Joanna Neuding, born in 1936
My Whole Life with Mother
I don’t remember much from the first years of my childhood. I know them mostly from my relatives’ stories, but some moments have stuck deeply in my memory. The story of my life can be divided into several different periods related to my personal experiences and the general situation in the country.
The first period, between 1936-1939, was pure bliss. An only child, the only granddaughter of four grandparents, pampered and showered with gifts by family friends, I lived a happy life. Even a very serious disease didn’t leave any traces in my memory. Happiness disappeared overnight with the beginning of the worst war in the history of Eu-rope. Many misfortunes and irretrievable losses befell my family, and I, like thousands of Jewish children, became a victim of fascist aggression.
The second period, 1939-1942, began with the drafting of my beloved Daddy into the army. My father, a chemical engineer, a second lieutenant, was going to Vilnius or Lvov, where his unit was stationed. I remember saying goodbye to him at the train station and Mom’s tears and her words: “Daddy’s gone to war!” We then moved to my grandparents’ apartment. It was the first time I had had to leave behind my beloved dolls and other toys. I remember the first raids on Warsaw. The radio announcement, “Attention! It’s coming!” made me get under the table and shout: “Wait, I’ve found a hiding place, but Grandpa hasn’t!” I also remember being woken up for night alarms. Sleepy and sweaty, I was being carried by my mother down the kitchen stairs from the fourth floor to the overcrowded basement. (My grandparents, afraid of getting buried in debris, stayed in the apartment.)
We were surprised and overjoyed to see Father’s return after a few days. It turned out that he hadn’t been drafted into the army, despite being well trained. Today I understand that the country’s lack of preparation for war and the chaos created such situations. Soon, however, we were saying goodbye to him again. He decided to follow the famous Umiastowski’s Appeal, broadcast on the radio on September 7, 1939, encouraging men capable of fighting to march out of Warsaw.
Father came back after a month or two—I don’t remember. He came back through the unofficial “green border” and wanted to take us to the USSR. My mother wouldn’t go, she was concerned about how I would endure such a trip, and she was connected to Warsaw. She was also afraid of the journey into the unknown as well as the real and imaginary dangers lurking along the way. So Daddy stayed with us, but he wouldn’t work for any institution related to the occupation authorities. Mother decided that they would teach secret classes.
My father, an excellent student in all subjects, after only four years earned a Chemical Engineer diploma from the Warsaw University of Technology (which was unique in those times), but he had to serve in the army. After the cadet school, he couldn’t get a job, so he only helped his father, who was in charge of a customs house.
My mother’s career path was a bit different. Already in the last year of Psychology at the University of Warsaw, she started working, first as an assistant to Professor Baley, and then as a psychologist in clinics and schools. In 1939 she worked in five institutions, in each for several hours. In 1929 my parents got married (they met at a university summer camp). After the wedding, they moved in with my mother’s parents, and later in a rented room with a kitchen. However, they didn’t run a household and ate at their parents’ place. Difficult financial conditions prevented them from buying new furniture, so Dad made it himself (in an album I have a photo of a dresser he made that is head and shoulders above what’s produced today). After I was born, they moved into a two-room apartment at 15 Bagateli Street, and that’s when things got “tricky”. My mother, who’d always been working and had been kept away from housework since childhood, was now helpless. She made the decision to hire a maid, she wouldn’t quit her job. Her “schedule” gave her psychological comfort and money to run the entire “manor”.
She’d proudly say that in 1939, she earned about 300 zloty a month. Therefore, aside from a nanny and later a tutor for me, there was also a cook. They said that my mother was always late for the feedings, and because I expressed my dissatisfaction with loud crying, the nanny got impatient and once gave me a pacifier. After that, “I weaned my mother off the breast.” Even when I was seriously ill (I was in danger of complete paralysis), my mother, forced to workaholism, didn’t quit her job and made a schedule for relatives and friends to watch me.
I was deeply affected by my first unpleasant experience connected with the Germans and I remember it to this day. I was three years old and I was returning with my tutor from a walk. Two German soldiers were passing in front of our entrance. “Zeh, wie schöne Puppe,” [German: What a cute baby!] one of them exclaimed. I cried out loud, the terrified tutor quickly pulled me into the passageway. Once in the apartment, sobbing, I explained that “he called me a butt.”
he called me a butt—Puppe, German. “baby”, however in Polish, pupa means “butt”.
I don’t remember how my parents found out that we had to move to the ghetto. My mother’s mother swapped her four-room apartment at 8 Złota Street to one at 8 Biała Street, and Grandma Ania, after her husband’s death (my father’s father had a stroke upon hearing the news that France had surrendered), moved in with us. At Biała Street seven people lived in a four-room apartment: my parents with me and Grandma Ania, and my grandparents with my mother’s sister.
Mom started working at CENTOS (Central Society for the Care of Orphans), first as a kitchen manager and then as a psychologist in a children’s clinic under the supervision of Mr. Kroszczor. Dad still taught clandestine classes and started working in the PPS. The Polish Socialists organization also published an underground paper called Barykada Wolności. It was one of the many organizations in the ghetto area that prepared plans for the uprising in the ghetto. I know from stories that my father took part in burying the Ringelblum files. Dad’s underground activities raised strong opposition from my mother, but he was adamant.
Emanuel Ringelblum was the founder of the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, which provided crucial information about the fate of the Polish Jews during the Nazi occupation.
I will describe an ordinary day of our family. My mother’s parents and their other daughter ran a separate household. Grandma Ania, who lived in the servant room, woke us up. Mom was the first one to get up. As she was getting ready for work, Dad was preparing his lessons, and Grandma was making breakfast. After Mom left, Dad washed up and shaved, then I was woken up.
Right after breakfast, the room had to be cleared to get it ready for the pupils. The round table had to accommodate eight pupils. They trickled in at short intervals. Books and school supplies mustn’t be seen either on the street or in the staircase, so the children kept coming up with ideas on how to transport them. Some sewed special pockets, others wore them under a jacket or a belt, while girls preferred to carry them in baskets under the bread. An agreed-upon light knock on the door meant that it was another pupil, and not some intruder.
Daddy, with the exception of a few tutoring classes he’d given as a student, never taught, but he turned out to be an excellent teacher. He was well-spoken, well-read and knowledgeable, not only in the field of science, but also in the humanities, which compensated for the lack of experience in working with students. The children sat quietly, staring at the “Professor”, who conducted the classes in an interesting way and was able to answer every question.
In the first year, the pupils mastered the fifth-grade curriculum, which was evidenced not only by their statements and essays, but also by an exam to the sixth grade (organized partly for fun and partly seriously).
Separate workstations were made of cardboard and divided the round table, on which exam sheets were laid out for each pupil. I, too, sat in one of the booths and painstakingly scribbled something on the prepared paper. However, I quickly got bored, handed my “work” to my dad, and announced that I was done. This made the students laugh and relieved the tense atmosphere of the exam. In addition to these classes, my father taught several high school pupils individually, these were science subjects.
After classes, my mother came home from work; sometimes she taught Polish, but usually she fell asleep on the couch, very tired. Grandmother woke her up for lunch and then she returned to the couch. At that time, my father prepared materials for the next day’s lessons, drew up plans for his organization, wrote something for the paper, went to a meeting or listened to the radio, and with colored flags he marked the movements of the troops on a map of Europe he had drawn. When he had free time and I was sleeping, he enjoyed his hobby —postage stamps.This was our life until the disastrous day of April 17, 1942.
This is how my mother remembers this day:
“The office day was almost over. The long lines of customers slowly thinned out. ‘Today, too, we have to go back to the office after lunch,‘ I tell my employees. ‘We have to prepare material for tomorrow.‘
“We finally have a break and go get some soup in the cafeteria. It’s crowded and noisy here, like in a beehive. Tables of various shapes and sizes, as usual, are swarming with people. You have to fight for a place. The less resourceful wait long and patiently for their turn. You can hear snippets of animated conversations all around you. Today, as always, important discussions are taking place. Intelligence specialists whisper the news, watching their neighbors closely. Everyone knows that traitors and Gestapo agents lurk everywhere, almost at every turn, sending their victims to death with a light heart. Here and there, a carefree flirtation blooms; this age-old human entertainment is also found in this cluster of troubled, tragic human lives.
“The canteen looks no different today from any other day, nothing foreshadows tomorrow’s tragedy. Meanwhile, the enemy is planning his crime, one of the first links of the future chain. This time, the criminal plans come to light. Some are already in-the-know. ‘Janeczka, don’t panic, but to- night, there will be searches and arrests, give your husband a heads-up,’ my colleague whispers, pulling me aside. ‘Remember, I have this message from a reliable source, it’s not hearsay,’ she adds dead-serious, saying goodbye.
“I feel like I can’t get an answer out, my larynx is tight, and a single thought is drilling hard into my brain. ‘I knew it!’ Now every moment may decide whether he’ll live or die. At all costs, I have to get a grip and come up with an action plan! The key question is how to warn him so he’ll take it seriously? After all, he only believes in the messages that pass through his organization. He always mocks the ‘word of mouth’.
“And most importantly, he’s a man who knows no fear and nothing can scare him. I still have a glimmer of hope that the organization has been notified and won’t let one of its valuable members perish.
“Unfortunately, I realized my mistake too late. On the way home, I meet my husband on the street. Knowing his bravado and incorrigible carelessness, he probably intends to visit the family of his recently arrested comrade Tomasz. He listens to me with a smile and says per usual: ‘All right, all right, good woman, just go to your office and come home quickly, I’m sure you’re tired, please don’t worry about such nonsense!’
“I know him and I know that I won’t convince him. Slowly, swallowing my tears, I return to the office. After giving a few instructions, I head back home with a heavy heart. But what is this? Although not much time has passed, the streets look completely different. Every few steps, I meet groups of people gesturing wildly. There is fear in their faces. Some are closing stores. The street knows!
“I burst home, horrified. ‘Such panic-mongers, because of some “he said, she said“, they lose their heads and close up stores,’ my husband greets me, having returned from a nearby store. I had a hard time convincing the soap maker who sold me carbide not to close the store,’ he adds amused. ‘How can you believe that the Germans will let anyone know if they are really up to something?’
“My husband paid with his life for this tragic mistake. However, no one could have foreseen the sloppiness, and perhaps, betrayal in the ranks of the organization. After all, everyone knew about the Gestapo’s plans. Why was the person managing the organization in the ghetto not aware of this? Whose fault was it and who should be responsible for it today? In the evening we went to bed early. I admit, I finally believed my husband and calmed down completely. Suddenly, right before midnight, I heard a violent banging on the front door. Before I could wake up my husband, my younger sister ran into the apartment with a warning that the Germans were here. The world swirled before my eyes. So the news was true and there is no way out!
“Several of them wearing military uniforms entered. One was ID-ing my husband, others shone their flashlights while doing a cursory search. They found nothing, though there were plenty of illegal flyers in the room. After ID-ing him, they ordered my husband to get dressed. I will never forget the calmness with which he was putting on the various pieces of clothing. He took the food stamps and keys from his pocket, and finally put the money on the table, which he was told to leave behind. Then he went to our sleeping daughter’s bed to kiss her, and hugged me, saying: ‘Do not be afraid!‘ Petrified with pain, I tried to bring out a possibly carefree tone: ‘I’m not at all!‘
“If these people still had any feelings, they must have admired his calm and dignified demeanor. As an officer, he proudly represented the honor of the Polish army, and as one of the leaders of his organization, the heroism of the Jewish resistance movement.
“As soon as the door closed behind my husband and his executioners, I rushed to destroy the piles of illegal papers in the room. I assumed the Nazis would return to search the apartment in daylight. Quick! Before it’s too late!!! All household members lent me a hand. Piles of Barykady Wolności and other illegal magazines and materials prepared for the fight against the occupier were burning up in the furnace. Perhaps it was then that the lists of Gestapo agents and files with their photos, taken by a street photographer, went up in smoke. I remember how proudly my husband had shown me these images. Unfortunately, it can be assumed that it was such individuals who fled at the right time and began a new life somewhere else, always ready to do evil.
“In the morning the doorbell rang. The superintendent didn’t dare tell me the truth. I knew im-mediately that my husband was dead. I experienced all the events that happened next like a viewer in the cinema, as if this tragedy didn’t concern me. I ran to the place indicated by the super. The street was asleep. I met no passers-by, my shoes tapped loudly on the empty sidewalk. I found my husband’s body by the wall, he was lying on his back in a pool of blood. Blood flowed profusely from his ear. I felt nothing, I couldn’t cry, I wanted to take him home as soon as possible. First, I have to pull the body into the entranceway and then find someone to help me. The super refuses, I have to look for another gate. Finally, a few passers-by take pity on me. A sad procession sets out. Four ragged and starving people carried the body of a young (36-year-old) man. The blood continued to trickle down, spraying the pavement profusely. Home at last. I’m left alone and I want to stare for as long as possible at the dead face of my Jurek, which has barely changed. After a while, I see that the blood is still oozing, although he’s been dead for a long time. Again, I can’t cope, I need the help of others. So I run to our friend, the surgeon. My heart shrinks in pain when I pass the sidewalk splashed with blood that hasn’t dried yet. The doctor, devastated by the news, immediately followed me to, ironically, provide his murdered friend with his last professional help. He also didn’t live to see the end of the war. Always strong and in good health, he died of a heart attack; he probably couldn’t bear the crimes he had to look at every day as a doctor.
“Soon, various people started coming to our apartment. Some were driven by curiosity, others wished to show compassion and offer help. I learned from others that one of my office colleagues, also an activist in one of the many underground organizations operating in the ghetto, died in a similar way.
“Among the 54 victims, there were also policemen and informers, as well as inconvenient witnesses who were liquidated by their employers. “The party comrades from the Barykada Wolności group also stopped by. Apparently the desire to see him one last time was stronger than the fear of being exposed. They had always underestimated the danger, which is probably why none of those present survived the war.
The next day we held a funeral. Aside from us, two of my friends came. “On April 17, we celebrate solemnly the death anniversary of our husband and father. I take my daughter and we take the same route to the ruins of the building, to the place of execution. After the war, we had difficulty finding his grave at the Jewish cemetery. It was completely destroyed. (Probably the so-called “graveyard rats” who robbed the graves also had a share in it.) What torments me most, and it always will, is the thought that the traces of his enthusiastic activity, for which he sac- rificed his life, have completely disappeared. Are any of those whom he encouraged to fight still alive? Have any of the souls whom he uplifted and comforted when in doubt survived?
“Perhaps only we, his wife and daughter, will always remember how he never broke down, how firmly he believed in the defeat of the enemy and the liberation of his homeland. Perhaps only in our hearts will his shining example live on.”
And here’s what I remember about that fateful day after Daddy had died.
A loud cry woke me up. It was my mom and grandma’s weeping. Mom was sitting on my bed, and having noticed that I’d woken up, she sobbed and repeated over and over: “Daddy has left! He’s gone far away! We won’t see him again!!!” Grandma (Father’s mother) was walking around the table and wailing loudly. Terrified, I don’t remember who took care of me. After some time, I was led into the room, where my beloved Daddy was lying on the couch, dressed in a dark suit. I was surprised, Mom was pulling my leg, I thought, she said that he’d left, while he’s sleeping! I wanted to run up to him and complain, hug and kiss him, but I was dragged away and taken to the other room.
I didn’t attend Daddy’s funeral, my mother thought it was dangerous and she was afraid of the shock it would cause me. I stayed with my mother’s friends then. When I returned home after the funeral, they had me sleep in my mother’s bed (I slept with her until 1948). And someone told me that Mom and Grandma were very sad, so I ought to be good, look after my mother, and not cry.
After some time, my mother and I got out of the ghetto, leaving behind my mother’s younger sister and my grandmother. My mother’s parents had already died (they died in ‘41 and ‘42).
I vividly remember our exit from the ghetto. A porter, to whom Mom showed a fabricated summons, let us in the court building. We were wearing layers. The cloakroom attendant, counting on a bribe, told us to take our coats off. Nervous, my mother gave him her coat, but she refused to hand over mine, saying that I was sick and the courtrooms were cold. We walked down the long, wide corridors to the room of the clerk who was supposed to take us to the Aryan side. I really wanted to see the restroom in this magnificent palace. My mother tried to dissuade me from this idea, but our guardian, afraid that I would start screaming and crying, led me to a dingy, dirty toilet. Disappointed, I returned to the room. Escorted by the guardian, we quickly left the court building. Another guardian was waiting for us and we all took a rickshaw to her place. “Righteous” Irena Chmieleńska picked me up from there.
And so began the next phase of my life.
Irena took me to her parents who lived in Anin near Warsaw. Mr. and Mrs. Chmieleński, both dentists, and their son Jan looked after me with care. I was introduced to strangers as a cousin from the Borderlands. I called my guardians “Uncle and Aunt”, and I referred to the adult Janek and Irena by their first names. It impressed me very much. The good times didn’t last long. Too many people came round the house—patients, neighbors, and I could have put the entire family in harm’s way by saying one inappropriate thing. I tried, but I made some blunders. For example, when I was going with Irka by train to Anin, I whispered in her ear, asking if Jurek was a Polish name, but passing a roadside shrine, I asked loudly, “Irka, what is this statuette?” Only when she squeezed my hand, I shut my mouth.
Borderlands—the eastern part of Poland, in 1939 annexed into the Soviet Union. Today, it’s divided between Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania.
statuette—in Polish rural areas one can find small roadside altars, typically devoted to the Virgin Mary.
After a few days, Irena returned to her duties, and I stayed in the care of her busy family, who didn’t always have time to watch me closely. Once, a patient with a little daughter came to see Mrs. Chmieleńska in a horse-drawn carriage. I, hungry for the company of my peers, invited her to play. I was running between the horse’s legs, urging my friend to follow me. Fortunately, someone noticed what was going on. I got called on my aunt’s “carpet”, who gave me such an earful that to this day, I stay clear of horses and cows.
Soon afterward, Irena took me to Zagórze near Warsaw. Far away from the city, surrounded by forests, Zagórze became a refuge for people oppressed by the Nazis during the occupation. Children with mental disorders, non-Aryans, and formerly prominent people or their families, including people in the arts, were staying here. (The property belonged to Dr. Kazimierz Dąbrowski). Resistance activists wanted by the Gestapo, close relatives of war heroes, and people of Jewish origin were hiding here, either as patients or as associates of the doctor. The wife of one of the most famous generals lived here. After her husband’s death, the wife and children of one of the Home Army leaders, as well as the wife of one of the pre-war prime ministers, found shelter and care in this camp. A famous surgeon, a priest high in the church hierarchy, an opera singer, a composer with his wife, and many other representatives of the intelligentsia hid here. Two of the residents—a married couple of Jewish origin—lived in a separate cottage.
In this estate, I found shelter in a sanatorium for children. It was a home for underdeveloped children, mostly with congenital syphilis. Irena brought me here and stayed for about a month, working honorably as a tutor. She didn’t want me to feel abandoned among strangers. I don’t remember much from this stay: the Herkulo groats for breakfast (I still don’t eat milk sops) and visits from my mother when I was sick and stayed in solitary confinement. When she asked about my three wishes, I replied: “I’d like the war to be over, for Daddy to come back, and…I’d like to eat a wheat bread roll.”
Soon my mom took me home from Zagórze. After obtaining fake papers, she rented a room at 38 Narbutta Street and we lived there until the Warsaw Uprising. My joy after coming to my new home was double, because my beloved grandma welcomed me there. She’d left the ghetto with the looters. Mother’s sister had come out of the hiding place during one of the actions and was transported to Treblinka, where she died.
Grandma ran our modest household while my mother looked for a job to support the three of us. Someone told her about a chemist who made candles at home, so she sold them in a soap store. However, once a batch turned out bad and no one would buy black candles. Then she found out about a neighbor from Kazimierzowska Street who baked cakes, so she started distributing them to cafés and restaurants in Warsaw. It was gradually expanded with pastries of other makers (these were former landladies, whose wonderful recipes were hugely successful). Often, customers at cafés waited long and patiently for my mother’s delivery. Mom had started out with one suitcase, and before the Uprising she worked with two helpers and six suitcases, turning around several times a day. The suitcases resembled in shape today’s hand-baggage on wheels, they were made of cardboard and had drawers to hold cakes.
There were also a few funny situations, for example when I sat down on a chocolate fudge bombe; each cost 17 zloty and my mother made 0.5 zloty per pastry. It was the first and probably the last time I was spanked. However, it was more painful for me that my mom got to eat the bombe. Another time, our hostess’s niece and I ate up the almonds from a whole sheet of “hedgehog” cookies (sliced almonds stuck into shortbread). Of the dozen or so almond needles, only a few were left on each cookie. As a punishment, I had to go to the woman baking these cookies, apologize to her, and ask her to fix them. She laughed and didn’t charge us anything for the havoc we caused.
Mom was stopped twice by the Germans. The first time in a café on Bankowy Square, from which she managed to escape, and the second time in a streetcar roundup. She was transporting the famous chocolate fudge bombes in the case. She said that in her mind she kept repeating the answer Kuchen if a German were to ask her about the contents of her baggage. The inspector shook the case and the balls rolled in the drawers. Without opening the case, the soldier let my mother go. Surely, he was afraid that those were actual bombs. Mom came home so upset she was barely alive. Once, her case came open amidst the tram crowd. All the pastries were crushed under the feet of the passengers, and Mom lost her earnings.
On the day of the Uprising, on August 1, Mom ran all the errands only in Mokotów, near the house. She came back earlier than usual, talking about the unrest in the city. At six o’clock, the doorbell rang and several young men in chimney-sweep overalls entered the apartment.
They told us to go down to the basement. Before we had a chance to alert our fellow residents and gather the essentials, the bombing started and we stood in the stairwell for over an hour before it was safe to run across the yard to the shelter.
The insurgent intelligence was tricked by the Germans. They pretended to leave the barracks at Kazimierzowska Street, but returned to them via a different route. Meanwhile, these barracks were supposed to have been captured by the insurgents in the first wave. It failed and the insurgents had to quickly withdraw from this area.
The fate of the residents of our house changed many times, we passed from the hands of the insurgents to the Germans’ and vice versa. I remember many events from that period: during the breaks in the bombing, I gathered potatoes from the field where the Iluzjon cinema now stands; the Germans throwing candy from the balcony to children (we weren’t allowed to eat or even pick them up).
I also remember a very dangerous incident. It was between August 1 and 21. Once, after we’d been taken over by the Germans, they led the entire civilian population out of the blocks between Narbutta, Niepodległości, Rakowiecka, and Kazimierzowska Streets. We walked along Kazimierzowska, at rifle point, terrified by the threat of death. It was late in the evening, buildings were aflame all around, their burning pieces falling off like torches, and sparks posing a threat to us. A young man, walking next to the three of us, was carrying his paralyzed mother. We were taken into the courtyard of today’s Ministry of the Interior. Here, in the line of cannons, men and women were separated and forced to enter a great assembly hall. I was standing in a crowd of people, and in front of us, on a platform, stood the victors with a translator. Everyone was told to repeat after the interpreter: “We swear that we will not help any bandit, we will not give them food or drink, we will not dress their wounds, and we will hand over every suspect.” We all naturally cried out WE SWEAR! Even though, for example, wounded insurgents were hiding in our basement. After taking this oath, amazingly, we were released, women and children right away, and men after a few days. Recently I found in historical sources the information that the Germans had been short on ammunition in Mokotów, which is probably why we were spared.
After returning to the basement, Mom and other neighbors noticed that some of our belongings had been stolen. We lost Father’s camera brought out of the ghetto, which had sentimental value for us. It was the looters, who, convinced we weren’t coming back, robbed us. However, as my wise mother said, what mattered most was that we were alive, and in this case material goods were of secondary importance.
On August 21 all civilians from our and the neighborhood buildings were taken to the railway station and transported by freight trains to Pruszków. From this place, I remember a few snapshots: sleeping on a high workbench in a factory hall, a woman eating soup out of a ball- shaped lampshade, another one who apparently had no baggage except for an umbrella, which she handed over in exchange for a plate and cutlery. After eating her meal and washing the dishes, she’d return them and get her umbrella back.
The next day, we were called up for a selection. At the assembly square, people were divided into several groups. (One of the groups was scheduled for release, but we didn’t know that.) When it was our turn, my mother, terrified of being separated from me, said “family”, and Grandma followed us. It turned out that the Germans were creating an experimental family camp that day. Out of 1,200 people, only the three of us and a woman with a little son were unaccompanied by a man, the rest were complete families.
We had to take another ride into the unknown in cattle cars, in the heat, without water. Finally, Stutthof, the concentration camp in Pomerania. We were waiting in line to the bathhouse, robbed of valuables by camp crooks. The first group of naked women was already inside when one prisoner with an armband approached us and took us to the barracks. It later turned out that in our transport, there was a Warsaw engineer who not only spoke German but was also familiar with the German mentality. He went to the camp management and, showing a German leaflet dropped by airmen, categorically demanded that we be treated as civilians fleeing the “Communist red plague”. The surprised Germans explained that the order mentioned bandits from Warsaw, to which the engineer replied that these were nothing but families. His cheek worked, we were treated a little differently: we didn’t have numbers tattooed on our skin or striped uniforms, we didn’t go to labor camps. All I remember from this stay was the death of one of our fellow inmates, who went up to the barbed wire right after our arrival and was electrocuted, and my barely alive, exhausted mother staggering under the weight of a cauldron with soup for our barracks. (Men carried the cauldrons for their wives, but they wouldn’t do it for my mom.)
Another memory is of prisoners—skeletons in striped uniforms—renovating the adjacent barracks. At the sight of a patrol, they pretended to work, hammering loudly and interrupting it right after the soldiers passed, laughing and winking at me.
After a few days, our entire transport was sent to the subcamp in Altfolwark (eight miles from Grudziądz). And again, a tiring drive in open trucks in the heat, the thirst quenched with water from the locomotive (the residents of the places we passed through not only refused to give us water, even to the children, but even threw stones and invectives at us, calling us idiots and rejoicing in our suffering for starting the uprising). When we finally got there, the barracks weren’t ready yet. Mom gathered a dozen or so children and started telling us stories in the shade. A Lagerführer who was passing by exclaimed, “Oh Kindergarten!” and took my mother to the barracks that was ready, ordering her to take care of all the children (there were 200 of them).
In the evening, the barracks were ready. The plywood stables, designed for twelve horses, looked like round circus tents. In the center, there was an arena-sized dirt floor. (In the winter there was an iron stove where wood and grass were burned. In the mornings Grandma used it to warm my underwear, which would freeze overnight.) We slept in pens separated from each other by a horizontal beam. Forty people slept on the straw, and Grandma would hang our clothes on the beam to separate us a little from the other inmates. As a vitamin-deficient child with allergies, I reacted to each prick of the straw with boils, which covered my whole body, apart from my face.
Everyone in the camp was digging trenches. After the roll call, my privileged grandmother, along with other sixty-year-old women, went to the kitchen to peel vegetables and potatoes all day for soup. My mom and I went to the Kindergarten.
Here is what my mother wrote about it in her account:
“It was impossible for one person to look after two hundred children of different ages, so I asked the camp manager to assign me help. I was given permission to independently select the staff. At first, I naively thought that my fellow inmates would be eager to take on child-care duties in a warm barracks instead of working on fortifications with the winter approaching. To my amazement, the only volunteers were a teacher with sick kidneys and a student at a teachers’ college, who, much like me, volunteered not knowing that disclosing your intellectual profession posed a risk of harsher repressions on the part of the Nazis. Fortunately, it appeared that the primary concern of our camp staff was to hunker down comfortably by the frontlines and make it to the end of the war without risking their heads. They didn’t care one way or another about us, the civilians of Warsaw, who, in their opinion, were being protected against the ‘Communist plague’.
“Aside from the war and camp, what can you do with two hundred children in a gloomy barracks, without books and school supplies? The youngest were five or six years old, the oldest—nearly twenty. A stay in the Kindergarten protected the oldest ones against digging trenches. Several times we experienced tragicomic moments, when, during the inspection of the camp director, robust adolescent girls and strapping young men sat quietly in the last rows, hiding behind the backs of the younger kids, who per my instruction, stood up obediently, shouting the words of greeting.
“I divided the children into three groups and asked what they would like to learn. I’m sorry to say, but the boy who declared with a remarkable calm that he’d prefer to learn German received the greatest applause. Today, from the perspective of wartime experiences, I don’t judge their attitude as harshly as I did then. After all, they were children of Warsaw, clever, resourceful, and practical. The same ones who risked their lives to obstruct the enemy and help their compatriots. They understood very well that knowing the language of the enemy was another weapon at your disposal. It was useful to know what they were saying or asking so they could cunningly get out of danger. Of course, I didn’t agree to their proposal and stated sternly that no one was going to teach them German in a German camp. So this strange learning began, probably not recorded in any historical sources. Covering a proper curriculum wasn’t an option, because, in the absence of any textbooks and aids, we had to rely entirely on our memory and our children’s. We sang a lot of songs known to many children from school. When it was clear that the Germans had marched out of the camp for exercises, we put up some lookouts in front of the barracks and hummed the national anthem in hushed voices. ‘Poland is not yet lost…’ In the middle of the German camp, it breathed hope and peace, both for the young participants of the daycare and for the adult inmates who happened to be passing by. In other classes, we talked about poems by famous Polish poets. The children who remembered some poems eagerly showed off their reciting skills while the rest tried to memorize everything. Excerpts from the history of Poland were skillfully presented by the teacher.
“Fearing that the war might be prolonged and the children could be at risk of secondary illiteracy, we obtained several pencils and Polish books. From then on, each child read a small passage every day and wrote a dictation. Our classes also involved doing simple arithmetic problems.
“Thanks to the extraordinary courage and dedication of a dozen or so residents of Grudziądz, our kids received some sweets and fruit almost every day. Some of them hiked for eight miles. Others came by bicycle. Each handed over to me a small package, looking anxiously over their shoulder for fear they might be shot by the guards. These included the representatives of various social circles, from men in overalls to intelligentsia.
“The hardest task was to distribute the sweets among two hundred children, because usually there was not enough of one kind to go round. If one day, the younger children got apples and the older ones got candy, the next day we switched.
“This is how our Kindergarten survived until the evacuation of the camp in February 1945.”
From the camp period, apart from the daycare activities, I remember my mom’s beautiful puppet used in a performance staged by a famous puppeteer from Warsaw. I remember Christmas spent at the Kaczyńskis’ (Dr. Kaczyński, the director of the local hospital, a Pole who played an active part in helping the residents of Warsaw imprisoned in the camp).
They invited us to their place so that we would forget our fate for at least two days. Mom got a pass and we set off on an eight-mile hike. What I remember most is taking a bath in a large, magnificent tub, a comfortable bed without straw, the clean, fresh underwear, and the vast apartment. It all reminded me of better times. I vaguely remember twins on the potties (they were probably some cousins of our prominent hosts).
The unpleasant memories from the camp involve boys who teased me, uncomfortable clogs we all had to wear (after the war, when they became very fashionable, I wouldn’t wear them for the world), hours of grooming and fairy tales invented by my mother so that I would sit quietly and not whine. Another painful memory is the roll-call when the prisoners who had gotten a pass didn’t return to the camp. It was the late fall, bitter cold. We all stood on the roll-call square, shaking with cold and fear, facing the rifles. Nobody was allowed to move. It lasted for a few hours. Luckily, the prisoners came back and we were allowed to return to the barracks.
In February 1945, the Germans evacuated our camp. The Nazis marched everyone out and hurried us towards the Vistula. The three of us, pulling a sled with our precious goose feather comforter and leftover possessions, lagged behind the column. High snow poured inside my laced- up shoes with leg warmers, which made Grandma and Mom worry about my health. In the late evening, the daughter of our fellow prisoners from the barracks found us. It turned out that the entire group, about twelve people, had separated and taken refuge in a place where soldiers sick with cholera had been isolated during World War I. Our invaluable comrades obtained fuel and food, I even liked the taste of the mare that had been shot. We hid there for about two weeks. The frontline was approaching, there wasn’t much to eat, and our shelter could have been discovered at any moment. The decision was made to go to Grudziądz and we set out again. It was already becoming dusk when we stopped in a small forest by the Vistula. It was decided to rest a bit and eat something.
Suddenly, literal hell broke out around us. We found ourselves between the two fronts, shots were fired from both sides of the river and they seemed to be targeting us. To this day, I have nightmares about figures kneeling and lying down, and I hear litanies and the wailing of people who were saying their last goodbyes amid the roar of bursting bombs and the whistle of diving planes. It was the first and so far, the last time, I cried out of fear. (Immediately after the war, whenever I heard the sound of a diving plane, I threw myself to the ground, and to this day, I don’t like it.)
When it quieted down, we moved on towards Grudziądz. We were already near the city, and in front of us there was a high mountain that we had to climb. The initially gentle slope turned out to be too difficult to climb to the summit for two tired and terrified women pulling a heavy sled, and for a clumsy, tearful eight-year-old girl sliding back down the mountain with each step forward. Our comrades helped us. (It turned out that there was an easier ascent nearby, which we hadn’t noticed).
That, however, was not the end of our Calvary that night. A group of twelve cold, soaked, dirty, and bizarrely disguised fugitives didn’t inspire confidence and was also a threat to the lawabiding Eingedeutschtes. Finally, after about two hours of loitering around the suburbs, some merciful people let us in. We were put up in the apartment of one of the few Poles (an officer of the Polish Army who hadn’t signed the Eingedeutschte list and had big problems, was harassed by the Germans and his fellow residents). In the bedroom that was made available to us, we all slept together in the marital bed of our hosts; ten people packed together like herrings, and two younger children across the foot of the bed. Still, it was a wonderful night, and we all slept “like stones”, despite heavy fire. The next day, we were taken to the basement, and here again, like the two previous times in Warsaw, we waited out a heavy bombing.
Eingedeutschtes—“Voluntarily Germanized”—an operation recognizing all indigenous people from the territories annexed to the Reich as German citizens.
We know that in 1945 the Germans weren’t too brave and readily surrendered, even to the Russians, but Grudziądz was defended by the Hermann Göring Division, one of the most valorous divisions in the army, and every house was defended tooth and nail. The Red Army swam across the Vistula and took over the suburbs by surprise. Our host burst excitedly into the basement and, choked by emotion, he talked about the victory of the “Reds” over the Germans, which he watched from his apartment window. Meanwhile, the first thing the liberators did was take his officer boots, his only memento from 1920. We understand that the soaked and cold soldiers had no sentiments, especially since they considered Grudziądz as a German city and all its inhabitants as enemies. Our group was protected by Warsaw Kennkartes, but others were robbed and raped. My grandmother, who’d graduated from a finishing school under the Russian partition, spoke the language perfectly, so she became a translator and mediator in disputes, which won her the affection of the Grudziądz citizens, as well as the respect and friendship of the soldiers. They called her “Matushka” and listened to her. Grandma saved a woman who, according to a drunken soldier, had offended his mother.
I remember Red Army soldiers visiting our basement. The first visit was when they entered our basement laughing and singing. They played the accordion and sang joyous songs, watching us closely, and after the performance, they took a nice old man with them. After a while, we heard a shot. He turned out to be a Volksdeutscher hiding among us. During another visit, when they entered they smelled intensely of all the flowers imaginable. It turned out that they had destroyed a perfume factory and drunk the perfume. There were also other, more menacing, visits when intoxicated soldiers looked for women to rape. At that time, almost-adult girls, wearing children’s dresses and bows in their hair, sat among children on the mezzanine, protecting themselves from unbridled soldiers. I also remember old women teaching their grandchildren Polish prayers, and how every morning, I heard calls from different sides: “Bobka topka” (“Grandma, potty”). I also remember insulting one boy by saying “nie figluj”. Mom had to go out of her way to explain to his mother, a native there, that these words were not vulgar in Warsaw.
Under the Nazis, the term Volksdeutsche was used to describe ethnic Germans living outside the country without German citizenship.
nie figluj may mean in Polish “to horse around”, but it can also have a sexual innuendo.
The liberation of Grudziądz’s downtown area was completely different. Here, as Dr. Kaczyński later said, the Nazis mined the hospital and other public buildings filled with people. The doctor’s wife and their little sons hid in the hospital. Finally, the Germans capitulated and didn’t manage to blow up the city center, but that was the threat for several days. Free at last! No more bombing! My mother, a teetotaler, resisting alcohol in any form, for the first and last time in her life got drunk OUT OF HAPPINESS! At last, you could leave the basement without fear and start a somewhat normal life. I don’t remember our life in Grudziądz, I know that my mother and grandmother dreamed of returning to Warsaw. However, rumors of its complete destruction and the dangers lurking on the way meant my family stayed put. At the end of March or the beginning of April, my mother and I (she was afraid of leaving me) set off to scout Warsaw.
Our guard was another Warsaw native from our group, who also planned to return with his family “to the old neighborhood”.
I don’t remember much of this trip anymore. All I know is that it took a long time. We traveled by freight trains and had to change multiple times. The trains were crowded and we were nervous. In her backpack Mom transported a two-kilo loaf of bread along with the most necessary items. It was said that Warsaw was nothing but rubble and a desert, full of dangerous thugs.
In the early morning, we reached the Western Railway Station. We were walking along empty streets towards our building on Narbutta Street, passing by stumps and ruins of demolished buildings, when suddenly, at the top of today’s Bruno Street, in Niepodległości Avenue, I was amazed to see a glass kiosk displaying a string of various sausages. “Mom, is it real?” I cried out. (Later in school, when I wrote in my essay that after returning to Warsaw, it was real sausages that made the greatest impression on me, the teacher called my mother, bemoaning my insensitivity and emotional detachment).
When we got to Narbutta, it turned out that moving back to Mrs. Stypułkowska’s wasn’t an option. There was a bomb crater in the middle of our room. We considered other possibilities. We visited the apartments that had belonged to our family before the war. The apartment of my Perl grandparents at 54 Złota Street. no longer existed. We entered my Neuding grandparents’ apartment at 10 Wspólna Street from Hoża Street. The workers standing on a scaffolding let us pass, noting that we ought to hurry up because they were about to do a “smokescreen”. We entered the yard, but my mother, seeing a pile of impassable debris and not knowing what that smokescreen was, quickly took me out to the street. That’s when there was an explosion. And a screen it was—dust and debris ob- scured everything, blocking our noses, eyes, and ears.
Our building at 8 Biała Street was also gone, while the building at 15 Bagateli was still stand-ing, but no elevator, doorframes, or doors made our apartment on the fourth floor unlivable.
Mom also thought about job options after returning to Warsaw for good. She went to the CKŻ—the Central Committee of Jews in Poland—where she was employed as a psychologist, and to the municipal council, which was hiring psychologists for the clinics.
At the beginning of May, my mother, grandmother, and I were returning to Warsaw. On May 9 we were sitting in the station in Łódź, waiting for the connecting train. I slept huddled up on my grandmother’s lap. I was awakened by the noise and bustle of excited people. Some Soviet officer snatched me from my grandmother’s lap and, tossing me in the air, exclaimed, “War over!” And again, many hours of waiting for the train, and finally, in the late afternoon, we managed to get to the freight car. The train was packed, we were sitting on our bundles. And again, fear, when a few drunken soldiers started tossing a grenade as if it were a ball. Passengers’ pleas fell on deaf ears. After some time, fortunately, they got bored with this game. Warsaw at last! When we were getting off, someone stole a bottle of vodka, intended as a bribe, from my grandmother’s baggage. I would hear many times: “If we had had that vodka, that problem would have been fixed” (each time a different one).
We arrived in Warsaw in the evening. My mother ran after the boy carrying our belongings in a handcart while my grandmother and I headed towards the building at Kazimierzowska Street owned by Dr. Szymańska (née Rozenblum), who had previously rented us our apartment. We were already in Niepodległości Avenue near Filtrowa Street, when suddenly, an actual cannonade began, with explosions and the whistle of falling bombs behind us. Terrified, we ran down the empty street. “It’s war again!
What will happen to us! We’ll die!” Grandma whispered with trembling lips, pulling my hand and making me run. We reached the corner of Rakowiecka Street, I looked back and, delighted, shouted over the roar of the cannons, “Granny, look!” In the already darkening sky, we saw a wonderful view of multi-colored stars splashing with a whistle. “Those were flares, a sign that the war is over,” Grandma said with a sigh of relief. We dragged on. When we were near the wall of the Mokotów Prison, we saw a drunk soldier walking in the middle of the road. When he was passing us by, he fired his gun, and laughing out loud, he went on. We fell over and Grandma shielded me with her body. When the footsteps faded away and the drunkard’s laughter died down, we went to meet my mother, who was waiting for us by the corner of Kazimierzowska Street. She explained that she worried about our property, the boy with the handcart walked so fast he was almost running. That’s why she’d left us behind.
In the morning, I found out that our apartment had been arranged. One of the pre-war tenants from Narbutta Street hesitated about whether he should come back from Lublin and let us occupy one room for the time being. (He stayed in Lublin for good, and we had various troubles with the other room.) Our room was very nice: large, south-facing with a balcony, but with no window panes, high on the third floor, with no water heater or water supply. The other was a north-facing walk-through room and had a sagging floor. Mom said that it had to remain unoccupied in case the former tenant came back. Our neighbors and friends gave us some furniture: a table, chairs—each different—mattresses and blankets to cover the glassless windows. We covered ourselves with the trophy comforter we’d brought from our wanderings (to this day I have pillows made from it).
The next period of my life began, somewhat normal, in an incomplete family. Grandma, as usual, took care of our household and me: she carried water from the street pump and coal from the basement; every day she went to Puławska Street for fresh bread (in today’s Goworka Street, there used to be a bakery called Ziarno—”Grain”). Apart from this, she brought us lunches in mess kits from the Municipal Council, and later from the Joint at Chocimska Street. She walked me to and from school and helped me with my lessons.
Mom worked all day and often went on business trips. (On behalf of the CKŻ, she selected talented Jewish children from orphanages in the remote provinces and transferred them to towns with secondary and higher schools. Aside from this, she qualified disabled children to go to special schools). The journeys were very tiring and even dangerous. For example, she told us how she’d fallen asleep on the platform and a thief cut off the leather straps of the backpack she was sitting on. She had to carry the heavy, unwieldy sheets of test papers into the overcrowded train car. Another time, when the children from the orphanage were transporting her on a sled, frozen and barely alive after an arduous journey, she suddenly heard a whisper: “Look! The psychologist is crying!” Our relatives and friends began to return from all over the world.
Once the son of my grandmother’s cousin, Kazik Dekler, a textile engineer, came by. He’d survived the war in an Oflag , lived and worked in Łódź (he was killed during a business trip in 1947 by a UPA gang that targeted Jews). I remember a wonderful lunch that my grandmother prepared for her beloved nephew, putting lots of effort and love into it. I, a fussy eater, ate everything with gusto.
Oflag—Ger. Offizierslager—a prisoner-of-war camp established by the Germans for officers.
UPA—the Ukrainian Insurgent Army—a Ukrainian nationalist paramilitary that fought against the Soviet Union, the Polish Underground State, Communist Poland, and Nazi Germany.
Kazik, on the other hand, refused to have compote made from pineapple that came in an UNRRA can. He explained that he had had to eat canned food for four years, and would never do that again…
UNRRA—the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
My mother’s cousin and a friend of both parents, a lawyer, Włodek Winawer, also returned from the USSR. First, he’d been there in a labor camp, and then in the army. He returned as a lieutenant colonel. His unit was stationed in Wrocław. He came to Warsaw to see the “old neighborhood”. I remember that when we once took a walk, all the passing soldiers saluted us. “Do you know them all?” I asked, proud and surprised. (In the 1950s Włodek and his family were moved to Warsaw; from then on, he looked after us and helped support me financially until my final high school exams).
Other friends of my parents, Lola and Zygmunt Ratuszniak with their mother, returned from Siberia. They told us about the deaths of my mother’s other friends, Halina and Janek Ałapin with their five-year-old son, who perished in a Lvov pogrom. Mom was very upset about it.
Jerzy Majzel, a friend of my parents, returned from an Oflag. His wife had died in the ghetto and he found his daughter in one of the monasteries. Since he couldn’t offer her any decent accommodation and she started spouting off antisemitic texts in his presence, Jerzy asked my mother to find her a place in some orphanage, and in the meantime, to take her under our roof. So Ola, a beautiful adolescent girl, came to live with us. She had a lot of behavioral issues that were a challenge for Grand- ma. Mom quickly found Ola a place in a Jewish orphanage near Warsaw.
Jerzy voiced doubts about whether Ola would settle in there. My mother, trying to talk him into the project, said that I’d also be better off there than at home. Unfortunately, Grandma heard it and for her, it was a blow. She realized that my mother didn’t appreciate her work or dedication. Mom’s explanations didn’t help. Vexed, she had a heart attack the next day and died. Certainly, difficult experiences and overwork also contributed to this. This incident was the last straw.
On September 23, 1948, the next period of my life began, without the care of my beloved grandmother. Her death was really hard on me and I fell ill with scarlet fever, among other things. Admittedly, now I had real freedom, not limited by the prohibitions of my caring grandmother (the telephone supervision of my mother wasn’t very effective). I started slacking at school, I spent all my free time after classes in the yard or in the library (the “kolkhoz” apartment and the empty room without my beloved grandma didn’t encourage me to stay at home).
Mom’s working hours weren’t as long anymore and her business trips were less frequent, but we still missed each other (when I came home from school, Mom went to work, and when I had classes in the afternoon, my mother worked in the morning). In fact, we only spent time together on Sundays.
After completing nine grades, I went to the Library High School for two years. Next, I studied Pedagogy at the University of Warsaw. At the same time, I started working in the Public Library in a branch for children. After graduation, I managed this branch. I worked for 18 years in libraries for children and teenagers. However, I decided to change my job profile and started working in scientific libraries.
I got married very late. My husband turned out to be not only an alcoholic, but also an antisemite. After eight years I got divorced.
I have no children, but I have Małgosia, whom I met almost 40 years ago, when she was 17 years old, a half-orphan, rejected by her family. She graduated from the Queen Jadwiga High School. She lived in the basement of her uncle’s villa. Together with my mother, we took care of Małgorzata, giving her moral support and taking an interest in her problems (she lived on a small pension after her father died). She often studied in our place and stayed there when I went away. We never helped her financially.
When she was taking exams to study medicine (which was her dream), we walked Małgosia off to the examination hall. Unfortunately, she failed. She tried a few more times, meanwhile graduating from a college for social workers. She started working in television (without patronage) and so the social department gained a solid employee. She met her future husband there. She made him study with her. She got a beautiful two- room apartment and they both graduated with a degree in journalism. After nine years, they had a son, and then three more sons were born. Unfortunately, she wasn’t happy in her marriage. Her husband came from a demented family and was an irresponsible, lazy man without feelings. (Although both parents had higher education, none of their four children even graduated from high school and each has family problems: divorces, children out of wedlock, drunkenness). Only Kajetan graduated from university thanks to her help. As he couldn’t find a job, he started to work on ships as a steward (he worked for half a year, and “rested” for the other half, burning through the money. He abused his older son and favored the younger one). After maternity leave she returned to work. She was offered a fairly high position, but she didn’t take it, because she couldn’t count on her husband to take care of their children, whom, basically, she looked after all her life by herself.
Finally, after twenty-two years of marriage, she got divorced. Her ex quickly married a colleague twenty-six years his junior. They have a child, he isn’t interested in his sons. He willfully lowered the already low alimony, but Małgosia won’t go to the bailiff, because she’s afraid that he’ll be fired from his job and her sons will be deprived of a livelihood. Now, Małgosia’s life is filled with work that she dislikes, taking care of her almost adult sons, her invalid half-brother, and an old mother from a village near Warsaw. She’s also looked after me and my mother, until Mom’s death in May 2006, as well as other people in need. After my mother died and I broke my leg, she took the reins of my household into her own hands. She is selfless and deeply experiences all the evil around her. I love her very much and I’m concerned about her problems, but there is little I can do. I treat her like my own daughter.
After retirement, I couldn’t find another job, even though I was at a pre-retirement age (I was 56), but back then I worked in the school library, and educators were forced to retire at the age of 55. So I took care of my mom. For a long time, I wondered whether I should describe my memories, so different from the stories of my brethren, other victims of the Holocaust. Always in the care of loved ones, I’ve never known hunger. The only tiresome thing for me was the responsibility for the lives of the people close to me. I knew that any ill-considered word could sentence my guardians to death. And this silence remains with me to this day. I’ve confessed my origin only to a handful of people.
It wasn’t until I joined the Children of the Holocaust Association that I allowed myself to “open up” and not suppress my feelings. I’ve found real friends here who I know will be there for me, rain or shine, with whom I can talk about anything, with them I can have fun, laugh, and cry.
MY ANCESTORS
On my mom’s side:
My great-grandparents, Róża and Izydor Krykus, had eleven children: nine daughters and two sons. All the children were educated. The eldest daughter left for France after finishing high school. In Paris she studied medicine. She brought one of the younger sisters to France. My grandmother, the youngest in the family, finished trade school and worked in a bank. She died in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. All my grandmother’s siblings living in Poland died with their families. Two of my mother’s cousins had emigrated to the USA before World War II, and one left for Ecuador after the war, and then to Brazil.Mom remembered grandfather Izydor as an old man who came to visit her parents.
My Perl great-grandparents had four children: three sons and a daughter. The eldest, Edward, who’d graduated from the College of Economics and was a bank director, died in 1916, his wife, a Pole, died in 1958, and their son died in Oświęcim. The second son, Bronisław, a lawyer, survived the war in hiding; he died in 1952, his wife Franciszka in 1955. They were childless. Daughter Janina, a teacher, died in a ghetto. My grandfather, Feliks, was the only sibling who only had a diploma from a Russian middle school. He was a clerk. He married early. My grandparents had two daughters, my mother and Wanda, who was fourteen years younger than her. At the age of twenty-two, she died; during a ghetto action, she came out of her hiding place and was deported, probably to Treblinka.
On my dad’s side:
My Kociołkowski great-grandparents came from Konin. They had two children. The elder son Alexander, a lawyer, emigrated to Russia at the beginning of the 20th century. He got married there and had a son. After the October Revolution, the family lost touch with him. The daughter, my grandmother Ania, completed a finishing school in Konin, and after the death of her father, she moved with her mother to Warsaw.
My Neuding great-grandparents were a family from Warsaw. They had twin sons. Adolf ran a business. He was married and had two sons, Stefan and Tadeusz. In 1939, all this family left for Brazil and they live there to this day. They helped us a lot after the war; even after the death of Grandmother Ania, who was friends with them, they sent us care packages. Only after the death of Niki, Stefan’s wife, all contacts stopped. And some of my cousins live there.
Grandma’s cousins, Maryla and her sister, emigrated to Canada; they ran a guesthouse there. Her daughter Wanda left for Paris with her sixteen- year-old son. After my grandmother’s death, all contacts were severed. My grandfather Józef ran a customs house. He met my grandmother in a theater. They got married in 1905 and spent their honeymoon in France. My father was born in December 1906, and two years later, his brother, Wacław. This exceptionally gifted young man, a student at the Academy of Fine Arts and Music, committed suicide for unexplained reasons at the age of nineteen. Supposedly, the reason could have been harassment at the university because he had a Semitic type of look.
I also have more distant relatives, especially from the line of my Perl great-great-grandparents. One of my great-aunts married a doctor with an artistic soul, Henryk Kohn. Songs with his lyrics were sung in cabarets, for example, “Cigarette Smoke” and “Little Room”. His wife Stefania was said to have been the most beautiful woman in Warsaw, and it was she who posed for Podkowiński in the famous painting “Frenzy”. Their daughter Halusia was my mother’s schoolmate and friend. (For nine years, they sat on one school bench). Halusia studied medicine. She had four children with Władysław Rotsztein. The eldest, Robert, a professor and inventor, graduated from the Technical University; Wanda studied chemistry; her twin brother got a degree in Sinology in Beijing and is a professor at the University of Warsaw. The youngest, Stanisław, studied at a railway school in Moscow, he runs his own enterprise. All four were brought up in an orphanage; their mother, a doctor at the hospital in Czyste, cared for the sick until her death, among whom was her paralyzed mother-in-law. All four have their own families, two children each, and now many grandchildren.
My mother’s relatives are also the Winawers. Włodek’s mother, whom I’ve mentioned, née Perl, was the sister of the famous Feliks Perl, one of the founders of the PPS (The Polish Socialist Party). She died in the 1950s. Włodek didn’t get married until after the war. He had two daughters. Krysia left for Paris after March ’68 and lives there with her family; the younger Zosia lives in Warsaw.
Since my mother’s death, I’ve been alone. I only have Małgosia and occasional contacts with relatives from Warsaw and colleagues. Contacts with the family abroad were cut off. My “brothers” and “sisters” from our Association of Children of the Holocaust are my refuge. They are my true friends now.
