Jerzy Pikielny's grandmother Aniuta Drutowska

I don?t know who took this photograph. It shows my Grandma, Aniuta Drutowska, née Imass. It was taken in Lodz in the 1920s. My maternal grandmother was from Chisinau. She was born in 1877 - she was eight years younger than Grandpa. My grandparents settled in Lodz after they got married. Their last apartment was at 25 Radwanska Street. They had two children: a daughter named Czeslawa, my mother, born in 1897, and a son named Leon, born in 1899. Grandma was rather small, quite thin, you could call her petite. Perhaps it had something to do with the angina pectoris she suffered from. Apart from the education she'd earned in Switzerland she didn't go to any school. She never worked. She told me that in 1905 there was a great demonstration in Lodz which the Cossacks were dispersing, and so Grandma went there to take part in it, against the Cossacks naturally. She didn't have to go, her status did not force her to fight and protest. Grandma Drutowska had a heart condition all her life and for that reason I didn't have such good relations with her as with Grandpa. She had a brother named Jozef, whom Grandpa had come to Lodz from Chisinau. I remember I met him once at an ice-skating rink. We even talked. I see the way he looked as I close my eyes. He was a bit younger than Grandma, not too tall, plump. As for Grandma, I cannot say anything more about her.

Photos from this interviewee