Anna Mass’ father Jankiel Szwarc in Dzierzoniow

It’s my father in Dzierzoniow, with others members of a Jewish political organisation, Bund. It can be in 1947, 1948 maybe.

We went to Poland in 1946. We returned home. They sent us to Lower Silesia , to Rychbach… Originally the town had a different name, then it was called Rychbach, and eventually it was renamed to Dzierzoniow.  Very many Jews had come from the Soviet Union, and [Dzierzoniow] was full of them. My husband worked in a textile plant. Then he started working with my father as a watchmaker. 

Before the war, my father was an active Bund member in Lublin. The Bund was something like the PPS for the Poles. Socialist. I think he joined as a young boy. In truth, he had communist inclinations. But because he was a coward as far as physical pain was involved, he was afraid that if they arrested him for communism - and so much as threatened with torture - he would give everyone away. So he preferred to be on the Bund, which was socialist but not communist. I'm not the party member type. I joined the Jung Bund on a follow-up basis, but I wasn't particularly active, after all, I had to work. Off peak season I worked for eight-ten hours a day, but in peak season, carnival, holidays, I sat there until midnight. In fact, I was busy all the time. Young people came to visit us. We talked, sang. I once knew very many Yiddish songs but today I can no longer sing.

And then, in Dzierzoniow, My father was a member of the Bund but when the Bund merged with the PZPR, he didn't join. In 1948, when Israel was founded, many Jews started leaving. In 1949, his sisters brought my husband to Warsaw and he started working in the accounting department of the Office of the Council of Ministers [URM]. In 1950, me with my daughters and then my father, we moved to Warsaw. 

Photos from this interviewee