This is my stepmother's niece, Stefa, in Toulouse in France. That was September 1943, during the World War II. They fleed from Paris to Toulouse, all of them, the whole family.
Aunt Chana's husband, Jankiel Tygiel, was very traditional, he had a beard parted in the middle with two spikes and completely orthodox clothes: a black gabardine and a square hat with a tiny black peak, on holidays he would put on a black velvet capote with a string tied around his waist, not to mention a tallit whenever he went to a synagogue, he dressed himself as a Hasid. Aunt used to wear a wig and ran a religious house, but Aunt's children absolutely did not they were not religious.
Stefa, Aunt's daughter, came from this house, a teacher, who taught Polish in a Polish school in Wolomin. She left her home very early and lived on Zelazna Street. A very well read person. I remember that before the war I used to go to her, and she taught me some French. I was her favorite, she used to take me everywhere. To Aleje Jerozolimske, to the National Museum - I went there for the first time with her (there was an agricultural exhibition, where I drank pasteurized milk for the first time, that was a novelty back then). Stefa was the most intelligent out of that house, completely emancipated, I'd say assimilated. She wanted to have nothing to do with anything Jewish. She used to go to Paris to her aunts, and was in France when the war broke out. She survived the war in France, in Toulouse, when Germany took over a part of France, they all ran south. She was an old maid, and only in France she met Jacques, a true Frenchman with whom she married and outlived. They had no children. They ran a so-called salon. Stefa came to Poland after the war, she had lots of friends among people who were close to the authorities in the People's Republic of Poland and used to come to us for a month or two; she lived in Warsaw.
