Adolf Fajner in front of his house

This picture was taken in April 1948.

Here is uncle Adolf in Manchester in 1948, probably in front of his house. ‘For dear Maniusia, Andziulka and Stefek - your loving uncle Adolf’ - so it’s to my wife Maria, my daughter Anna and me.

Adolf Fajner was my mother’s brother. My mother's maiden name was Fajner.

Her parents' names were Maurycy and Roza Fajner, but I don't know the maiden name of my grandmother.

Later her family moved to Lodz. There were very many of them.

Her sisters: Bella and Helena; and her brothers: Samuel, Jakub, Maksymilian, Adolf and Jozef. Eight altogether.

Up to about 1922 Adolf worked for my father. My father had an electro-technical establishment.

Adolf learned the profession while working for him, but then things got difficult in Poland, so he emigrated to Germany, to Dortmund in the Rhine region.

He lived there until more or less 1938, working, among other things, as a taxi driver. Then he moved to Manchester in England.

He was struggling financially and he believed things would work out better for him in America.

Just before the war he was planning to join his brother Samuel in Cleveland, he even sent all his belongings out there.

Then the war broke out and he stayed in England, in Manchester. He survived the war, just as Samuel's family in Cleveland did.

After the war, in March 1946 I returned home from the Soviet Union. At the beginning I was in Lodz.

There was nobody left from my closest family, and Bela, my fiancee was also gone.

I was continually in touch with my uncle Adolf Fajner, the one who lived in Manchester.

After the war he played the role of a link between the family members who were still alive.

Everyone would ask him to find out about the others. So he put me in touch with my uncle Samuel, my mother's oldest brother.