Katarzyna Meloch, born in 1932 (1) [name during the occupation Irena Dąbrowska]

An unwritten biography

Someone asked me when it was that I heard the word “Jew” for the first time in my family circle—perhaps only in 1941 when, in Białystok, the Germans came to pick up my mother. They were then tracking down people connected with the Soviet authorities. “A Communist,” said one of them after looking over her passport (a Soviet passport), adding, “Of course, a Jew!” “I am only a mother,” she responded. She was driven away by the Germans in a motorcycle sidecar. I never saw her again. She must have perished in one of the first executions in the Białystok area.

Soviet authorities – Białystok had been under Soviet occupation from 1939 to 1941.

But before then, while we were waiting for the arrival of the Germans, she had pounded into my head for hours the address of her brother in the Warsaw Ghetto. She would wake me up at night and check whether I had remembered—12 Elektoralna Street. I remembered; I knew that my salvation and care would come from there. And that is, indeed, what happened. I wrote my own life history and presented it many times in my life, but it was not one and the same story. There were various life stories.

Almost all the elements in it were changeable, my date of birth as well as the first names of my parents, my own first name and family name, also, my mother’s maiden name, information about my place of birth, and the notation identifying religious denomination.

Each of my (and yet not-my) numerous biographies had major gaps. Irena Dąbrowska (the name of Katarzyna Meloch during the occupation), with an authentic birth certificate allegedly extracted from church records in Targówek, was a year older than Katarzyna. She had had a Roman Catholic christening. Her mother, before her marriage, used the surname Gąska, first name Anna. Katarzyna was born in 1932, not like Irena, in Warsaw, but in Łódź. Mother’s maiden name Goldman, and grandmother’s name (Garfinkel, Mrs.) would have indicated unmistakably who her ancestors were on the distaff side.

On the “side of the sword,” I had in my family Melochs and Gliksmans. But should one use this Polish nobleman terminology when it concerns a Jewish family? Meloch is a distorted spelling of a Hebrew name (compare to David Hamelech). Ancestors of my father lived in the territories of Poland that were under Russian domination after the partitions. Thus, the Russian softening (or hardening) symbol changed the form of the Hebrew word. From the book of my father’s cousin, David Wainapel, From Death Row to Freedom, published in New York in 1984, I learned that my father’s family (more precisely, my father’s mother’s family) had lived in Radom for over one hundred years. My ancestors were, in general, health practitioners, but only a few of them, physicians.

“side of the sword” – the paternal side.
David Hamelech means “David the King” in Hebrew
…“after the partitions” 1772, 1793, 1797 – Poland is partitioned three times, progressively causing it to vanish from the map of Europe. After the Third Partition, the division is as follows: Russian Poland, Austrian Poland, Prussian Poland.
…“the book of my father’s cousin” – one of the chapters, “I was a Prisoner in the Concentration Camp in Bliżyn,” appeared in Polish, translated by Agnieszka Jackl. The introduction entitled “Powrót Dawida” (The Return of David) by K. Meloch (Bliżyn, 1991), was published by the Association of Friends of Bliżyn. The full text has been prepared by the translator for publication. (Author’s note)

A family legend has it that one of these great-grandfathers dressed the wounds of participants in the January Insurrection. Another legend proclaims that an uncle of my grandmother, a doctor (four generations back!) traveled by hackney cab to attend the sick on the Sabbath. He treated Jews and Poles.

January Insurrection – insurrection in 1863 against Russian occupiers.

My father and his numerous cousin-contemporaries attended Polish schools. Polish was the language spoken in their homes, but Jewish holidays were observed; our own traditions were not renounced. My father, Maksymilian Meloch, was a historian of Polish national insurrections.

If I am to write an honest account of my own life, I must tell about all of them, a task which cannot be accomplished. . . .

My life did not begin at my birth, i.e., on May 7, 1932. I did not appear in the world out of nowhere. I acknowledge, among others, my mother’s heritage. In labor movement publications, one finds the name of Michalina Goldman, participant in the 1905 revolution. I knew her only as my grandmother. I have preserved a letter of hers written in the Warsaw Ghetto on March 11, 1941 to our cousins in New York. This letter returned from New York to Warsaw a quarter of a century after being sent from the ghetto. The sender’s address, 45 Sienna Street, Apartment 46, Warsaw, was probably the last address of my mother’s family before it was “resettled” to Treblinka.

1905 revolution – spontaneous revolution in Poland against Czarist Russian rule. “resettled” – euphemism used by the Germans to disguise the fact that people were being sent to their deaths.

It was a long letter, full of information about closer and more distant relatives, a call for help, not for herself, but for those among the relatives for whom it was most difficult. There is not a single word in it about herself, about her own condition in the ghetto. “As to Sara Bejla,” writes Michalina Goldman, “she, poor old woman, is in extreme poverty. I did for her as much as I could, but my possibilities have already come to an end. She now goes begging, tolerably clothed from the outside, but even this will soon end… I wrote to the Red Cross in her name.”

My grandmother asks that they turn to Sara’s brother, an American. One time, a personal tone is struck: “Any letter from us should be regarded as being pretty much the final one.” Grandmother Michalina – were it not for her, I would have been gone from this world long ago.

Jewish policemen appeared suddenly in the yard of the former Hospital of the Holy Spirit. Nobody had expected them there. A branch of the ghetto hospital was located at 12 Elektoralna Street. We were under special protection of the Judenrat itself. The policemen entered the “protected” area. Perhaps they did not catch enough people to fill their “daily quota” which was binding on each of them. Soon, they gathered children from our area, and they seized me as well. I cried loudly and desperately. My grandmother, Michalina (my mother’s mother), heard me crying and came down from her safe hiding place into the midst of the roundup. She engaged the policeman in conversation and signaled me to run away. The policeman pretended not to see my escape.

“daily quota” – Jewish policemen had to turn over a certain number of Jews each day for deportation.

My grandmother was taken to Umschlagplatz in my place. However, she returned from there to Elektoralna Street the next day. She was the mother of a hospital staff member and, therefore, on that occasion, came out unharmed from Umschlagplatz. Already then, she might not have come back and perished in Treblinka, but I myself would not have returned from Umschlagplatz for sure. And yet, still in Białystok, I had resolved to survive.

The death of Grandma Michalina, her return to the collapsing ghetto, giving up a safe location on the Aryan side, that is a separate story. I have described it elsewhere.

I have described it elsewhere – see K. Meloch, “Trzy próby. Belka w oku moim” (Three Tries. A Beam in My Eye) Więź (Ties), no. 6 (1991): 43.

My wartime life history is the story of rescue. In order to save me, people who were leftists and Catholic nuns harmoniously joined hands. Towards them, the living and the dead, I have a debt of gratitude, a debt that cannot be repaid.

The Talmud says: “He who saves one life, saves the world.” I am a journalist; I work with words, but I do not know how to characterize the deeds of people who saved dozens of lives. I was a Jewish child, saved in an institution for children operated by nuns, Servant Sisters of the Most Holy Virgin Mary (headquartered in Stara Wieś). I am one of a large group of Jewish children saved in Turkowice in the Zamość area. “Jolanta” (Irena Sendler, the head of Żegota’s department for the care of children) reports that thirty-two Jewish children found shelter in Turkowice. One of the nuns, decorated posthumously, Sister Hermana (secular name Józefa Romansewicz), writes in her yet unpublished memoirs about nineteen children who were hidden in the institution.

Three nuns from Turkowice (from a religious staff of approximately twenty-two persons) have already been awarded Yad Vashem medals, but rescuing us Jewish children was the joint effort of the entire religious staff. When I write and speak of the collective rescue deeds, I have in mind not just “our” nuns. In the Social Service Department of the municipal administration of Warsaw, operations were conducted, clandestinely, to place Jewish children in homes operated by religious orders. The writer, Jan Dobraczyński, was the initiator of this activity. He was assisted by co-workers Irena Sendler, Jadwiga Piotrowska, and also by my wartime Aryan guardian, Jadwiga Deneka. The “collective enterprise” would have been impossible without the consent of Inspector Saturnin Jarmulski. He knew (Sister Superior had no secrets from him) that Jewish children were located in the Turkowice institution. He demanded just one thing, that we all have our Aryan documents in good order.

I cannot fail to mention Father Stanisław Bajko. He saw to it that our identity was corroborated by church practices. I ask on behalf of those cared for in Turkowice, “Remember their names!” For me, the most important of these persons was and is Sister Irena (Antonina Manaszczuk). Two years ago, she received, in person, a medal at Yad Vashem. In the spring of 1992, when I was in Israel at the World Congress of the Children of the Holocaust, I touched the plaque with her name with my own hand.

Sister Irena took us, girls and boys, by a dangerous route to our place of destination. On a daily basis, she looked after several Jewish girls. In the task of rescuing us, she was the right hand of Mother Superior.

We, the rescued, were for the most part children taken out of the Warsaw Ghetto. In  Turkowice,  the  hunger  typically  experienced in the closed quarter ended, although in the institution, there was no overabundance. Hence, a “potato stomach,” left over from the Białystok Ghetto, is visible in my photo.

In March 1943, while I was in the “rescue house,” as Turkowice was called, almost the entire family of my father was killed. I cannot recall exactly what I happened to be doing on the twenty-first of March, 1943, whether I was seated on the school bench or running with friends through the forest. Even Sister Irena is unable to say what kind of a day it was in Turkowice. Or, perhaps when shots were falling on the cemetery in Szydłowiec, I was singing with the other children in church:

Pilate washed his hands Saying, “I am innocent May this blood fall
On you and your sons.”
And the Jews answered to Pilate, “That does not frighten us
Our wish is such that
You release Barabbas to us.” 

In Mark 15:6 and John 18:40 of the New Testament, it is claimed that Pontius Pilate offered to release Jesus or Barabbus, and the crowd chose Barabbus.

I did not feel stigmatized; I did not think that this blood fell on me also because I belonged to the sons and daughters of the tribe. I was almost unafraid of the Germans on the grounds of the institution…

David Wainapel, in the above-mentioned autobiographical book, From Death Row to Freedom, recalls how my father’s family perished. The Germans offered to the representatives of the intelligentsia in the Radom Ghetto a departure to Palestine in exchange for a substantial sum of money. Our family decided to take advantage of this “opportunity.” Trucks arrived. Almost the entire Gliksman and Wainapel families found themselves in them, two uncles, three aunts, and four cousins. In this group were also children, eight-year-old Merusia, daughter of cousin Roma; the two-year- old daughter of another cousin, Stanisław Wainapel and the ten-year-old daughter of the youngest sister of my grandmother Regina (my father’s mother). They did not suffer an anonymous death in a concentration camp; they were shot to death in the cemetery in Szydłowiec. Some of the condemned escaped death, but none of our loved ones were among them. Thanks to David’s book, I know how the Wainapels and the Gliksmans and our close and more distant relatives perished. Grandmother Regina’s brother-in-law shouted out to the Ukrainians, in Russian, “Murderers, some day dogs will drink your blood!” He supported his wife (the oldest sister of Grandma Regina) as they walked together toward their grave. A young cousin of my father, Stanisław Wainapel, with a child in his arms, waved good-bye to his parents and was shot in front of their eyes.

My contemporaries perished, and the death of my father’s cousins meant that those who were not yet born also perished; they could have been my cousins in the future.

I experienced two ghettos. In the one in Białystok, I spent approximately half a year, and in Warsaw, longer—eight to nine months. First came Białystok. I was alone there, having to depend on myself, a nine year old, but already grownup, perhaps more so than later in the Warsaw Ghetto, responsible. In the Warsaw Ghetto, I found myself in the midst of family. I was led by the hand.

One of several dozens (or maybe hundreds?) of children in the Jewish Home for Children in Białystok, forever hungry, I headed “to town” almost every day, but I never left the Jewish quarter. I wandered along the streets of the relatively small ghetto without a plan, ostensibly without aim. Along the way, living alone, was a friend of my mother, a teacher, who would invite me to her place and prepare for us a ghetto delicacy, stuffed cabbage. It turned out that across the street from the Children’s Home lived Lenka, a prewar neighbor from 49 Królewska Street and my first childhood friend. Her parents were no longer alive. She was being brought up by her uncle (a physician) and his wife. At Lenka’s, I ate “prewar” dinners; small portions elegantly served on good china. Nobody in this house rushed at the food as at our place in the institution. Food was not the subject of conversation. I ate dinners at Lenka’s, stuffed cabbage at Mrs. Marysia’s, and then ran to the Children’s Home for the noontime thin soup. After these three meals, I was still continuously hungry.

For many years now, I have tried to find out what became of the Jewish children from our children’s home. Chajka Grossman, the legendary liaison between the Białystok and Warsaw Ghettos, told me recently that all the orphans from the Białystok Ghetto were transported by the Germans to the camp in Terezin and from there, next, by a transport to Oświęcim (Auschwitz) to perish in the gas chambers.

I am still unable to write about my stay in the Warsaw Ghetto. I saw bodies covered with sheets of paper. They were a permanent part of the landscape. There was nothing about it to surprise me at all. I did not have to close my eyes or to grasp my Grandmother Michalina‘s hand; I had already lost two parents. “Disappearance” of people was for a ten-year- old girl such a natural event that it did not even arouse protest! Even the worst almost didn’t touch me there.

Those closest to me tried to live, in so far as possible, “normally” until the first “actions”. They sent me to private classes, I studied, I discovered books. The burnt-out wing of the Holy Spirit Hospital, where the roof had been missing since September 1939, was full of self-sown vegetation. The wind had blown in earth and sand. I cultivated a little plot there together with Krysia Sigalin. We cultivated fragrant nasturtium. In May of 1942, my uncle, taking the place of my father, gave me a birthday party. What is there to tell about it here?

I am writing down the Jewish stories of my sisters and brothers from the Association of the Children of the Holocaust. I am becoming familiar with situations which were not part of my fate. I experience Krysia’s leaving the ghetto through sewer canals (she lost her family in the canals, sisters and brothers). I never had to enter the canals. I am with Jadzia in the headquarters of the Gestapo on Aleje Szucha, where she, a child, is beaten and tortured but does not admit to being Jewish. With Irena, I stand in the railroad wagon going to Treblinka. I take notes of the remembrances of Marysia, snatches of a childhood gleaned here and there between actions, shut up in the attic with a vial of poison, sitting in cellars with bats and wandering with a beggar’s stick.

These are all facts from the life stories of my friends, incidents that could have happened to any of us. They also belong to me, because it is our history, even though I was personally spared.

I never once encountered szmalcownicy so that when I talk about our rescuers, Zosia interrupts me with the words, “But I did not have rescuers; I had szmalcownicy.”

I put myself into these life stories out of a journalist’s habit. I hide myself behind the backs of my heroes, and my heroes are all my age-mates who survived in spite of the Nuremberg laws. And I don’t know and will never find out where our common story ends and my individual fate begins…

During the occupation, I learned to “lie in order to live.” I learned to change my skin to suit the needs of the moment. The evil continued within me after the war. Could one come out unscathed from several years of daily lies, from a childhood on someone else’s papers? Could one emerge without internal harm?

A true biographical account must be a moral accounting with oneself. I owe it to those closest to me, the murdered, and also to my daughter and grandchildren as well. I am writing step by step, publishing pieces, fragments, one word after another…

I am writing step by step – printed fragments include: “Spuścizna” (Legacy), Więź, no. 4 (1989): 96-110; “Trzy próby. Belka w oku moim” (note 10) :42-45; “Dom naszego ocalenia” (Home of Our Salvation), Więź, no. 11 (1992):166–69. (Author’s note)

Warsaw 1992