Donat Brzeski

This is a photo of Donat Brzeski, my aunt Klima's husband. It was taken in 1935 or 1936. The picture survived, because I didn't have to throw it away when living on Aryan papers. Brzeski had Aryan looks. He was Polish. My mother's youngest sister, Klima, married a Polish doctor before the war, Mr. Donat Brzeski. She originally had a different name, but I don't remember it. As the wife of Mr. Brzeski she used the name Klementyna, Klima. Uncle and Aunt Brzeski lived in Lodz, at the family-owned pharmacy. They were a good couple. They had a car, which, those days, was a luxury. I remember the trips to Stefanski's, to Ruda Pabianicka for sunbathing. There was a swimming pool there, you could swim. Or you went to Piatkowski's café in Pabianice. They served the best cake in the area. I remember this episode from my life: Aunt Klima was pretty, but she had very Semitic looks. And I had a classmate, her name was Aurelia Jezierska. She once said to me, 'Listen, I never go to that pharmacy, there's this kike woman there.' I just looked at her really? I saw her once during the war, that Aurelia Jezierska. I stepped into a travel office and she worked there. When I saw her, I ran away as fast as I could, because I remembered that encounter from school. It was very hard for me, to experience such unjustified hatred. I don't know whether it was religious or ethnic? Such attitudes were frequent among Poles. But that's a question of upbringing. The war showed that people reacted differently. I was taken right from the street by my former classmate, of whom I'd have never expected that, and I lived a good few years on her papers.. Aunt died of cancer during the war. She had had one breast amputated even before the war, the tumor metastasized to the other one, and she died. Uncle died suddenly from a heart condition, sometime in the late 1940s. He was a doctor in Lowicz at that time. He was 56.