Jerzy Dołębski, born in 1942

I know nothing about myself

Actually, I don’t know how to begin the account of my life. I truly don’t know when I was born or where. To this day, I do not know my biological parents. I only know that I am, by origin, a Jew.

My life story begins on the fifteenth of October, 1944. On that day, there is an entry in the parish record book of the Parish of Saints Peter and Paul in Lublin that I was given the names Jerzy Janusz and that my parents were Jan and Leokadia, née Kowalczyk, Dołębski. It was entered into the records that I was born on October 15, 1942 in Hrubieszów.

For a very long time, I have tried to find out some truth about myself, but I was always given false information. First, that I was an illegitimate child of Leokadia Dołębska, later, that I was taken from a children’s home. Still later, that it was from some Jewish apartment building in Lublin. Lately, my father started telling me about a Frida Neumark from Hrubieszów who might have been my mother. I was also told that when they took me, I had a little band on my arm with the inscription “Tomcio N.”

After my adoption, my parents and I left Lublin (my father was in the military) for the vicinity of Warsaw, and from there, we went to Lębork in the Recovered Territories. There, in 1949, I started attending Elementary School No. 4. I finished elementary school in 1956.

While studying in elementary school, I kept running away from home, which lasted for a period of approximately three years. It was then that my grandmother told me that I was a “foundling.” Therefore, I began my search, except that I didn’t know for whom I was searching.

After finishing elementary school, I began studies in the Technical School of Chemistry (_) in Zgierz, which I finished in 1961. I lived in student housing. Thanks to having left Lębork, I changed my environment. It was better for me, and I did not worry too much about the past.

Technical School of Chemistry – secondary school concentrating in chemistry.

After finishing Technical School, I began studies at the University of Łódź in the Department of Chemistry. However, I did not finish my studies because my father was arrested. Because I was the oldest, I had to start working. I began to work in Factory A-10 in Lębork which produced electrical distribution equipment. This lasted about half a year until I was drafted into the army. In the army, I fell ill with meningitis. I underwent a serious operation in the Clinical Hospital of the Military Academy of Medicine in Warsaw, and I was transferred to the reserves.

I was then twenty-three years old, and I started working in the Ship Salvage Works in Gdynia. In 1965, I met Danuta Miś and married her in July of that very year. In 1966, I transferred to a job in the Polish Oceanic Ship Lines in Gdynia and worked there until October 1971. Next, I began work in the Municipal Cooperative “Farmers’ Self-Help” in Wejherowo, where I worked until November 1990. Then, I operated my own business for almost two years.

At the moment, I am not working. I suffer from diabetes. I have three sons: Grzegorz, twenty-four years old, Piotr, twenty years old, and Paweł, seventeen years old. At present, I am trying quite intensively to learn something about my roots. This year, I was even in Israel. For the time being, my search has produced no results. In the month of June 1992, I was accepted into the Association of the Children of the Holocaust. In a very abbreviated version, that would be all.

Wejcherowo, 1992