Wladyslaw, Bernard and Adam Minc

This picture was taken when the Pilsudski Hill was being built, after Pilsudski’s death, in Cracow, near the Kosciuszko Hill.

Here, on the left is my brother Wladyslaw Minc and in the middle there is our uncle Bernard Minc.

On the right there is my cousin Adam Minc, the son of my father’s youngest brother - uncle Zygmunt Minc.

My father's older brother, Bernard, completed his medical studies in Vienna around 1908-9.

There he married Schwester, I mean the sister superior whose name was Maria (people called her Mitzi).

She was a native of Vienna, and although there are many Catholics in Vienna, she was a protestant. Until 1926 they lived in Lodz, at 6 Plac Wolnosci [Freedom Square].

They were childless, but since they loved children, they always had Christmas parties at their house and all the children of my mother's sisters would come visit them.

Bernard and Mitzi could afford this, they were quite wealthy.

Bernard was the head of a ward in a hospital, and he also worked in a doctors' co-operative called Sanitas.

Since we were also doing quite well, the gifts he gave us were rather modest. But my mother's sisters were not so well off, so for them he would prepare more meaningful presents.

It was all very nicely arranged. Bernard had never been baptized and his wife was a protestant.

My brother Wladyslaw went to Cracow in the 1930s to pursue his studies in law, at the Jagiellonian University.

During his studies he was active in the The Union of Independent Socialist Youth.

In 1948 it became part of the Academic Union of Polish Youth. And Adam, uncle’s Zygmunt son, was born in 1928.

When the war broke out, Bernard Minc had already retired, he left the city and he died in 1939, as early as September I think, in Mszana Dolna.

His wife had the body brought back, and had him buried in the Rakowiecki cemetery in Cracow.

Wladyslaw with his wife Berta died in Lwow in 1944.
Zygmunt Minc, my father's younger brother, and his wife Erna and their son Adam survived the war.

During the war they lived in Yoshkar-Ola, the capital of the Autonomous Republic Mari El.

Later they settled in Bytom, and after that Adam came to Gliwice.

We saw them after the war.