Anna Mass' father Jankiel Szwarc and husband Borys Mass

This is my father, Jankiel Szwarc and my husband Borys Mass, and my father watchmaker shop in Dzierzoniow.

I met my husband in Ukraine, in 1944. At first, it was my father who met him! We spent the first summer in that kolkhoz. But soon we decided there wasn't much to do there and it was decided that my father would go to Bakhmach. He went there and at the station got all confused: where he should go, what he should do. He met a young man at the station. The man saw that my father stood helpless, so he asked him in Russian whether he was looking for something. When he heard my father's Russian, he switched to Polish. But my father's Polish wasn't much better. So they switched to Yiddish and they were home. That young man told my father where he should go, what he should arrange. Upon his return, my father told me he had met a very good man at the station, his name was Mass, and that he liked him very much for helping him. And as I have good intuition, I thought, 'That Mass will be my husband.'

We moved to Bakhmach, and there was a sugar-making kolkhoz there. I knew that guy Mass worked there. There were two girls from Poland there against thirty boys. So when I suddenly turned up, the boys immediately beset me. And that boy Mass isn't showing up! So I thought, 'You scoundrel! I can do without it!' I started meeting another boy and suddenly there turns up Mass. I still remember that unbuttoned shirt and freckled chest. He said hello and went. Oh, so you're like that? Okay, no big deal. But then any time he learned I was to visit friends on Sunday, he'd show up there. And as I was meeting another, he always crossed our path. And my then-boyfriend started pulling out. So I thought, 'Well, what kind of a boyfriend are you if you don't fight for me?' And so I started meeting Mass.

And then he proposed to me. And that's how I met my husband. Those features, besides the physical looks, that I had chosen at the age of 13 that my boyfriend should have, he had them all. Strong will, a sense of humor, that's very important, and a good ear, because I used to sing a lot.

Photos from this interviewee