Irena Wygodzka in the Tatras

In the summer of 1938 I went to Zakopane only with my father.

I don’t know where the other members of our family were at that time. My father took this picture. He really liked photography. He took pictures whenever he could.

At outings, holidays, at home. He had a camera, he had a darkroom. It was some corner, maybe the servants' room. The camera - one of the more popular ones at the time, a Zeiss or Leica.

In the picture I am with a man we met in Zakopane during that vacation. A young married couple was staying in the hotel with us. And then we hiked in the mountains together.

I remember this hotel in Zakopane. We'd live there and eat there. It was a Jewish hotel. The owners were Jewish, the guests were mostly Jewish, too.

Almost every year we'd go on vacation. We'd leave the city for at least a month, or two. We'd take all our stuff. We'd go near Katowice, to Bystra, to Cyganski Las, sometimes to Rabka, always to southern Poland, Silesia.

I never went to the seaside before the war. Our more distant family would go with us, too, and we'd spend time there together. We'd rent cottages from peasants.

Photos from this interviewee