Joanna Berens-Tomczyńska, born in 1939

I Was All Alone

My family lived in Warsaw. Grandfather, Edward Berensztajn, was the owner of the Majde and Co. soap and cosmetics factory. My mother was a lawyer and my father was a pulmonary doctor. Soon after the war began, the whole family—my grandfather, grandmother Maria, my mother Irena, and her three younger brothers: Aleksander, Julian, and Tadeusz—set off in two cars to the East.

My mother was pregnant with me and wanted to get to my father, who had been mobilized in August 1939 as a phthisologist to the Military Hospital of Lung Diseases in Nowojelnia near Baranowicze. Shortly after I was born (November 1, 1939), my grandfather said that the factory was in danger and needed saving. My parents, grandmother, and I stayed in Baranowicze. Grandfather with his sons Julek and Tadeusz left for Warsaw. Aleksander with his wife and little Ania, who was my age, went to Lvov.

On September 17, the Russians entered Baranowicze. The hospital where my father worked filled with sick Soviet soldiers. In June 1941, the Germans invaded Baranowicze. The hospital staff and patients were shot. That’s how my father died. My mother arranged for fake papers for us and Grandma to be able to return to Warsaw. Denounced by the man who organized these papers, she was killed by the Nazis in the market square in Baranawicze. My heartbroken grandmother suffered from a perforated duodenal ulcer. And so I was all alone.

People who knew my parents were hiding me from the Germans in the basement until a woman arrived from Warsaw who, for a lot of money, agreed to take me to the rest of my family in the Warsaw ghetto. It was the beginning of 1942.

We all hid in the attic of a house in Leszno. Both my uncles were there: Julian with his young wife and Tadeusz, my grandfather, and my uncle Aleksander’s wife with Ania. And I, who caused the most trouble because I cried all the time. Fortunately, at the beginning of 1943 an old friend of my father’s who was staying outside the ghetto on Aryan papers contacted my family. She decided to take me with her. Having bribed the guards, she got into a cab with me. I remember the journey to her apartment in Mokotów very well. I was terrified, I was sitting under a blanket and only saw the legs of the horse moving on the cobblestones. Later my uncles and Julian’s wife also managed to get to the Aryan side. Grandfather and Halina died in Treblinka. Apart from them, twenty-eight members of my extended family died. I was now in different hands.

Under the loving care of Marysia—“Mom”, as I called her—I recovered. My hair grew back, I got rid of the ulcers on my head. I didn’t leave the house, and during unexpected visits I ran away to the mezzanine and sat there quiet as a mouse.

After the fall of the Warsaw Uprising, the Germans drove all the civilians out of Warsaw. We also left our Mokotów district. My new mother’s daughter-in-law, Halina, and her son, Jurek, were with us. We walked to Pruszków. My mother, her daughter-in-law, Halina, and I were loaded into cattle cars headed for Oświęcim, and Jurek was taken to Stutthof. Luckily, our train only reached Krakow. In Krakow, we moved into the Actor’s House, because my new mother had been an actress before the war.

I remember that there was no furniture there, only mattresses we slept on. During the day, I was in a convent with nuns—again among strangers. I was a very polite child out of fear and dismay, so I received a red stamp with the Mother of God in my report card every day. After some time, Mom and Halina got jobs and I was able to be with them during the day. Halina worked as a waitress in a restaurant and got a plate of soup, which she shared with me. She was a pretty girl, the waiters’ manager fell in love with her, and as a result of that love, I got my own little plate of soup. One night, lying on the mattress, I felt the floor shake. The Russians were entering Krakow.

After the liberation of Krakow, the wife of my uncle Julian (my real mother’s brother), Jadwiga, came to visit us. I learned from her that Marysia wasn’t my real mother and I was crushed. I felt deceived. Jadwiga took me from my beloved Marysia, whom I called Mom for the rest of her life, and brought me to Łódź, to the Szulkin family, who were related to us. While staying at their house, I became attached to the warm and kindly Elżunia Szulkinowa. After some time Jadwiga came back; I was in despair again, this time for longer. Jadwiga took me to Sopot, where my uncle Julian got a job and an apartment. After some time, I was adopted by them.

It turned out that I had intuition in not liking and being afraid of Jadwiga, because from the very beginning, my next “mother” hated me so much that I often wore traces of her whippings, which went on for a long time. In the meantime, we moved to Warsaw, where, fortunately for me, my adoptive parents divorced. I stayed with Father, who died shortly afterwards in surgery. And I was all alone again, but that’s another story.