Samuel König with his wife Stanislawa and children

This is a photo of me and my family. The photo was taken in Cieladz in 1957 in some studio.
After the World War II I arrived in Poland in early November 1946. Or so I think. I didn't know where I was going. And nobody asked anyway. You didn't have to know where the repatriation train was heading.

I met my future wife, Stanislawa, in Cracow. Her parents lived in a village near Cracow. I worked for the Metaloplastyka co-op then. She had contancts with Jews. She worked at a Jewish family after the war. She was a housekeeper. And she had some business in the Jewish Committee one day, we talked, went for a walk together, and that's how it began. I left for Slupsk later but we wrote letters. Plus I came to see her, and once she went to visit me in Slupsk. When I completed my school we decided to get married. Since it was nice together, why not. We never discussed the fact I was a Jew and she was a Catholic. I needed a woman and she also wasn't made to be single. I knew her parents. I met them twice. We also went there before the wedding for two or three days and they saw how things were. We got married in the summer of 1952. It was in Cracow, in the registry office. Just us and the two witnesses. A boy and a girl my wife knew. There was no wedding party.

After the wedding we settled in Slupsk. I worked in a dairy. They assigned me a room in a house occupied by some family. It was a big German house. We didn't stay there too long. Two, three weeks. I was later sent to the country. The Slupsk dairy lacked a local representative. There was a couple of former German dairys in the surrounding area, right. I was made accountant in the dairy in Dobieszew. I was asigned a little apartment. Two rooms and a kitchen. I don't know how the dairy got to administer the building. Four families lived there. I worked there till April or May 1952, or 1953. They transferred me to a state farm in Labiszewo, a village in the Slupsk district. The farm had 1,500 acres of land. An old friend of mine told me they needed an accountant. They hired me right away. I was well educated, I finished a bookkeeping school. Later I was transferred again. They lacked an accountant in Malczkow, another village in the Slupsk district. The farm there had 4,500 acres. And so the head accountant assigned me there. Malczkow was about 12 or 13 kilometers from Labiszewo. Later we moved from Malczkow to Jasionna, a village in the Wielkopolska region, Szamotuly district. It's a place near Lowicz. I also worked in a state farm there. I stayed there till 1966. Then I got a job here, in Cieladz, a village in the Lodz region, Rawa Mazowiecka district.

I worked as an accountant in all those places, I mean as a head accountant, bookkeeper, and cashier. Three posts, one person. Head accountant was an important person, financial vice-director. We did fine. I earned well. Even though the state farms in the country did not compare to the co-ops in the cities. You didn't earn as much as in a city. Well, but you had your own garden, and free boarding, and free milk if you had a wife and child. So we didn't have to worry and were able to save some money.

Two of my children were born in Labiszew. Ala in 1954, and Ludwik in 1956. My youngest, Andrzej, was born in 1960 in Malczkow. My children know I'm Jewish but they were not raised in the Jewish tradition. They were christened. They went to a normal school, just like everybody else. Ala went to the school in Jasionna at first, and later all three went to the school in Cieladz. Ala completed a merchant high school, just like me. Ludwik finished a mechanical high school. The third one, Andrzej dropped out just before the final exams. The elder two, Ala and Ludwik, live in our village, Cieladz. They have their own houses. Andrzej has lived in Germany for 19 years now. The city he lives in is called Regensburg. He left with his girlfriend, it was still People's Republic of Poland back then. They went as tourists but fled and didn't come back. They settled there. Ala has two children, a boy and a girl. His name is Daniel and hers - Dagmara. He's 30 and she's 27. Ludwik has a son, Konrad, he's now 26, and a daughter, Kinga, she's 23. There are no children in Germany. We were a good family. We kept our limbs intact, nobody ever hurt anybody. We're still closely bonded.