Tomasz Miedzinski with Jewish activists in Wroclaw

This is me with a group of young Jewish activists from Wroclaw in the late 1940s. As soon as military operations ended we were able to go back to Poland. We left in January 1946, and arrived in Klodzko in February. Our repatriation journey took almost four weeks, in very primitive conditions, in cattle wagons. When we first arrived we were in a little village called Gieszcze Puste, and then we went to Klodzko. A Committee of Polish Jews was set up and Wajcman became its chairman. A fairly large group of Jews settled in Klodzko after the war. A number of artisan cooperatives were founded: a tailors' cooperative, a cobblers' cooperative, and there was a branch of the ORT. Joint began to send us some aid, food and other necessities, and some people started to work. We were all given some apartments that had belonged to Germans, that were more or less furnished. And there in Klodzko I started work for the Jewish Committee as head of the youth division. We organized events for young people: various types of events, festivals, ghetto ceremonies; there was a coordination commission for Jewish organizations. That was 1946. [In 1948 Jewish organizations were to be abolished.] In the summer of 1947 I went to Wroclaw and lived in the Korczak Memorial Boarding House at 30 Krasinskiego Street. There were about 120-125 of us there. Most of us were Jewish orphans. The young people who lived in that house attended Polish schools, the ORT, or the artisan school run by the Jewish Committee. I was working, a little in a wagon factory and a little helping to rebuild the city. And I was studying. We did the whole of the grammar school program in one year and the whole of the high school program in the second year. After two years' study, in 1948, I sat my school-leaving exam. And of course I was also active in the community. I was appointed to the committee organizing the Uniting Congress of Youth Organizations in Poland. And in 1948, on 22 July, in the Slask cinema auditorium, the Uniting Congress of Youth Organizations was held, and the Polish Youth Union was created. On Saturdays and Sundays we organized 'Sobotniki': these were voluntary work programs; we were rebuilding important buildings in Wroclaw, including the main building of Wroclaw University, the Polytechnic on Kosciuszkowski Bank, part of the wagon factory, and other public facilities in Wroclaw.