Hanna Raicher, born in 1940

Help came at the last moment

I was born in Warsaw. Mother, Chaja, née Bromberg, the youngest of ten brothers and sisters, was then thirty-five years old and worked for the Polish-American philanthropic institution “Joint” involved in promoting the productive skills of the Jewish population (she had completed studies at the Horticulture Department of the Main School of Rural Agriculture). Father, Artur Raicher, was a physician (formerly a veterinarian) and worked in a hospital for poor women (St. Zofia Hospital). From 1941 on, Mother lived with me in the Warsaw Ghetto where she conducted agricultural courses under the auspices of the Society for Promoting Trade, ORT (Organization for the Development of Productivity).

In 1942, after a flight from the ghetto, our entire family was hidden on the Aryan side of the city, using false documents. In August 1943, after a “visit” by blackmailers, who not only took away all our financial resources but also frightened the people who were hiding us until then, we had to leave the apartment. My parents, doomed to a certain death at the hands of the occupiers, deprived of the rest of the family who had already perished in the ghetto, decided to end their lives––Mother, with me, in the flowing waters of the Vistula, and Father, because he could swim well, under the wheels of a train. The details of this drama are described in a book by Władysław Smólski, called Bewitched Years, in the chapter entitled “Compassion.”

Bewitched Years – the book title in Polish is Zaklęte Lata (Pax, 1964). The chapter title in Polish is ”Miłosierdzie”. W. Smólski, from the words of the Żegota activist, Janina Buchholtz, vividly described how an old sandman first fished out a child and then, together with his two grown sons, pulled ashore, with the greatest difficulty, a drowning woman who “did not grab the lifesaving oar but pushed it away and immersed her head under the water”; and how, to the words, “Why have you rescued us? We are Jews… ,” he responded that he did not care about that, but that it was the duty of a man of the water to come to the assistance of a drowning person; how he then took Mrs. Raicher and her three-year-old little daughter to his home right on the water, where his wife and mother looked after them, gave them food and drink, and put them into bed under a warm eiderdown. Thus, the family of a Warsaw sandman restored to the mother of the little girl the will to live and faith in people. (123–28) (Author’s note)

Mother and I were rescued by river workers who chanced by, the so-called sandmen, floating in a boat. Nothing is known about the circumstances of the death of my father, and there is no grave for him. We survived the rest of the occupation, initially, thanks to the assistance of the movement Żegota and the people connected with it. It was with their assistance that mother found work as a “feeder of lice” in the Institute of Health. This job permitted us to last through to the end of the occupation under a new name. My mother, thanks to human kindness, regained faith in people and in herself. After the war, she again became very active professionally, and after she retired in 1970, she became involved, with a passion, in the popularization of biological science.

I fulfilled my life’s goal of becoming a doctor. I completed medical studies in 1963. That was also the year in which I gave birth to my first son; after five years, I gave birth to a second one.

In 1972, when, as a regional doctor, I treated the mother of the writer Władysław Smólski, I received from him, as a gift, this little-known book. Neither the writer (who was connected during the occupation with the movement Żegota) nor I knew then that it was I who was this little girl whose mother, in final desperation, had dropped her from the Poniatowski Bridge, jumping down after her. Until this time, I was totally unaware of these happenings; Mother had kept them from me. She was trying to bring me up with a sense of trust in people. She wanted me to be active in my every undertaking, to be able to enjoy life, and, in this, I think she has succeeded.

Warsaw, November 1992