184 Names unknown. Print from a glass plate found in Zdunska Wola. |
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185 "My late father always said that there are Jews in this photograph. How it came into my family, I don't know. All I can say is that before the War, we lived in Lvov." Tadeusz Gliwa, Krakw |
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186 The wedding of Bronka Karas and Mietek Szydlower, Warsaw, probably 1938. They perished during the Holocaust. Their daughter lives in Warsaw. |
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I wasn't at my sister's wedding. I couldn't go, because I had gotten pregnant by a Pole and my family ostracized me. It seems that Franka cried because I wasn't there.
187 Wedding photograph of Frajda Fajgenbaum and Samuel Grinberg, Warsaw, September 22, 1935. |
"They called her Franka, even though her real name was Frajda, which means joy. She got that name because she was the firstborn. Next was me, Gina Miriam, then Noemi - that is, Ninka (a very fine coloratura soprano), then Dawid and Wolf. Our father, Israel Lejb Fajgenbaum, had studied religion, and graduated from the famous yeshiva in Lomza. He wrote articles for the Hebrew newspaper Hacefirao under the name Eic Tanew. "But when it was time to start a family he opened a leather goods store. My parents' wedding took place at the restaurant my grandfather, Eliasz Odoner, ran in the Praga district at the corner of Wrzesinska and Brukowa Streets. The wedding lasted three days and three nights. My father's store was in a good location, at Targowa 41. But he didn't make much money from it, because he belonged to the Linas Hacedek charitable organization. At Zabkowska 15a they maintained a free clinic for the poor, and my father was always busy there. "During the War my whole family went to the Ghetto - only I remained on the Aryan side. I managed to find them thanks to my husband's brother, who got himself hired to work in the Ghetto especially for that purpose. In December 1942 1 sent them though him 300 zloty and I got a letter from Franka:
Dear and beloved Gina, I think that the Lord himself must have inspired you to send us this 300 zloty. The man who brought us the money found us in the archway of the building, on our beds. The landlord - although he too is a Jew - evicted us, since we haven't been able to pay the rent for three months. And now we've paid up, and even have some left over for half a loaf of bread. May God grant to life. Grandmother is dying and says to tell you that you are no longer cursed. She gives you and your son her blessing and prays that you live to see better days. Dad stands by the washtub and washes our things in cold water without soap. He is doing it because the rest of us are too weak. Little Dawid has died of hunger. I hope that you five to see better days. As for us, you can guess. Don't send your address.
"I read it and I cried and cried. I memorized it, because I knew there would come a time when I would have to destroy the letter.
"Once the neighbors came by and asked, Would you let us look out your window, so we can watch the Jews burning in the Ghetto? But the windows in their apartment faced the same side. I was terrified. Right away I threw Franka's letter into the stove, along with a gold locket from Mama, which had a picture of her in the garden from 1907. (To this day I regret doing it - the locket wouldn't have given me away, since there was no Yiddish inscription, but I had lost my head.) I went back to the room, and their conversation livened up: Wow, look at them burn! Their side-curls are sizzling now! And what do you think, Mrs. Gnoinska? You don't think it's good that Hitler is exterminating the Jews? By then, I wanted to laugh along with them, but in my mind's eye I saw my father doing the laundry and I heard: You won't admit it, my girl? And I said, No, Mr. Budrewicz, I'm not going to laugh, because there's nothing to laugh at. When they finish with the Jews, they'll do the same to us Poles. The Jews drank our blood and ate our bread for free, and you're on their side? I was sure that they'd take to the police. I won't die that way without defending rnyself, I thought, and I stood by the stove so I could grab the poker. They finally left. "Then another neighbor dropped in to tell me that I had a Jewish nose (though his was much the same - he got his from drinking vodka like I don't know what), and then neighbors from the courtyard told my five-year-old son that he was a Jew. In the end, a policeman came by to ask me about my background. We had to move out. "All of them - my grandmother, mother, father, Franka and her husband and daughter Gieniusia, and Ninka and Wolf - were killed at Majdanek. Out of my grandfather Odoner's twenty grandchildren, the only survivors were me and my cousin Karol, who was at Kolyma. After the War I found out that when Gieniusia. was four, when they moved to the Ghetto, she was a pretty little blonde. The neighbors from the entranceway, Poles, wanted to take her in. Gieniusia was with them for a few days, but she cried the whole time. My sister then came for her, also crying, and took her to the Ghetto."
As told by Eugenia Gnoinska of Warsaw
188 "Rza Horwitz, my great grandaunt, born in Warsaw, and beside her Mr. Hilsum, her husband, a French Jew. She left with him for Paris. They had three sons." Marek Beylin, Warsaw |
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189 On the reverse: "Plock, October 4, 1938. Leon Szwarcbart and Hela Urbach." |
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190 On the reverse: "Auntie Cecia with Uncle Albert, Director of the Malopolska Bank in Krakw". They were related to the Abranowicz family. |
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191 "These were neighbors of my mother before the War. Since my mother grew up with them, I was often told about them. They lived in Kalisz at number 50 Skarszewska Street." Czeslawa Marciniak, Kalisz |
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192 On the reverse in unclear handwriting are the names "Hersz ... Blitzerwny". Photograph taken by Michal Dabrowski, from Baranw Sandomierski. |
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193 Names unknown. From Baranw Sandomierski between the Wars. Photograph by Michal Dabrowski. |
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194 Mr. and Mrs. Glanz of Cieszyn. "Mrs. Glanz (nee Rozenberg), a very good-looking woman whose father had a factory in Biala (now Bielsko-Biala), was the wife of a well-known lawyer, Dr. Henryk Glanz. His office was in the center of Cieszyn at Olszaka Street, on the second floor. The Glanzes lived at I Sejmowa Street and they spent much time in Ustron, where they owned the Biala,, ["White"] villa. They had a son, Jurek. They hired Ewa Waliczek as an au pair, cook, and maid; the picture is from her. During the War, the Glanzes fled to Lww and were killed there. That's what was told to me by Mrs. Waliczek, who remembers her benefactors and employers with great emotion." Wieslaw Radwanski, Wisla |
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195 Julius Wagner, a dentist from Olawa, with his wife. Julius' mother, Erna, was the daughter of Abraham Abranowicz. |
196 Print made from a glass plate by a photographer, who would travel throughout the villages around Dobromil (now in Ukraine). Probably from the 1920s. |
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198 A wedding at Ozjasz Kuflik's home in Brzozw. "Over a thousand Jews lived in Brzozw - one third of the town. There were five synagogues, one of which was made of brick. On the 9th of August 1942, on Sunday, Gestapo policemen arrived from Przemysl. They ordered the Jews to come to the stadium, from where they were to go to -field work-. In the morning, the Jews were taken in trucks to the forest. They were shot in a ravine." Jzef Rogowski, Brzozw |
199 A w edding in the Kolatacz family from Skala. Second from right, Chaja.Tendler. There might be family friends - the Bugajers, the Ruchlas, the Kamrats, and the Silbersztajns - in the photograph as well. |
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197 The wedding of Michal Grodziski, son of Kuperhand, a furrier from Siemiatycze. On the reverse, "As a remembrance for our dear Leszcinski family from the Grodzickis, whom you did not forget - Paris, 20 IX 1953". |
I, the undersigned Stanislaw Leszczynski of Siedlce, will describe for you what happened during the Nazi occupation in the Podlasie area. One autumn, two Jewish families we knew came to my father, the late Boleslaw Leszczynski, to the Bocianka settlement in the village of Kajanka, near Siemiatycze. They were the Feldmans (eight persons) and the Kuperhands (five persons). They had escaped from the Ghetto in Siemiatycze. My father sheltered the Kuperhand family in the stalls, and the Feldmans in the barn. We made special hiding places for them. In the barn, we boarded up the mow and covered it up with lupine. We left one board loose so that we could get food to them. In the spring, when the lupine had to be threshed, we found a trench for the Feldmans which was about 200 meters away.
"My sister Boleslawa said that she wanted to live, but if the Germans came and found them, they would execute everyone. She changed the date of her birth on her papers from 1928 to 1926 so that she could go to Germany to work.
"After some time Dad and we made two dugouts for them in the forest near us. We worked at night. It was worst in the winter, when we had to take food to them and then cover up our tracks. Before the harvest in 1944, the Soviets arrived, and long-awaited help came for the Jewish families. Both families left during the German retreat. They contacted me in 1990:
"Dear Leszczynski family, You'll definitely be surprised to see who's writing to you. I am the son of the furrier from Siemiatycze. I'm sorry that I haven't written to you for so long, but I was waiting for the Polish government to change. I'm now living in America - I have two daughters and a son, and they're all married now. My sister also has three children. Our parents recently passed away. I'd very much like to find out who of your family is still alive and who is living at the Bocianka settlement. Yours, Michal."
"All of my parents' guests are Jews. My mother is sitting in the center, on her left, my father, on her right, my aunt Anna Tenenbaum. By the clock, a photographer, Gelgor, is standing. His daughter is sitting first from left. Next to her, standing, is Max Hirszhorn, with whom my father was partner in the so-called Chevrolet salon. His wife, a dentist, is sitting between the Gelgor girl and my father. Mr. and Mrs. Rubinraut are also in this picture. He was a clerk in City Hall."
As told by Rafal Malec of Warsaw
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200 The silver wedding anniversary of Liba and Dawid Malec from Grodno. September 3, 1938. |
201 Print from a glass plate found in Radomsko. |
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