Halina, born in 1930

I was only afraid of mama

I never reflected on whether I am a Jew or Pole. There’s no doubt that I was a spoilt Jewish child. My father impressed on me that we were Polish. He said about himself that his nationality was Polish and religion Jewish. He was a Polish patriot. As a young boy, he tried to enlist in the Polish Legions but wasn’t accepted due to his age. He experienced the death of Piłsudski as a personal loss. On the first day of the war, he shaved his head like a soldier and volunteered to join the army and defend Poland. This time he was also rejected as there were not enough arms for the crowds of volunteers. He returned home to immediately organize digging trenches, which the authorities requested. As if the trenches could save the country from the Nazi army! Later, on the appeal of the authorities, he left for Warsaw, where armed forces were going to be concentrated. After Warsaw capitulated, he came back with Mama’s youngest brother, who was very sick. He and Father had met on the street by an uncanny coincidence. My father took him to Tola’s, his cousin, at whose place he was staying during the siege. Tola, energetic and resourceful as she was, was able to obtain gas and a permit from the Germans to move the sick man to Łódź by car. She saved his life.

My mother was a Polish Catholic from a traditional petit bourgeois working class family. She came from Dąbrowa Górnicza. My grandfather was a steelworker, a steel-melting foreman. He was a member of the Polish Socialist Party. He died in 1930. My grandmother, though weathered by life, died at the age of 86. My mother had several siblings—five sisters and two brothers. But the younger generation was much smaller: two sons of her older sister and me. The son of her youngest brother was born very late. The whole family would meet regularly on holidays. That hustle and bustle was merry, especially, after my husband joined the family. Soon, however, the family started to crumble. First, the elders passed away, later my two cousins, who were far too young. My mother outlived everyone. She was 97 when she died.

My mother was very pretty but also ambitious and resourceful. The war interrupted her schooling, so she completed various courses and for a short time she worked as a secretary. Later she was a cashier in a big restaurant and a night spot in Sosnowiec as well as a representative of her brother-in-law, who was its co-owner. This is where she met her future husband, who played in a band contracted for that season.

My parents got married out of great love, mainly through my father’s determination. Both families strongly opposed their marriage. For both sides the different religions were an obstacle, but not nationality or race by any stretch. They had a civil ceremony in Katowice, where such weddings were officiated, and they promised both families that the religious ceremony would take place after the husband had converted to the Catholic faith, which never happened. Over time, both families came to terms with that and got along with my parents.

The first olive branch was offered by the Jewish mother. After I was born, she traveled across Poland with a beautiful gift for my mama and to see her granddaughter. It was that much easier for her because it wasn’t her son who renounced his faith but her daughter-in-law. By not having a church wedding, she was excluded from the Church.

My parents’ wedding goes with a story characterizing my father. His mother, in order to prevent the marriage, went to Sosnowiec and took him to Łódź. Father complied, but after dinner he said he was going out to get cigarettes, after which he got on a train and got married the next day.

The attitudes in my mother’s family varied. Her sisters and brothers were friendly but I didn’t meet my Catholic grandmother until I was five. All the religious firewalls went down after the war. The survivors became friends and offered each other help.

I was born in 1930 in Kraków, where my parents were going to settle down. They had led a nomadic life. My father was a musician and played in a reputable band hired for a season, after which he would move on to the next place that offered him a contract. Wandering around and living in hotel rooms was cumbersome with a small child. Succor came to my mother in the form of the economic crisis. For the lack of a profitable contract, the orchestra wasn’t offering decent remuneration. My father gave up his music career, and in 1933 my parents settled in Łódź with my father’s family. Aside from his musical education, my father had also completed a well-known middle school of the Merchant Assembly and could work in commerce. He took a job in the company of his older brother. My father’s parents had lived in one of the towns near Łódź. They were spinners and craftsmen and designed weaving patterns for factories. They died young. My father’s own mother died right after giving birth to him. The children were taken care of by her sister and brother-in-law. The youngest son was legally registered as their own child. This was my father.

Grandpa—my father’s stepfather—“dealt with Russia.” This referred to activities that yielded profit, apparently very high. The family was wealthy and aspired to educate the children, of which there were five: three brothers and two sisters. The eldest sister got married young. The others, including the younger sister, completed secondary school, which at the time didn’t happen too often. My father was sent to the music conservatory in Vienna. The wealth had melted away after the First World War but they were far from impoverished.

I remember my grandma very well. She’d sit all day at a table and attend to some sort of business. Some people came to visit her, they were very respectful. She’d make money without leaving the house, which I know because she always had money and lent it to the family if there was a need. She’d buy us gifts which were brought to us by Mrs. Mejer, who was a traveling saleswoman. I also know that my grandma was considered a very wise person, and many people, especially men, came to ask for her advice. They’d play cards with my grandma, which was her number- one entertainment. I don’t remember her ever going out. She dressed traditionally in long skirts and did her hair in a bun. Her hair was black with very few gray strands. She looked old although she wasn’t very old. When the war broke out, she wasn’t even 70. She died in Auschwitz in 1944. My grandfather died in 1933. I remember his funeral, I think.

I also have this memory of my grandfather sitting in an armchair by the window with me in his lap. He was giving me tea in a saucer because it would have been too hot in a glass. I might have been two at the time.

My grandma lived with my father’s sister, Aunt Rózia, her husband Leon and their daughter, Felusia, who was three years older than me. We were very close and we also argued a lot because she thought I was a silly brat and I wasn’t having it. This was our “home,” this is where important decisions were made during family meetings and this is where holidays were celebrated. Aunt Rózia and my mama were inseparable. I don’t remember them arguing or being cross with one another, even though they both had difficult personalities.

I had managed to complete the third grade of a private Jewish elementary school before the war broke out. It was unthinkable in my family for children to attend a public school and be exposed to bullying. My whole childhood was marked by a fear of antisemitism. For instance, you wouldn’t leave home during workers’ rallies on May 1. However, we did celebrate national holidays with solemnity. I remember watching parades from my friends’ balcony on Piotrkowska Street.

The first year of the war is etched in my memory as a constant snowy winter during which I would ice-skate down icy streets. Following the announcement that Jews were supposed to live in the ghetto, we soon moved to a relatively decent small tenement building from which its previous Polish tenants had been forced out. We took with us what we could. Various valuable items were hidden in the attic of the house where my father’s sister lived with her family. This hiding place was made by the custodian, an incredibly decent man. He was thought trustworthy because he was a Jehovah’s Witness. The owner of the house was an old German who pretended he didn’t know about anything. What couldn’t be taken or hidden was left behind in the vacated apartments. All of our relatives settled in the same house, but each family had its own large room with a cooking stove. The water access was in the hallway, the toilet in the yard. I’ve completely erased from my memory the time spent in the ghetto. I can’t recall how we passed the time, whether I took lessons, what the elders did. I really can’t…

In the late fall, or maybe even winter, my father and his brother were hired by the Germans on the “Aryan side” as experts and got accommodation in a large apartment with several other men. After some time, apparently it was possible for us to move in with our father. After dusk, some people escorted my mama and me to the barbed wire surrounding the ghetto, lifted the wire, and we crossed to the other side. We were awaited by a friend, a foreman from the small factory that had been run by my father before the war. He lived just outside the ghetto’s perimeter so he took us in, and we joined Father in the morning.

I remember this period. Life ran its relatively normal course. A tutor gave me lessons at home, I went out with my mama, all three of us were together. This idyllic state didn’t last long. One morning, I think it was the fall of 1941, the Germans from the criminal police (but not the Gestapo, importantly) showed up. They searched the apartment and arrested everyone. I was spared, thanks to the courage and quick-thinking of the person who had been visiting us that day. It was our neighbor from before the war whose stepmother was German, and on account of this she was forced to accept the Volksliste. She resisted it because she was a great Polish patriot, but my uncle convinced her that as a “German” she could help people and if she had refused it, she would have put herself and her daughter at risk. It was true. She identified herself and spoke German haughtily (I remembered that), packed a few things of mine, took me by the hand, put my doggy on a leash, and we left. Only at home she realized what she had done and she almost had a nervous breakdown. Her determination probably was caused by the fact that she was my godmother.

I had been baptized in the first winter of the war. According to my parents, the certificate was to remove the threatening Jewish stigma from me. But the priest wouldn’t give out the baptismal certificate, probably out of fear. Mrs. Marta treated her godmother’s role very seriously. I had a good life with her. I studied, not only religion. I received warmth and care. My upkeep was financed thanks to the valuable items my parents had stored at Mrs. Marta’s. I also had a thing or two because before the Germans searched the place, I had grabbed my mama’s rings and I left with them. By some miracle, I lived in a house where the owner—a German—and all the tenants knew very well who I was. A “local” Gestapo agent took an interest in me. In response, a young German woman from Magdeburg, who lived next door, and who probably worked at the Gestapo, told him off, which we could all hear, for suspecting her of tolerating Jews. Later, she was very proud of herself. In return, she could count on our almost familial affection and a place at the Christmas Eve table. I was doing well at Mrs. Marta’s. She treated me as if I were her granddaughter. I worried about my parents, but so did Mrs. Marta, her daughter and friends, so I wasn’t alone. My parents had been arrested. My mama was  put  in  prison  on Gdańska Street. Someone let us know about it and we took her packages. She was released from this prison by the warden – a Silesian. On what grounds, it’s unclear. He had the same last name as she did, and my mama was staying in prison without a charge or sentence, so he let his “relative” go. It’s hard to believe but this is true. The warden didn’t know that this last name was “international” and quite popular among Jews, Poles, and Silesians.

We both moved in with Mrs. Marta. She soon moved to the apartment below while we stayed in her place. It was possible because officially, the main tenant was my mama’s brother, Romek, who was working in a big factory in Pabianice. Its German owners  protected their workers. Only a few years ago I learned that these owners were the relatives of a great figure in pre-war Poland, the Evangelical bishop Juliusz Bursche, murdered by the Nazis.

My father was sentenced and transferred from the ghetto prison to Sieradz but between the two prisons, he was put under arrest for several days on Kopernika Street. There, he managed to inform us via a bribed guard that on this day and that time, he’d be in the basement cell in the front. If we were to walk by there, he’d see us. And he did. We didn’t see Father, we only heard his voice. He called: “I see you!” In Sieradz Father sent a guard out for some food. This guard didn’t charge a high fee. He said that Father was well liked, that he sang and played and kept people’s spirits up. After some time, the guard came to say that Father had fallen sick and died. Prisoners didn’t get treatments. An official notice came to the ghetto. It was in the winter of 1942. For a long time, I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, believe that my father was gone.

For several months, we lived in relative peace. I continued to take lessons with an amazing tutor who wasn’t so young any more. Not only did she transfer knowledge to me, but she also instilled values and needs in me, which at home in those circumstances were secondary. I started reading very early, and in most cases it wasn’t just fairy tales. Father was not an intellectual. He was a musician, an artist. He had an imagination and various interests. At home we’d listen to the radio, to music. I knew the names of prominent artists, even poets and writers. I’d listen to conversations about current events and politics. I must have understood a lot from them because I wasn’t surprised by the Nazis’ treatment of Jews and Poles. I wasn’t as terrified by the war events and repressions as other children kept in a glass jar and sent to their rooms. We didn’t even have children’s rooms at our place. My cousin and I would listen to everything and share news. My tutor didn’t treat me as a silly child, either, and talked to me in a serious way.

After some time of relative peace, a stranger came and warned us that we were going to be arrested. She worked as a cleaner in an institution designed to maintain racial purity in the Third Reich, and she browsed the lists of people who were going to be arrested. In one day, my mama packed our things. Since Łódź was part of the Reich, through her friends, Mama found smugglers to move us through the “green border” (that is, illegally) to the General Government. I don’t know how we got to this border. I only remember waiting around in the dark in some meadow, and in the morning, we were already in Koluszki, in a designated house, in an isolated location. We lived there for several months.

But we were no longer safe in Koluszki, it was too close to the border. I remember well the sound of nearby gunshots. Later they would say it was the Germans who had killed Jews. We had a big problem because I didn’t have any document, and traveling without one was even more dangerous. This is when the invaluable Mrs. Marta came to Koluszki (as a German, she was allowed to) and went to the parish priest. I don’t know what arguments she used but she got me a certificate. I still have this piece of paper.

Despite the occupation, the war, and the division of the country, the postal service worked and my mama managed to get addresses of her cousins in Warsaw. We arrived in Warsaw on a packed train. Some people took us and several other travelers from the station to a private shelter. I remember it was at Widok Street and it was getting close to the curfew or even later. At first, we stayed with an elderly woman friend of Mrs. Marta’s. She lived in an attic room, somewhere on Krucza Street.

Our wealthy relatives  couldn’t  help  us,  while  a  significantly less wealthy cousin gave us her studio  apartment.  She  spent  the nights outside the city because she was afraid of bombardment. Her household was in a shack in a fuel warehouse, which she ran with her husband. The studio was small,  on  the  fourth  floor,  with  “facilities” in the yard and a view of the ghetto, which later was on fire. But the tenement house belonged to a German family of Polish patriots who surrounded us with care and affection.

My resourceful mother had a knack for making money and we lived decently. The recommended tutor turned out to be a wonderful person. Although she was only a Polish teacher, she taught me all the subjects, and she did it so well that I didn’t have any catching-up to do after the war when I went back to school. She was very religious, almost devout, but at the same time, rather clear-minded. She introduced me to the church choir, thanks to which I had some female and even male friends. I also had a reputation in the tenement building, which was mostly inhabited by factory workers’ families and small merchants, because the evening prayers in the yard were enhanced by my singing. My tutor also was my patron at the library. They allowed me to rummage through the shelves and borrow any books I wanted, and even help with the index cards.

One day, very early in the morning, we were awoken by a banging on the door. It was the German gendarmes accompanied by a “blue” policeman who immediately pointed at me. They told us to get dressed, put us in a “wagon,” and took us to Willowa, where the gendarmerie was. We waited there, not feeling anything, neither hunger nor thirst, not even fear. We were both completely numb. After some time, they took us to Szuch Avenue, to the Gestapo. We were taken to a room with no chairs. A fat, short, not too young, man in civilian clothes was standing behind a desk. Mama answered some questions and after that, she actually told him off: What was the meaning of this? So many hours with no food or drink? And for no reason? Later I only remember that this man asked me to say prayers, which I knew perfectly. Finally, he gave an order to let us go—and really—he gave Mama his card to mention his name if need be.

We returned home by carriage, I think. Everyone was fully mobilized there. The owners of the house had already found a contact at the Gestapo and were collecting valuables. The backyard community was praying by the statue because “our Halinka couldn’t be Jewish if she can sing church hymns so beautifully.” Even Polish antisemitism was religious. But something was going on. A girl younger than me was staying at my neighbor’s. She never went outside and was only seen through an open door or window. Someone from the tenement building must have informed the police. But I—a religious girl—was beyond suspicion. Luckily, that ill-fated day, the neighbor and the girl weren’t at home. I don’t think she showed up again.

We spent the next winter in better conditions. One of Mama’s cousins passed away. His widow gave us his room in an apartment divided between two tenants. She had a cottage in Wilanów and stayed there. Mama’s family—the less wealthy ones—would help us a lot. Mostly, we weren’t so forlorn and had someone to count on. Frying potato pancakes at my aunt’s in the closet was very pleasant. The fact that uncle sent us firewood through his employee was appreciated. It was beech cubes used as fuel for trucks with the so-called Holzgas system. In the summer, we went to Wilanów and brought home fruit. We did visit our wealthier relatives, but only as a courtesy.

Unfortunately, there were losses too. Due to air raids and bombardments, when we still lived in that studio on the fourth floor, we spent the night on the ground floor at an uncle’s relative, the one with the firewood. One morning I overslept. I was afraid of what Mama would say, and in a rush, as I was getting dressed, I took off a pouch containing jewelry that I carried in case I was separated from Mama. After fifteen minutes, the pouch was gone. My uncle intervened but in vain. After that, he broke off all contacts with that family.

To our delight, Tola showed up at our place unharmed. Tola managed to escape the ghetto with her young son. She placed him somewhere near Warsaw, hinting that the boy was a child out of wedlock so he couldn’t live with her. She paid for his upkeep. She’d roamed Warsaw, thanks to which she bumped into Mama. At times, but rarely, she visited us. They were both afraid of being exposed. Tola had pretty, regular features but she was ginger and freckled. She bleached her hair and spoke correct Polish, although her family had mostly spoken Yiddish. I don’t know how, but she was always well-dressed, even elegant. However, there was something about Tola’s behavior that unnerved my mom. She’d have Tola over when she was in need because she owed her, but during the visit she would be very anxious. After the war Tola returned to Łódź with her rescued son. She remarried and left for Australia. She’s alive; she’s over ninety years old.

Our apartment was on the front line, so we survived the Uprising by wandering around strangers’ homes and basements up to the last day. I spent the first three days by myself but not abandoned. Almost immediately, a neighborhood community was formed and included all the passers-by who were forced into our gate by the initial combat. The restaurant fed the hungry. A hole was made in the wall to move freely between the houses. The first casualties appeared, passers-by and insurgents. I helped dress their wounds. One of the neighbors was a nurse but needed help, and the adults fainted at the sight of blood. Mama came back after three days.

After the capitulation, when we were going to Pruszków, we managed to escape. Some people in Szczęśliwice were assisting with the escape. They put us up and later robbed us. We went with our friends (also neighbors) to Milanówek, where these neighbors’ friend took us in in his villa. The villa was packed to the gunwales but there was some room to sleep on the kitchen floor. The house was hospitable and cultural life was in bloom. Professor Rączkowski (a famous organist) played the piano, numerous children—already teens—sang patriotic songs and hymns or recited poetry. I even attended concerts that took place in Milanówek—in private homes, of course. Mama got in touch with her sister who lived in Sosnowiec. She had managed to get us passes, for which we were waiting in Częstochowa at the old friend of our aunt’s. It was already winter when we arrived in Sosnowiec. We were relatively safe. The war wasn’t over yet but the worst was behind us. We veterans of the Uprising treated the passage of the front rather lightly, although at that point we were living with a family in the country where it was hard to find shelter from the artillery fire.

Throughout the war, my mama was deeply anxious and afraid. She feared for our lives, she feared poverty and illness, but most of all, antisemitism. This fear accompanied her before, during, and after the war. She was very unhappy that my schoolmates knew of our Jewish connections. This fear started to subside only after I got married, when it was clear that my husband’s family treated origin—of any kind—with complete neutrality. I don’t remember being afraid of anything during the war except my mama’s discontent.

My mother didn’t punish me, she didn’t even forbid anything explicitly. She treated me as a responsible person—almost an adult. It was like this from the beginning of the war. For this  reason,  the worst punishment for me was when she was upset or crying in difficult moments, which weren’t infrequent. I didn’t rebel, I didn’t talk back, I wasn’t late. Perhaps, out of stupidity, I wasn’t afraid during my parents’ arrest nor when crossing the “green border,” not even when bombs were falling. During the Uprising, I didn’t sleep in the cellar. I stayed alone while everyone went down to the “bomb shelter.”

It wasn’t until the war was over that I started being afraid—it’s hard to say of what. I did well at school, at university, at work. I could get things done. But throughout my whole post-war life, I struggled with fear. Despite this fear, I was independent. Right after the war, still in Sosnowiec, I chose my own school and was enrolled. No one had to supervise my studying. Mama and her sister started trading and made a bit of money.

Then a miracle happened. Aunt Rózia resurfaced. Her husband, Uncle Leon, and Jerzyk, my father’s nephew, had also survived. So had Tola with her young son. Someone brought the tragic news that Felusia had perished. We all despaired… Around that time, Mama and I returned to Łódź. Uncle Leon believed that Mama had been alone for long enough and he had to take care of her. One day another miracle happened. In the morning, Mama’s sister came from Sosnowiec to see us because we all lived together. She was all jittery and blurted out that Felusia was alive! Despite everything she had been through, Felusia remembered the first and last name of Mama’s sister and looked for her through the Red Cross. She found her. After her experiences in the camp, Felusia was very sick. She was taken to Sweden where she recovered and came back to us.

We weren’t together for very long. The whole surviving family got scattered around the world: Israel, Australia, the United States. Mama wouldn’t go anywhere despite the pleadings of Uncle Leon, who couldn’t imagine that she’d stay behind by herself. At that point, I was a first-year student. I knew that emigration would put an end to my studies, and that was out of the question. After studying for three years in Łódź, I left for Warsaw to get my MA. And I’ve stayed there.

When we managed to get a bigger apartment, Mama moved in with me and my husband. He died in 1988. By a lucky coincidence, my close family members got to meet each other. Three months before his passing, Felusia and her husband had visited Poland, for the first time since emigrating. The last twenty-five years of her long life, Mama spent with us, later just with me. I wasn’t afraid of her anymore. I did my best, sometimes beyond my strength, to make sure she didn’t lack anything. I remembered well that even in the worst of times, she made sure I didn’t go hungry or unclothed.