Estera Migdalska with her sister Chana Dajbog and a subtenant

From left: Me, our subtenant and my sister, Chana Dajbog. This picture was probably taken around 1938 on the way to school on Chlodna Street in Warsaw. My sister and I were the first generation in our family born in Warsaw. I was less than three years old when my sister Chana was born on 6th February 1933. I remember she was born in our apartment, and I remember the moment when I suddenly terribly wanted to see my mother, and they let me in and I snuggled up to her. Then they took me to the kindergarten for the rest of that day, the place was called ?Freblowka.? And when I got back home from there, my father, all happy, told me I had a sister. That's how I came to remember it, for I actually felt a kind of grudge, and felt it for quite a long time afterwards. This means there was some envy there. I was born and lived at 32 Dzielna Street. Dzielna was a cobbled street, and many a time I got hurt on those cobbles. Our apartment had two rooms with a kitchen, a toilet, no bathroom. A washtub stood in the kitchen and there we took our baths. It wasn't a very large apartment, which means we were hardly well off. My father contributed to the marriage only what he was earning, and the estate of my mother's father had been divided into plots and handed out to the peasants, so Mother didn't contribute much either. There were four of us: my mother, my father, me, and my sister. We also had subtenants, because you had to make some extra money. All the rooms were always occupied, especially that you entered the sleeping room from the kitchen. We slept in the sleeping room but also used the kitchen and the dining room on a normal basis. The tenants slept in the dining room, there were two sorts of couches there.

Photos from this interviewee