t let me.
Then we were in a transit camp in Pruszków, from which we escaped. Then Grodzisk. Some apartment on the market square, on the first floor. What I remember most about this apartment is that rats were running around our bed all night. Then some village near Grodzisk. We stayed there only for a few days—they wouldn’t keep Jews.
We finally ended up in Żyrardów. I know we lived in separate apartments there. Again, the mothers thought it might be easier for us to survive this way. We lived in an apartment almost across from the military barracks. I spent most of my time looking out the window, and often saw German columns marching. They mostly walked in threes and sang “Heili, heilo”. I had mixed feelings, on the one hand, I was terrified of them, but on the other—as a little boy, I was fascinated by their marching and singing.
My aunt and her daughter lived near the church with an old lady. She didn’t know they were Jewish. Although she herself told them that the neighbors said she was hiding Jews. “I told them it was impossible, after all, her name is Krajewska.” Life was very difficult and I know that we went to the RGO for help several times. Additionally, my aunt started trading in yarn stolen by workers from German spinning mills in Żyrardów. She sold it mainly on the railway bound for Częstochowa. Her daughter, Krysia, refused to stay at home. After all she’d experienced, she wouldn’t part with her mother. Once there was a German raid on the train. A German soldier led them out of the carriage and spoke to them in fluent Polish—he was from Silesia. “Are you crazy? You’re transporting stolen goods while traveling with your daughter who looks like this?” Then he released them. They continued to take the trains, they had no option, sometimes my mother came along.
RGO—the Central Welfare Council.
One cold morning while I was in the street, I noticed a tank and a truck pull out from the side streets, on both sides. They were the Russians. The tank driver got out of the tank and approached our group of children. He noticed that I had no gloves and I was very cold, so he put both my hands in one of their gloves. And that was the end of the war for us. My cousin Krysia sprinted straight to the main square in front of the church, where supposedly the German corpses were lying. She hoped, as she said, that maybe one was still alive so she could kill him herself. I also remember that on the same day, we “finessed” a loaf of bread and for the first time I ate wheat bread.
So, what’s next? My mother and aunt returned to Warsaw two days after the liberation (on January 19). They arrived there partly on foot and partly on military trucks. I was left in Żyrardów until my mother finally came back for me and I was in Warsaw two days later. We got to Marszałkowska Street somehow and, surprisingly, the building at number 56 had survived, as well as other buildings on this side of the street towards Wilcza. The building at number 54, with the famous pre-war Bukowski’s pharmacy (painkillers with a “cockerel”), was completely destroyed. Mom and Aunt went to the family apartment on the fourth floor, which just then was being robbed of my aunt’s pre-war furniture. They somehow managed to chase the thief away, but it was impossible to live in this apartment and we moved into an apartment on a lower floor. It’s hard to even call it an apartment. It was more of a nomadic stay, no water, no light, no heating and no panes in the windows. Fortunately, the superintendent of the building, Mr. Pietrzak, returned around the same time and installed an iron stove for us. He also tried to insert something like panes of glass or plywood in windows. It was basically Sisyphean work—at that time, the sappers blasted the remains of the destroyed buildings with explosions, and as a result, the panes fell out of the windows again. There was practically no Marszałkowska Street, only a path across the piles of rubble. At the corner of Skorupki Street, there was an overturned tram, where, fortunately, someone later set up a small store. Across the yard of our building there was some ammunition, a couple of rifles, and helmets.
My mother and aunt went to Praga to get some food and money. They crossed the frozen Vistula on foot and notified some Jewish organization that we were alive and were given some money.
After a short time, the first schools began to open. They didn’t know what to do with me. They started working at the Ministry of Supplies, which then opened at Chocimska Street and at Unii Lubelskiej Square. My cousin went to junior high school, I think one named after Słowacki, and I was five years old and, because no one could watch me, I was sent to school. Back then, it was two years too early. School started at the age of 7. And so, from my school days until university, I was the youngest in my class (two years younger). My first school was at Ujazdowskie Avenue, between Piękna and Wilcza Streets. No, there were no school buses, and of course, on the harshest winter days you walked on foot, over the rubble. Initially, three grades were in one room—each row of desks was one grade: the first, second or third. One teacher usually taught all the classes. From those first years, I remember the most that our teacher was a demobilized officer whose methods weren’t very pedagogical. For instance, when someone was behaving badly, he would ask if he or she had ever heard the sound of the sea, then he would take off his wide military belt, wrap it around the victim’s head, and rub it furiously, which produced the appropriate effect in the student’s ears. Then, my school (No. 40) was moved to Hoża Street and this one was great—its handrails in the stairwell were perfect for sliding down. I somehow plugged along for the first two years.
For us, life was very hard, as it was for most people. Because the movie theater was located in our building, the branches of The Polish Film moved into it, and we were thrown out of the apartment. My aunt went to the then director of The Polish Film, Aleksander Ford, and begged him for permission to stay in this building, on the sixth floor.
I remember going to Praga with my mother and aunt a few times, mainly on a pontoon and high-water bridge. It was very difficult to get to the bridge, you mostly trudged through mud, and everyone had to bring a brick to put into the mud and make the access easier.
I think it was in 1946, I was sent to a special summer camp organized by the JOINT. There were mainly orphans and half-orphans who survived the Holocaust. I was one of the younger boys. I know that many teenagers later emigrated to Israel and quite a few died in the First Arab-Israeli War.
JOINT—American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee—a charity organization established in the United States in 1914.
Going back to school. Nobody paid any attention to me there. It wasn’t until the end of the second grade that it was noticed that I couldn’t read or write. My mother was called to the school and told that something was wrong with me, and after a few “talks”, I had to get down to work and, for a change, I started reading a lot. Also, I developed my own theories about Polish grammar and spelling. For example, I remember that I once spelled “kura” with an “ó”. When I was asked why, I replied, “because you spell ‘kogut’ with an ‘o’”. Today, they would probably say that I displayed the so-called social sensitivity, but this wasn’t a thing back then.
kogut’ with an ‘o’—“kura” in Polish is a “hen”, “kogut ”—“rooster”; according to the Polish spelling rules, you spell words with an “ó” if other forms of that word are spelled with the letter “o”. In this example, however, this rule cannot be applied because the words, though related in one way, mean two different things.
At that time, my violin “career” began. As I’ve mentioned, I was always drawn to music and I had an ear for it. I started attending the Chopin Music School and I started learning to play the violin. Most of my old friends remember me like that—“He’s the one with the violin.”
Now in a nutshell. The apartment at Marszałkowska Street had its advantages, but also major disadvantages. In this building the first movie theater was opened on the left-bank of Warsaw (apart from “Tęcza” in Żoliborz). It wasn’t called “Imperial”, as before the war, but the proper “Polonia”. There were great commotions going on there, and many times we couldn’t get through the crowds to reach our apartment. The advantage was that I knew all the ticket sellers and often spent my days at the movies instead of at school. I remember, I saw the first film, Sekretarz Rajkomu, over 150 times. The second one, Zoja Kosmodemiańska, only 50 times.
I remember that food was also scarce. My mother’s and aunt’s salaries barely allowed them to make ends meet. We were especially short on warm clothes and I was often cold. Fortunately, we received packages from UNRRA (_) a few times. Once, my mother also got a sheepskin coat from the rejects of the US Army, and after various modifications I wore it until my high school final exams.
UNRRA—ted Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
final exams—the American army demobilized in Western Europe passed on the unnecessary components of soldiers’ equipment to the population. These were traded in Polish marketplaces and referred to as “army surplus” items.
Later, I had to go to music school as far as Inżynierska Street in Praga, which, especially in winter, wasn’t the most pleasant thing to do on the old, crowded, and cold Warsaw trams. I usually came home late and I didn’t feel like studying for my regular classes, and at that time I went to school in Noakowski Street, in the building of the Staszic Junior High School. The school was later renamed the TPD No. 2 and moved to a new building at Nowowiejska Street, supposedly built by the Czechs, and, therefore, renamed the Gottwald School. That school was already considered very good and had a very “diverse” clientele. Some of the pupils were from the school district, just like me. In my class there was, for example, Krzysiek Kowalewski (actor) or Janek Jagielski (a.k.a Margiel)—who, already back then, was “the salt of the earth”, but there were also some children of prominent figures, for example, Stefan Zambrowski, actually a very decent and modest boy (he died in Israel at a young age). It seems that he went to our school to avoid the school at Parkowa Street, which was famous for the V.I.P.’s children attending it.
TPD—Towarzystwo Przyjaciół Dzieci—Association of the Friends of Children.
There were also students from a completely different group in our class —for example, there was Jungraft, whose father was murdered in the colonels’ trial. I’m still in close contact with a few of my classmates, for example, the former ambassador to Hungary—Maciek Koźmiński with his wife, and Michał Antopolski, who lives in the neighboring state of Ohio. In our class, there was also a boy who in my opinion was the most talented person I’d ever met, Andrzej Zabłudowski. His father was a “big fish” in various publications shortly after the war. They had a beautiful apartment in Róże Avenue, near Cyrankiewicza Street, but then was kicked out for Trotskyist deviation (?). Andrzej got a degree in philosophy, and then was a professor at major American universities, but his life ended very tragically. Coming back to me. I was a rather average student. Oh, after the war
I looked like a child from Biafra—not black, but thin. I was sent to a special nutrition camp and they succeeded, and to this day I’ve maintained a pretty good weight, but I never really liked gymnastics and military training. At one point, probably as the only one in the history of the school, I had to re-do a baseball throw (that is, a grenade throw) in my military training.
What saved me many times was playing the violin—I knew all the common songs and at academies I played a cantata about Stalin or other melodies “following the line”. Mom really wanted me to be the second Huberman, or at least a communications engineer (it was “hot” back in the day). Of course, studying Marxism, Leninism, or economics in Moscow was en vogue, but fortunately, it wasn’t going to happen. By the way, there was one guy in our class, whose name I won’t mention, the stepson of some less important minister, who studied economics in Moscow, and now, it seems, is the most popular astrologer in Poland (the same utopia and fairy tale?). Surprisingly, I passed my high school diploma quite well. Even then it turned out that if I put my mind to it, the results aren’t half bad.
At that time, I was also in the Chopin Secondary Music School at Szpitalna Street, which I hadn’t finished yet at the time. I got admitted to study musicology at the University of Warsaw. I studied there for two years. I liked the fact that they had quite a large archive of recordings (even then) and we had special entry cards for the general rehearsals at the Philharmonic, but this theorizing about music wasn’t my cup of tea.
My cousin had already been studying medicine. She lost many years of schooling during the occupation and, as I mentioned, for a while she’d gone to the Słowacki School, but, unfortunately, just after the war it wasn’t the most pleasant place to be, and several times she heard comments about her Jewishness, not only from her schoolmates but also from teachers, so she transferred to another school. My mother also decided to stick to the “Polish” surname—Malinowski. Of course, this was coupled with hiding her “capitalist” origin. (Luckily, the stocking factory had been destroyed).
I took more and more to medicine, and after two years of musicology, I passed the medicine entry exams, and I was finally in my age group. And there it was, as they said back then—“przełom w bulwie”. I liked medicine a lot, I studied it and was one of the best students in my year. I worked in science clubs, I volunteered for duties in the hospital, and I even managed to go to Strasbourg for a summer scholarship as chairman of science clubs.
przełom w bulwie—phrase used in the past, coined from the title of Janusz Osęka’s satirical collection Przełom w Bulwie—meaning, a total breakthrough, a 180 degree turn in someone’s views and behavior.
At the same time, I graduated from the secondary school of music and even took exams to the conservatory, but I had to make a choice: medicine or playing the violin professionally. Fortunately, I had a bit of internal self-criticism and knew that I wouldn’t make a career as a solo violinist, and playing, for example in an opera orchestra, though much more profitable than working as a doctor at that time, wasn’t for me. So, I stuck with medicine.
In the fourth year, I met my future wife, Jolanta—a non-Jew. To this day, I keep telling her that she is a typical example of Polish antisemitism—she married me to tease me. Somehow, it doesn’t get through to her. We got married right after graduation and later our daughter Zuzanna was born. I got a PhD scholarship in Warsaw. My wife really wanted to specialize in dermatology, but that was out of the question—we had no “connections”. At the clinical ward in Warsaw, the head at the time mainly accepted good-looking boys or the children of prominent figures (e.g. the daughter of one of the deputy prime ministers, who was in our year). Working in one of the clinics at the Medical Academy, I was often on duty with an assistant professor, whose husband was the head of dermatology at Wołowska Street (then the hospital of the Ministry of the Interior). I once asked him if there was any possibility of getting a job for my wife in this unit—“out of the question”. They were doing very well at that time, had a beautiful apartment in Mokotów, two cars from the prime minister’s pool, etc. I have recently read their daughter’s memoir about how much they were “persecuted” in those times!
We were enrolled in a medical housing association and finally got a three-room apartment in Londyńska Street. My wife worked as an occupational-medicine physician, mainly in several factories in Praga. I earned extra money doing hospital shifts and teaching in a nursing school. Finally, the year 1968 came. We decided that we had to emigrate, mainly for the sake of our daughter. Of course, I was fired straight away. My wife continued working for some time. At the Mostowski Palace they were talking her into divorcing me. When she was leaving, her whole family was still in Poland. In Vienna the Jewish Agency asked us why we didn’t want to go to Israel. My wife, who has a more Jewish look than me, was asked about that too. I am very proud of her, because she gave a Jewish answer: “You have so much faith in the American reality?” “I don’t, but my husband does.” The next step was typical, six months in Rome.
Mostowski Palace—largely destroyed during WWII and rebuilt in 1949, now contains Warsaw’s police headquarters.
We didn’t have any family in the States and we waited for a sponsor. I said that I wanted to go anywhere except for New York—for all Polish Jews the States began and ended in New York—I had had enough of this. Oh, I didn’t mention that in 1947 we almost went to the States. My mother found my father’s brother who had left for the United States in the 1920s and lived in New Jersey. I have no idea how she found his address. I remember that he sent two care packages and later, an invitation to the States. We got the passport, which I still have today. At the same time, my aunt found her husband’s two brothers in Australia, who also sent an affidavit and she got a passport. I don’t know exactly why, but from the conversations I heard I surmise that after what they had been through, they didn’t want to be separated from each other and didn’t have the strength to embark on a new journey, thanking God that they were alive at all.
We finally arrived in Detroit. Here, it turned out that I had to validate my diploma before I could start any work. I spoke almost no English. For a few months I studied under very difficult, and often dangerous, conditions. We lived on very limited social welfare, but at least we were helped. Our daughter was very small, my mother was already sick. Fortunately, I was able to pass all the exams on my first try and became a resident at the local Jewish hospital—I went through the “wringer” but my first salary was in dollars. I felt like a Rockefeller.
One more thing. Before emigrating to the United States, I signed a statement saying that I would report to the military commission and could possibly be sent to Vietnam. I didn’t have any problem with that. I calculated that my salary in the army would be higher, and even if I died, my family would get citizenship and a pension after me.
I don’t want to bore you with various “flourishes” from this emigration—just a few funny anecdotes. One is about the army. When reporting to the local military commission, I mentioned, of course, that I had had military training at the Medical Academy. I was ordered to show transfer documents from the Polish army to the States. It took them quite a long time to figure out that the Warsaw Pact was a bit different from NATO.
Warsaw Pact—a treaty signed in Warsaw during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and seven Eastern Bloc socialist republics.
Another story. During the talks at the American embassy in Rome, my wife stated that she hadn’t been in any trade union. The consul said it was impossible because everyone said that you had to be in one. I, indeed, was a member but my wife wasn’t. We had decided that we would save some money, and if we were offered a holiday by the FWP, we would get it through my membership, so their suspicions were unfounded.
FWP—Fundusz Wczasów Pracowniczych—the Workers’ Holiday Fund—a trade union institution organizing family holidays for factory and office workers.
I didn’t end up going to Vietnam, the war soon ended. We also signed a document that my daughter (less than 4 years old) didn’t engage in prostitution and would not try to forcefully overthrow the US presidency (!). After a few years, my wife also passed all the exams while taking care of our home and child. She wanted to go back to dermatology, but our American friends told her to get it out of her head—for the entire state of Michigan there were only a handful of places, where several hundred American graduates applied. In spite of everything, she got accepted, and at that, to a department “a little” better than the Ministry of the Interior or even the Medical Academy in Warsaw. By the way: the former head of this clinic, who later came to the States (for conferences), talked about how she had been persecuted (!) by the regime in Poland. My wife completed her training with special honors for the best resident and later also was given an award as the best visiting faculty teacher.
We both worked very hard, and it’s under these circumstances that our daughter grew up. She was doing pretty well in schools. She was an excellent student. She never went to private schools, but it didn’t hurt her, and she finished high school with honors. She got admission letters to the most famous American universities, including Harvard, Yale, Duke, Dartmouth, etc. However, she chose the University of Michigan, which then offered a special 6-year college program plus 6-year medical school (instead of the normal 8) to a small group of especially gifted students. They called her several times from Harvard to persuade her to enter the university. The thing was that it isn’t the grades or tests that count there—no one with poor results even applies for admission. They are looking for someone who stands out. She had to write an essay on who had the greatest influence on her throughout her life. We’ve never seen it. We only know that the life and fate of her parents were the theme of her work. She chose Michigan because she could study additional subjects there outside of medical school. For example, she spent the summer in Florence studying art history and the next summer in Salamanca studying Spanish.
During this time, the family began to age and slowly die out. My mother died in 1986. She didn’t live to get a reply from the Bar Council regarding her pension. Of course, my wife was refused a visa to Poland. The last time, the consul of the Polish People’s Republic in Chicago (Mr. A.) said that she wouldn’t get a visa because “we” had murdered Allende in Chile! They finally let our daughter in when she was 13. It was hard for them to prove that she had been a counter-revolutionary element before our emigration from Poland, and that she would lead an active opposition in Poland at her age. At the end of the 1980s, finally, we were also able to go to Poland, unfortunately mainly for the funerals of my wife’s family members. My aunt and cousin also died here. My wife and I have a private practice, I work as a cardiologist, but recently we are “slowing down”—our age is catching up with us.
Several years ago, prompted by my wife, I started playing the violin again. I even take lessons from a Polish violinist from the local philharmonic. At first, it was very difficult, but recently I’ve started doing better and it gives me a lot of satisfaction. Now it looks completely different and helps me relax in this often crazy life of a doctor in the United States. Why did I finally decide to write something about this “curious”
life of mine? Until recently, it had never occurred to me, I even thought that the sheer volume was too much. In general, I have very ambivalent feelings about the whole Holocaust problem in today’s organizations and media, especially in the United States. Like a typical Jew, I’m of two minds. I don’t like to participate in any organizations—I was cured of that in the former Polish People’s Republic and unfortunately, I see a lot of unjustified “distortions” here. I believe many people have made a good living out of the Holocaust—just look at the Claims Conference board. I know people who get compensation from them without ever having been under the German occupation. I also know people who survived, for example, the Lodz ghetto, and receive pennies from them —and this organization still “sits” on almost a billion dollars. I haven’t gotten a penny from them and I don’t want this blood-stained money, and even if I am to get it, it should be my decision to whom I want to give it and when. I have never authorized these American Jewish attorneys to represent me. No money can turn my family’s fortunes around, and American Jews who didn’t care much about it during the war cannot understand it.
At one of the meetings here, a Holocaust specialist said that “those who survived it have the right to say what they want.” To which I say, “Politically, it’s not right.” I’m irritated by those whom I call the local “professional victims of the Holocaust” who will tearfully repeat the same speeches for good money. For me, it is completely Orwellian (it resembles Animal Farm)—there are starting to be worse and better victims of the Holocaust.
More and more Poles I’ve met in the course of my life announce that either they or their families hid Jews during the war. Sometimes it seems to me that if it had been so, then basically no Jew in Poland would have died. Well, that’s enough. Even my family says that in my old age I have become grumpy and cynical. I guess they’re right.
Why did I write it though? During my last visit in Warsaw, when I was there for the first time with my wife and her sisters, I decided to show them the building at 104 Grójecka Street. The building seems renovated and looks nice in bright colors. While I was standing on the side of Opaczewska Street, they called me to show me something on the main wall of this building (on Grójecka). Now there is a plaque there. Later I found out in the Ochota district that it had been unveiled in 2008. The plaque commemorates the events of August 1944 and says that all the residents of this block were murdered in the basement and the nearby allotments by the criminals from the RONA, and I realized then that we were the only four who had survived and I’m the last person alive! It touched me very, very deeply and to this day I still can’t get over it.
Here’s the second reason. Our daughter got married quite late. She’s one of the top retinal specialists in the United States. During the specialist exam, she achieved the highest score in the country and became the youngest examiner on the board in her specialty. I’m not writing this to boast, but inside, we’re overjoyed that our really hard emigration has paid off.
In 2007 our daughter bought us a trip to Israel and on the way she announced that she was pregnant. In 2008, our grandson was born. Of course, his grandma and grandpa adore him! Our daughter, on her own initiative, named him… MAREK. It seems the Germans didn’t succeed in murdering my father, after all.
