This is a picture of Gina Korczak taken in 1945. Her real first name was probably Eugenia. The Korczaks took me into their home when I came back from the camp.
I got back in July. What I felt when I found out that there was nobody there, that no-one from the family had survived, only me! I had nowhere to go; I stood on the street and cried. And I wanted to go back to the camp. Because at least there, there had been that bunk and I had been someone's business? No-one here, what was I to do? No money, no-one wanted to let me into my apartment, no-one wanted to give me back my things. What was I to do? Without an education. It was well that I could read and write. At least there was that. No-one would even have taken me on to work, because I couldn't do anything.
At 38 Dluga Street the Jewish Committee had set up; I was directed there. And there you posted slips of paper saying who'd come back. And there were thousands of those slips on the walls. There was a large courtyard, and there they put straw down and you could sleep. At midday you got soup. And if you were absolutely in rags, like me, in my one shoe and without any dessous, without panties, you could get some there. Not to fit, but something.
I put up a slip of paper that I was there, that I was alive, and if any of the family had survived, they should sign. After a month the Korczaks, these friends of my parents, found my note. They wrote that they lived on Karmelicka, and that I should go to them. I went there, and they took me in. They had a very big apartment, they were doing very well, because he was a dentist. They enrolled me in school, because I had to have a sponsor. And I was there right until they left. They went to Israel in 1948. Mrs. Korczak, Gina Korczak, died not long ago. Her husband has been dead a long time, but she died only about a month ago; I just got news from Israel.
