Ferdynand Keiner

This is my father, Ferdynand Keiner. The photo was probably taken in Rabka in the 1930s. Grandma and Grandpa Keiner had two sons, Samuel, born in 1889, and Ferdynand, born in 1893. My father Ferdynand came into the world in Wadowice and went to gymnasium there. Then he moved to Cracow and studied law at the Jagiellonian University. He became a doctor of law and after doing his articles in Cracow opened an attorney's office in Rabka. As for my parents, Ferdynand Keiner and Paulina, nee Kleinberg, they had met much earlier, before World War I, as very young people, but they had not yet got together. During World War I my father was a private soldier in the Austrian army and was taken prisoner by the Russians in some battle, unfortunately I have no idea in which one. He remained in prison in Russia right up until 1921 and, not without some difficulty, returned to Poland. Then he and Mama got married. My parents certainly had a religious wedding. They lived with Grandma and Granddad Kleinberg. My father worked in an attorney's office, but in Cracow and in Galicia in general, lawyers, not just Jews, were as common as muck. There were many graduates from the Jagiellonian University's Law Department every year. So to keep a family you had to move away. My mother's brother, Roman Kleinberg, had been living for some time in Rabka and was a dentist there, so he persuaded my parents to move to Rabka. We moved from Cracow towards the end of 1929. My parents started from nothing. There was already one attorney in Rabka, Mr. Dorfman, but he lived in poverty too. My father was a very conscientious man who didn't demand much from life, so the local highlanders, who went to court at the drop of a hat, trusted him to represent them in their cases in the local court in the nearby town of Jordanow.