Travel

Matylda Wyszynska
Gdynia
Poland
Interviewer: Anna Szyba
Date of interview: March 2006

Ms. Wyszynska is a very elegant old lady.

We meet at her apartment in Gdynia, which she shares with her granddaughter.

The apartment is modest but nice. Books on Jewish subjects stand on the shelves.

Ms. Wyszynska prepares a breakfast for me, and when we eat, she tells me about how she misses Lwow, showing me photo albums and books about the city.

She gladly tells the story of her life.

• My Family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war
• Glossary

• My Family background

I was born on 31st January 1922 in Lwow to a Jewish family. My mother, Leonia, nee Ramer, ran the house. My father, Maurycy Fuchs, was a lawyer. I knew my maternal grandparents. Only recently did I find out the name of the street they lived at, it was 18 Szpitalna Street in Lwow, the Jewish quarter.

My grandfather was called Leon Lajzer Magid, and my grandmother was Gitel Ramer. And now there’s this thing that my grandfather is always called differently than my grandmother, because they never had an official marriage only a Jewish one. And my mother is called after my grandmother rather than after my grandfather.

I very seldom visited [my mother’s parents] because we lived in a completely different part of town and we basically didn’t go to them, and they never came to us, but when I went to school, my grandfather often came to see me there in the summer.

We went out to the yard for the break and he threw me small bundles with this kind of ice candy over the fence, because he didn’t want to make himself conspicuous. It was kind of ice cream, transparent. I don’t know why he didn’t want to be seen, perhaps because he was a Jew. I don’t know whether my maternal grandparents [were religious], I quite simply don’t remember that.

Grandmother was rather bulky, the true grandmother, but I think she had blonde hair. Grandfather was short, chubby, bald. I remember Orthodox Jews in the Jewish quarter 1, with the payes, in the kaftans, but my grandfather never dressed like that. And I loved [them] very, very much. Grandmother always had some goodies in the pockets of her apron for me, which she gave me secretly, because my mother didn’t allow me to eat sweets.

Grandfather died before my mother, I think [before 1936], and my grandmother I don’t know at all when she died. She must have died after my mother’s death and I simply wasn’t informed. I had no contact with her since my mother’s death.

My paternal grandfather, in turn, was orthodox, that I know for sure. He lived in [a part of town called] Zniesienie, Grandmother was already dead. I don’t know how he was called, Grandmother was called Fidelia Udul Fuchs, I’m called Ada [after her]. [Zniesienie] was also a quarter populated chiefly by Jews.

[Grandfather] never visited us but I remember, when I was four or five and I went to visit him, I was always struck by the sight of the tower of the Baczynski [Editor’s note: Baczewski] factory [near where he lived], the inscription ‘Baczynski’, it was a vodka factory, its products were known virtually all over the world. [Lwow’s oldest, J.A. Baczewski’s made vodkas, cordials and liqueurs.

Founded 1782, in operation until 1939, it exported its products during the interwar period to virtually all European countries, Canada, South America and Australia].

And what I remember of that grandfather, my father’s father, it must have been a very religious family. I can’t remember how many times we spent holidays together there. I was a small girl when we went to Grandfather for the Seder. I remember a large table and there must have been relatives at that table [possibly Grandfather’s sisters].

One chair was left unoccupied, the door was left ajar, they told me prophet Elias would come to take that chair, there was a plate for him, and I trembled with fear and kept looking whether some ghost wasn’t coming from that direction. I remember how they poured the wine into the cup, grape wine, and my grandfather sprinkled the wine from the chalice and told the blessing.

He was very skinny, tall, dressed all black. I never remember how the ritual ended because I’d invariably fall asleep and they’d carry me away in their arms. I don’t know whether [Grandfather] had a beard. From the perspective of those childhood years, I remember him as a very old man. He died before the war, but I don’t remember the funeral.

My mother had three sisters and three brothers. She was either the first or the second child because she was the eldest of the sisters. One brother, the eldest one, I think, studied in Nancy near Paris, a textile engineer. I don’t know what his name was. I called him Ma, the older ones called him Manek – for Manuel or something like that.

Later he was sent to work at a wool factory in Bucharest and married the owner’s daughter, a Jewess, her name was Raisa, [married name] Ramer. They had a daughter called Bianka. During the war, when the Germans came, they fled through Bessarabia and found themselves in the Soviet Union.

After the war, he came to Poland with his family, became the head of the whole textile industry at the Textile Industry Administration in Lodz. He is buried at a cemetery in Lodz and, to my shame, I neither attended the funeral nor have ever visited his grave. And Aunt with Bianka went to Toronto [after Uncle died].

Helena Ramer was an aunt in Paris. She arrived there in 1926 to join her brother Ma who was studying there. In Paris she met her future husband and decided to stay. She married an Austrian, and when the war started, he joined the Wehrmacht, she [found herself] in a camp and there, in 1940, she gave birth to a daughter called Jeann.

When her husband returned from the war, he disowned them. If that were not enough, the daughter was called Jeann Haltmeier, and he went to the court to strip her of the name. He said she wouldn’t be his daughter. Aunt Helena died in July last year [2005] at the age of ninety.

My mother’s second brother I called Mis and parents called him Samek, he was Samuel Ramer. He was a dentist, married a dentist and the lived in Stary Sambor [today western Ukraine, Lwow district]. She was a prosthodontist, he specialized in restorative dentistry, they had a practice together.

She was Jewish and they had a beautiful boy named Romek, blue eyes, light blonde hair. I know I twice spent the summer holidays with them in Stary Sambor before the war. They were assimilated. Had their practice and I know they didn’t’ even [observe] kosher because I remember Aunt always bought cold cuts from a certain butcher and we very much liked the ham from that butcher, his name was Baran [‘ram’ in Polish].

One day there was no ham and my Aunt said that Baran didn’t have any ham today. And I asked whether it had to be ham from a ram, whether it couldn’t be ham from a pig, for instance, and they had a hearty laugh at my expense. You remember such silly things and you don’t remember the important ones. Uncle Mis’s whole family died in the Lwow ghetto.

The second aunt [was] my dearest, Aunt Mia, I don’t know what her real name was, perhaps Miriam. I attended her wedding under the chuppah. It was when my mother was still alive [before 1936]. I know that my aunt married the owner of Leopolia, a Lwow-based paper and confectionery plant, she worked there in the office, the man fell in love with her (he was a Jew) and married her.

There was this large room somewhere in town, I don’t remember it to have been a synagogue, but there was a chuppah, and I remember how Aunt was dressed because I have her wedding photo to this day. Aunt Helen sent her a dress from Paris, so she had a beige-blue outfit – a dress and a hat – under that chuppah. That’s all I remember. None of my father’s or mother’s sisters were religious. After her husband was murdered in the Janowski camp in Lwow, Mia went mad and was shot in the Lwow ghetto.

The third sister was called Mada, what her real name was, I don’t know. Mada was the youngest of the sisters and was very pretty. When the war started, she was very young, not much my elder. She could have been in her twenties. She had beautiful, large, almond eyes. And when [the war started], she disappeared. Later everyone refused to know her, she was seen riding in a car with the Germans, and [what happened to her] later, I don’t know. Nobody knows.

Then there was the third brother, Bernard. He lived with his wife and two sons in Katowice [ca. 380 km west of Lwow, 70 km west of Cracow]. His son, Gieniek, was a violin virtuoso and studied at a music school. As an 18-year old boy he played concerts across Europe. I had a photo of him with the violin. Fleeing from the Germans, they left Katowice and set up in Lwow. Unfortunately, the Soviets soon sent them to a camp in Siberia, where they died.

I knew my father’s two sisters. One was called Regina Fuchs and was married to a dental surgeon whose last name was Frid, and it seems to me that, with a name like that, he should have been a Jew but he was a legionnaire 2. He joined Pilsudski’s 3 legions, was wounded in the thorax, had this kind of pipe here [in the thorax], and always wore tall, rigid collars.

They had a daughter named Ada, like me, after Grandmother. And I visited her and she visited me, when my mother was already dead. [Uncle] whistled at us because he couldn’t talk. I was very afraid of him. My aunt divorced him and went to Tlumacz [today in Ukraine], a town near Lwow, to work, and she was never heard of after that.

The other aunt was called Klara. I remember her from my childhood, when she came to visit us in Brzuchowice [village near Lwow] where I [was] on vacation with my mother. She came with Uncle and made wonderful raspberry juice, and she knew I loved that juice so she gave it to me to drink. That’s how I remember her. Before the war, thought I don’t know precisely which year, she emigrated to Mexico. I wanted to find them after the war, but I don’t know their name. I don’t know to this day. She got married and had a different name than my father.

• Growing up

When still lived with my parents, we lived in those large apartment blocks on the third floor, the street was called Na Bajkach. I don’t remember how many rooms we had, I always had my own. I was the only child. We had a bathroom. There was a coal stove and by that stove a large plastered box.

It had a metal door on top and a small door at the side. Once a week the coal supplier came and poured in the coal and the maid took that coal portion by portion through the small side door. As a child, I loved to lay on that box because it was so warm there.

When my mother went out somewhere, I went to the kitchen to the servants and had my shakedown on that box. And the servants gave me scale weights to play. There was a weight called ‘mother’ and another called ‘father’ and the small ones, the children, and I played with them on those scales.

My father worked in the office of the French oil company, it was called Koncerny Francuskie Malopolska. The branch office was in Cracow, the head office in Paris. It was an oil company, the wells were in the nearby, foothill villages. My father was the head of the supplies department.

The office was in Lwow’s largest house, owned by Jews in fact; it was called the Szprecher house. I remember it was the only house in Lwow that had an elevator, an old one with metal railing, and there was that usher called Bruniany and when I came to visit my father, I always asked that Bruniany, who had a long moustache reaching up to his ears, to give me a ride and he took take me on that elevator to the sixth floor and back.

The house, slightly converted, exists [to this day], near the [city’s] largest street, Akademicka, the so called Corso, vis-à-vis the Mickiewicz monument.

My dad was a big-time sportsman and played soccer on the Polish team called Pogon, because there was also some Jewish team. When I was born, he took me to every game and I shouted together with my father, ‘Down with the referee!’ We had that huge lobby in the house on Na Bajkach. We’d stand at its opposite ends and play soccer and my mother would shout at us because we broke windows.

Besides that, I remember that my father had very many Jewish friends, I remember a man called Rapaport, for instance, he was certainly Jewish, with whom my father played tennis and who also taught me to play it.

I don’t know what schools my parents attended. My mother, when she was very young, worked in Przemysl [city 100 km west of Lwow], I don’t know why in Przemysl. She worked at a post office, as an assistant. My mother always believed in fortune-telling and I remember as a child that she [told] her sisters and me that when she was a very young girl, there was some old Jew who foretold the future.

My mother went to him with some friends and he told her she’d marry a man who would come from the military and would be in uniform. He told her his name in Yiddish. And when my mother wanted to know more, he studied her palm, closed it, and said, ‘Don’t ask for I‘ll tell you no more.’ As if he saw something bad. He refused to say anything more. And it all proved true. Even Father’s name.

My mother didn’t have a good life with my father, at the beginning perhaps it was good, I don’t know, but when I was a bit older, my father had an affair with his secretary. They [Ms. Wyszynska’s parents] separated for some time, he moved out, and it was a great time for me.

I was young and stupid, my mother cried all night, wept, and I felt great because my father asked me out, came to pick me up, took me to various places, I ate cakes, whatever I wanted, he bought it, and then he saw me off home. And I have a bad conscience to this day because I was against my mother, I offended her, I told her she was wrong, told her that my father was good and she was not.

And it was the other way round. I actually read a letter from that secretary that my mother had obtained or found somewhere, a love letter. There were scenes [the parents argued], not in front of me, of course, but a child always senses such things, and my mother, still a young person, had a stroke one night. She was a hypertensive, I’m not sure whether it wasn’t caused by one of those arguments, because my father would come home at strange times, and afterwards I always had a grudge against him.

Even though my parents were assimilated, on the high holidays they went to synagogue. I was too little; I don’t know where the synagogue was. They went to the prayer house, fasted on Yom Kippur, and I know I said the Kaddish for my mother on the high holidays.

I know we also [observed] other holidays because I remember the festival of the booths, when you built the wooden shelters and we played in those shelters with other kids. And our parents prayed during that time, I don’t know, in the prayer house or in the synagogue. I went to synagogue with my parents.

On Purim, I remember, I ran around with the rattle when they told the story of Haman. But my mother never wore a wig! She didn’t observe kosher, we had a maid, a Baptist. I know it was her who saw me off to school even though the school was close to home.

The language spoken at our home was Polish. My parents, when they didn’t want me to understand them, they spoke German. Everyone around knew German because it was the former Austrian partition 4 and my grandparents always spoke with great respect of Emperor Franz Josef 5 and about living under his rule, that everyone had a good life then, Jews included.

Grandparents spoke Polish, but what language they used between themselves, I don’t know. I never spoke Jewish. Still, I don’t know from where, I know some letters. Two or three. It seems to me I learned the Kaddish in Yiddish. I guess my father didn’t go to the cheder because he was an educated man, a lawyer, though I don’t know where he studied. There were no Jewish newspapers at home. There were Polish books and newspapers.

My mother had two cerebral strokes and was hospitalized for some time. She died in March 1936. Even though our family was assimilated, she had a Jewish funeral and I remember the ceremony as if it were today. Mama was wrapped in a white cloth, I saw only her legs, I was afraid to raise my eyes, and there was the coffin, a wooden one, I think.

I was dressed in a sweater and a coat at the cemetery, and someone cut that sweater and the coat with scissors. It’s a Jewish custom. It made me very sad because it was my beloved mohair sweater. After returning from the cemetery we sat for like a week, me, my aunts, I don’t remember whether my father sat with us all the time, I don’t remember precisely how many days, on those small stools, with our shoes off, and the mirrors were covered. It was called sitting ‘na pokuciu’ [shivah], if I remember well.

I saw it as a traditional thing, there was nothing strange in it for me. My father got married again shortly after my mother’s death, not with the secretary but with another woman, she was Jewish, less than a year had passed, it came as a shock to me and I felt a deep resentment towards him.

I lived on Na Bajkach Street with my mother, then we moved to another part of town, on Zielona Street, together with my mother, and there my mother died. [And there the maid robbed us]. One day [the maid] took everything from the house, the rest of the furniture my father gave away to some warehouse for storage because it was before he remarried, and me he gave away to the judge’s wife, because he was always on the move.

[It was] a judge’s widow who had a huge apartment near Leona Sapiehy Street, by Gleboka Street. She wasn’t Jewish, rented rooms to students, I had a room for myself. She was supposed to have custody of me, and the custody was limited  to me having to be back home at eight, and I remember I wore my school badge covered with black crepe paper [as a token of mourning].

The apartment was on the third floor, there was a window in my room, and I was alone all day, I mean, I was permitted to go to a friend [but] I had to be back home at eight, meals were delivered to my room, she had a maid, a cook. And I remember that the afternoon snack was always strawberry preserve which I put into the oven [to heat] because the widow only told my father whether I was back home at eight and whether I ate my meals.

And so, on that third floor, I did nothing but sit in the window. On the first floor across the street lived my schoolmate, and in her apartment there rented a room a technical university student named Staszek [diminutive for Stanislaw].

He lived in lodgings because his parents lived near Kalusz [town, today in Ukraine, 100 km south-east of Lwow] where they taught at school. Staszek studied at the technical university and rented a room nearby. I was sending various messages to my friend through the window. He also had a window in his room and that’s how we got to know each other.

I learned to write in reverse and read various messages. He started writing to me, her too, and it was her who persuaded me to go on the first date with him. We went to cycle or for a walk. Then it turned out I wasn’t doing well with math at school, I had to tell my father, and Staszek started giving me lessons.

We started dating each other, and he [Staszek] was an endek 6 at the university. He wore the Chrobry’s Swords [an emblem in the form of two crossed swords worn in the lapel], wore the special cap, had an endek friend. He dated me and [my friends] Tamara and Irka were angry at me because they knew I was very close with him.

We went to a park, and when we passed some endek activists on our way, I trembled with fear. I used to say, ‘Your nose is my insurance policy,’ because he had this [non-Jewish] snub nose. I don’t think he ever took part [in attacking Jews]. Those were not the German times yet.

Those were the Polish times. He took me to the polytechnic club for parties, but that was at my father’s knowledge. As my tutor. My father had to know where I went, with whom, he saw me off, and my father permitted that. I went to those student parties, it was great fun. There was no question whether someone was Jewish or Polish, well, there were the thug activists in the park, but that didn’t concern us.

[One day] my father spotted me biking with him, because [Staszek] always brought his friend’s bike for me, a men’s one, with a frame. My widow didn’t know either I was going biking, she thought I was studying with my classmate. On the stairs I took off my skirt and put on sweatpants.

And once my father caught me riding a men’s bike. He came to me looking very stern and said I was to report in his office the next day at hour so and so. And he had always threatened to give me away somewhere, to some orphanage or boarding house. So I went, with my heart in my mouth, and my father took me to a large bike store and told me to choose a women’s bike for myself.  

I trembled he’d give me away. And that was my first bike. I have photo with this bike, it had that blue mesh cover on the back wheel. And, imagine this, he told me, ‘Who’s this? Your boyfriend?’ ‘A friend.’ I said. ‘I don’t want to see you with him on the stairs, if you want to be meeting him, let him come in.’

[Then we settled with my stepmother] on Leona Sapiehy Street, an apartment I remember very vividly. It was a very large apartment, on the main street, opposite the technical university. And there occurred a clash because they assigned one large room for me and Anka [stepmother’s daughter] together, the furniture was all new, everything painted blue, and there was a wardrobe where she had the lower part and I the upper one.

Besides that there were beds with those white-and-blue kind of curtains, there were writing desks, a table, and those blue armchairs. And I rebelled, because I was already at the age when my friends from school visited me, I was in gymnasium and high school, and the chit told her mother what we talked about, and we had all kinds of secrets.

Always when I told her to leave us alone, there was an argument, because she’d open the wardrobe and sit there, in her [part], on the pretence that she needed some stuff from there. Because she had their crayons there, and her toys. With my stepmother I lived like a cat with a dog, but my father arranged it somehow and she started sleeping elsewhere, not in my room, but her wardrobe was still there and she always came, especially when Staszek visited me.

Because there was a large bathroom, my father, to spare me the effort of going through their rooms, knocked out a new door and now I had direct access from my room to the bathroom, even though that door wasn’t standard size but lower and narrower. There was a huge kitchen, and the servant’s room by it, a servant always lived there, and I remember the stove, in an alcove, fired with coal and wood.

In 1929 I went to a Polish school by the St. Mary Magdalene church. It was Catholic, but it also admitted Jewish girls. There was a priest and an altar in the corridor, but Jewish students didn’t have to pray. Nor did they have to attend religion classes, and they didn’t.

The priest played with us, I have very nice memories of him, he was such a kind-hearted man, he played ring a ring o’roses with us and sleeping bear and all. The discipline was harsh, we weren’t allowed to have curly hair, and my mother was often called to the headmistress for curling my hair, and she had to swear they were curling by themselves. In winter time you had to wear the beret [straight], never at an angle.

We had to wear those sailor-collar uniforms and ankle-length pleated skirts, which we pulled up after school. Brown stockings only. Brown leather shoes.

A white hat with navy-blue ribbons, which had to be starched so hard to hold firmly. In fact, they were very nice, those hats. That’s how we had to dress in elementary school. You weren’t supposed to run, you were supposed to stroll.

Each class had its stretch of the corridor and there you were supposed to stroll. In the summer, each class had its tree to stroll around, you weren’t allowed to run around the whole field. When my grandfather came to throw me candy over the fence, he had to aim well so that I didn’t have to run for [it].

Then I went to Zofia Strzalkowska’s gymnasium. There was this saying in Lwow, ‘a mother had two daughters – one of them was decent, and the other one went to Zofia Strzalkowska’s.’ It was a wonderful private gymnasium for girls (there were also Jewish students). A beautiful building.

It was a very good school, and a genuinely secular one. The Polish literature teacher was wonderful. I have no accent because the eastern accent wasn’t tolerated. I know Latin to this day. Each one of us had a [nickname]. [My friend] Mela was called ‘Mentecaptus’ [dimwit] by the Latin teacher because she didn’t know the answer to some question.

I was ‘Morbus’ [disease] because I didn’t know how to decline the names of diseases. I still remember the Iliad, I still remember some things I had to learn. The teacher was very demanding. Thin, tall.

But there were parties where you were allowed to bring your boyfriend, naturally in front of the teachers and the headmistress you danced like this [decently], and afterwards like this [closer to each other]. We staged cabaret shows, I still remember some songs, poems, we had funny songs about each teacher, each subject. I don’t think there were any Jewish teachers there, but I didn’t give it any thought then.

I had four friends since elementary school; we were the five of us, as close as sisters. We were all Jewish. We also had [Polish] friends but not that close. One of us was called Mela Miezes. She had those thick braids, and one night one of her [brothers] cut off one of those. [During the war] she changed her name to Melania Mirska and retained the name afterwards.

Her husband never learned who she was, and her children aren’t aware who she was either. She argued that if she didn’t tell him about her ethnic origin before the war or when she was marrying him, i.e. under the occupation in Cracow, then she was afraid to tell him afterwards. One could think she married for protection and security. They are both dead now.

Another one was Alina Kupfer, she died. She was my closest [friend]. She lived next door. I lived on Leona Sapiehy Street, corner of Gleboka, and she lived on Gleboka Street. Her parents were Jewish pharmacists, ran their own pharmacy, and had two children, Alina, whom we called Lina, and a son, I don’t remember his name, who was a great musical talent.

When my mother died and my father married again, I spent the summer vacations with them and their mother in the Eastern Beskidy mountains south-west of Lwow. [Lina’s parents] died before the war, first her father, of a heart attack, and then her mother, of cancer.

The children were left alone, they were 15 or 16 years old. Their mother died, they were left alone, in a large apartment, and we all met there, some boys [came], a bit older than us. As soon as the Germans entered, they took [Lina’s] brother right from the street, to the prison on Lackiego Street [former police buildings turned into a prison.

In June 1941, before their evacuation from Lwow, the Soviets murdered the majority of the Polish and Ukrainian prisoners held there]. They were alone, loved each other very much, she went to look for him and never returned. They killed her too. Their aunt later moved in the apartment.

There were also Tamara and Irka [Irena Weizberg, married name Herz]. They lived next door and I was virtually raised in their home. I called their mother ‘mama’ when my mother died. They were three sisters and a mother.

The mother was called Klara Weizberg, Tamara was called Zwerling, after her mother’s first husband. The mother attended the parents’ evenings in school on their account but also on mine because Tamara was in the same class with me. Irka was younger.

I didn’t know much about Jewish political life, and what I knew came from my friend Lusia Lewental. She came from the most orthodox home [of the five of us], we never visited here at home because it was far away. She was highly aware politically. She was a Zionist.

I think her whole home was like that. She told us about Palestine, about the political parties. But we listened with only half an ear. We somehow weren’t interested in all that. Lusia was killed immediately, didn’t even go to the ghetto 7, such were her looks.

So it was four years of gymnasium, then two years of high school, and I passed my maturity exams in 1940. In 1941 I was admitted to the Lwow technical university but when the Germans entered [June 1941] I could no longer study.

• During the war

Between 1939 and 1940 we were under the Soviets. And that wasn’t normal. My father lost his job, my uncle, [Aunt] Mia’s husband, was arrested. My second uncle, Ada’s father [Aunt Regina’s husband] also died in the Brygidy [Brygidy or Brygidki, called so because it was located in a former Brigittine nunnery: a major prison at Kazimierzowska Street in Lwow where, in June 1941, the Soviets murdered several thousand Poles before evacuating from the city].

When the Germans came, my mother’s brother, Uncle Bernard, fled from Katowice to Lwow and lived somewhere in Lwow. They were taken to the forest [and murdered]. My stepmother’s brother, a doctor, was also taken away, never heard of again.

My father spent a number of nights in the coal box, hiding from deportation, because during the Soviet era lights were put out in the whole city and they went from house to house, taking men, deporting them to Siberia or taking to the forest.

When my father lost his job [there was no money], I lived for some time with Aunt Mia, in a terribly cramped apartment, it was after the Soviets had taken their husband, it may have been 1940 or 1941. He [Aunt Mia’s husband] was incarcerated in Lwow’s harshest prison, the Brygidki, spent six months with his legs in water all the time. I don’t know whether such were the conditions or it was a punishment.

They were quite rich because they had a factory, and Aunt Mia had that beautiful black pearl, she sold it and ransomed my uncle from the NKVD 8. Uncle could no longer walk, his legs were very thick, and they lived in terrible conditions because she had sold everything to buy him out.

Uncle lay on the bed all the time and he sewed some cyanide into his clothes because he thought the Soviets could come for him again. He was a bourgeois, after all. My Aunt took that cyanide away from him, and when the Germans came, he was taken to the Janowski camp 9 and shot at the very first roll call because he couldn’t stand.

My Aunt went to the ghetto, lived in the same house as Samek with Romek and his wife, [because they] had come to Lwow when the Germans came. Romek may have been 5 or 6 when he was in the ghetto.

At first we terribly feared the Soviets because when the Soviets marched into Lwow, in 1939, I lived opposite the technical university. There’s a large garden in front of it, a board fence, and that’s where the Polish military surrendered their arms. The Soviets arrived riding bareback. Savages! Without uniforms, with just some red rags stuck here and there.

Their hair uncut, in those felt [hats] that are a hotbed for lice. The female soldiers were also terribly louse-infested. And they bought nightgowns as ball gowns. They commandeered our apartment and a postmaster from Odessa, now appointed the postmaster of Lwow, [moved in with us] with his wife.

The first day he stood by the bathroom light switch and toggled it on and off, because he didn’t know how it works, back in their place they had those turning knobs. Later, when he got to know us, he pushed us to attend the 1st May parade [1st May, International Labor Day, established by the International, celebrated since 1890 in the form of public rallies, demonstrations and marches] and we had to go.

I always said, ‘And why don’t you go?’ ‘I went for forty years, now it’s your turn.’ I went for the parade with the rest of my school because they wrote down who went and who didn’t and we were all afraid, they’d arrest you and deport you, so you went.

My father certainly felt Jewish. When the Germans entered 10, but before the ghetto was set up, various people were evacuating themselves from the city, among them a doctor who lived next door. I remember how they were packing their things, how they had to [get aboard] some ship somewhere to go. My father not at all, there was never any talk of us going anywhere.

I remember, in 1941, we didn’t know anything about the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact 11 we [only] knew the Germans were approaching Lwow, and my father went with other men from the neighborhood to raise barricades near our home, on Listopada Street. We realized what was happening to Jews [in German-occupied Poland] but not fully. Because we believed the [Germans] were, after all, a civilized, intelligent, music-loving nation. We didn’t know.

In the first days [of German occupation] my father was terribly beaten up, he was unconscious. There was a prison on Lackiego Street, near where we lived, and when the Soviets were leaving [June 1941], they murdered the prisoners there. When the Germans came, they caught people in the street, not only Jews, and made them remove those corpses. And when they saw a Jew (and they told men to strip so they knew who was a Jew), they beat him terribly. And my father was utterly unconscious.

Some strangers, Poles, brought him home. He stank so hard of dead bodies it took several days [to get rid of the smell]. We burned his clothes. He lay completely out of his senses, for a very long time, he was so horribly beaten. And as soon as he came to, they [Ms. Wyszynska’s father, the stepmother and her daughter] moved to the ghetto. Me, I stayed on Sapiehy with Staszek until the last moment, because I was afraid. He protected me a bit.

The Germans started setting up the ghetto as early as in July [Editor’s note: the Lwow ghetto was officially set up in November 1941]. I remember such episodes like when the Germans, helped by the Ukrainians, ordered all people from our house to gather in the courtyard.

Lined us up against the walls. Men separately, women separately. We didn’t know whether they’d shoot us or… They took the men [for labor] then. Notices were posted, all on pain of death, that by day so and so all Jews had to move to the ghetto. The armbands were introduced, Jews were like hunted animals. The szmalcowniks 12 operated in large numbers, and there were also people who denounced Jews just for the sake of it.

Under our apartment, on 29 Sapiehy Street, there was a large nightclub, with dances and all. It was called Wesolowski’s, obviously the owner’s name. When the Germans came, they requisitioned [the place] and some uniformed German ran it. One day there’s banging on the door.

Staszek went to open. A uniformed German enters. ‘Any Jews living here?’ Staszek couldn’t speak German, unfortunately, he said ‘no’ in Polish. ‘Do you have a piano?’ Indeed, there was one. I used to play it, but no longer. Never had a knack for that, and I didn’t like to practice either.

He saw me, realized immediately I was a Jew and started talking to us. I told him I was afraid, he started inquiring with Staszek, I had to act as an interpreter. Why he was there with me and so on, and [Staszek] said he loved me. And, imagine this, the German took the piano, apologizing to us for taking it, and said, ‘It’ll be of no use to you anyway because you have to leave here.’

But for as long as we stayed there, before we moved to the ghetto, he sent us food upstairs everyday. Some soups, some chickens from that restaurant. And he said, ‘If you love her, flee together, go anywhere, just don’t stay here.’ See, there were good Germans too.

But I didn’t have anywhere to go. I was afraid of the Soviet Union. Under the Soviets, we always feared we’d be deported [The Soviets carried out mass deportations of Polish citizens to the Siberia and Kazakhstan in 1940-1941]. Whom did I have there, where was I supposed to go? Men were [right to flee] perhaps, because they joined the army there, but where would I go? To work in the forest? You didn’t know things would take such a turn here.

Then I had to [move to the ghetto] because they went from apartment to apartment and checked. I don’t remember the address in the ghetto. An old brick house, wooden stairs. The third floor, I guess, I don’t even remember how many rooms, but there wer so many people there!

My father, me, my stepmother, her daughter, her mother, her sister, the sister’s husband, and some children. It was horrible, the apartment. Water froze in the glass, there was no way to wash yourself.

Filthy, no water in the toilets. Horrible. I slept on the floor, next to my stepmother and my father. I know there was no food, but when I woke up in the night, she [the stepmother] was feeding Janka [her daughter]. I don’t’ know where she had the [food] from. I was very cold that winter. Since then I’ve had deformed joints in my fingers.

I was at home [didn’t work] and was terribly afraid. I was afraid to go out on the street, everyone begged there, the sick and the dead lay on the sidewalks, and I couldn’t bear it. I don’t know where you took food from in the ghetto.

My father went to work somewhere, but where he worked, what he did… I don’t know. And my stepmother stayed at home. Before the ghetto was sealed, Staszek sometimes came to pick me up.

I remember one of my trips out of the ghetto: I put on a hat and high-heeled shoes, a streetcar passed through the ghetto heading to the Aryan side, and we decided he’d take me out aboard that streetcar.

There were prostitutes [in the ghetto], so I wore full makeup and I went with him to the streetcar without the badge, laughing out loud, he pretended to be whispering something to my ear, groping me, and kissing. I stood in the back. I crossed over to the Aryan side, I had my heart in my throat, but I kept laughing hard.

Once, I remember, I left the ghetto and Staszek went ahead of me to warn me in case of any danger. And he signaled me and immediately I saw uniformed Germans. I don’t know whether it was the Gestapo or the SS or whatever. I leaped into the nearest gate, there were stairs up and stairs down, and I didn’t know what to do.

I heard them coming after me so I his behind the gate, and when they came, they went up the stairs and down the stairs, and during that time, I heard their footsteps, I left the gate and Staszek stood there, waiting for me at a distance.

There were such situations because I left the ghetto several times, I went to Staszek’s place to wash myself or to eat something, for a day or two. There was no bread [in the ghetto], there was nothing, and he always had some bread and mustard, and we’d spread the mustard on the bread and eat it. How wonderful food it was! And I felt my heart in my throat. Chaos and confusion. And the damn fear.

It was 1942, August, the liquidation of the ghetto and the full extermination of Jews were under way, people were being shot. [Staszek] offered to take me out of the ghetto. He forced his mother [to help him] by telling her that if she didn’t help hide me, he’d go to the ghetto himself to be with me, he was her only child so she agreed to everything. He secured some documents from a friend of his.

Whether he told her it was for a Jewish girl, I don’t know. He may have told her it was for a Polish girl in hiding, because Poles faced repressions too, they were being sent for forced labor to Germany, for instance. He gave me a genuine birth certificate for one Matylda Bednarska, a smallpox vaccination certificate, a school ID, and a form for reporting one’s relocation out of Lwow.

My father saw me off to the ghetto perimeter, the wall. We dropped in on Aunt Mia to say goodbye. Aunt talked to me like [I was her husband]. His photograph lay next to her, she lay on the bed and talked nonsense, gone mad. She never had any children. My future husband, Staszek, told me later Aunt was shot in the ghetto for assaulting the Germans. She’d mouth off when on the street, and must have obviously molested some German.

I didn’t know then I’d never see my father again. He gave me very little money [on saying goodbye] because the [stepmother] had taken everything from him and he didn’t work. When giving me the few zlotys, he apologized to me for all he did, for remarrying so soon and that I had such a miserable life. I lost touch with him but I was in touch with Staszek who found out how they were doing and related the news to me. Some time later he told me my stepmother had jumped out of the window and killed herself in the ghetto.

I suppose her daughter must have been killed because she would have never left her daughter alone by killing herself. My father died in the Janowski camp in 1942 or 1943. My mother’s brother, the one from Sambor, with his wife and small boy, was also killed in the ghetto. Samek, and his family too.

As for my paternal relatives, I don’t really know because [I didn’t even know them all]. Uncle Ma was in the Soviet Union, he didn’t die, returned after the war. Aunt Hela was in a camp in France and Jean was born there. [Today] all the relatives that I knew are dead, except my cousins Jeanie and Bianca.

Staszek’s parents were teachers and ran a rural school in Kalusz. Staszek forced his mother to come near the ghetto, he took me out, by a miracle in fact, I took off the badge in the nearest gate and I went following her, not with her, because she was afraid to go with me. We also had to swear we wouldn’t be seeing each other. That was the condition on which she agreed to hide me, because she was anxious about him.

We got off at the station where the rural school was, waited until it got dark, and [walked] some 25 kilometers in the night to get there unnoticed. It was August, the summer break, no classes. The school stood away from the center of the village, I didn’t go out, I was locked away in a classroom and I didn’t even go to the lavatory, there was a free-standing one outside, but Staszek’s mother instead brought out the potties.

I can’t remember how long I was there. After a couple of days she said people in the village were talking there was a Jewess hiding in the school and that I had to leave. She was good enough, though, not to throw me out completely but again walked the 25 kilometers in the night with me to the nearest train station and took me to Staszek’s uncle, the brother of Staszek’s father, whose name was also Podchaniuk.

He was an old bachelor, the headmaster of a school in Stryj [city 70 km south of Lwow, today in Ukraine]. She brought me there in the morning, four or five o’clock, and told me I’d stay there until she found some hiding place for me. We arrive there, and we saw a drinking party, an orgy, it turned out the guy Podchaniuk had signed the Volksdeutsch list 13, the place was full of uniformed Germans, drinking.

When we went in and saw all that, she told him we’d just have a tea in the kitchen, and we fled from that kitchen so that they didn’t see me. She took me to Stanislawow [today Ivano-Frankivsk in Ukraine, city 70 km south-east of Lwow] where, in the suburbs, there lived Staszek’s grandfather, who was in his eighties but had a nasty daughter.

[My mother-in-law] told him I was Staszek’s friend and I was to be sent to Germany for forced labor and I was hiding. They hid me in the barn so that the daughter didn’t find me. They were liquidating the Jews in Stanislawow, it was August 1942, they were liquidating Jews everywhere.

I hear shots all the time and I heard the daughter telling her father how they were hanging Jews on trees. I overheard that because it was a plank barn, and when the daughter wasn’t home, he slid the bowl with food under those planks for me. Once, when she wasn’t home, because she worked somewhere, I begged him successfully to give me a pen and a piece of paper and then to send my letter to Staszek. And Staszek came and took me away from there.

There was a rural school in Wygoda [today in Ukraine] where his parents’ friend, not much older than me, was the headmistress and a teacher. [Staszek] took me to her and she took me in as Staszek’s fiancée who is hiding away from being sent to forced labor to Germany, while Staszek went to Dolina [today in Ukraine] to [fix me up] with a job at a sawmill.

He came back with the right paper and with it I reported to the manager. The German asked me who I was, what I could do. I said I had completed high school before the war but had no profession. I stammered a bit, I learned German at school but I hardly remembered anything. And he said okay, you’ll work at the sawmill. And so in 1943 I started working at the sawmill, Holzwerke, later renamed to Delta Flugzenhalen und Barackenbau.

At first I was employed as a simple worker: hammering in nails, cleaning, doing everything. One of the girls [working] in the office was a Jewess from my street who appeared as a Volksdeutsch, had the right papers, her hair dyed light blonde, blue eyes, and she was from the same house as Tamara. Then I worked in accounting but we were stationed together.

There were those wooden houses on the premises, because those were all formerly Jewish-owned sawmills that the Germans had requisitioned.

And I lived in one such pseudo-villa, in the loft, and she lived right next to me. She had a son who was four years old then. Her husband was killed by the Germans shortly after they marched into Lwow.

She fled and she couldn’t [stay] with that son because he looked like ten Jews together: dark, big dark eyes, curly hair, and was circumcised, so she found some woman she knew in the countryside whom she paid [for hiding the son]. [Then] she ran out of money and could not longer pay and one day the woman came with the son and left him there, said could no longer keep him.

She took the boy to where we lived. She locked him away in one of the rooms, didn’t allow [him] to go out because there were various kids wandering around the sawmill and someone could notice he was circumcised. He sat by the window all day and one time he stuffed something into his nose, a tragedy, she had to call someone to take it out. And a rumor quickly spread she was hiding a Jewish child. She ran away in the night, they caught her on the road and shot them – her and the boy.

Later, because the front was approaching, many of the Germans working at the office, especially the young ones, were taken to the front, the older ones were left in place, and I was moved to the front office, where I learned to type with two fingers on a typewriter, in German.

I didn’t know German too well at the time, and those wood industry-related terms were complete black magic to me. They put me in charge of the files. I had those ‘geheim’ [confidential] stamps, for instance, because that was classified stuff.

I met a girl there who worked at another department, her name was Olga Mieroszewska, she came from an aristocratic family, lived in a poor cottage without a chimney. Her sister, Janka Mieroszewska, worked at the Arbeitsamt [employment office] in Dolina. I became friends with Olga.

It was a family of princes, Poles. There were three daughters and four brothers, all died on the front. [Olga lived with her mother] and had a cow off which they lived. In her white gloves, in her delicate cotton hat, she led that cow to the pasture. We worked two shifts at the sawmill, until noon and from two to six.

During the break, Olga ran for the cow, [brought her] on a piece of rope, and the cow grazed on the sawmill grounds. At six, after work, she took the cow back.

Because I worked in the front office and it turned out Olga was collaborating with the partisans, the Poles from the AK 14, [she] asked me to show her the ‘geheim’ correspondence if there arrives any.

[Near the office] there was a free-standing wooden latrine and I agreed to take those documents out of the office and hide there. I was an idiot because I was [risking] my life. She passed those papers on to someone. I don’t know who, my role was to [deliver] the stuff.

There was a lot of wood cuttings all over the sawmill, and I had that room [in the loft] and I liked it to be warm, so I collected those cuttings into an apron or a blouse and placed behind the stove, and between noon and two I stoked in that stove as hard as I could so that it was always nice and warm in my room.

One day I stoked it up hard, there were those cuttings layered between the stove and the wall, I went back to work and when I returned at six [it turned out there had been a fire], I couldn’t get to my room because the stairs weren’t there anymore, everything burned down. I had that cupboard where I kept my things, all I had, [it burned down]. Naturally, there was an investigation whether it wasn’t an act of sabotage, but as the directors liked me, [I somehow got off scot-free].

The directors had been told I came from Lwow and had a family from Lwow, knew my fiancée from Lwow visited me, so they kindly gave me a few days’ leave so that  I could go to my family while they renovated the place because they didn’t have anywhere to put me. What to do? Where to go? Where to hide? In the forest?

And [because] I was friends with Olga [Mieroszewska], I told [her] I was Jewish and had nowhere to go and was terribly afraid, and what should I do? We arranged I’d pack my bags, go to the station for the evening train, enter the train, and then go out the other side before it departs.

There were those buildings [by the station] where I was to hide, then [Olga] came for me and took me to her place, in the night. I spent [the several days] there, didn’t go out anywhere. She had plates with her family’s coat of arms, there were seven clubs there.

And flatware, whatever they managed to salvage from that mansion or palace of theirs, some of that was also in that cottage. And I didn’t know a Jew was hiding in the attic above me. That she didn’t tell me until the very end. I found out after the war.

We did a terrible thing with Olga, for which we were all detained by the Gestapo for three days. We gave notice to that Volksdeutsch, Dziewonski. [He was] a Pole who collaborated with the Germans and Olga received word, from the partisans, I think, to do something with him, and that was something like half a year before the Soviets came.

I worked at the front office and I had the rook [official stamp]. It was me who typed the notices for employees. It was April Fools’ Day and we typed the notice for him, and it worked, because he was in forced labor there and used the opportunity to flee because the Soviets were approaching and he was afraid. He was given the notice on the first and he disappeared. On the third day they started looking for him, he didn’t come to work, what’s happened? Nobody knows.

An investigation was started. All of us, the office workers, were detained. They kept us for three days. [And it turned out he had been given notice]. Olga held out tough and didn’t tell them a word. I cried like an idiot and told Hermel that I did [it] because it was 1st of April. I didn’t tell about Olga.

The boss said, ‘Well, young and stupid.’ He ordered me to swear I’d never forge anyone’s signature again. I swore, of course, and the whole thing blew over. But what we went through, all the employees!

In March 1944, when the Soviets were already very close, at 2 AM [the sawmill was evacuated]. It was a harsh winter, we roamed for eight days and eight nights and finally they took us across the San to Jaroslaw [town ca. 100 km west of Lwow].

• After the war

On the San I saw Polish navy-blue police 15 for the first time in years, the Ukrainians had different uniforms. When I saw the navy-blue policeman, I felt like giving him a kiss. Those were the same kind of thugs as the Ukrainians though perhaps they didn‘t participate on this scale in the murders.

When we reached Jaroslaw, they sent us to various sawmills owned by the Delta company, the branch office was in Cracow, the main office in Breslau [German for Wroclaw, city ca. 270 km north-west of Cracow, today in western Poland].

I was sent to Grybow, a small town near Nowy Sacz [town, 160 km south-west of Jaroslaw]. When I was there, Staszek suddenly turned up, who didn’t know what was going on with me but who learned the sawmill had been evacuated. They also fled the Soviets.

He went to Chabowka [village 90 km west of Grybow] together with his mother, because his father went to Czestochowa [city 170 km north-west of Grybow] where he was put in charge of a school near the city. Staszek, in turn, got a job on the railways.

Chabowka was an important interchange between Zakopane [Poland’s major winter resort, 90 km south-west of Grybow], Cracow and Nowy Sacz, it was called the eastern railway. And he started looking for me. Later, when he came for me, I fled from Grybow. It must have been the summer or autumn of 1944.

They [Staszek and his mother] had rented a room with some farmers in Chabowka. When I fled from Grybow, I went there. [At first] his mother didn’t want me to be there, so we rented a room for me across the bridge. I was jobless. The Germans were still there. I had a Kennkarte 16.

Staszek started telling me he knew that manager, a German, who was a fantastic man, collaborating with the underground. There were Polish partisans there, very active in the area. Their job was to blow up bridges, crossings, rail tracks, viaducts, so that the transports of weapons, munitions, the deployments, didn’t go east, because it was a major interchange. And, as if knowing what would happen when, the manager always disappeared when something was to be blown up.

That manager supervised the technical staff and he was often out on the platform, and one day I accosted him and I asked him whether he could give me any job. He knew [Staszek] well so he told me to come. Because there were no vacancies, he fired a Volksdeutsch girl who brought him all kinds of cold cuts because her father was a butcher!

And I worked there until the end. The liberation came around May [Editor’s note: Nowy Sacz was liberated on 19th January 1945, and Chabowka probably around the same date].

All war I kept promising [myself] I’d [shoot] some German, which I never did because the Soviets came again. Savages, simply. They raped, plundered and drank. My neighbor in Chabowka was raped, we sat in the cellar, terrible things were happening.

Then, when the Germans had gone, Tamara [schoolmate] turned up, and persuaded us to go to Walbrzych [city 500 km north-west of Nowy Sacz].

We set up in Walbrzych, Tamara lived there too. She worked at the registry office and she married me and Staszek on 6th January, 1946. I got a job at the Polish State Railways’ road department while Staszek quit his job and went to Wroclaw to finish the studies he had begun in Lwow.

I couldn’t complete my studies because I didn’t have the documents. Then I was transferred to Wroclaw because I wanted to be with my husband. [Staszek] became a civil engineer and in 1950 he was sent to Czestochowa because that’s where he wanted to be, with his parents.

In Czestochowa my husband worked and I sat at home. He was assigned an apartment on the premises of a wool plant he was appointed the technical director of. My relations with his parents were strained because they didn’t approve of our marriage.

I didn’t even notify the Yad Vashem about Staszek as a righteous among the nations 17 because his mother didn’t want me to. They forbade me to reveal I was Jewish. They didn’t want us to have children. Staszek loved his mother very much.

I became independent, shook off the shackles. Because I couldn’t admit who I was. I didn’t know about the Jewish organizations that were being founded. We got a divorce. I went into retraining and got a new, interesting job. It was a public institution and I worked there for 40 years until my retirement.

I’m an employee of merit, have been awarded the knight’s cross, various medals… In 1959 I was transferred to Gdansk. I married again and gave birth to a daughter, Kasia. My second husband didn’t know who I was, knew nothing about my origin. I told my daughter, but fear and anxiety are in me to this day. I’ll never get rid of this. My children aren’t afraid.

My grandson, when in the third year of his exclusive high school here, came once to me and said, ‘Grandma, I have this assignment, I’m to draw my genealogical tree and list relatives who suffered during the war and where.’ And he knew I was Jewish. I told him, ‘Don’t put it there, I’m asking you. What for? You’ll have problems, perhaps there are anti-Semites at your school.’ ‘I’m not ashamed of it and I’ll put it there’, he said.

I’ve never been to Israel. I was afraid it would be too much for me. I’m 85 now, but my granddaughter’s been there many times, also as part of Jewish summer camps organized by Rabbi Schudrich [Chief Rabbi of Poland] here. So my children aren’t afraid and I’m still afraid. All the time.

I’m a member of the Jewish community. I’m the secretary, now also the chairperson, of the Gdansk branch of the Association of Jewish War Veterans and Victims of WWII 18. I’m not a full member of the Children of the Holocaust 19 but I have honorary membership, I’m very active, I’ve done lectures for high school students.

I needed it very much then and I need it now. I attend every Shabbat and that’s very important for me, that I go there like to my family, that I’m on friendly terms with everybody there, sometimes we argue, sometimes someone is cross with someone else, sometimes I don’t agree with something they do, but the bottom line is that I can say everything there, I don’t have to hide.

They feel the same, the old veterans, they are afraid, have the same fear deep down their souls. I know many people who do their best for no one to find out they are Jewish.

It’s hard to say what my attitude towards religion is. Sometimes it seems to me I’m an atheist, sometimes I believe… I know for sure that my mama protects me. I’ve been in extreme situations, it was a miracle I survived them, and I believe it’s my mother who led me and protected me somehow.

If I lose something and am looking for it, I pray to St. Anthony, because I believe in St. Anthony. I go [to the community], I say the prayers, because I’m the eldest member now, we bless the candles, I put on my tichel and recite the prayers in Hebrew. I’m very moved then. Feeling unity with my ancestors.

• Glossary:

1 The Lwow Jewish district: Jewish settlements in Lwow date back to the 14th century. At first the Jews lived on the streets later called Zolkiewska and Krakowskie Przedmiescie. In 1350 there was a huge fire, which destroyed the city. It was rebuilt outside its previous boundaries.

Thereafter, the Jews settled in the southeastern part of the new city, where a Zydowska [Jewish] Street came into being (from 1871 Blacharska Street). However, some of the Jews remained in the original district, hence the genesis of two separate Jewish religious communities in Lwow: the downtown one and that on Krakowskie Przedmiescie. In 1582 the first synagogue in the downtown community was built, the Golden Rose Synagogue, at 27 Blacharska Street.

The oldest of the suburban synagogues dates from ca. 1624. The downtown Jewish district grew in time to extend beyond Blacharska into Wekslarska (later Boimow), Serbska and Ruska. In 1795 the Austrian authorities imposed a ban on Jews living on other streets. This ban was officially lifted in 1868.

2 Polish Legions: a military formation operating in the period 1914-17, formally subordinate to the Austro-Hungarian army but fighting for Polish independence. Commanded by Józef Pilsudski. From 1915 the Legions came under German command, but some of the Legionnaires refused, which led to the collapse of the organization.

3 Pilsudski, Jozef (1867-1935): Polish activist in the independence cause, politician, statesman, marshal. With regard to the cause of Polish independence he represented the pro-Austrian current, which believed that the Polish state would be reconstructed with the assistance of Austria-Hungary. When Poland regained its independence in January 1919, he was elected Head of State by the Legislative Sejm.

In March 1920 he was nominated marshal, and until December 1922 he held the positions of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army.

After the murder of the president, Gabriel Narutowicz, he resigned from all his posts and withdrew from politics. He returned in 1926 in a political coup. He refused the presidency offered to him, and in the new government held the posts of war minister and general inspector of the armed forces. He was prime minister twice, from 1926-1928 and in 1930.

He worked to create a system of national security by concluding bilateral non-aggression pacts with the USSR (1932) and Germany (1934). He sought opportunities to conclude firm alliances with France and Britain. In 1932 owing to his deteriorating health, Pilsudski resigned from his functions. He was buried in the Crypt of Honor in Wawel Cathedral in the Royal Castle in Cracow.

4 Partitions of Poland (1772-1795): Three divisions of the Polish lands, in 1772, 1793 and 1795 by the neighboring powers: Russia, Austria and Prussia. Under the first partition Russia occupied the lands east of the Dzwina, Druja and Dnieper, a total of 92,000 km2 and a population of 1.3 million.

Austria took the southern part of the Cracow and Sandomierz provinces, the Oswiecim and Zator principalities, the Ruthenian province (except for the Chelm lands) and part of the Belz province, a total of 83,000 km2 and a population of 2.6 million. Prussia annexed Warmia, the Pomerania, Malbork and Chelmno provinces (except for Gdansk and Torun) and the lands along the Notec river and Goplo lake, altogether 36,000 km2 and 580,000 souls.

The second partition was carried out by Prussia and Russia. Prussia occupied the Poznan, Kalisz, Gniezno, Sieradz, Leczyca, Inowroclaw, Brzesc Kujawski and Plock provinces, the Dobrzyn lands, parts of the Rawa and Masovia provinces, and Torun and Gdansk, a total of 58,000 km2 and over a million inhabitants.

Russia took the Ukrainian and Belarus lands east of the Druja-Pinsk-Zbrucz line, altogether 280,000 km2 and 3 million inhabitants. Under the third partition Russia obtained the rest of the Lithuanian, Belarus and Ukrainian lands east of the Bug and the Nemirov-Grodno line, a total area of 120,000 km2 and 1.2 million inhabitants.

The Prussians took the remainder of Podlasie and Mazovia, Warsaw, and parts of Samogitia and Malopolska, 55,000 km2 and a population of 1 million. Austria annexed Cracow and the part of Malopolska between the Pilica, Vistula and Bug, and part of Podlasie and Mazovia, a total surface area of 47,000 km2 and a population of 1.2 million.

5 Franz Joseph I Habsburg (1830-1916): emperor of Austria from 1848, king of Hungary from 1867. In 1948 he suppressed a revolution in Austria (the ‘Springtime of the Peoples’), whereupon he abolished the constitution and political concessions.

His foreign policy defeats – the loss of Italy in 1859, loss of influences in the German lands, separatism in Hungary, defeat in war against the Prussians in 1866 – and the dire condition of the state finances  convinced him that reforms were vital.

In 1867 the country was reformed as a federation of two states: the Austrian empire and the Hungarian kingdom, united by a personal union in the person of Franz Joseph. A constitutional parliamentary system was also adopted, which guaranteed the various countries within the state (including Galicia, an area now largely in southern Poland) a considerable measure of internal autonomy.

In the area of foreign policy, Franz Joseph united Austria-Hungary with Germany by a treaty signed in 1892, which became the basis for the Triple Alliance.

The conflict in Bosnia Hertsegovina was the spark that ignited World War I. Subsequent generations remembered the second part of Franz Joseph’s rule as a period of stabilization and prosperity.

6 Endeks: Name formed from the initials of a right-wing party active in Poland during the inter-war period (ND – ‘en-de’). Narodowa Demokracja [National Democracy] was founded by Roman Dmowski. Its members and supporters, known as ‘Endeks’, often held anti-Semitic views.

7 Lwow Ghetto: created following an order of the German administrative authorities issued on 8th November 1941. All Jews living in Lwow, that is approx. 120,000 people, were resettled to the ghetto. During a selection which was conducted by the German authorities most elderly and sick persons were shot to death before the ghetto was formally created.

Many Jews were employed in workshops producing equipment for the Wehrmacht or the Luftwaffe. Some of them were also employed in the German administration outside of the ghetto. Since March 1941 the Germans imprisoned Jews in the Janowska forced labor camp and also deported them to the extermination camp in Belzec. Some residents died during mass street executions in the area of the ghetto called Piaski.

The Great Liquidation Action in the Lwow ghetto lasted from the 10th until the 23rd of August 1942. It is estimated that some 40,000 Jews were deported to the Belzec extermination camp. Some young men were sent to the Janowska forced labor camp. Approx. 800 people were taken to the Auschwitz extermination camp. 

8 NKVD: (Russian: Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del), People’s Committee of Internal Affairs, the supreme security authority in the USSR – the secret police. Founded by Lenin in 1917, it nevertheless played an insignificant role until 1934, when it took over the GPU (the State Political Administration), the political police.

The NKVD had its own police and military formations, and also possessed the powers to pass sentence on political matters, and as such in practice had total control over society. Under Stalin’s rule the NKVD was the key instrument used to terrorize the civilian population. The NKVD ran a network of labor camps for millions of prisoners, the Gulag.

The heads of the NKVD were as follows: Genrikh Yagoda (until 1936), Nikolai Yezhov (until 1938) and Lavrenti Beria. During the war against Germany the political police, the KGB, was spun off from the NKVD. After the war it also operated on USSR-occupied territories, including in Poland, where it assisted the nascent communist authorities in suppressing opposition. In 1946 the NKVD was renamed the Ministry of the Interior.

9 Janowski camp: a Nazi concentration camp in Lwow, one of the biggest in Western Ukraine. In November 1941 Jews from Lwow and the neighboring towns and villages were taken to the camp: about 70,000 people in total. During the occupation, thousands of Jewish inmates, Soviet prisoners-of-war and Ukrainian nationalists were exterminated in this camp.

In November 1943 the Nazis resolved to exterminate the inmates as well as all the traces of the camp before the Soviet Army’s arrival.

A group of inmates attempted to escape, but most were killed. The few survivors told the world about the camp. In total some 200,000 people, including over 130,000 Jews, were exterminated in this camp from November 1941 until November 1943.

10 Capturing of Lwow: on 30th June 1941 the German forces captured Lwow, which had been under Soviet occupation. This was part of Operation Barbarossa, initiated on 22nd June 1941, leading to the overtaking by the Third Reich of the pre-1939 Polish territories now occupied by the Soviets and a sizeable part of the Soviet Union itself..

The quick capturing of Ukraine was facilitated by the collaboration of Ukrainians themselves, who treated the Germans as liberators from Soviet terror and forced collectivization.

11 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact: Non-aggression pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, which became known under the name of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Engaged in a border war with Japan in the Far East and fearing the German advance in the west, the Soviet government began secret negotiations for a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939.

In August 1939 it suddenly announced the conclusion of a Soviet-German agreement of friendship and non-aggression. The Pact contained a secret clause providing for the partition of Poland and for Soviet and German spheres of influence in Eastern Europe.

12 Szmalcownik [pron. shmaltsovnick] - in Polish slang of the period of the occupation, a person who blackmailed and denounced Jews in hiding (from the Polish word for ‘lard’). There were szmalcowniks operating in all larger cities, in particular following the liquidation of the ghettoes, when Jews who had evaded deportation attempted to survive in hiding ‘on the Aryan side’. In Warsaw they often formed organized groups that prowled the ghetto exists.

They picked out their victims by subtle signs (e.g. lowered, frightened eyes, timid behavior), eccentric clothing (e.g. the lack of the fur collar so widespread at the time, or wearing winter clothes in summer), way of speaking, etc. Victims so selected were threatened with denunciation to the Germans; blackmail could be an isolated event or be repeated until the victim’s financial resources ran out. The Polish Underground State attempted to combat the szmalcowniks but in vain. To this day the crimes of the szmalcowniks are still not entirely accounted for.

13 Volksdeutsch: In Poland a person who was entered (usually voluntarily, more rarely compulsorily) on a list of people of ethnic German origin during the German occupation was called a Volksdeutsch and had various privileges in the occupied territories.

14 Home Army (Armia Krajowa - AK): underground military organization, part of the Polish armed forces operating within Polish territory (within pre-1 September 1939 borders) during World War II. Created on 14 February 1942, subordinate to the Supreme Commander and the Polish Government in Exile.

Its mission was to regain Poland’s sovereignty through armed combat and inciting to a national uprising. In 1943 the AK had over 300,000 members. AK units organized diversion, sabotage, revenge and partisan campaigns. Its military intelligence was highly successful. On 19th January 1945 the AK was disbanded on the order of its commander, but some of its members continued their independence activities throughout 1945-47.

In 1944-45 tens of thousands of AK soldiers were exiled and interned in the USSR, in places such as Ryazan, Borovichi and Ostashkov. Soldiers of the AK continued to suffer repression in Poland until 1956; many were sentenced to death or long-term imprisonment on trumped-up charges.

15 Navy-Blue Police, or Polish Police of the General Governorship: the name of the communal police which operated between 1939 and 1945 in the districts of the General Governorship. Navy-Blue police was subordinate to the order police (so-called Orpo, Ordungpolizei).

Members were forcibly employed officers of the pre-war Polish state police. Navy-Blue Policemen participated, for example, in deportations of residents, in suppressing the ‘black market’, in isolating Jews in ghettoes. Some members participated in cells of the underground state and passed on information about the functioning of the German forces.

16 Kenkarta: (Ger. Kennkarte – ID card) confirmed the identity and place of residence of its holder. It bore a photograph, a thumbprint, and the address and signature of its holder. It was the only document of its type issued to Poles during the Nazi occupation

17 Righteous Among the Nations: a medal and honorary title awarded to people who during the Holocaust selflessly and for humanitarian reasons helped Jews. It was instituted in 1953. Awarded by a special commission headed by a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court, which works in the Yad Vashem National Remembrance Institute in Jerusalem.

During the ceremony the persons recognized receive a diploma and a medal with the inscription “Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world” and plant a tree in the Avenue of the Righteous on the Remembrance Hill in Jerusalem, which is marked with plaques bearing their names.

Since 1985 the Righteous receive honorary citizenship of Israel. So far over 20,000 people have been distinguished with the title, including almost 6,000 Poles.

18 The Association of Jewish War Veterans and Victims of Persecutions during World War II (Stowarzyszenie Zydow Kombatantow i Poszkodowanych w II Wojnie): an organization of Jewish war veterans, who had taken part in armed struggle against the Nazi Germany, and were victims of Holocaust persecution.

The organization was founded in 1991. It has 13 sections throughout Poland, and 1050 members. Its aims include providing  help to Jews who were victimized during the war and spreading knowledge about the struggle and victimization of Jews during WWII. The Association established the Medal of the 50th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which is granted to persons who have made important contributions to Polish-Jewish life and dialogue.

19 Children of the Holocaust Association: non-governmental organization associating persons who were persecuted as Jews during the German occupation of Poland and who in September 1939 were not older than 13, or were born during the war. Founded in 1991.

It is a self-help organization, providing psychological support or family search services, as well as an educational one, organizing seminars, publishing a bulletin, conducting other publishing activities (e.g. the Children of Holocaust Speak… memoir series).

The Association currently numbers close to 800 members, and has branches in Warsaw, Wroclaw, Cracow, and Gdansk.

Irena Wygodzka
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Zuzanna Schnepf
Date of interview: May – July 2005

Mrs. Eni (this is the first name she prefers to use) Wygodzka returned to Poland from Israel three years ago. She lives in a new apartment building in downtown Warsaw.

Just like the modern building, her apartment is simple and functional. We spent many hours there, talking, often long after the voice recorder had been turned off.

Mrs. Wygodzka treated me to Italian panettone, Israeli sesame paste and kosher broth with noodles – just like her mother used to make before the war. Going back to distant events from the past was not easy. 

Mrs. Wygodzka would often say with regret: ‘I don’t know,’ ‘I don’t remember’ and explained: ‘I was only a child then,’ ‘so much happened later.’

The impressive collection of photographs – Mrs. Wygodzka’s real treasure - was very helpful. The photographs miraculously survived the Holocaust: saved in a camp barrack and discovered years later by family in Israel.

• My family background
• Growing up
• During the war
• After the war
• Marriage and later life
• Glossary

My family background

My name is Eni Wygodzka, nee Beitner. Erna was the name used in documents, in the identity card, but both my friends and family always called me Eni. One of my cousins used to call me Koziula [from the Polish word ‘koza,’ meaning goat], because I was kind of wild and restless, skipping around on one leg.

Irena, that was only after I returned to Poland, in 1947. The [communist] authorities explained that first and last names should be Polish, not Jewish, so I changed my name to Irena 1. That’s how it has stayed – Irena. I somehow got used to this name, only my close friends and family call me Eni.

My maiden name was spelled differently, depending on who was writing it down, what official. Sometimes they’d spell it with ‘ay’ – Baytner – sometimes ‘ei’ and sometimes ‘aj.’ My grandparents and Father’s brothers spelled their names with ‘ei’ [Beitner], like my father.

I don’t remember anything before my grandparents [Mrs. Wygodzka doesn’t know anything about her great-grandparents’ generation]. Father’s family came from Dabrowa Gornicza [approx. 65 km west of Cracow] and Mother’s from Bedzin [approx. 70 km west of Cracow].

I only remember one grandfather from my father’s side. [His name was Ajzyk Beitner, he was born on 20th April 1857 in Bedzin – information from an album prepared on the basis of documents found in the archives of Andrzej Maskalan, Mrs. Wygodzka’s cousin’s son.]

I don’t have any memories except for one meeting with Grandfather, maybe because he was so sick then. He was in bed, in some dark room, his legs were hurting. I think he had diabetes and died shortly afterwards in Dabrowa Gornicza. I only remember that when they told me, I cried a lot.

I think he died in 1928 [probably in 1934 – according to A. Maskalan’s album], because I was at school then, it could have been first grade. I don’t remember his wife at all. [Her name was Zofia Beitner, nee Weksler, born on 4th September 1857, a daughter of Herszlik and Cwetla, married Ajzyk on 21st February 1877 in Przyrow, approx. 80 km southwest of Cracow – according to A. Maskalan’s album].

My grandparents had a hardware store, one of their sons who was living in Dabrowa, Nachman, operated that store. It must have been a family business. My grandparents were living in some one room shack, in a non-Jewish district, a mixed one.

And that’s where the hardware store was located, next to the house. I remember the kitchen – there was a table, a cupboard and a stove, for cooking, with removable eyes [cast-iron rings, closing the holes in the stove plate, where pots are placed.]

This was all small, small windows overlooking the street, yes. The store was large, with an entrance from the street. I remember the counter and drawers, all kinds of nails, screws, nuts, hammers, all kinds of equipment for building works, maybe even machine parts were sold there.

Uncle Nachman, Father’s brother, lived near my grandparents’ house and so did Father’s sister, Aunt Rozia [Jewish name: Rajzla]. They must have been taking care of Grandpa somehow. They lived in this small single-family house, as you’d call it today.

I visited this Uncle Nachman and Aunt Rozia in Dabrowa several times. They had children and we were more or less the same age. This Nachman and his wife Rywcia [Rywa] had a daughter named Chawa, or Ewa, and a son, Jankiel. Jankiel survived the war, as the only one from the family in Dabrowa. There were three children at Rozia’s: the daughters’ names were Zosia and Jadzia [Jochewet] and there was also a boy.

There were seven sons in Father’s family: Jakub, Szlomo [Hebrew; Yiddish name: Szlama], Tobiasz, Chaim, Herman – my father, Abram and Nachman, and two sisters: Rozia and Ida. It was a traditional family, with many children.

They were all religious. Except for my father and Uncle Nachman they all had beards and side-locks and went to the synagogue. They dressed normally; I don’t think they wore those kapotes.

Nachman was living in Dabrowa Gornicza where all the people knew each other, so he was religious, too, but he didn’t wear a beard, so he must have been kind of rebellious. There was also one brother in America; I only met him in Israel.

His name was Abram. He must have emigrated before I was born. He also shaved. Father and his siblings spoke Yiddish. So did my grandparents. They probably knew Polish, German, but spoke Yiddish to each other. We [Mrs. Wygodzka and her cousins] spoke Polish to each other.

I don’t know what year Father was born in. [Herman Beitner was born on 30th September 1890 in Bedzin – according to A. Maskalan’s album.] I’m sure Father and his brothers went to cheder. I’m also sure Father graduated from public school.

I don’t think he had more schooling. I think no one in my father’s family studied at university, no. Life was hard, difficult, you had to make money, you had to learn something: either to trade or do something else to earn a living. So no one had time for studying.

My mother’s maiden name is Londner. Her parents died early, I didn’t know them at all. Mother’s father had a store in Bedzin, also a hardware store, that’s all I know. Mother’s mother must have died, because Grandfather remarried and had three more daughters with his second wife.

My mother – Bala was from the first marriage, there was also Mania, Regina, who was in Palestine, and I think one more daughter, who was in America. These three half-sisters of my mother’s were Hela, Frania, she was a bit of a hunchback, Hela was pretty, and there was also Jadzia, she was pretty as well.

They lived in Bedzin, I think. I only remember how their mother was a stepmother to her – that she was not good to her and her full sisters. Mother never wanted to talk badly about her; she didn’t want to talk about bad things.

I supposed Mother’s family was religious, because Mother used to light candles, say this Friday prayer, celebrated the holidays. That’s how she was taught at home and that’s what she did. I remember that even during the war, when she was very depressed, she used to say you have to believe in God, that he’d get us out of it.

It’s very likely that the families of my parents met through business – these hardware stores. There was a double marriage between two families [two marriages]. First Tobiasz, my father’s brother, married Mania, Mother’s sister.

And at this wedding my mother must have met [Tobiasz’s] brother. They must have fallen in love, but somehow Mother never talked about it. Those were families who hardly made ends meet. That’s what I think.

I remember how Mother told me that she waited seven years, because during World War I Father was in the German Army 2. He only married my mother after he was discharged from the army. So he was in the army between 1914 and 1918 3, and I think they got married in 1919, because my brother, Natan, was born in 1921 and I was born in 1922.

I don’t know where they got married, I don’t remember any photographs from my parents’ wedding. It wasn’t then like it is now, you didn’t invite hundreds of guests and throw huge parties. It was all more modest.

After the wedding my parents went to Magdeburg [approx. 125 km southwest of Berlin]. There was a painful [economic] crisis [in Poland] and that’s why Father went to Germany looking for work. I think it must have been 1920. He worked at his sister’s store. She had a shoe store.

Her name was Ida Oppenheim, her husband, Natan Oppenheim, was, I think, a German Jew. Or maybe he was from Poland? I don’t know where they met, but I do know they only spoke German to each other. They were more progressive, reformed. We were both born in Magdeburg: my brother Natan and I.

Ida had two sons, Heinz and Herman, and two daughters, Cili und Mary. The Oppenheim family left Germany when Hitler came to power. They went to Palestine 4. I later met Mary in Israel, she told me about how she took me for walks, I was in a stroller.

One son, Heinz, lived in Germany [after WWII], but both daughters and Herman lived in Israel. Cili had a hat store in Israel and sold hats to, for example, Golda Meir 5 and other important people.

Growing up

When I was two years old my parents returned to Poland. We went to Katowice [75 km west of Cracow]. That’s where my two sisters were born, Zosia and Jadzia [Jadwiga]. In Katowice, Father was a real estate manager. 

Private owners would ask him to manage their tenement houses. Probably at first Father was only managing one or two houses, for example the building at 10 Slowackiego Street, which belonged to my father’s brothers Tobiasz and Chaim. Later the owners started trusting him more and all in all he had 14 buildings in his care.

We had an apartment in one of these buildings. Father’s office was in our apartment. There were five rooms there, Father had one room for himself, but it was also the dining room. Father learned about management all on his own. He went from one house to another collecting the rent.

Some things had to be fixed. Light bulbs exchanged, they were sometimes stolen by thieves. He met with people of different heritages, because there were all kinds of people living there: Jews, Poles, Volksdeutsche 6. There were quite a few so-called Silesians 7 in Katowice.

[Editor’s note: When Mrs. Wygodzka refers to Volksdeutsche she mostly means Silesians who became Volksdeutsche during WWII.]

Father didn’t only work for Jews. For example, Mrs. Rabsztynowa, at whose building we had our apartment, was not Jewish, but Polish.

Father had help, this [girl called] Hadasa who worked for us for very many years. She could do bookkeeping. She was schooled in trading. Hadasa would sit at the typewriter and serve all the people who came there.

Her maiden name was Manela. She lived in Bedzin, next to the market square, with her mother. She took a tram to work every day. [A tram ride from Bedzin to Katowice took from 20 to 30 minutes]. Hadasa also had a brother.

They were both Zionists, but rather religious ones: they were probably members of Mizrachi 8, not of the Zionist Organization 9. We were great friends with Hadasa. She sometimes went on holiday with us. Abram Manela would also go with us. He was Hadasa’s nephew. I later met him in Israel, he married a Hungarian and had two sons.

Father used to go to court hearings, because some people wouldn’t pay [the rent] and there were evictions. Once, during such an eviction, my father didn’t go there on purpose [to the apartment he was supposed to evict the family from], because he didn’t want to evict that man, who was poor, had a wife and several children.

He was a Jew who lived on Mariacka Street. One of the richer Jews, Mr. Krakowski, owned that building and ordered this man to be evicted. Mr. Krakowski went there to evict him. When he knocked on the door, that man came out with a knife and stabbed him [Mr. Krakowski]. And then there was this headline in the newspaper, in block letters ‘Jew killed a Jew.’ This was a horrible ordeal for Father. And this was just before the war, I remember.

Father was calm, he was good, not talkative, very liberal towards his children, towards the world. He had blond hair, blue eyes. He had a very friendly face. He wore a suit. He had to dress properly, because he went to courts, for those hearings.

He really liked photography. He took pictures whenever he could. At outings, holidays, at home. He had a camera, he had a darkroom. It was some corner, maybe the servants’ room. The camera – one of the more popular ones at the time, Zeiss or Leica [Zeiss – the first single-lense small-picture Exacta camera, invented in 1936 in Drezno, Leica – a 35 mm small-picture camera, invented in 1925].

There was this man, his name was Salpeter, he was going to Palestine as a tourist and he asked Father to lend him that camera. He was an acquaintance, from the same town. He had a store with ties, scarves and umbrellas.

It was 1939. Mr. Salpeter took that camera with him and stayed in Palestine. That’s how my dad lost the camera. Father used to collect scissors of all types; there was this album where he, kind of, arranged these scissors.

Mother’s name was Bala, but officially, in documents – Bajla, I think. But she’d also sign her name Balbina. ‘Balcia,’ I remember that’s how my father called Mom. When they were speaking Jewish to each other Mother would call Father ‘Herszel,’ but when they were speaking Polish – Herman.

Mother was born in Bedzin. She was about as old as Dad, even, I think, a year older. She was pretty, a brunette, I think. She had short hair, somehow tied, but it wasn’t a bun. She wasn’t tall, she wasn’t plump. She was calm, kind. They loved each other, Father and Mother, yes, I remember this. They were very gentle with each other. But Mother felt that Father wasn’t energetic enough with us, or with the work he was doing.

Mother was always worried that she didn’t have enough money. As I remember it, it wasn’t so bad, because we used to go on holidays in the summer with our entire family, there was a piano in the house, I used to learn how to play it.

That didn’t last long, because I was lazy and didn’t have good musical hearing. But I remember that my parents always talked about being in debt. Father used to borrow money, possibly from his brothers Tobiasz and Chaim.

Mother dressed very modestly. She may have had one better dress, for outings. I remember Mom’s shoes, laced up, with heels, narrow, gray. Sometimes my parents would go to Bytom [approx. 85 km west of Cracow] to buy clothing.

That’s where the border was and there were Germans there. You could buy something a lot cheaper, but the Germans didn’t permit for anything to be taken out [of the country]. So I would leave my worn out shoes in a trash can and put the new ones on. But I remember that once my parents bought some oranges and it was forbidden to take those oranges [to Poland] and Father was so angry that he smashed them into a wall.

I was in Bytom once with my parents and brother. And I bought this dress, a woolen one, pink, even my sister, six years younger than me, wore it later on. And even Jadzia, who is eleven years younger, wore it during the occupation.

I remember that Mom was always busy with work. And she wasn’t that strong. She had some health problems, she couldn’t sleep. I think she went to Naleczow once [a popular health resort in eastern Poland, approx. 20 km from Lublin].

I don’t think it was a longer stay, because that would have been too expensive. Mother took care of the house, there were four children, so there was a lot of work. Once every week or two the bed linen had to be changed, the washing would be done in a tub and the servant did the washing on a washboard, the wet things would be dried up in the attic.

Everything was washed at home, we never took anything to a laundry. Everything was so primitive, simple. I didn’t help with the cleaning and cooking. I was studying, taking care of my younger sisters: taking them for walks, playing, reading to them. There was no nanny or governess. There were no luxuries.

There was one servant. She was always a Pole. The servants would come and go, for different reasons. They came from the countryside. I remember one who was very pretty. She used to wear an apron, I remember, Mom came up to her and said, ‘What do you have in your pocket?’

And it turned out that she had stolen eggs. I was devastated that she’d stop working for us, because I really liked her. She had a nice name, but I don’t remember what it was. Of course, she stopped working for us.

Every day we’d eat potatoes, broth with noodles – that was typical, grated carrots, raw, we had that every day, compotes, we’d eat chicken, sometimes a piece of meat, noodles, rice, groats, barley groats. The servants cooked and Mom did, too.

I remember that from time to time Mother would make so-called tsimes, chulent, kugel. I really liked milk, cheese, eggs, dairy products. Mother would bake cakes with poppy seeds, with cocoa. Yeast cake. Not some fancy kind, the simplest one, delicious. I really liked sweets.

There was a bakery, a kind of confectionery called ‘Martike,’ on 3 Maja Street. There were beautiful cakes on display, frogs with open mouths, different cookies – these colorful mushrooms, fancy, pretty. And I really like halvah. So many kinds, this fresh, wonderful halvah!

Father was a member of the General Zionist Organization. He was the treasurer there. My parents wanted to move to Palestine, but they never had enough money for the tickets, to go with the entire family. So we never left.

Zionist views were popular among Father’s brothers. Uncle Tobiasz and Uncle Chaim bought some land in Palestine, but somehow they didn’t manage to leave on time, because if they had, they would have probably survived [the Holocaust].

That’s how their oldest brother, Jakub, survived. He died there. One of the sisters in my mother’s family also left for Palestine, but I don’t think it was for ideological reasons. She simply got married to someone who took her to Palestine and that’s where she lived until she died. Her name was Regina Cytrynbaum. Mother wanted us to leave, but she wasn’t a member of any Zionist organization.

My brother Natan was smarter and more talented than I. I kept arguing with Natan all the time. We would fight over everything, but he was very chivalrous. I remember how once, when I was supposed to get a spanking for something, he stood in front of me and didn’t let Mom or Father spank me.

We were later very close, we liked each other very much. Natan kept to himself. He was involved in his technical things. He was tinkering all the time, electrical equipment. For example he built some radios. I remember he also took pictures with Father’s camera and he took this one picture of our cousin in a bottle. 

At first he took a picture of a bottle, then he placed [the image of] this cousin on the same film. He went to the Berek Joselewicz Public School in Katowice, I later graduated from the same school.I remember some names of my brother’s friends, girls: Fela Frejlich, Mici Meler, Hanka Urbach.

My brother had some friends, boys, but I don’t remember him having a close friend, no. I remember how he was getting ready for his bar mitzvah. There was this Hebrew teacher [in the public school]. His name was Winer and he prepared my brother.

After he graduated from seven grades of public school, when Natan was 13 or 14 years old, my parents sent him to an agricultural school in Helenowek near Lodz [approx. 30 km northeast of Lodz]. My parents were probably thinking about going to Palestine and wanted Natan to learn about farming, so he’d have a job there.

The school in Helenowek was directed by the ‘king’ of Lodz, Rumkowski 10. My brother only spent several months in that school. I remember that I went there to visit him with my parents in the fall and Natan was back in Katowice shortly afterwards. I think he didn’t like it much.

In Katowice he was admitted to a technical school, which didn’t accept Jews at all. It was the Silesian Technical Research Plant [The Silesian Technical Research Plant opened a school in 1931, the second largest institution of its type in Europe].

It was a very high-standard technical school, which is probably still in existence [the school is now located in a building at 26 Sokolska Street]. Natan tried to get in three times. Each time he passed the exams easily, but they didn’t want to admit him. But he was stubborn and they had to finally admit him [1938].

So there were a thousand students in all and two Jews: my brother Natan Beitner and one boy from Bedzin – Dudek Naparstek, that was his name, as I recall it now. My brother didn’t graduate from this school. Natan didn’t want to go to Palestine, like my parents and I [wanted]. He didn’t have anything to do with Zionism, he was more of a communist.

Natan had a crush on Hadasa, who was my father’s employee. She was older than him, some 10 years older. She had a crush on him as well. They didn’t hide their feelings from our parents much, because it was, how should I put it, a platonic story.

They weren’t a couple. In his notes, before he died, Natan wrote that he loved Hadasa, but that some other girl could have replaced her for him. I would say he was very realistic about this.

I remember the birth of my sister, Zosia [in 1928], because my mother gave birth at home. She didn’t go to the clinic, like she did with Jadzia. It happened then, I was in first grade, that the servant came to get me from school.

On the way, as we were walking, we saw lots of people. Everyone was saying something: ‘What happened, how did it happen?’ It turned out that my brother had just been run over by a car. So we came home and we told Mother that Natan had been run over by a car and that’s when she went into labor.

Natan was taken to the hospital, examined. It wasn’t anything serious. We later saw the man who stopped that car at the last moment, because the car would have backed up and smashed my brother’s heart. It turned out it was a German, his name was Doctor Aronade. He was a physician, a pediatrician. Anyway, that’s when Zosia was born, after seven months of pregnancy.

Zosia was really tiny – Mother used to say ‘she’s as large as a knife,’ I remember they put her in cotton, because there were no incubators then. And later, several days after she was born, this same Doctor Aronade saved Zosia, because the baby started dying.

The bed was near the furnace, carbon monoxide must have been coming out of it; coal was used for fuel then. I remember that Doctor Aronade took two bowls, one with hot water, one with cold water and kept moving the baby from one bowl to the other and that’s how he saved her.

Zosia went to a Jewish preschool, which was operated by my mother’s friend, Mrs. Schif. It was a private preschool, but it wasn’t expensive. Mrs. Schif taught the children some Hebrew, sang with them. The activities always took place at our apartment, in the nursery.

Zosia was very close to Natan. She adored him and he was nice to her, good and kind. Not like I was to her. I remember that I once took her hand and put it on a hot light bulb. Zosia annoyed me, because I had to take her everywhere with me.

When I went to the Organization [Mrs. Wygodzka used to belong to the Zionist Youth Organization Akiba], I had to drag her with me. I think she was later a member of this organization as well, but this was already during the war, in Sosnowiec [approx. 65 km west of Cracow]. Zosia also managed to go to the Berek Joselewicz school for some time. When she was ten years old, the war broke out.

Jadzia was the youngest of all the siblings. She was born in 1933. I loved Jadzia. She was so sweet and pretty. I called her ‘Jadziulka.’ Before the war Jadzia didn’t manage to start attending school, so she had no schooling. My little sister was six years old when the war broke out.

We lived in downtown Katowice. The city wasn’t so big, that’s how I remember it. It was close everywhere, you could walk on foot. Katowice was clean, there were nice stores, houses – not very tall, some three or four stories.

Maybe even taller in some new buildings which they started building right before the war. The streets were paved, there was electricity and running water in the houses. At first we lived at 10 Slowackiego Street. It was actually a side street of 3 Maja Street, which was the main street in the city.

The building on Slowackiego Street belonged to Uncle Tobiasz and Uncle Chaim and my father managed it, it was large. Then our family grew, because Zosia was born, that was still at 10 Slowackiego Street. We moved to an apartment at 21 Slowackiego Street and that’s where we stayed until the war.

In addition to five rooms, there was a kitchen, a small room for the servant, a bathroom with a bathtub and running water. There was a separate toilet, even two. There was Father’s office, the parents’ bedroom and our, the children’s, bedroom.

We always rented out one room, sometimes even two, because we had enough space, but we needed the money. One of our boarders was this pianist, a Pole. There was also a German with his wife and he yelled at her horribly, because she didn’t make scrambled eggs like he liked them.

He threw those scrambled eggs at her. I also had an aunt, but not a real one, Nysele, she lived with us for a longer period of time. And she had a son who was robbed and murdered somewhere in the forest, probably for anti-Semitic reasons. Perhaps he was carrying something, trading something? It happened before the war, I heard about it as a child.

The balcony door was in the kitchen, my father made this special contraption which opened the ceiling of the balcony for Sukkot. The balcony would become a booth and that’s where the holiday of booths was celebrated.

This balcony is not there anymore, I was in Katowice some two years ago and saw that it has been disassembled. After such a long absence I came back to that house, which is really run down. What I remembered were the stairs, which are still the same. Wooden stairs. I used to sit there, with my girlfriends from school, do our homework, play.

The furniture in the apartment was large and heavy. The curtains were very nice, I remember kilims [decorative rugs, usually woolen, hand-woven, often placed on walls to adorn them] … There were furnaces, used for heating, for example in the nursery. There was a telephone in Father’s office, number 990.

There was also a Keren Kayemet 11 can. You’d put money in there, from time to time young people would go around collecting the money. With this money Jews used to buy land from the Arabs in Palestine. A portrait of Uryshkin, this Zionist, was on the wall. [Uryshkin, Mendel Menakhem, (1863 – 1941): a member of a Zionist Organization, one of the leaders of Russian Zionism]

There were two entrances to our apartment [at 21 Slowackiego Street]: the front entrance – from the main gate, and the back entrance. There was one hallway from the street, with entrances to all the apartments and three hallways from the back. One of them led only to our apartment. Although there were other apartments above ours, these back stairs went up only to our apartment. When you entered our apartment from the back, there was a small storage room on the left of a small hallway, there were glass jars with good stuff there.

We were living on the first floor. I think the house had three floors. Mrs. Rabsztynowa was living above us. She was very nice. There was a caretaker, who took care of the house, cleaned and so on. I think this caretaker was a Volksdeutsche [she was probably a Silesian and signed the list of loyal citizens of the Third Reich during the occupation], her name was Chudasz.

She lived on the ground floor, from the back, in the hallway opposite the gate. There were also two Jewish women living in that building. Their last name was Krysztal, they lived right next to us. Both, the mother and the daughter, died of cancer.

There was one more Volksdeutsche living there: Erika Pietruszka, I remember her name. She was a blond, living with her fat mother. Erika Pietruszka was my age, maybe a year older. The neighbors in our building were all right. [Mrs. Wygodzka means that there were no anti-Semitic conflicts with the neighbors].

Katowice was this Polish-German city 12. There weren’t many Jews and they were mostly progressive. I don’t remember any Jews with beards, side locks. Orthodox Jews, if there were any, lived in Sosnowiec, Bedzin, in that area. There was no Jewish district in Katowice. Jews were scattered throughout the city, they lived where they wanted.

There were different Jews in Katowice, rich ones and poor ones... There were days when the poor ones went around collecting money. I know that my parents always gave alms. There were Jewish stores; rather poor ones, with vegetables, fruit, somewhere downstairs, almost in the basement, but with entrances from the street.

This girl came to us, her name was Langer, she was pretty, she brought us eggs, milk. There were stores on this main street, there were elegant goods there. I remember Wasserman’s textile store. There were rich Jews as well, who dealt with trade. 

I knew several girls from school whose older brothers went to France to college. I suppose they must have had their houses there as well. For example Edek, Marysia Zukierman’s brother, studied at Nancy [approx. 275 km southeast of Paris].

There was also this Stasiek Zimmerman, who went abroad to study. I knew him, because he was in the Hanoar Hatzioni 13 Zionist Organization which I was also a member of for some time. Stasiek had a sister named Lala and a younger brother called Janek, who died in the uprising in Sosnowiec [in the summer of 1943 members of Jewish self-defense groups in the Srodula ghetto in Sosnowiec stood up to the Germans, several hundred Jews were shot then].

Sztrochliz was rich, his father had a printing house. There was Marysia Grajcer, her parents had an iron factory. There was this Marysia Szolowicz, whose father, I think, owned some real estate. These girls, egoists, used to buy ice-cream for themselves and would never let you have a lick. 

In Katowice people used to drive their cars to the synagogue for the holidays. [The synagogue was located on Mickiewicza Street, it was built in 1900, later destroyed by the Germans in 1939, it was the second synagogue in Katowice, the first one was built in 1862.]

This was a western fashion, you could say German. Their religiosity was not very strong. Even those who were not religious celebrated the holidays, because that was the tradition. It was a reformed synagogue. I think there was no mikveh in the city, no talmud torah or cheders.

I remember the synagogue was very beautiful, large. I think the women had their own separate part, upstairs. There were also services on Polish national holidays, for example on the 3rd of May 14. In addition, when Pilsudski 15 died, there was a service, we all cried.

The service was in Polish and the rabbi talked about the Marshal. There was singing, ‘Boze, cos Polske’ [Polish, ‘God, you protect Poland,’ a song from 1816 considered to be one of the Polish national anthems]. The entire school gathered in mourning, everyone.

We had two rabbis [in Katowice]. One was called Doctor Vogelman. The second one was Doctor Hajmades, who had a beautiful wife and he was, in general, very European, with a small beard, elegant. And Doctor Vogelman was more traditional, with a longer beard.

I sometimes went there to ask him whether a specific hen was kosher, my mother would send me. He lived very close to us, on 3 Maja Street. I was really ashamed to do this, I was shy and going to the rabbi was a huge event for me.

Mother’s food was kosher. Kosher meat was bought in a store, I think it was called ‘Fiszer.’ It was on Szopena Street, nearby, two minutes from home. Near the synagogue as well. And Pola Fiszer, the daughter of these owners, attended the vocational gymnasium with me [Gymnasium of the Polish Women’s Association in Katowice].

She left for Australia in 1947, maybe 1948. My parents celebrated the traditional holidays: Pesach, Chanukkah, Purim. Mother lit candles on Fridays. When she lit the candles, she’d say the prayers, but she didn’t pray in other situations. She didn’t go to the synagogue much, she was no religious fanatic.

Father went to the synagogue, but only on holidays, not on Fridays. Not every week, like those religious Jews. He didn’t wear a beard, he was more progressive. I know that when we were later in Lwow he ate ham, other things, too. 

We didn’t do anything on Sabbath. That’s when guests would come visit. We sometimes listened to the radio. There were these programs, I remember Korczak 16, these talks, songs: ‘O czym marzy dziewczyna gdy dorastac zaczyna? Kiedy z paczka zamienia sie w kwiat.’ [Polish: ‘What does a girl dream about when she starts to grow up? When she changes from a bud to a flower.’]

But I don’t think we obeyed all those restrictions. We cooked, we turned the lights on, but I don’t think we traveled. We weren’t allowed to eat ham, but my friends and I would often buy a ham sandwich and eat it at the gate.

I was never religious. I remember I attended the synagogue only on high holidays and we played in the gardens around the synagogue. My parents were inside and we were romping, running around, talking in the gardens around the synagogue.

We only went inside for a second. I remember my brother debated religious issues with Father and tried to prove to him that God didn’t exist, that it had all been made up by people. And we, girls, didn’t care much about religion. Later, when I was older, I didn’t go to the synagogue on my own.

I liked Pesach best of the holidays we celebrated at home, because everyone gathered and we had good things to eat. Dumplings were made from matzah flour: just matzah, eggs and water. Mother prepared all the dishes in the kitchen: there was challah, egg in salt, and, of course, matzah.

And for the Pesach holiday Mother also changed the dishes. We’d read the Haggadah and Father put on a white robe and ate in a half-reclining position. For Pesach Father would sometimes bring some Jewish soldier home for supper.

That was customary there, because Polish soldiers 17 were quartered somewhere nearby and, because they came from all over the country, they didn’t have any relatives there, so locals would take them in.

We also celebrated Kuczki [Sukkot]. We would sit down and eat on the balcony, we opened this roof of the balcony. The balcony would be beautifully decorated with paper. It was like a booth. And we’d sit there and sing. I don’t remember these songs now.

On Yom Kippur you had to fast. My parents fasted, but I didn’t. Children didn’t have to. We also went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. I think candles were lit at home for Chanukkah. We played with a dreidel and received Chanukkah gelt [Chanukkah money].

We didn’t dress up all that much for Purim, sometimes we painted our faces a bit, but I don’t remember any parades of dressed up children on the streets. There were also these ringers, which we used to make noise in the synagogue, I think also at home. Nothing much happened on New Year’s. If anything, perhaps Father went to the synagogue.

We spoke Polish at home. My parents also spoke German and Yiddish. We, the children, spoke Polish and German. German and Polish were the official languages in Katowice. Actually, I think that until I turned six, until I went to school, I only spoke German.

The only book which I remember we had at home was in Polish. It was Tolstoy 18, I remember, it was bound in these red covers, but not leather, it was in my father’s study. My parents didn’t read much. They didn’t have an intellectual education, no needs.

They were simple people. Among themselves they spoke about family, business, that there wasn’t enough money. I’m sure they didn’t talk about politics. I remember that before the war there started to be talk about whether there’d be a war. They were afraid. Mother thought we should have left for Palestine.

We sometimes went to the theater, mostly with Mother. It was a Polish theater on Teatralny Square [probably the S. Wyspianski Teatr Slaski, located at Rynek 2, created in 1907, still in existence], very nice. Seats in the first rows cost more, in the back rows – less. I didn’t go there often, but when I did, I usually had tickets for those cheaper seats.

The Jewish theater came once, for a guest performance. I went to the play. It was ‘Madame Iks’ with Ida Kaminska 19, or maybe with her mother 20. I remember that Korczak came with a lecture on how to love children. I went to listen to that, my mother took me. Father used to buy the daily paper, it was called ‘Haint’ 21. I remember he would read that.

My parents’ friends were Jews. We didn’t have any close relations with Poles. The three nationalities in the city: Poles, Jews and Germans were not close. Jews met with Jews, and the others probably with their own. Some Jews who were friends of my parents had a printing house on the main street, I think it was Pilsudskiego Street.

They were both called Sztrochlic, because they were brothers. They had children our age. One of them was short and fat and the other one was tall and very handsome, he had a wife and a pretty daughter named Gusta and a son. The short one also had a short fat wife and a daughter – also Gusta, but she was fatter. Both Sztrochlic brothers were living on Graniczna Street. We’d go there for their birthdays. 

We lived at number 10 and the ones who lived at number 21 were, I think, the Zajdlers. I don’t know what they did. I think we invited them for birthdays, they invited us. We would organize birthday parties German style, with cocoa, chocolate and whipped cream, there was ‘Kartoffelsalat’ – potato salad. There was a movie projector at their house. They showed us films, for example ‘Tiny Tim,’ in German. We’d sing songs in German.

I still remember them: ‘Hänschen klein, ging allein, in die weite Welt hinein./ Stock und Hut, stehn ihm gut, ist auch wohl gemut./ Aber Mutter weinet sehr, hat ja nun kein Hänschen mehr./ Da besinnt sich das Kind, läuft nach Haus geschwind./ Lieb Mama, ich bin da, ich dein Hänschen hoppsassa./ Glaube mir, ich bleib hier. Geh nicht fort von Dir.’

[English: ‘Little Johnny/Went alone/In the wide world,/ tick and hat/Suit him well/He’s cheerful!/But Mother weeps much,/Now she has her little Johnny no more,/So, the child thinks it over,/He goes back home./Dear Mother, I’m here,/Your Johnny tra la la,/I’m by you,/I stay by you.’] Polish was spoken at the Zajdlers and at the Sztrochlices.

Almost every year we’d go on vacation. We’d leave the city for at least a month, or two. We’d take all our stuff. We’d go near Katowice, to Bystra [Bystra Krakowska and Bystra Slaska – towns south of Bielsko-Biala – 86 km west of Cracow], to Cyganski Las [forest in the southern part of Bielsko-Biala], sometimes to Rabka [approx. 40 km south of Cracow], always to southern Poland, Silesia. I never went to the seaside [Baltic Sea, in the north of Poland] before the war.

Our more distant family would go with us too and we’d spend time there together. We’d rent cottages from peasants. I remember this hotel in Zakopane. We’d live there and eat there. It was a Jewish hotel. The owners were Jewish, the guests were mostly Jewish too.

We met a young married couple during one of those vacations, they were staying in that hotel with us. And then we hiked in the mountains together. We’d hike mostly in the valleys with the little sisters, we’d climb the Gubalowka [a peak on the outskirts of Zakopane, 1,120 m above seal level], never too high. We were not professional [hikers], I didn’t have any special clothing, I hiked in my school coat. 

Most often we’d meet with Aunt Mania, that is Mother’s sister, and her husband Tobiasz, my father’s brother. They had one daughter – Estusia [Ester]. We were also in touch with Chaim, that is Father’s brother and his entire family.

Chaim and Aunt Cesia had several children. Four sons: Abram, Herman [Herszlik], Nachman, Aronek [Aron] and one daughter – Netka [Natalia]. We didn’t have any family in Katowice. They all lived in Sosnowiec.

Tobiasz and Chaim lived in Sosnowiec, on Deblinska Street, near the train station, they had nice apartments. They were wealthier than the rest of the family. Tobiasz and Chaim operated a currency exchange office in Katowice, at 10 Slowackiego Street, in a house which was owned by them. It was a small, private corporation.

Chaim also had a clothing store in Sosnowiec, on Modrzejowska Street. Modrzejowska was a street where almost all the stores belonged to Jews. There was no Jewish district. There were streets where mostly Jews lived, but they were in no way separated. [The Jewish religious community was founded in Sosnowiec in 1899.

Jews lived mostly in the commercial district – a square delimited by present day streets: Warszawska, Malachowskiego, Sienkiewicza, Koscielna. According to the census of 1931 Jews constituted 19% of the population of Sosnowiec.]

Szlomo, another one of Father’s brothers, also lived in Sosnowiec. He had a colonial goods store. He was alone, his wife was dead, that’s what I remember. He had a daughter Jadzia – Jochewet, a nice, pretty, blond girl. We used to call her Jochcia.

She used to talk a lot and very loudly. I remember I was ashamed to walk on the street with her. She was a bit older than me and died in the camp in Lichtenwerden [Svetla Hora, Czechoslovakia, an ‘Aussenkommando’ of Auschwitz, inmates worked in the arms industry in a yarn factory (G.A. Buhl und Sohn) and clearing the rubble after bombings, liquidated in February or March 1945]. Jochcia had one brother, his name was Pesach, he was in Peru.

He had emigrated before World War II, he was an upholsterer by trade. Jochcia also had some more brothers, sisters, whom I don’t remember. I met this one from Peru in Israel, when he came there in the 1970s and died shortly afterwards. He was some 10 to 15 years older than I.

We also used to meet with Rozia and Heniek Oksenhendler. They had two daughters: Fredzia and Renia. Rozia was Aunt Cesia’s sister, Aunt Cesia was the wife of my father’s brother, Chaim. I think that Rozia was also some relation of my father’s, because Cesia and Rozia had one more sister: she lived in Czestochowa and her name was Miriam Bruk, I know that she was also a cousin of my father’s. [Chaim Beitner married his cousin Cesia, the daughter of Aron Weksler, who was the brother of Zofia Weksler, Chaim Beitner’s mother – according to A. Maskalan’s album.] Miriam Bruk also used to go to on vacation with us.

Estusia was my favorite cousin. Her father [Tobiasz] was my father’s brother and her mother [Mania] was my mother’s sister. We loved each other very much. I remember how once I went with her and her mother to Krynica [Krynica Gorska, approx. 90 km southwest of Cracow].

We were there in the summer, in a hotel called Tel Awiw. Krynica Gorska was a health resort. Estusia was some ten years older than I. She graduated from a gymnasium in Sosnowiec. I don’t remember if it was a Polish of Jewish one. She wasn’t married.

Estusia was a charming, intelligent girl. She was self-taught and she was very radical, progressive. Progressive – I mean her father was very religious, he had this long beard, but she sympathized with the communists.

She didn’t belong to the party [Communist Party of Poland] 22, but she had a whole group of friends with whom she met and discussed political issues. Her leftist views were well known in the family. Her parents were pious Jews, but they didn’t mind [her communist views.]

Politics didn’t play any role in my friendship with Estusia. She was the one with communist sympathies, I was a member of a Zionist organization. She didn’t try to convert me to communism. My brother Natan, yes, she did. She had influenced him, but I was too stupid, too naïve. I was a child. Estusia died in Auschwitz. Together with her parents, she was deported from the ghetto in Sosnowiec 23.

My second cousin Netka was also a communist. She was Uncle Chaim’s daughter. She organized a strike in her parents’ store on behalf of the employees. She may not have been a member of the party, but she was definitely a communist and they always spoke quietly about her.

Netka survived the war. She was in the USSR. She married a Russian of Polish origin and they followed the line of the front together, they reached Berlin. [Most likely they were in Berling’s Army, formed from Polish refugees in the USSR in 1943.

Berling’s Army took part in the capturing of Berlin in April 1945.] Right after liberation they settled in Warsaw. Her name was Natalia Maskalan and she had this son, Andrzej [Andrzej Maskalan, the author of the Beitner and Weksler family album, quoted above].

Natalia’s mother’s sister, her name was Nadzia Lesko, was also a communist, and she was also not talked about, because she was in prison for communism. [Communist activity was illegal in Poland in the interwar period.]

In the 1930s she went with her husband to the homeland of communism [Soviet Union], because she was in trouble in Poland. And that’s where Nadzia’s husband was murdered and she was sent to a camp for ten years 24.

Netka’s oldest brother was named Abram, then there was Herman, Nachman and Aronek. The oldest ones went to Palestine even before the war. I think Abram left in 1933 and Herman in 1934. Nachman, we called him Nacek, left in 1936 or 1937. He died there several years ago.

Their father, Chaim Beitner, stayed in Poland. Of course, he died [in the Shoah] and his youngest son, Aronek, died with him. They were sent from Sosnowiec to Auschwitz. [Transports of Jews from the ghetto in Sosnowiec began in May 1943, the last one departed from Sosnowiec in January 1944].

From my mother’s side I met her three step-sisters: Hela, Frania and Jadzia. And this Hela had a son, I remember. Her name was Hela Frydrych, she was not quite normal. And Frania and Jadzia didn’t get married before the war. We did not have a close relationship with Frania, Hela and Jadzia. They would sometimes come to Katowice. Only Frania survived the war, no one else was left. And this Frania went to America after the war, got married, had a son. 

I was in Bedzin two or three times, but when I went there I would always sleep at Hadasa’s house [Father’s employee]. I remember there was this huge bed with a feather quilt. There was only one room there, they were not rich people.

Hadasa’s mother used to bake yeast chocolate cake – it was delicious. Hadasa would sometimes bring it to us, to Katowice. I visited this Helcia [Mother’s stepsister] maybe once or twice. I don’t know what she or her husband did. They had something on the market square in Bedzin. I only remember Mother used to say he was primitive.

Hela lived outside of the Jewish district. There was a Jewish district in Bedzin, it was called ‘Zimna Dupa’ [Polish, literally: ‘Cold Ass’; most Jews in Bedzin lived in the area of: Zaulek, Zawale, Rybna, Berka Jozelewicza, near the old walls of the city, near the castle.] I don’t know the origin of this name. Only poor people lived there. I was there only once, it was near Gora Zamkowa [Castle Hill].

Mostly German was spoken at the preschool which I attended in Katowice. It was a private preschool, German, I think. Children of all ethnic backgrounds went there. My mother used to walk me to the preschool. I don’t remember if I went there with my brother or not.

I was six years old when I started attending the Berek Joselewicz Elementary School. It was very close to our home, on Stawowa Street, I think. There was one Jewish school in Katowice. It was organized by the Jewish religious community.

The school had a lot of pupils, there were boys and girls together in the classes, the building was quite impressive too, maybe three stories high, with a large schoolyard. The principal’s name was Dligacz. The classes were taught in Polish.

Winer taught Hebrew, but it was very basic. Our homeroom teacher was Miss Londner, who taught Polish. Her name was the same as my mother’s, but they were not related. There was Miss Apter, I think she taught history, Mr. Szapiro, who taught Polish.

I really liked Ms. Sara Diler, who taught us drawing. Marlena, that’s how we called her, she had beautiful legs, like Marlene Dietrich. Sara Diler was very  shapely, nice, intelligent. We met in Israel, many, many years after the war and talked about the days in Katowice. It had turned out that before the war she was a friend of my future husband, Stanislaw Wygodzki 25.

There was gymnastics [at school] and in the Zionist sports organization which we belonged to. I think it was called Maccabi 26, or perhaps the name was different? We did exercises on all kinds of equipment. There were competitions too.

The gymnastics classes at school took place in the girls’ gymnasium on 3 Maja Street [Municipal Girls’ Gymnasium, located at number 42, on 3 Maja Street, created in 1922, currently M. Sklodowska-Curie High School number VIII.]

I had the greatest problems with Mr. Neumen, who used to throw me out of physics and mathematics lessons, because I didn’t know anything and disturbed the class. Well, I wasn’t such a good student.

I was lazy and only once, in 5th grade, did I have all As and Bs. Once I even had to repeat a grade, 6th grade. Yes, I failed mathematics and physics. I remember that it really hit me hard. My parents didn’t punish me at home.

They were sorry, just like I was. I told them I wouldn’t study at all, that I’d go to work. Of course, I couldn’t find a job. So I repeated 6th grade and graduated from that elementary school after eight years, because there were seven grades in all.

I had several friends at school: there was Mala Lobel, Hanka Urbach, there was Rutka Reichman, Mina Schif, Hela Hass. All of us, with the exception of Mina, were in love with this boy from our class. His name was Natan Rozenzweig.

He was charming, nice, intelligent, wise. I think I even made out with him somewhere in the park. Those were very immature feelings, but they did bind us, because we stayed in touch for a long time. Natan was in the ghetto in Warsaw 27, he wrote me that he was sick with typhus. I even sent him a typhus vaccine. He died in the ghetto.

Most of my friends were in Akiba 28 – a Zionist youth organization, so I also joined it. I was in touch with my girlfriends for many years. My best friend Hela [Hass] was in Siberia 29 during the war. We sent packages to her from Vilnius, from the kibbutz, pictures and greetings. She survived, got married, she was in Israel and died a few years ago. 

Mina Schif also survived, she is in Israel today. She’s very sick with Parkinson’s disease. Mina Schif’s father was a member of the Zionist Organization. I think he operated a Singer franchise [a company producing sewing machines]. He had bicycles, sewing machines there.

My other friends died during the war. Mala Lobel, Rutka Reichman. When we were in gymnasium this Rutka was really in love with Franek Goldsztain. We were very young, maybe 17 years old and it wasn’t popular then for young people to carry on like that, they were like a marriage.

But nobody condemned them much. She later died, he survived. I know, because he sent me a letter in 1946 and his picture from Karlstadt [a city on the River Main, east of Frankfurt am Main]. We later lost contact, I don’t know what happened to him.

When we were children, and later teenagers, we used to go to Kosciuszki Park. There was this special sledding trail there. It was quite far away from the center [of the city]. Fairs [of industrial products] took place in Kosciuszki Park from time to time.

There was also Bugla [an outdoor swimming pool, opened in 1927, still operating at 26 Zeliwna Street], where we used to go to swim. There was a skating rink, where we went skating. We also played ball. I used to go to the cinema with my brother.

It was a huge expense for us, but there was this one teller, who let us in without tickets. There were some cowboy movies, I also went to see ‘Ben Hur’ [American silent movie from 1926].

I was nine years old [1931] when I joined the Zionist organization and I was a member until the end. My friends encouraged me to do it. My parents didn’t have anything against it. I remember that my father said, ‘You can join anything, but the Betars 30.’

Because Betar was an organization whose members looked like fascists, almost like the ‘Hitlerjugend’ 31: they had uniforms, brown shirts and these military belts. They also had this idea to take Palestine by force, which my father didn’t like.

I joined Akiba, but I wasn’t always there. I was also in Hanoar, but later returned to Akiba. Which organization I was in, depended on where my friends were at the time. There were probably some ideological differences between those two organizations, I don’t remember exactly. I only know that they were more pious in Akiba: they made us pray, organized religious celebrations. There was also Hashomer Hatzair 32 in Katowice. It was a socialist organization.

In Akiba we’d meet, learn Hebrew, sing some songs in Hebrew. It was quite fun. We wanted to leave for Palestine. Studying, discussions, camps – all of this prepared us for emigration. When I was some 15-16 years old I wanted to go to Palestine and work on a farm, like I was taught in the organization.

They told us about Palestine, what was happening there, what life was like, about how land was being conquered, about how everything was being built, how difficult it was there. They talked to us a lot about morality, pride, love of Israeli land.

There were discussions about current events, political and sexual issues. Those discussions made me conscious [of sexuality]. I was very young then, 12-13 years. What did we know then? Nothing. Our parents didn’t tell us anything.

It was all organized very well in Akiba: there were these units, platoons, kind of like in the army. They all had names: ‘Sharon,’ ‘Degania’ – named after places in Israel [then Palestine]. For example I was in ‘Blyskawica’ [in English ‘Lightning’]. Later in others, because that would change.

We had this ‘kfucovy,’ that is a leader, male or female. There was this Zyga Halbreich and his brother Paul [Halbreich], there was Edi Goldberg, there was Rakower, Bronek, there was Mania Walner. Some of them would later go to Palestine.

For the older ones – you had to be 15-16 yeas old – there was the so-called haksharah [Hebrew: preparation, strengthening], this preparation for emigration to Palestine, it took place at a farm. I never went there. I was too young.

I didn’t date. I didn’t fall in love easily, well, even if I did, it was platonic. There was this Moniek Fajner. He was from Bedzin. His father used to come to Katowice, I knew him. Moniek Fajner had a brother, Karol, who ran away to the Soviet Union during the war and was deported to Kolyma [Kolyma Lowland, where the gulags were scattered].

He was in Magadan [a city in the Asian part of Russia, since 1939 the largest Gulag transfer point, transports of prisoners were sent off to camps from there.] And he labored there, in a mine [there were gold, zinc ore, tungsten, coal and lignite mines].

He labored there in very harsh conditions. He came to see me after he got back from Russia – without hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. And Moniek Fajner left for Palestine in, I think, 1937. He wrote letters to me, he was in love with me, but I didn’t write him back.

When we were children and then teenagers, we used to go around Jewish homes and collect money for Keren Kayemet, in those blue cans with a star of David, for the purchase of land in Israel. There was a youth Zionist organization in Chorzow [a city approx. 3 km northwest of Katowice] and we went to meetings with youth from that organization. It was a five to six kilometer walk: from Katowice to Chorzow or Krolewska Huta, as it was called then [in 1934 the name of the city was changed from Krolewska Huta to Chorzow]. And from there [from Chorzow] they would walk to Katowice to visit us.

When I was 12, 13 years old I went to camp for the first time. I went to camps with Akiba, perhaps once with Hanoar. With Akiba I used to go to Banska Wyzyna, near Zakopane [approx. 9 km north of Zakopane]. My parents didn’t like this very much.

They had to pay, it was expensive. But I always somehow managed to convince them. Once, I don’t think they let me go, so I ran away. We went hiking in the Tatras [the highest mountain range in Poland, in the southern part of the country.]

I remember we would always go to Zakopane at night and then hiking in the mountains. We practically slept while walking, we were so tired. Each hike would always last several days. We ate whatever was available, mamalyga [a dish prepared from corn flour or cooked groats], we slept wherever we could, on some straw.

I once climbed Kasprowy Wierch [one of the highest peaks in the Tatra Mountains, 1,985 meters above sea level.] I climbed using these buckles and chains. Well, there were also these raids of the Polish scouts. And we would raid their camp as well.

We kept watch, guarded our camp in Zywiec [approx. 100 km southwest of Cracow.] We were afraid that these scouts would take our flag [capturing another troop’s flag was a custom based on the capturing of the enemy’s banner in the military.]

I started attending gymnasium when I was 14 years old [1936]. It was a vocational gymnasium of the Polish Women’s Association in Katowice. An all girls’ school. We learned sewing, corsetry. I didn’t want to work in that profession, but my parents sent me there.

Because I wasn’t such a great student they sent me to a vocational school, so I’d learn a trade. There was also a public girls’ gymnasium [in Katowice.] But I wasn’t a good student, so perhaps those general subjects would have been too difficult for me? I didn’t like studying.

My friends from elementary school and from Akiba went to the gymnasium with me, for example Mala Lobel. There were some who attended the Hebrew Gymnasium in Bedzin. It was called the Firstenberg Gymnasium [opened in 1930, currently High School #2.] Classes were taught in Polish there. There was also a Jewish trade school in Bedzin.

My gymnasium was very decent: there were quite a few students, the building was very nice. It was in the Silesian Technical Research Plant, where there was a technical school for boys. We were in a separate part of that building.

There were practical classes and general subjects. We learned German and French. But the study of foreign languages was not very serious. I remember one professor – Mrs. Fik. A great teacher of Polish. I think she must have been a communist. There were also [Christian] religion classes at the gymnasium. I left the classroom for religion classes. Jewish teachers didn’t work there.

There weren’t many Jewish students. There were few of us in the class: this friend of mine [Mala Lobel], me, Pola Fiszer and one more – she commuted from Dabrowa Gornicza. We didn’t feel anti-Semitism at the gymnasium.

There was also this Aniela Gora, a Pole. I was friends with her. She lived on 3 Maja Street. I used to go to this Aniela’s house and she’d come and visit me. But usually there weren’t that many close relationships between Polish and Jewish girls.

I attended the gymnasium for three years, until the war broke out. I graduated from the gymnasium. It was called the semi-final exam [an exam after four years of gymnasium; secondary school consisted of a four-year gymnasium and a two-year lyceum.]

During the war

After Hitler came to power 33, it was in the 1930s, there were lots of anti-Semites 34. This happened when I started to be able to understand certain things, I could have been 10 or 12 years old. I don’t know how it was before.

Usually, there weren’t many serious anti-Semitic incidents. I remember that yes, they used to shave off the beards of Orthodox Jews, who came to Katowice from Sosnowiec or Bedzin. This uncle of mine, Tobiasz, when he came to Katowice from Sosnowiec, he was attacked and his beard was cut off.

I remember that my uncle and my parents were all shocked. But when there were such attacks, they wouldn’t rob you, they wouldn’t take your money. It was the Hitlerjugend that did this [Mrs. Wygodzka is probably referring to the Jungdeutsche Partei für Polen (JDP), 1930-1939, a national Nazi party of the German minority in Poland.]

Those young people [from JDP] dressed just like the Hitlerjugend: in those gray shoes, white knee-high socks, shirts. They were behind all those anti-Semitic incidents. But I don’t know exactly whom they represented, I didn’t know them. Those were German influences. I don’t remember if there was Endecja 35 in Katowice.

In nineteen thirty-something my father had some problems. Some Volksdeutscher must have ratted on him – but I don’t know what exactly, because my father wasn’t doing anything illegal. I remember how they came to our house, the Polish police.

Mother told me and my brother to go out to the park. And she dressed us nicely. That is she had me wear a two-part dress, red, polka-dot. And she told us not to come back until she came to get us. And we walked and walked around this park, until finally Mother came to get us, it turned out they had searched the house. They took Father’s scissors, those he had been collecting for the album.

And I remember this story when I was playing hopscotch at 21 Slowackiego Street, the house on the other side of the street was number 10 or number 12 Slowackiego Street. It was a corner house. Suddenly a boy came out of that house and slapped my face, then went away.

I cried horribly and went to my mother and told her everything. Mother went to talk to that boy’s mother, but she didn’t care – nothing. That was an anti-Semitic incident. It was in the 1930s, that’s what the atmosphere was like. After the Germans came [in 1939], all the Silesians immediately became Volksdeutsche. One of them was shot on the very first day when the Germans entered. On the street, because he was out there, overjoyed that they had come, so they shot him. He was a barber on 3 Maja Street. I don’t remember what his name was.

The last camp was organized [by Akiba] in 1939. Several hundred people went hiking in the Tatras, because young people from all over Poland gathered there. I didn’t take part in that hike, I must have been feeling ill. It was a tragic hike, because lightning struck a rock and seven people, including the guide, who was a very handsome boy, fell off the cliff, into the precipice.

He lived in Nowy Targ [approx. 20 km north of Zakopane]. His name was Heniek Jaffe, he was slim, tall, blond, he had blue eyes. I remember the despair of those parents who were waiting at the train station in Cracow. It was August, we had just gotten home when the war broke out on 1st September and the tragic camp was forgotten.

I wasn’t there when the Germans entered Katowice, I didn’t see how happy they [the Silesians] were to greet them. Perhaps a day before the war broke out we ran away from Katowice, because we were afraid of the Germans. We knew Katowice would surrender immediately. We took some wagon and ran away [to the east]. Everyone was running away, not just Jews 36. But no one was counting on how soon they’d catch up with us.

We were somewhere near Olkusz [approx. 40 km east of Katowice], Wolbrom [approx. 55 km northeast of Katowice]. The Germans starting bombing the fields, people were hiding in the grain fields.

The Germans told everyone to get off the wagon, only I was left there, because they asked ‘You’re the servant, aren’t you?’ I was blond, blue-eyed, they didn’t think a Jew could look like that. Even that servant [a Pole] had to walk.

And I sat on the wagon and the driver took me home, to Sosnowiec, to my mother’s sister [Mania] and my father’s brother [Tobiasz], that is to my closest relatives. Only later did my family get there, to Sosnowiec, on foot. And that’s where we stayed, with Mania and Tobiasz. 

And then this horrible occupation 37 started. It drove me crazy, because Uncle Tobiasz controlled my every move and didn’t allow me to do anything. I was a rebellious girl, so I decided to run away. I didn’t tell my parents anything. And my brother and I, we decided to go to Lwow, to the Russians 38. This was still in September 1939.

So we left home, we walked and walked, sometimes we’d get a ride on some horse-drawn wagon. We reached Cracow. It turned out we didn’t have any money. So my brother bought himself a kilogram of salt and went back to Sosnowiec to sell the salt and earn some money. He returned with Father [from Sosnowiec to Cracow].

Father had decided that he had to run away too, because he was the manager of those tenement houses where so many Volksdeutsche lived and, although he was a very decent man, he still had enemies among those Germans. And from then on we traveled together.

My mother and sisters stayed in Sosnowiec, with that Uncle and Aunt. The children were small: six and ten years old. It seemed at the time that the war would end soon and that we’d all be back. I don’t remember the Germans stopping us on our way to Lwow. It was still quite easy, it was just the beginning.

I think they must have approved of this running away, yes. [In September 1939 the Germans deported several hundred Jews from Sosnowiec and forced them to cross the German-Soviet border. Polish lands incorporated into the Third Reich were supposed to be ‘Judenrein’] 39. We passed Przemysl [243 km southeast of Cracow], we swam across the River San [a tributary of the Vistula] at night, crossed over onto the Soviet side and went to Lwow.

So I spent the first few months of World War II in Lwow. At first I’d call the situation dramatic. There were lots of refugees from Poland. People were unhappy, wandered around Lwow not knowing what to do with themselves. There were no means for living. Mina Schif with her family was also in Lwow.

Mina’s mother knitted some scarves and my brother took them to an arcade to sell them. I was living in a school dorm, because I was supposed to start going to school in Lwow. I don’t remember what kind of a school it was, perhaps I wanted to graduate from a regular high school? Father finally rented a room from the Seweryns.

It was a mother with a son and a daughter. They were Poles. Very nice and decent people. Father lived there with Natan, but he couldn’t get a job either. He later started working in some wood and coal storehouse.

Natan wanted to enroll in a technical secondary school, but they didn’t want to admit him, because he was a ‘biezeniec,’ [from Russian, refugee] that is a refugee from the German zone. He couldn’t come to terms with the fact that he couldn’t study.

He saw what real communism was like in Lwow and he came to understand that it had all been falsified, not true. He kept to himself, he didn’t have any friends. When I left [Lwow for Vilnius] he was practically all alone. He didn’t have a good relationship with Father. Natan committed suicide in 1940.

I went to a kibbutz in Vilnius 40 in December 1939. My brother walked me to the train station. I didn’t tell Father that I was leaving, because I was afraid he wouldn’t let me go. It was horrible! I crossed the border to Vilnius when the temperature was 40 degrees below zero [Celsius], so I remember this.

When I was in Vilnius one of my friends from the organization said: ‘What?! You didn’t say goodbye to your father, you didn’t tell him? Write him, he must be worried!’ So I wrote him and Father somehow forgave me.

I went to the kibbutz, because I wanted to leave for Palestine, but I was one of the youngest in the kibbutz. Well, it was the older ones who got to go first. It was all quite illegal, papers were arranged in Russia. There were all kinds of organizations in the kibbutzim in Vilnius: leftist, rightist, all Zionist. 

We were in these former army barracks on Subocze [a street in Vilnius, leading from the center of the city to the suburb of Poplawy]. It was horribly cold [in the winter of 1939/40]! There were no toilets in the building. You had to go out into the yard.

And to get there you’d slip on [frozen] pee. There were hundreds of people there and lice. We used to go to the so-called ‘banya,’ the baths, and those lice were crawling on the walls, on the tiles. It was a horror, this first period. But then we broke up into groups and each organization tried to somehow function independently.

There were more or less 90 of us in our organization, Akiba. I knew some of the people from before the war. For example there was this Fryda whom I knew from a camp organized by Akiba before the war. We settled in a very nice house with a porch from the yard.

It was somewhere near Ostra Brama [a city gate in the southern district of Vilnius, erected before 1514]. The street was called Beliny. We’d be assigned jobs and then paid for doing them. The money was collected in one cash box and then used to buy what was needed to survive.

I was the nanny of three children, I think it was a Jewish family. Later I worked in a printing house, I chopped wood, I cleaned apartments; there were always lots of windows to be washed.

In the spring of 1941 I received a letter from Mom, sent from Sosnowiec to Vilnius. The letter arrived in the mail, normally. Mom wasn’t clear about it, but she wrote that she was sorry she would never see Natan again. How did she know what happened? I think Father must have written her something. And Father hid Natan’s death from me, because he wrote that he had been sent to Siberia.

So I thought: ‘If Natan is in Siberia, then Mom shouldn’t think that she’ll never see him again. After all, the war will finally be over, he’ll come back from Siberia.’ When I got this letter I asked my friend Dudek Goldberg, who was going to Lwow, to find out exactly [what happened]. Then he brought me the news that Natan had committed suicide.

That’s when I went back to Father, to Lwow, it was May 1941. The war between Germany and Russia 41 broke out a month later. Dudek Goldberg also went to Lwow. He was my first love: Dudek Goldberg from Radom [approx. 100 km south of Warsaw.] I met him in Vilnius, in the kibbutz.

We were together in Lwow for a short time. Later the war broke out and he was conscripted into the Soviet army. C’est tout – that’s all. He died in the army. Everyone knew: they sent them all to the front without any kind of training, as cannon fodder.

After I returned from Vilnius I settled with my father in that room at the Seweryns’. A month after the Germans came in [the Germans captured Lwow on 30th June 1941], a pogrom of Jews took place, to honor Petliura 42. The Ukrainians organized a pogrom of Jews 43.

That’s when my father died. First they took everyone to nearby forests, outside of Lwow. They forced them to dig their graves and shot them. I was also in that pogrom [Mrs. Wygodzka was arrested during the pogrom].

I managed to get out of the prison on Lackiego Street because I showed them the document I had. The German looked at me, I was young, blond, blue-eyed, maybe I didn’t look like a Jew to him. Anyway, he read ‘place of birth: Magdeburg’ and said, ‘you shouldn’t waste your life,’ and asked them to lead me out of the prison, along with two other girls.

I was all by myself, after Father died in that pogrom. I was living in Lwow, at the Seweryns’. I had to go to the Germans, because I was looking for a job, I didn’t have anything to live off. They gave me a job cleaning windows, later in a laundry. It was an army unit.

The airmen who went off to bomb the Russian part of Poland [the Soviet occupation zone], or even further, came back dirty, they had lice. We’d get food from them, lunch, bread. I used to divide this bread among my friends, because there was such horrible hunger in Lwow.

Linka, my friend from the organization was in Lwow, as was Joziek, another friend form the organization. I don’t remember if I paid Mrs. Seweryn for the room with bread, too. It’s possible, I don’t remember.

When they started setting up the ghetto 44, I ran away from Lwow. I was afraid of the ghetto, because I knew if they built a wall around us, or surrounded us with wire, then they’d have control over us. I decided to go to my mother, to Sosnowiec.

The only document I had was my gymnasium school-leaving certificate. I had this special ink which I used to erase all the data from the document and filled in a new name: ‘Emilia Dutkowska, Religion: Roman Catholic.’ I only left ‘born in Magdeburg.’ And with that document I set on my way from Lwow to Sosnowiec [in December 1941].

I stopped horse-drawn wagons, today this is called ‘hitchhiking,’ they offered me rides. I remember that I made the sign of the cross each time we passed a cross, so the drivers wouldn’t think I was Jewish. I was extremely careful...

I stopped in Sanok [approx. 220 km southeast of Cracow] along the way, where I had some friends with whom I was exchanging letters. Awrumek Gurfein and Marta, I don’t remember her last name, they were in the same organization as I was, in Akiba.

Before the war we used to meet at summer camps. I wanted to see them, because nobody knew what the following day would bring. I was depressed after my father’s and brother’s deaths, I wanted to cry on a friend’s shoulder. I was in Sanok for one day. Marta gave me her picture as a keepsake, in the picture she’s holding her little sister. Both Marta and Awrumek didn’t survive the Holocaust.

I reached a settlement, I think it was called Zloty Potok [approx. 20 km southeast of Czestochowa]. It was Christmas by then, it was December 1941. I could see the lights of a local recreation hall from far away. I entered that hall and there was some boy sitting there and decorating it.

I told him I was Jewish and didn’t have any money. I asked him if he could lead me to the Reich [Polish lands incorporated into the Third Reich – for example Sosnowiec and Katowice], because I knew that the border was nearby [border between the General Governorship and the Third Reich], but I didn’t know exactly where I could cross it.

And he agreed, no money, nothing, he didn’t want to rape me, he was decent and very kind. He guided me across the border. We were walking at night, it was very cold. At some point he said: ‘Here, on the other side, it’s the Reich.’ I said goodbye to him and kept on walking.

I remembered I had some distant relatives in Olkusz and I went there. They gave me money, so I could have it for the bus and train fares. I bought a ticket and went to Sosnowiec. I didn’t know it was after curfew [at the beginning of the occupation the curfew, the ban on walking out on the street, was enforced between 7pm and 5am].

I reached Deblinska Street number 13, where Estusia was living with her parents. Out on the stairs someone said to me, ‘The lights are not working.’ I looked and it was Estusia. We hugged each other and cried very much. She opened the door and I saw that my mother was there and both my little sisters. I was very, very sad, because I had left with my father and brother and came back alone.

The Germans had a detailed list of everyone who crossed from the General Governorship to the Reich, because all those people had to apply for a ‘Kennkarte’ 45. The Germans summoned them to a meeting point. I received an order to show up there.

We, the young ones, were sent to a labor camp. There were women, some very young ones, some with children, who were immediately sent to Auschwitz. But we didn’t know about it then. So in February 1942 I was already at the Oberaltstadt camp 46.

Today it is called Horejsi Stare Mesto, near Trutnov [a city approx. 100 km northeast of Prague, near the Polish-Czech border] in the Sudeten Mountains. At first it was a labor camp. We were taken to a flax factory, it was called Kluge.

The factory produced thread. The work hours were, for example, from 2.30am to 2.30pm. And then you had to clean the camp, scrub the floors, do all kinds of things, peel the turnips. Turnips – the kind you give to cows, that’s what we ate. We lived in horrible barracks, full of bugs. There were some 16 girls to a room. The rooms were small, double beds.

There were only girls at the camp. I became good friends with some of them. For example there was this Lunia Kronental, I think. She was from Bedzin. She gave me her picture as a keepsake with the inscription: ‘Eni, I want us to be able to recollect these times soon, or maybe forget – which would you prefer?

To my friend from factory times. Lunia.’ Lunia survived the war. After the war she lived on those conquered lands [so-called regained territories, which used to belong to Germany before WWII, incorporated into Poland after the war]. She got married to a simple tailor, she later went to Canada with him. That’s where she died.

It was a camp only for Jews, but around us [probably in surrounding camps] there were Russians and Frenchmen and English soldiers from Africa [most probably POWs from the African front]. There were Belgians, who, I think, volunteered for that labor. They were not Jews, they were normal people. I don’t know where they [other, non-Jewish workers in the factory] were living, because we only saw them at the factory.

English soldiers would, from time to time, throw cigarettes to us and out of gratitude I’d throw them pictures of myself and my family, so they wouldn’t think we were some criminals, but that normal people had been rounded up at that camp.

Those English and French soldiers showed great solidarity with us. Once this Zosia’s head was shaved, because they found out that she had been writing a letter to some Frenchman or Englishman. And as a sign of solidarity they all shaved their heads.

We were allowed to write letters once a month at the camp, we could also receive letters. Estusia used to write to me, all the letters were in German. We had arranged a kind of code, so we could tell each other things.

I found out that a ghetto had been created in Sosnowiec in the following months, after I had been sent to camp. The ghetto was in Srodula, between Sosnowiec and Bedzin. [Editor’s note: Srodula was incorporated into Sosnowiec in 1914.] My family was moved into the ghetto.

I remember that I kept writing about how horrible the camp was and my Estusia would write me back saying that I should be glad and should not complain, but she didn’t tell me about Auschwitz. Fewer and fewer letters came to the girls at camp. Only when a transport from Auschwitz arrived, did we find out what was happening. That was in late 1943.

I was thinking that as long as the Germans needed our work they would keep us there. So I started thinking about getting my mother and sisters to the camp. There were a thousand of us at the camp and all of the others looked at me like at some idiot.

I went to the ‘spiennmajster’ [German: Spinnmeister], the technical manager at the factory, and I asked him for a requisition [allotment of work] for my mother and sisters. I said that I would put my hands into the machine if he didn’t give it to me, because I couldn’t live there without my mother and sisters. And he wrote such a requisition for me, I sent it to Mother.

This ‘Lagerführer’ [camp commander] of ours once went to bring some more girls to the camp. I asked her then to bring my mother and both my sisters. I gave her a tablecloth which I had from home. She accepted the tablecloth, went there and brought Zosia.

She told me she couldn’t run a kindergarten or a retirement home at the camp. Zosia was 13 then. That was the best age. Of course, Zosia for many years felt offended that I greeted her: ‘What, only you?!’ – that I wasn’t happy enough. But she later forgave me.

Meanwhile Mother kept walking around Sosnowiec begging to be taken to the camp. Finally, someone got bored with her and put her on some transport. They managed to reach me before the final deportations from the ghetto in Srodula. All the other family members: Uncle Tobiasz and Aunt Mania, Estusia, Uncle Chaim and his wife, Aunt Cesia, they were all taken to Auschwitz and they all died.

I was at the camp with my mother and sisters until the end of the war. And we all survived. My sisters worked very hard at that camp. Even the little one, Jadzia, she had to push these heavy carts with the cotton spools, she cleaned the toilets.

Mother worked on the machine for some time and later this ‘Lagerführer’ allowed her to work in the kitchen. It was easier, because she didn’t have to go to the factory and there was one more plate of soup.

Doctor Mengele [Mengele, Josef (1911 - ? in hiding), a member of the SS, a doctor, performed criminal medical experiments in the Auschwitz extermination camp] came once and there was a selection then. I hid Jadzia on the top bunk.

Even this ‘Lagerführer’ didn’t turn her in. We had to march naked in front of them, several people from the SS. Mother somehow passed. They didn’t bother her [because of her age]. Several girls were sent to Auschwitz then, the sick ones. 

We were lucky that our camp was not evacuated, because during evacuations many people died of exhaustion, diseases 47. Almost all the surrounding camps were evacuated. At the end we had to dig trenches before the Russians came.

We were there until 8th May [on 8th May 1945 Germany signed the act of unconditional surrender], even a little bit longer, because we didn’t know where to go. The Czech locked up this ‘Lagerführer’ and those SS-women. There were all put on trial later in Czechoslovakia. I even testified in the trial of our ‘Lagerführer,’ her name was Hoffman.

After the war

After we left camp I went to Salzburg [Austrian city, near the border with Germany, some 250 km from Vienna] for some time. Together with my mother and sisters, because we didn’t know where to go, we wanted to go to Israel.

In Salzburg we lived in stables which were adapted for sleeping. [Mrs. Wygodzka was in a ‘DP’ – ‘displaced persons’ camp, for persons taken to the Third Reich for forced labor and liberated from concentration camps, who did not return to their countries after the end of WWII.]

From Salzburg we went to Germany. We were in the French zone [the area of defeated Germany was divided into 4 occupation zones: British, American, Soviet and French], in Jordanbad [approx. 100 km south of Stuttgart].

The nuns were running a house for DPs there. It was a very old place, very beautiful. It was called Knajp Kur. Hadasa contacted us and invited us there. She got married to Motek Krzesiwo.

He had survived together with her using false South American documents 48. Hadasa and Motek were interned as foreigners in a special camp. They survived the camp, they survived the occupation. In Jordanbad Hadasa gave birth to her first son. I was there when he was born.

I met my husband in Germany, still in 1945. I was at the camp in Oberaltstadt with his wife, Rena Domb. We were friends with Rena. She told me about him, about her family. And right after the war ended, Rena went to Poland and I stayed.

In Jordanbad I found out about Wygodzki, that he was in hospital. I went there to pass on Rena’s greetings. He was in hospital in Gauting [approx. 5km southwest of Munich], sick with tuberculosis. That’s how we met. Well, and we fell in love.

My husband was from Bedzin. His name was Szyja. Stanislaw was his pen name before the war. His parents were Icchak and Rywa-Brajndla, nee Werdiger. I know that Rywa-Brajndla’s brother, Samuel Werdiger, was living in Paris with his wife Anii and daughter Luci.

My husband also had other relatives in France: some male cousin. My husband had three younger brothers, their names were: Lejb, Leon and Aronek. When someone asked Rywa-Brajndla how she was doing, she’d answer: ‘My husband is a Zionist, my four sons are communists, how can I be doing?’

Stanislaw was a leftist. He was expelled from school two months before his high-school final exams. It was the Firstenberg gymnasium. He was sent to prison for promoting communist literature. So he had no education.

He was self-taught. But he was a man of great knowledge. He translated from German, from Yiddish. Until the outbreak of the war he was working as a bookkeeper at a zinc white factory in Bedzin. He started writing in the 1920s.

His first book was published in 1935 in Moscow, it was poetry [the ‘Apel’ (‘Assembly’) volume of poetry was published in Moscow in 1933]. Later more volumes of poetry were published in Poland [‘Chleb powszedni’ (‘Daily Bread’), Cracow 1934]. He cooperated with leftist literary journals [publications in ‘Miesiecznik Literacki’ edited by Aleksander Wat, numbers 11, 9, September 1930].

The name of my husband’s first wife was Anka. They had a small, beautiful daughter, Inka. They lived in Bedzin. During the war they were deported from the ghetto in Srodula: his father, mother, wife, daughter, two of his brothers.

My husband had earlier arranged some luminal [luminal – an anti-seizure medication, causes drowsiness, here: luminal as poison]. And he gave it to his wife and child and took some himself. They arrived at Auschwitz.

The wife and child were dead, but the dose must have been too low for him and so my husband survived, they tattooed him while he was still sleeping. Everyone else from his family was murdered in Auschwitz. He was in the sick ward first.

They later gave him a job, carrying out dead bodies. He was evacuated to other camps. He was in Auschwitz, Oranienburg 49, Sachsenhausen 50, Dachau 51, Freiman [Editor’s note: a camp with this name has not been identified] – he was liberated there in 1945, he was sick with tuberculosis, taken to hospital.

Marriage and later life

We got married on 11th March 1945, when he was dismissed from hospital. In Germany, in Feldafing near Munich [approx. 35 km southwest of Munich]. It was a civil marriage. My husband’s acquaintances, who were with him at the camp, organized a party at their house, in Feldafing.

We stayed at Knajp Kur until 1947 when my husband was well enough to return to Poland. Both my sisters and my mother went to Palestine straight from Germany. Zosia left with a youth group in 1945 or 1946. It was called Aliyah Noar 52.

It was the last transport for Palestine, the next one went to Cyprus. The British were not admitting anyone any longer 53. Mom went with Jadzia. They left in 1947 legally, with papers, and they got there without problems.

I wanted to go to Palestine, too, but my husband, because he was a Polish writer and a communist, believed his place was in Poland. He had fought for this socialism all his conscious life and when it came in Poland, he wanted to keep on building it.

When we were getting married my husband put forward this condition – that we would go back to Poland. And I agreed, because I loved him. People were leaving for Palestine, for America, going to all kinds of places.

Nobody was going back to Poland, because they knew there was anti-Semitism there. I found out about the Kielce pogrom 54 in Jordanbad. They talked about it, but not that much. And in spite of the Kielce pogrom, my husband decided to return to Poland. So we arrived in Warsaw.

When we arrived in Poland in 1947 we were forced to change our personal data. The authorities explained that first and last names should be Polish and not other. Other meant Jewish. There was even an ordinance about this.

My husband changed his name to Stanislaw and I – to Irena. As the names of my parents I put: Barbara and Henryk Lewicki, instead of Beitner, and of my husband’s: Barbara, nee Balicka, and Ignacy. My place of birth was changed from ‘in Magdeburg’ to ‘in Sosnowiec.’ It was all falsified like this in all documents. Only now did I manage to change the data through the court, it took me two years.

In Warsaw at first we lived with my cousin, Natalia Maskalan. When we arrived, she helped us. She was living with her husband in some house in Mokotow [a southern district of Warsaw]. By the end of 1947 we received a room in a building belonging to the Ministry of Culture.

My husband started working for the Ministry of Culture then. When Ewa was about to be born, that was in 1955, we got an apartment in a building belonging to LOT [Polish Airlines] at number 9 Warynskiego Street. We were there until the end of our stay in Poland.

My husband was working at the Ministry of Culture for some time, later only at home. All he’d do was write. I don’t remember when he stopped working at the Ministry. He wrote by hand, later typed it on a typewriter. He asked me to proofread his writing, I did the editing, later typed it on the typewriter.

And after he submitted it at the publishing house, I’d do the subsequent revisions, which he checked. He usually agreed with me. I often threw out lots of things, because he sometimes repeated some things.

At first I worked at ‘Przeglad samochodowy’ [‘Automobile Review’ – a supplement of ‘Przeglad Techniczny,’ a technical-scientific journal, published since 1866, since 1945 as a weekly]. I collected materials about automobiles in the office.

I later worked at ‘Ksiazka i Wiedza’ [‘Book and Knowledge’ publishing cooperative, established in 1948], doing technical revisions, after all I didn’t have a proper education [to write texts by myself].

I worked until the birth of my son. In 1952 I gave birth to Adam. Later to my daughter, Ewa. She is three years younger than Adam. Almost to a day. They’re all born on the 13th of January. My husband on the 13th, Ewa on the 13th, Adam on the 14th.

I wasn’t involved politically. I wasn’t in the Party 55, but I didn’t rebel against the authorities either. I didn’t go to all those discussions at the writers’ club. That was my husband’s domain. My husband was in the Party.

After Khrushchev’s 56 declaration at the Twentieth Party Congress 57 his eyes were opened. He didn’t return his party membership card, but he openly spoke his mind during meetings. He wrote the book ‘Zatrzymany do wyjasnienia’ [‘Detained until explanation,’ novel published by ‘Kultura’ in Paris in 1968 and in London in 1979]. It was also translated into Hebrew [Israel, 1968, Maariv publishing house] and into German [Germany, 1969, Piper Verlag].

After the events in Hungary 58, after Nagy 59 was murdered, we submitted the paperwork necessary to get permission to go to Israel for good, but they refused.

But I always received a passport [in communist Poland one had to receive permission for each trip abroad – one would then receive a passport which had to be turned in to the authorities after returning to Poland] when I used to go to Israel as a tourist, to visit my mother and sisters. Before emigrating there, I went there some five or six times. I never had any problems, I would go alone or with my children.

Mother died in 1966. All those years I was in touch with my mother and sisters. Both sisters got married. Their husbands were born in Israel, but their parents were from Poland. My sisters didn’t visit me often in Poland. Jadzia came once in 1958.

She only visited me again recently, a month ago. Zosia came here several months ago for some celebrations. She was also in Katowice for the opening of the monument of the Katowice synagogue [a monument with the inscription: ‘to honor the memory of Jews, the residents of Katowice – murdered by the German occupant in 1939-1945’ was opened between Mickiewicza and Skargi Streets in Katowice in July 1988].

In 1963 my cousin from Israel, Fredka [Rozia Oksenhendler’s daughter] visited us. She had run away from Poland during the war, to Hungary 60 and later went from Hungary to Palestine. She came for the 20th anniversary celebrations [20th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising] 61.

At that time you could already sense anti-Semitic feelings 62, the number of people who were allowed to come for the celebrations from Israel was limited. But there was a delegation from Israel. It included Gideon Hausner [Hausner, Gideon (1915-1990): main prosecutor in A. Eichmann’s trial in 1961], Eichmann’s 63 prosecutor, Rabbi Goren, people from the Israeli Embassy. I went to Auschwitz with them. It was the first time I was in Auschwitz.

My husband and I never concealed our identity. My husband wrote about Jewish issues, about the Holocaust. Everyone knew he was a Jew. Our friends were also Jewish, but we were in touch with some Poles as well. My husband was in the [Polish] Writers’ Association, so he knew lots of writers. We talked about the Holocaust with our friends. Whatever we talked about, we’d always go back to the war.

I wasn’t a traditional Jewish housekeeper. I brought my children up in a secular manner. I told them about their heritage. I even remember this conversation with my son, who was five or six years old at that time, when one of his friends told him he was a Jew.

He came home and asked what a Jew was. So we explained to him that he was a Jew and that we were Jews. And because he had listened to our conversations, which he was not supposed to hear, he asked whether he and his sister would have been gassed, too, if they had lived during Nazi times. That was his question.

Even before 1967 64 they [communist authorities] spied on us. We’d be invited to the Israeli Embassy, for example for Chanukkah or something. They’d always follow us. Once they even came to our apartment.

They asked my husband about his relationship with, I think, the secretary of the Israeli Embassy. And my husband said that all he was interested in was literature. And indeed that’s how it was.

My husband never wanted to go to Israel, but in 1967, he decided to go. Anti-Semitism knew no limits then. We left in 1968, in January. The entire period preceding our departure was horrible. We were followed, our phone was being tapped.

Even our son wanted to leave, because he had experienced anti-Semitism at school, for example children would write in his notebooks: ‘Go away to Israel.’ My daughter experienced anti-Semitism, too.

There was fear [in 1967] like during the occupation. I was afraid to go to the Dutch Embassy, because I thought they’d arrest me. There was no Israeli Embassy by then, because they had been chased away [in June 1967 Polish authorities broke off diplomatic relations with Israel, following the example set by the USSR].

I decided to go to Vienna to learn at the Israeli Embassy whether they were admitting Jews from Poland and, if they were, whether my husband would be able to get a job there. They only told me they couldn’t promise anything. We went to Vienna by train.

At the airport they [representatives of the Polish opposition] wanted my husband to talk about what was happening in Poland for Radio Free Europe 65, but he didn’t want to. The same evening we were on a plane to Israel.

In Israel, Jadzia, who was living near the airport, took us in. We stayed with her for some two months. And then we went to Ulpan [school of Hebrew, founded in 1951, still operating] near Netanya. It was a Hebrew school together with accommodation, food, everything.

So we didn’t have to worry about cooking, shopping, especially since we didn’t have any money. We didn’t have to pay for accommodation, for food. We spent some five months there. I was in the same class with my son, so I had to try hard not to embarrass myself.

My husband’s car accident, which happened while we were still at Ulpan, was a huge problem for us. My husband went to a meeting to Kfar Saba [city in Central Israel, north of Tel Aviv]. My husband was the most seriously injured of those who were in the car.

There was also this doctor, Dawid Lazar, a journalist from ‘Maariv’ [evening paper, published since 1948], Efraim Sten, a radio journalist, who was driving and my son, Adam, who luckily wasn’t injured. My husband was in hospital for a long time afterwards, he kept shouting ‘moja noga, moja noga’ [Polish, ‘my leg, my leg’] and in Hebrew ‘noga’ means ‘planet,’ so the doctors didn’t understand what was going on.

We were also allotted an apartment then. And immediately after our arrival, we didn’t yet have time to settle down, we received notification that we have to pay back the credit. It was very difficult for us financially. We borrowed money from one sister, then from the other one and then we paid it back.

Our apartment was in Givataim [a city east of Tel Aviv, a part of the Gush Dan metropolis]. We liked it best, because it was closest to my sister, Jadzia. There were six buildings there, built for new immigrants, who came from everywhere: Africa, England, France, Morocco, Poland, Russia, Lithuania.

It was the only apartment we had in Israel. We were very pleased with it. When we started living there, there was no road, just sand. But a beautiful city was built later on. We later bought this apartment, because it was possible to pay some small sum and the ownership of the apartment was transferred to us.

In Poland my husband used to earn money in one specific way – he published books. But in Israel you wouldn’t receive much even for writing that was published. We had to get by somehow, so I studied for nine months at a school for beauticians in Tel Aviv.

It was very difficulty for me, because all those terms were in Hebrew, I didn’t understand them, so I had to learn them by heart. But I somehow passed the exam and received my certificate. I took out a loan and purchased all the equipment necessary to open a beauty salon at home.

At first I waited for a long time, almost for a year, for my first customers. I worked very hard, I had learned how to work hard in Poland. I had lots of customers later. They were government employees, some executives’ wives, storekeepers. They were very nice and it was thanks to them that I learned how to speak Hebrew, because the language had still been foreign to me before.

We spoke Polish at home, until the end, always. And with my sisters, after some time, I started speaking Hebrew. Not always though. When Jadzia visited me recently we spoke Polish, so she would remember it, because she was only a child during the occupation. But when Zosia calls me from Israel we speak Hebrew, because it’s easier for her.

My husband used to write a bit. Mostly for ‘Maariv.’ His book ‘Zatrzymany do wyjasnienia’ was also published. And he started working for Yad Vashem 66. He prepared definitions for Encyclopedia Judaica for them, he also edited memoirs.

My husband was displeased with many things in Israel: their attitude to Arabs and those Orthodox people, their power in the country. When there were elections we always used to vote for the Labor Party [Israeli Labor Party, created in 1968, social-democratic, leaders: I. Rabin, Sh. Peres, E. Barak].

My husband missed Poland very much, he missed his friends and his past. He never really belonged anywhere, he didn’t go out. He rarely went to those meetings of the Writers’ Association, because he decided that all those people keep talking about themselves and not about some topics which could interest him. He got kind of sidetracked in life.

We were friends with people from Poland. They were from the previous waves of emigration. There was a Polish bookstore in Tel Aviv. So Mr. Neustein with his wife, Ada [the owners of the bookstore], organized some parties at their house for interesting people, for writers who came from around the world.

My husband had one cousin in Israel, who emigrated in the late 1920s. His name was Wygodzki too and he lived in Petach Tikvah [a city in central Israel, north of Tel Aviv-Yaffa], nearby. We met from time to time, not too often. He was religious. When he visited us he’d never eat anything, just drink water. He had a wife, two daughters. He was a calm, very nice man. He worked in a health insurance company, I think. And then they all died.

And from my side, I have a large family in Israel. In addition to my sisters, there are lots of male and female cousins, their children, the second, third generations born there. Bar and bat mitzvahs were always and experience for me there, because I would meet my family.

I was in close touch with some of my cousins. They were: Abram, Cwi – Herman, Nachman or Nacek [Chaim Beitner’s sons], Fredka [Rozia Oksenhendler’s daughter], Fredzia and her brother Kuba [Miriam Bruk’s children].

Fredia Rappaport, nee Bruk. Her husband, Frycek, was a charming boy. He came from Bielsko [today: Bielsko-Biala, 86 km southwest of Cracow] from a family which made wool. The name Rappaport has something to do with wool. My cousins didn’t change their names to Hebrew ones. They’re still called Beitner. And the women took their husband’s names.

My daughter was 12 when we got there from Poland. She went to elementary school in Israel, it was near our house. And my son was at boarding school. It was called Hadsim, near Natanji. He was 16 when he came to Israel.

He graduated from high school and had to go to the army. There were two types of army duty: regular and kibbutz. So he chose the other kind and he was in a kibbutz. It was in Golan [Golan Hills – a mountainous area between Syria and Israel] and they guarded Israel’s borders there.

It wasn’t tough duty. My son would come home from time to time, I’d go and visit him. Adam took part in the Yom Kippur War 67. He was seriously wounded. He was almost dying. After he was wounded he stayed in the kibbutz for some time.

Then problems with the children began. They were in a different world, climate, mentality, everything was foreign to them. Although they tried to plant their roots there, it wasn’t working out. My daughter graduated from gymnasium and attended the Michlal LeMorim LeOmanut higher school of painting in Tel Aviv for three years, because she was quite talented. It was a painting school for teachers. But she didn’t graduate from that school.

Meanwhile my son had decided to leave Israel for good [in 1975 or 1976]. He married a Swiss girl [in 1985]. They traveled all over the world. They were in India, New Zealand, Jamaica, South America. Their daughter, her name is Sunshine, was born in New Zealand.

My husband followed everything that was happening in Poland closely [the 1980s, the period of democratic opposition in Poland, the creation of Solidarity] 68. He was a communist. That’s how his life was. He only realized that he was on the wrong side when it was too late.

We were very happy when communism fell in Poland 69. My husband additionally disliked communists, because his brother, Leon, who was a communist, had been murdered by Stalin. Leon and his wife, Genia, also Jewish, left Poland for the Soviet Union before the war. That’s where their two sons were born: Seriorza and Roman. Leon was murdered in 1936 or 1937 when there were so-called cleansings in Russia 70.

After some time in Spain, my daughter met a Frenchman whom she married. They’ve been living in the south of France for ten years now. They have two daughters. Satia is now 13 and Lotus is two years younger, so she’s eleven.

Both are beautiful, talented, they paint, they’re excellent students. They’re very cheerful, charming.  My daughter’s husband is very kind, everything is going well for them. They have an ecological farm: goats, chickens, vegetables. They have a greenhouse. My daughter also paints when she finds the time.

My son has remained a traveler. During one of his stays in India he decided to teach himself magnetic biotherapy. My son and his family have been traveling all their lives. Sunshine, who is today 20 years old, is in Martinique. And my son with my daughter-in-law are in France. They spent half a year in Poland. They’ll probably come again this winter.

My husband died in 1992, on 8th May, on liberation day [anniversary of the end of WWII]. He died at night, in hospital. I stayed in Israel for many years afterward. Finally, I decided that if I wanted to keep in touch with my children, I should go to Europe. I decided I’d never return to Israel.

In 2000 I decided to go to my daughter. But it turned out I wasn’t feeling well there. They live in the countryside, I had no acquaintances. I didn’t know the language. I could speak Hebrew to the children, because Ewa had taught them Hebrew.

But the four of them were a kind of closed unit and I didn’t want to interfere. So I decided to go to Warsaw, see how it would be here, whether life would be possible, because I had never imagined I’d return to Poland after I left [in 1968].

So I got here, here I am and I’m not doing too badly. Not good, because I don’t feel ties to Israel, Poland or France. I’m somewhat suspended, neither here nor there. I am an Israeli citizen, I don’t have a Polish passport.

Polish citizenship was taken away from me [in 1968 Jews emigrating from Poland were deprived of Polish citizenship, they only received so-called travel documents, without the right of returning to Poland]. I could try to regain it 71, but I’m not sure if it’s worth it. I’m also put off by the same things I was put off by in Israel. For example fanatics, who are the same everywhere.

So this is all difficult, especially since I’m alone. I know I don’t have much time until the end, so I’m happy every time my son or daughter come and visit me. My daughter will visit me soon, in the fall, with her family. Adam has been here twice since I came to Poland.

I also have relatives here. There is the son of my cousin, the closest one, Natalia [Maskalan]. I don’t impose myself on them, because they are young people, the same age as my children, they have their own joys and sorrows, their own families.

There are quite a few people I can talk to from time to time. For example from literary circles. I don’t participate in the life of the Jewish religious community in Warsaw. I never have. I don’t see why I should begin now.

I’ve been to the Jewish theater, Grynberg [Grynberg, Henryk (born 1936), writer and poet, the theme of the Holocaust dominates his writing] came, so I went to a meeting with him. I read a lot. Mostly about the Holocaust. I somehow can’t leave the past behind.

Glossary

Golda Osherovna Gutner
Kiev
Ukraine
Interviewer: Yelena Tsarovskaya
Date of interview: November 2001

My family backgrownd

Growing up

During the war

After the war

My family backgrownd

My name is Golda Osherovna Gutner I was born on August 15, 1916, in the town of Konotop, Ukraine.
Let me start with my grandfather, my mother’s father. I don’t know where he came from. I only know that he was born into a very poor Jewish family. His name was Boruch Lurye. He was a tinsmith and owned a workshop with work-hands in Konotop. The buckets and other articles they made they took to fairs. Mother told me that as a young man my grandfather was a solider. At that time soldiers were to serve in the army for 25 years. He got very sick in the army. According to my mother, the doctors told my grandfather that he should go to St. Petersburg, to the tsar himself, and get a release from the army. I don’t know who received him in St. Petersburg in reality, but he took his documents about kidney disease there; he was transferred to the reserve and returned to Konotop, to his wife. Grandfather died at the age of 48, in 1905, from his kidney disease. In those times young people created families. Grandfather was around 17 years old when he married my grandmother, Fruma-Tsivye. (I don’t know her maiden name). She was around 16 years old. She was a housewife. They had 14 children, but only six of them survived: three sons and three daughters. The eldest child was Soreh-Liba, born in 1875. Then Meishko was born 1888, then Rakhil and Avram were born, and Shlemka was born in 1899. I have practically no memories of my grandmother Fruma-Tsivye, because she died at the end of 1918-1919, when I was too young.
Keeping order around the house of such a large family and feeding the workers of – all of these duties rested on the shoulders of my grandmother Fruma-Tsivye. They also had cows. Their children certainly helped the parents. Everyone was working. They owned nothing but the workshop. Aunt Soreh-Liba, for instance, soldered together with her father’s workers.
Soreh-Liba, the eldest daughter of my grandparents, married a worker from grandfather’s workshop – Vengerov. They were in love with each other; when he was in the army, she waited for him. After grandfather’s death Vengerov owned the workshop. Brothers Meishko, Avram and Shlemka first worked for Vengerov. But Vengerov had a difficult character, and the brothers organized their own workshop. They were great friends. Unfortunately, Meishko was a sportsman and died at the age of 37 because of a heart disease. Then Avram and Shlemka began to provide for his family (two daughters and wife Beilya). Soon, Avram got sick with leukemia. He died either in 1932 or 1933. He left son Boris (named in honor of grandfather), daughter Fruma (named in honor of grandmother), and the wife. So, Shlemka alone provided for his own family and the families of his brothers. My father said that his ancestors came from Austro-Hungary. His grandfather was a rabbi (I don’t know his name). He was somebody special – he was buried in a crypt, with a lamp always burning in it. That rabbi had three sons. One of them was my grandfather, Ele Gurevich. His brothers came to visit us from Kharkov in 1920-s. I was named in honor of father’s grandmother. My mother said that my great-grandmother Golda came to visit us too. She liked to drink tea very much, so she always carried her own kettle with her and asked people to boil tea for her only in this kettle. As she was drinking tea, she always said in Yiddish, “Grandmother Golda loves tea”. Grandfather Ele Gurevich was a watchmaker, and his wife, grandmother Sima – a housewife. Besides my father, they also had daughters: Fanya, Liza, Gita, and son Shura (Mulya). They lived in the town of Radul, Belarus. During the Civil War there was a White Guard gang, so around 1921-1922 they moved from Belarus to Konotop (because life was quieter here). In the beginning, they lived with us, and then uncle Meishko found a flat for them and a little store where they opened a coffee-shop. All of this was during NEP∗.
Grandmother Sima was a brunette, but already grey, while grandfather was blond. He had a beard with grey hairs in it. My father looked like grandfather, but he was brunette; and I look like my father. I have the same form of the nose like my grandfather. Grandmother was a tall thin woman, who always wore long skirts, reaching her heals. Nobody else dressed like this in Konotop. She never wore any wigs, and I don’t remember anybody else in our town who would wear a wig. My grandfather wore regular clothes. On his head he always wore a yarmulke, but I remember he always wore a cap on top. When he came to us, he took off the cap, but left his yarmulke on. Grandfather visited us often. He liked playing with us. We played cards a lot. I remember when I was young and played him, if I lost, he always hugged me and laughed heartily. Grandfather died around 1928, but grandmother Sima died first. I think she died because of pneumonia. When grandmother was buried grandfather got sick. He was rushed to the hospital. I remember visiting him there, bringing him food, and he looked very content. Around 3 weeks after grandmother’s death he also died. I remember his funeral very well. He lied on straw and was buried without a coffin. His grave was covered with wooden boards. Then we took off our shoes, which is called “siveh” [this Jewish rite of farewell with decedent- seven days of mourning], and sat on the floor for the whole week (I exactly not litter what it is. Know only that was beside Jews such tradition). Gradually, these traditions died away. When my grandparents died, special white shrouds (“takhrikhim”) were sewn. Special people sewed them by hand. But afterwards there were no such people any more. However, when in 1957 my father died because of cancer, such a “takhrikhim” was sewn for him, and he was wrapped in a taleth (a special cover for Jewish men during prayer), and a costume was put on top of it. By the way, we took this taleth to evacuation with us.
My father, Osher Isaac Elevich Gurevich, was born in 1883 in Belarus. There he got his education. I think he finished a cheder and then learned Russian on his own, this was it is required for life and work. He was a very good tailor. My father sewed clothes for men: coats, special costumes, and military coats for officers. After the revolution, father worked in an artel for some time, but he did not like it there. So, he began to work alone and pay taxes. Before the war, in 1930-s, he got some additional training and began to sew for women, because, he said, women always ordered more than men. When he was young he never sat at one place for a long time, but lived and worked in different places, and in the beginning of the 20th century he found himself in Konotop. Father grew up near the Dnepr River. He was a good swimmer and an oarsman. In Radul, their house stood almost over the river. When revolutionaries had their meetings, my father helped them cross the Dnepr. He was huge and was often standing on duty for them. Right before the October Revolution, father rescued some revolutionary in Konotop. He put that man among the workers of his workshop, and the tsarist police did not find him.
My mother, Chaya Lurye, rented a small store and traded in various small articles there. In that store she met my father. Then my father met mother’s brother Meishko. They became good friends. Brothers liked sports very much – there was a “cult of muscles” in the family. Every time a guy would come to ask for my mother’s hand, Meishko, as her brother, would always try that guy’s jacket on. If the jacket was small for him, it meant the guy was not developed physically enough (this was general jacket, Meishko wanted that husband daughter's was physically strong person, either as this himself). Gurevich’s jacket was too big for Meishko. My parents married in autumn 1907. I not know was beside them wedding. My father was a raven-head with black eyes.
He was not a party member, but he sympathized with revolutionists. Probably due to being a good tailor, he had to work for his boss (when I was born he already had his own workshop with hire-hands). But he always said, “A boss is a boss”.
My mother, Chaya Borukhovna Lurye, was born in 1885 in Konotop. She was not tall; she had blue eyes and blond hair. I think she finished cheder, because she was quite literate in Yiddish. I also think she learned Russian on her own. Just like everybody else in the family, she was quite religious; she had a special seat in the synagogue. When she went to the synagogue, she wore a special outfit. I remember she had a scarf, which was beautiful. Mother always celebrated all Jewish holidays. She was a fanatic before the war, but not after the war. We never ate pork at home. We always prepared to every holiday. In autumn she bought geese and fed them well until Passover. Before Passover, no matter what the weather was, she hired somebody to whitewash the whole house. Then she cleaned the house of all “khumyts” (leaven; according to the Jewish tradition, there should be nothing made of leaven in the house on Passover). We had special crockery for Passover. We always made special Passover wine of cherry. My mother made huge jars of such wine. My grandparents would come to the first Passover seder. We all sat around a big table, and there were a lot of delicious things on the table – so many that I don’t even know how people could eat all of them! There was stuffed fish and other delicious things. Foods for the whole Passover week were cooked on geese fat only. My mother also had a lot of pans and she cooked things with fat, with flour, with poppy, and with matzos. Special people (I not know who were these people, but think that they worked in synagogue) baked matzos for Passover. At the seder, my father sat on special pillows, and brother Boris asked the four traditional questions (he studied in cheder for some time, but there were no cheders after the revolution). For the whole evening people would sit there, eat and tell interesting stories. All of this was done in Yiddish. We all spoke Yiddish at home. Yiddish was the native language for all of my relatives. I also remember there was a holiday when a chicken was rotated over head. Mother would give us all chickens, then she would put them in a basket and I went through the town to shoichet (Jewish ritual butcher). Mother told me how a chicken’s head should be put under the wing so that there would be no blood. She trusted me with money to pay the shoichet, even though I was only ten years old. But we were very independent at that age; mother taught us to do everything: clean the flat, wash windows (every ten days), clean the dust, and wash every leaf of the plants we grew (she liked them). We baked bread every week. She bolted flour and made dough, and I had to knead dough with my fists. I once asked her, “How long should I be doing this?” and my mother answered, “Until beads of sweat appear in the other corner of the room. Every Friday we did a major cleaning of the house.
Mother was a housewife.  She only hired a babysitter when she gave birth to two twins. When I was born there was no babysitter. There were no water pipes, and when we had to wash we brought water from the well. In summer we carried water ourselves, but in winter we hired a special man. In winter we washed clothes in the river in ice-holes. We carried things on slides. We always were clean. We also washed in bath once a week.
Mother had very good music ear – she sang and danced well. When she was young she was invited to Jewish weddings that it there sang. In Konotop she’s all knew and much liked to listen as she sings.She liked both Jewish and Ukrainian songs. Aunt Soreh-Liba’s son once said, “When aunt Chaika comes, no actors are needed – people will be listening to her alone”.  My father could not sing, but he liked singing. He even sang in a choir.
In 1908 my mother and father had twins: Boris, named in honor of grandfather Borukh, and Ida. For some reasons they were always ashamed of admitting that they were twins. Eight years later I was born. At that time our family stayed at the house of a rich Jew, Kozlovsky. His house was located downtown. It was a two-floor good house made of bricks with a big yard. It also had two courtyard houses. I remember horses in the yard. The main house had two big good rooms. My father’s workshop was located in one room, so workers were sitting there. But during the Civil War, the military occupied the whole house. My mother found a place for us to live on the outskirts. We settled in Yarkovskaya Street. It was an absolutely Ukrainian street, with only a few Jewish families. There was no anti-Semitism in Konotop prior to the war. My mother had Ukrainian friends, whom she knew from her youth, and they spoke fluent Yiddish with her (they little knew Yiddish, therefore that always veins amongst Jews). Among the Jewish families was the family of Tsitovskies.. Their son, Chaim, born in 1920, was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union for crossing the Dnepr during the Second World War. I think he is the only Hero of the Soviet Union who was born in Konotop. The museum of Konotop has his portrait and a memorial board. My mother’s brothers with their wives often came to visit us. We had a large hall where we all played and ran after each other. They had families, but they still ran after each other like kids. There were no TV, radio or lights then, so it was the only entertainment. Sometimes we also played cards. My father liked to eat sunflower seeds when he talked to somebody.
There was a club of handicraftsmen in Konotop. Jew Topkin was in charge of that club. My father always attended this club in winter and took me with him. Topkin delivered lectures. There was also a good drama theater in this club. They staged various plays. I also recited a poem on Lenin’s death in that theater and was awarded Lenin’s portrait for this. The Jewish theater of Zaslavsky came to Konotop. They showed “Tevye Tevel” by Sholom-Aleichem all this occurred indoors club. My parents took me with them to watch it. Some other famous actors came to our town. I think it was in the middle of 1920-s.
Konotop was a small town, but there were a lot of Jews there. There were 4 synagogues in it. The Jews were chiefly found in the center of the town. There were many tailors and shoemakers among them; also there were those who fixed bicycles. The division into rich and poor was very strong. The rich had their own stores and two-floor houses, but the rich ones often helped the poor ones. We were quite poor (life was better only right before the war). The most difficult years were the 1931-1933-s. In order to survive we sold articles made of precious metals and bought some foods instead.
At home we spoke only Yiddish before the war. My brother even went to cheder before the revolution. When I was young, there were Jewish schools in Konotop, but I went to a Russian school (even though most of the students in my class were Jewish). I finished 7 classes. I also learned music for 6 years (parents bought a piano from our neighbor). After school I finished a one-year accountancy school and since 1932 I was working as an accountant in a flax-storing company.
All Konotop boys, just like my brother Boris, were trained in Vengerov’s workshop. My brother studied metalwork in this workshop for several years. Then he said he wanted to continue his studies. Vengerov supported his idea, considering him very smart. My brother dreamt of studying in Moscow, but my mother did not like Moscow for some reason, and in around 1929 my brother Boris went to study in Kharkov, to aunt Rakhil. In Kharkov he worked at a plant as a tool-maker and simultaneously studied at the Workers’ Department . Then he entered the Heavy Engineering Institute. My parents could not help him financially, for these were the difficult 1930-s. He lived in a dormitory on his scholarship. He was a good student. He graduated around 1936. He was sent to work in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) to the “Uralmash” plant. From that plant he was sent to Leningrad, to the Higher Military Academy, where he studied for another two years. From there he was sent to Kramatorsk, where he worked as an engineer up to the beginning of the war.

Growing up

In 1933, my sister got married and moved to Kiev. I also wanted to live in a big city. In March 1937 I moved to Kiev. I lived with my sister and worked as a bookkeeper at a paintwork base. But I did not work there for long; I moved on to another organization, “Spetstorg”, where I also worked as a bookkeeper. This organization serviced exclusively the military. This organization sent me to Lvov in February 1940. I liked Lvov very much. (Just like other western regions of Ukraine, Lvov was part of Poland until 1939. In 1939, these lands were annexed to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine). I rented a room from a landlady, who treated me very nicely. I was young, I was not even 24 years old. I would go to different places, like dances, and I had many acquaintances. One of them was a military man. There is a wonderful park in Lvov – Stryisky. He and I spent June 21, Saturday, in that park. The next day he invited me to the Opera Theater to a ballet. In the morning next day I woke up from a sound of thunder. I thought to myself, “Oh, if there is thunder, it means it is raining, so how will I go to the theater?” I opened my eyes and saw the son shining. So, where did the thunder come from? Then I heard the landlady crying, “German has attacked us!” They called “Germans” – “German”.
Her husband left the day before and went to another town. They had two boys, Monek and Manek. It was a good Jewish family. The landlady was begging me to take them with me. I began to cry. I wept a lot on that day. That military man came to me and said, “Leave everything and flee immediately. Our men left in nightgowns, with only wives and children”. I spent that night in a shelter. I was the secretary of the Komsomol organization, so I was naturally waiting for some instructions. But my chief accountant, Natan Markovich Fridman, was a very good man. He told me, “Pack immediately and we will leave together”. We went to the train station. It was impossible to get on the first train, because its doors were locked. Our coworker Ostrovsky went to see us off. He found an open window in the second train, even though the doors were barricaded by suitcases. He opened the door to let people get on. We also took the sister of our chef; they came from Leningrad. Thus we left: no tickets, no money. Natan Markovich was a decent man. We could have gone to any canteen that belonged to our organization and taken some money. But neither he nor I did that. We left Lvov on June 23, in the evening, and arrived in Kiev on June 27. We stopped at every station; there were a lot of people. The train was overcrowded. People even sat on the floor. When we reached one more station, we saw that train that we could not get on – it was totally bombed and destroyed. Our train was also bombed. During the bombings we would run out of the train and lie down on the ground. In Kiev we stopped not at the central station, but in Darnitsa. I went to my sister’s house across the town, at night, in total darkness. When my sister saw me, she passed out – everybody was convinced I was already dead. 
Kiev was also bombed. From Kiev, my sister and niece (sister’s husband was at the front) we moved to Konotop, to our parents. We began to get ready to further evacuation. Father sewed big bags. He also bought a pair of horses and a large cart (father could drive horses very well. Back after the civil war he drove to a village to exchange clothes for foods).  All our belongings, even old clothes, we put on this cart and moved eastward. Roads were heavily bombed. Two weeks later we reached Voronezh. Only there we got on a train. In the middle of October we reached Pugachevsk, which is behind the Volga River, in Saratov region. It was already cold. We found a small room to rent, but when its landowner heard my parents speaking in Yiddish, she immediately exclaimed, “I don’t want to have any Jews here!” So, we had to look for another place. We settled with a family: a couple with two children, a 14-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl. Their house was very poor; they had absolutely nothing there. Even in the villages in Ukraine I have never seen such poor families. In Ukrainian villages people at least have trees and flowers around their houses, but here they had nothing. My father found some wooden boards and made us trestle-beds. He could do everything with his own hands. My mother and I slept on a big trestle-bed, while he slept in a smaller one; for my sister and niece we found a real bed somewhere. It was good that we had brought bed sheets with us. But the bad thing was that our neighbors behind the wall quarreled and swore all the time. We never heard such words before. That is why mother sought and found another flat, and in spring we moved to live with a woman, whose husband was killed at the front. I quickly found a job as a bookkeeper at a mill department. Mother and sister did not work. My sister got money for her killed husband (he was killed in the first days of the war; we only got one postcard from him). At the work I was given a small land plot, but the soil there was like rock. My sister, mother and I worked hard on that land. We planted melons, water-melons, and pumpkins. My father sewed things.

During the war

When the war broke out, my brother Boris volunteered to go to the front. But at the military enlistment office he was told that specialists like him were needed in the rear. So, he was sent to Kuibyshev. We knew nothing about him. From Pugachevsk, from evacuation, we wrote to every institution we could; we had a whole folder with correspondence. Finally, with great difficulty, we found him. He was working at the aircraft-building plant in Kuibyshev.
Kuibyshev was located 150-200 km away from Pugachevsk. Sister Ida went to see him in Kuibyshev. When she came to his dormitory, none of his friends believed it was his real sister: he had blond hair and blue eyes, just like our mother, while she was a brunette with dark eyes. Due to his appearance, many people thought my brother was Russian. But he never changed his name or patronymic. Kuibyshev was in famine. My brother had to work hard; sometimes he even slept at the plant. They were building the plant and putting out products at the same time. It was very cold, and their hands froze to the metal. Everyone worked for the front back then. They put out armor. My sister met his girlfriend, Katya, whom brother married after the war. But I will tell you later about this.
From Pugachevsk, I was sent to work in Moscow, to the metro-building company. I worked as a bookkeeper. I lived outside Moscow, in a horrible dormitory with rats and no heat. At the same time I studied at the Red Cross courses and worked at a hospital. I felt ill with furunculocis. As soon as Kiev was liberated (November 6, 1943), I began to pursue return to Kiev. It was impossible for the evacuated to simply return to the places they wanted. My parents returned to Konotop in June, 1944, but I was pursuing permission to go back to Kiev. On my way to Kiev I visited parents, and on September 1, 1944 I came to Kiev. I had no problems with finding a job. I began to work as a chief accountant at a small plant. Its director and most of its workers were Jewish. We found that the room my sister used to live in before the war was occupied. A bad man settled there: he did not live in Kiev before the war, but he was a lawyer, and he knew all ways in and out. Then a wonderful law was issued that one could fight for his/her own flat if one had registration in Kiev and a flat. We had all of it because we settled with our far relative Murochka (her husband was repressed in 1937 and died; she was arrested, but returned home). When the court made the decision that our former flat belonged to us, this lawyer made the court terminate its decision; he gave false testimonies and even bribed the court. The chief of the registration office knew us before the war (I even remember his name – Klimov), but he told the court he knew nothing. With great difficulties, through different court institutions, we could finally get back our flat two years later (despite the fact that my sister had every right to have it, because her husband was killed at the front).
Immediately after the end of the war, my brother Boris married that Katya, whom he met in Kuibyshev and about whom my sister Ida told us. He brought Katya to Konotop. Boris was 37 then. Boris and Katya loved each other very much. My mother was certainly very concerned that her daughter-in-law would be Russian, but my father told her not to talk about this. So, mother received them very well. My brother remained to live in Kuibyshev for the rest of his life, together with Katya and his children.
In 1945, when the war was over, I found out that I had no winter coat. My father found some fabric to make coats for me and my sister. It was hard to get vacation at that time, so I went to Konotop on October Revolution holiday. The Vengerov family settled with my parents after the war. And before the war they lived next door to the family of my future husband. They were great friends. My aunt Soreh-Liba nursed my future husband, young Benyumchik. He was treated like their own child. So, on the October Revolution holiday in 1945, Benyamin Gutner had a leave from the military. He came from Germany to see his parents and came to visit my parents and the Vengerovs. He came, wearing a naval uniform. He was happy to see me. We sat and talked for a while. He found out when I was going back to Kiev and said he would be going together with me. Before the war he worked in Kiev and had friends there. He wanted to see these friends and walk the streets of Kiev. He still had time to do that. His mother gave him a whole suitcase of food. So, he took his suitcase and my bag and we got on the train. When we came to Kiev, my sister was happy to see him alive. In the morning I went to work, and in the evening, my sister said that he had asked her whether I would refuse to marry him should he make a proposal.
Benyusik and I went to the theater. In the break he went to the buffet and bought me a bar of chocolate. It cost 100 rubles then! I told him I would not eat it at the theater but at home, together with my sister Ida. It was a rare occasion when somebody could eat chocolate, because it was right after the war.
So, then he mastered up boldness and made me a proposal. He had to serve some more and then he wanted to marry me. I said I was worried about being 29 years old and two years older than he. To this he said that he wanted to have a quiet and good wife. And with that he left. At the same time a client came to my father, a good Jewish guy, who also was interested in me. His father was a hat-maker – “kifner” in Yiddish. But by that time Benyusik had written a letter to my parents. So, I rejected that other guy. Benyusik and I had no correspondence.
We had not no  wedding ceremony: we simply had a dinner at my parents’ house and invited close relatives. My aunt, his parents and cousins came. After the wedding we returned to Kiev. Almost immediately after moving to Kiev he became very ill. During the war he had a leg injury. But when he was fighting he forgot all about that wound, and only in Kiev he began to feel sharp pains in his leg. He also had high fever. X-ray could be done only privately. He could not walk – I almost had to carry him. He had to undergo a surgery. He had a surgery in November 1946. His bone was drilled and pus was taken out of it. But after the surgery the wound would not heal. The New Year was close, but he was still in the hospital. My mother came to visit us and suggested that he should go see a very good doctor in Konotop – a close friend of my father. His wound was open till spring and no X-ray showed anything. In April my pregnancy leave began, and we went to Konotop. The city hospital was ruined; they had nothing there, we had to bring bed sheets with us (just like now!). But the main thing was that I trusted the doctor. Another operation was made and the doctors saw that the previous surgeon left a cotton ball in his wound, and he had that cotton ball for six months. Our doctor assured us that on May 1 he would even dance. It all took place in April.

After the war

On May 9 we returned to Kiev. And on May 19, 1947, my daughter Sima was born. She was named in honor of my father’s mother. My husband certainly wanted a son, but he was happy to have a daughter too. Our second daughter, Bella, was born four years later. She was named in honor of my husband’s grandmother, Beile. After the birth of my second daughter I did not work for 16 years until my children became more or less independent.
Prior to the war we sensed no anti-Semitism at all, but after the war our children and us felt it all the time – at school and especially in entering university. Sima finished school with honors, and in her written exam in mathematics (in entering the Kiev Polytechnic Institute) she received an excellent mark, but at the next oral exam she was given a poor mark. She was able to enter the correspondence department of the Aviation Institute only a few years later, when she was already working. Bella also had problems with entering university. But even though we had problems with anti-Semitism, I’m sure I would have never endured emigration.
After my father’s death in 1957, we took mother from Konotop to Kiev. First she lived with the sister, then with me. Soreh-Liba died in Kiev too, in 1963. She also moved to live with her children – she had four of them. The youngest, Rakhil, died in 1936 in Kharkov. She had three children. Neither Soreh-Liba nor Rakhil worked outside the house after getting married.
My mother and her brother Shleimka, unlike other relatives, lived for a long time. Mother died in Kiev in 1978 at the age of 93. Shleimka also died being older than 90. His last years he lived in Minsk at his son’s.
My husband was a worker, and most of his life he worked as a plumber at construction objects. He died in Kiev in 1998.
I would like to tell you some more about my brother, Boris. He spent all his life at that plant in Kuibyshev. His and Katya’s elder daughter was born in 1946, but when she was 12 years old she died because of leukemia. Then they had two more children – Alla and Mikhail. Their children never changed their last name or patronymic.
My brother was the chief constructor. But during the Soviet Union’s fight against cosmopolitism, in early 1950-s, a Jew, Gurevich, could not remain the chief constructor. So, the plant’s director made him a teacher in the plants’ technical school and put him in charge of a desigh bureau. Of course, after Stalin’s death he could work better again. But he never shared about the nature of his work. I only know that he spent months in Moscow in business trips.
In 1978, I received tragic news about his death. He died from stomach cancer. It was hard for me to think that I would burry my brother. My children stayed with my mother, while my husband and I went to Kuibyshev. The whole plant expressed great honor to him. The cemetery (this was common town, not Jewish graveyard) was far from the town, and there was a truck covered with carpets (it was in March when it was still cold). But the workers did not put the coffin on the truck – they carried it to the cemetery in turns. They made a great funeral banquet for him. I know that Jews do not do such things, but at that place people did that. The tables of the plant’s canteen were covered, but not everyone could fit in. So again, people took turns. Many people spoke about him, shared how he taught, how he treated students, what a wonderful and honest person he was. In 1985 I went to Kuibyshev to visit Katya and her children. Katya invited me to the plant’s museum, which speaks a lot about Boris. It even has his big portrait. We came to the museum when a tour was held for children. The director of the museum told them how my brother started that plant with the first nail and what difficulties he faced. After the tour, the director invited me to his office and sadly said that he had asked Boris many times to write about himself and the plant, but Boris was a very modest person, so he wrote nothing.
My sister Ida always lives and worked in the Kiev. We with her were very friendly, children grow together. After the death of Boris, in 1989, she with the family emigrated to USA. Regrettably we can communicate on the telephone only and much seldom. I know that beside them there all well.
Praise God, we had a good life. My husbands was working, and on top of his salary he always tried to find some part-time work, for instance, fix something for the neighbors. I went to the sewing courses and after a year of studies I began to sew everything for myself and children. I did not want to pay somebody else to sew for us. When I was sewing, some things I knew exactly, other things I tried to understand. My children also learned sewing from me. Then I bought an electrict sewing machine and began to take orders from other people. It was hard at that time to buy decent clothes at the store, so I sewed for anyone who ordered and never denied help to anyone.
I’m now living with my youngest daughter, Bella. Being old is certainly not a happy thing. I need to buy medicine and food, while my pension is small. I would be in despair if there were no Kiev charity fund “Khesed Avot” that helps us a lot. It helps us not only with foods and medicines, but also with care and warm words to us. I really appreciate them very much.
I do not approve of emigration.
You see, when you come to Israel, you realize that you are a foreigner there. It’s in my nature. When I was leaving Moscow, my friends would beg me to stay, promised to provide a room for me, warned about ruins in my native town where I was going. But I told them, “It’s my home”. When I came to Konotop and walked into the town, the road was full of my tears. I saw that it was mine, my home. Once we wanted to go to Germany, but then I said, “No, I’m not going. I can’t go there. I can’t hear that language. I can’t live there. I’m not going”. My husband agreed with me that it would be better for us to stay home. I know people are moving to America, to Germany. Well, we paid too much for moving to Germany – we paid with rivers of blood. I can’t imagine how Jews can live in Germany, in that situation. The Germans hate us!

Evgeni Chazov 

Ternopol
Ukraine
Interviewer: Zhanna Litinskaya
Date of interview: September 2003

I met Evgeni Chazov in the Jewish community of Ternopol. Evgeni visited me in the hotel the following morning. He didn’t invite me home and we had our meeting in a hotel room. Evgeni is a thin nervous man. He told me that he came from a mixed marriage and was raised by his Russian father. However, he identifies himself a Jew. Evgeni told me that he takes an active part in public activities in the Jewish community and he is actually assistant director of it.  He enjoys studying Jewish history trying to fill up the gaps in his education. Evgeni requested me to take an interview with him and talk to him, even though his father wasn’t a Jew and he didn’t reveal his Jewish origin before the early 1990s and didn’t identify himself as a Jew. I found his story to be very interesting. It reflects the epoch in which a few generations of Soviet people grew up.  

I was born in and raised by a mixed family; my mother was Jewish and my father was Russian. My mother’s parents came from Krivoy Rog located in the southeast of Ukraine, 350 km from Kiev It was the center of coal and iron industry. My mother’s father Moisey Bragher was born in the 1880s, was a tinsmith. My grandfather Moisey worked very hard before the revolution of 1917 1 and then continued working at a state owned mine. Moisey was a highly skilled tinsmith. He never refused his Jewish or non-Jewish neighbors when they asked him to help and very often he did hard work for free. People liked my grandfather and brought him milk, eggs or bread – whatever they could afford to pay him for work. My grandmother Zlata, whose maiden name I don’t remember, was almost the same age as my grandfather. I don’t have any information about her family, but from what my mother’s cousin sister Bertha Gribovskaya told me my grandmother received common Jewish education at home. She could read prayers in Hebrew and she was a terrific cook like all Jewish housewives. She could also make clothes. She had her customers that paid for her work, but sometimes she made clothes for her relatives or neighbors for free. She was known and respected in her neighborhood. My grandmother had a sister named Golda Gribovskaya. She was about two years older than my grandmother. Golda was married to Mark Gribovski. They died before the Great Patriotic War 2, in 1930s. Their daughter Bertha Gribovskaya was married and had two children. They live in Cheliabinsk, Russia, and we correspond with them occasionally.  I have no information about grandmother or grandfather’s other brothers or sisters.

My grandfather and grandmother got married in 1905. They had a Jewish wedding with a chuppah, signing the ketubbah, numerous guests and Jewish music. We have a photograph of Zlata’s and Moisey’s wedding. My grandmother had a fancy wedding dress on. One can tell that her parents were far from poor. My grandfather and grandmother lived in Krivoy Rog one or two years. Their first baby, my mother’s older brother, whose name I don’t know, died in infancy. After he died my grandmother and grandfather moved to Novovorontsovka, Kherson province [150 km from Krivoy Rog and 500 km from Kiev] probably looking for a job there.

My mother Friena Bragher was born in Novovorontsovka in 1908. My mother happened to be the only child in the family. In 1911 the family moved back to Krivoy Rog. I don’t know why they returned, probably, things were not going very well. They settled down with Golda Gribovskaya’ [the grandmother’s sister] family in her house. The families had separate entranceways to their apartments. My aunt Bertha told me that both families observed Jewish traditions, followed kashrut and celebrated Sabbath.   On Saturdays Golda’s husband and grandfather Moisey didn’t go to work. On Friday both families lit candles and sat down to the table set for a celebration. I don’t know any details about their celebration of holidays, but I know from aunt Bertha that there was always matzah in the house at Pesach and grandfather Moisey, being the oldest in the family, conducted seder. On Saturdays and holidays they went to the synagogue in the center of the town. Krivoy Rog was an industrial town and there were many Jews residing in it like anywhere else in the south of Russia. [Ukraine] I don’t know the exact numbers, but the Jewish population constituted at least 25%. Russian, Ukrainian and Jewish families were good neighbors and respected each other.

I don’t know the name of the street where my grandparents resided. After the revolution of 1917 it was given the name of Karl Libknecht. During NEP 3 my grandfather worked for a master and later he went to work at a mine. My mother finished elementary Jewish school before the revolution.  During the Revolution and Civil War, the period of pogroms 4, the family again moved to Novovorontsovka to live through the trying times. It was a small and relatively quiet town. From what I know, nobody in our family suffered from pogroms. After we returned to Krivoy Rog my mother finished a lower secondary school and then entered obstetrics school. Se finished it in 1928 and went to work as a physiotherapy nurse in the town hospital in Krivoy Rog. My father was having treatment in this hospital in 1931 and my parents met there.

My father Pyotr Chazov was born in Chusovaya, a distant area near Nizhniy Tagil in the Ural [3000 km from Kiev] in 1900. His father Michael Chazov, my grandfather, was a trackwalker at the station and grandmother Anastasia was an attendant in the railroad hospital. My father didn’t have any brothers or sisters.  When my father was about 6 years old  grandfather Michael died from anthrax and when he was 11 his mother died of tuberculosis. By that time my father had finished  the 5th grade in the secondary school. He didn’t continue his studies. My father lived with his aunts taking turns with one aunt in Briyansk region and another aunt in Perm region.  He followed into his father’s steps and went to work in railroad depots. In 1917 my father joined the Red Army along with other workers. Basically, he joined it to get better food. They were also provided clothes and accommodation. My father struggled against White 5 units in Siberia. His fellow comrade was a hero of the Civil War 6 and a future Marshall of the Soviet Union, Golikov 7. Life threw them together several times in the future. My father served in Ukraine and took part in battles in the Crimea and was awarded an Order of Red Star [Soviet Military Order, Instituted in 1930. It was awarded to servicemen of the Soviet Army, Navy, Border Guards, Internal Troops, and Committee of State Security (KGB) personnel, for personal courage and bravery in battle, excellent organization and capable combat leadership]. There is a photograph of my father and a group of Red Army soldiers awarded orders of Red Star. An outstanding red commander Blyukher  8 conducted the award ceremony. During the Civil War my father became a communist.  After the Civil War was over my father passed his exams to receive a certificate of a low secondary school and then finished a Higher Party School 9 . He became a political officer in the Red army. He was sent to serve in Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk and Krivoy Rog. By the time my parents met he was in the rank off lieutenant colonel. When he was in Krivoy Rog he was hit by a car when riding a motorcycle. He was taken to hospital where he had to stay a long time. My father met my mother in the hospital in 1931 and they fell in love with each other.

Both of them came from families of workers and they were a product of the Soviet epoch: they were led by their dreams about socialism and communism, construction of plants and mines and a new life with no exploitation. That was what other Soviet people were driven by. My father fell in love at first sight and my mother returned his love. They met several times after my father was released from hospital and then he came to my mother’s parents with a bunch of flowers to ask their consent.  Although he wasn’t a Jew my grandmother and grandfather gave their consent to their marriage without hesitation. My mother’s parents had given up all prejudices associated with Jewish religious life, including mixed marriages. Also, they liked my father as a person. Few weeks later my father and mother had a civil ceremony in the registry office. They didn’t have a big wedding party; it wasn’t customary at that time. grandfather and grandmother arranged a dinner where my father invited his colleagues and mother invited her friends, about 8 guests in total. 

My parents lived in Krivoy Rog another year. They lived in an apartment that my father received at work. In 1932 my older sister Ludmila Chazova was born there. A year later my father was transferred to work in Dnepropetrovsk in 30 km from Krivoy Rog. My mother entered the Medical College there. It was her dream to become a doctor. However, she had to quit the college three years later after my father got another assignment. My mother obtained an assistant doctor diploma [That was issued to students who quit their studies premature but had sufficient knowledge to work as junior medical personnel]. My father got an assignment in Ovruch, Zhytomir region, in 120 km from Kiev. My parents always stayed in state owned apartments with furniture and everything necessary. All these belonged to the state and they only took their belongings with them. Ovruch was a small town with the majority of Jewish population, but my parents resided in the military housing district with its customs and rules. Wives of the military were friends and lived in their own close community. In 1936 I was born.

My father was political deputy of commanding officer of the military unit. He was a colonel. Commanding officer of the division was Golikov, my father’s fellow comrade from the period of the Civil War. My mother worked as a nurse in the medical unit of the division. My father was convinced that the wife of a political officer just had to go to work. Around 1937 commanding officer of the division Golikov was sent to a military academy in Moscow to continue his education. My father was appointed commanding officer of the division. This position required a general’s rank, my father wasn’t promoted at that moment for some reason that I don’t know.

We lived in a cottage owned by the division. There were 3 big rooms and a kitchen in the house. The furniture was also owned by the division and each piece of furniture had an inventory number on it. Even curtains and tablecloths were owned by the division. We had a housemaid that did cleaning and cooking and also looked after my sister and me. My mother said that my father had many friends: they were his comrade officers, for the most part. There were frequent gatherings in our house to celebrate Soviet holidays: 1 May and October Revolution Day 10. On Sunday officers’ families visited each other and had parties. They usually drank a lot and said toasts ‘To Soviet Motherland, to Stalin’. Observation of Jewish traditions was out of the question, but to do justice I must say here that we didn’t celebrate Christian holidays, either. Officers that came from the lowest levels of society, workers’ or peasants’ families, were inclined to sybaritic way of life: they dressed up, smoked pipes and spent a lot of time sitting at a card-table playing.  My father’s friends called my father Pierre in a French manner for his snobbery and his predilection to nice clothing and good eau-de-cologne. 

My mother’s cousin Bertha Gribovskaya told me many years later about what happened in our family further on. Our parents never shared this with us. At that period arrests [Great Terror] 11 and show trials against so-called ‘enemies of the people’ 12 began. People disappeared without any trial or investigation. They were arrested at night. The majority of commanding staff of our division disappeared forever then. My mother told me that they didn’t get together with friends that frequently since a word said at the wrong time or a joke might have caused an arrest. In early 1939 my father had a telephone call. He was ordered to make an appearance in the division headquarters in Zhytomir. This happened on Sunday. My father and mother were used to sudden calls and their commandment habit to work on holidays and at night like their chief. There was no indication of the forthcoming trouble and my mother even went with father to do shopping while he was at work.  They agreed to meet when he finished work, but my father didn’t show up on time. My mother waited until evening and then called the headquarters, but they told her that my father was busy and that he sent her a message to go home without him. My mother called them again when she arrived home and then she gave few more calls on the following days. She wasn’t worried since it happened before that my father disappeared every now and then: the military have their own complicated life. Two days later, when my mother called the headquarters again they told her that she should come to see her husband and she suspected that something was wrong. She gave Nadezhda Smirnova -a typist in the headquarters of my father’s division and a close friend of the family- my father’s award documents, family albums and photographs where my father was photographed with Golikov and commander Blyukher, who had become ‘enemies of the people’ and were executed. Besides, she gave Nadezhda my father’s collection of stamps. This was his hobby.  My mother was concerned that these documents might become evidence against my father and she was convinced that something terrible had happened to him.  

In the vestibule an officer on duty met my mother and then an NKVD 13 officer approached her and asked her to follow him and he would show her to where my father was waiting, but she was actually taken to be interrogated. They were trying to force her to slander my father and acknowledge that he was an enemy of the people and a French spy. Perhaps, one of my father’s friends that called him Pierre reported on him. The interrogation lasted few hours, but my mother refused flatly to sign an accusation against the man she loved. During the interrogation they treated her with respect, but when she left the room, two officers took her to another room and from then on she couldn’t remember anything. She recovered her conscience in NKVD hospital: her knee didn’t bend and her face was injured.  Her first words were about my father, but they didn’t tell her where he was.  When she asked about her children they told her to not worry about us and that we were in our nanny’s care. We were staying with the nanny and she kept telling us that our parents were in business trip and that there was nothing to worry about and we didn’t worry, being small children. We lived our usual life. When my mother returned she told us about interrogation, but she plainly said there was a search at home after a false accusation of my father and that authorities ‘worked on’ her in their office. She didn’t mention that my father was arrested. My mother stayed in hospital and her doctor was her former co-student at the Medical College in Dnepropetrovsk. One day she asked my mother to come to her office. She closed the door and said: ‘Friena, if you want to rescue the children you need to go to a distant place before they arrest you’. When she was released from the hospital my mother went straight to her father in Krivoy Rog. She stayed with her father a day and then decided to follow his advice to go  to a distant place since her father’s house might be the first place they would be looking for her. 

My mother returned to Ovruch and packed within one day without telling us any details.  We moved to Lysva Molotov (present-day Perm) region in the Ural, 3500 km from home where my father’s aunts lived: Natalia Schipanova and Anna Gluchova. However, we didn’t stay there long. Probably my father’s aunts were concerned about their own safety and they advised my mother to go to work in the  ‘Sokol’ military recreation center located in the woods near Lysva. They believed she would not be discovered there. I wouldn’t judge them for what they did: they feared that my mother might be discovered and they would suffer for giving shelter to the social dangerous elements that we had become. This was what this period was like when people were afraid of giving shelter to their close ones.  We left our father aunts’ house and my mother never contacted them again. My mother didn’t tell my grandfather where we were staying to keep him safe. She sent him a cable to let him know that we were all right.

In this new place nobody knew our story. My mother didn’t talk about her husband and we believed that our father was doing his job and would be back soon. My mother got a job of a nurse in the recreation center. I don’t know how she managed to get this employment when our father had been arrested. I know that doctor Shtabskaya, a Jew, helped my mother get this job.  I don’t remember our life in this recreation center. I know that during the Finnish campaign 14  this recreation center was transformed into a hospital and my mother went to the front several times with a medical team. Therefore, she was given the status of a veteran of the Finnish War.

Shortly after beginning of the Great Patriotic War in 1941 there was a military training camp organized in the woods near the recreation center to train recruits.  My mother and other medical employees went to work in this camp and the recreation center was again transformed into a military hospital. I remember this camp very well. It was divided into two parts with a ground road: one part was for reserve military training units and another part was for a medical unit and other facilities of everyday use.  Employees also resided in earth houses in this part. My mother and we also lodged in an earth house. Soldiers arranged a small vegetable garden for us where they grew potatoes and vegetables. My mother couldn’t do any hard work. She was an invalid and had heart problems, but soldiers helped us a lot. There were small potatoes growing, but we were glad to have them. There was also cabbage, carrots and beetroots growing in the garden: all small size due to the lack of sun. This first winter of the wartime was difficult. Of course, we didn’t starve as much as those that evacuated from their homes. My mother received food packages and bread provisions for my sister and me as her dependents. In spring my sister and I went to the woods looking for herbs: sorrel, oxalis and nettle. We brought them home and my mother made soup with them. Our situation was more difficult than the situation of wives of the military that had special provision certificates. My mother didn’t have any information about my father, but she told us that he was at the front bravely struggling against the enemies of the Soviet power: fascists. My mother didn’t have any information about her father or other relatives in Krivoy Rog.

I was just a boy and the word ‘war’ was very familiar tome. It was often spoken in the military unit. I knew that soldiers trained in the camp were going to the front. They had left their homes and their children and they spent time with us making toys for us from wood, twigs and cones. I also strove to them missing my father’s are. My friends and I played the ‘war’ game throwing cones at one another. During the winter of 1942-43 I fell ill with scarlet fever and almost lost my hearing due to it.  Few months later, when my friends and I were playing in the woods an old tree fell on me and I had both legs broken. I was a weak child and when I went to school in 1944 my teachers treated me with warmth and sympathy. I went to school in Lysva. We drove there on a truck. Senior children of the 4th grade and up walked to school along the railroad track and in winter they just crossed a lake. I cannot remember any of my classmates: I was often ill and stayed away from school. I had cold or something, besides, it was difficult to travel to school in winter.

I remember Victory Day on 9 May 1945 very well. How happy adults were singing and laughing. Radios in our camp played Soviet songs ‘Katyusha’ and ‘Zemlianka’ and ‘Siniy platochek’ that we liked for the rest of our life. The camp was still there, but there were no newcomers. The military and civilian employees were going to their homes. We had nowhere to go. Then my mother made up her mind regardless of how hurt she felt to visit my father’s aunts in Lysva. How happy she was to hear that my father was alive. He was released in late 1940, but he couldn’t find us: my grandfather didn’t know our whereabouts and when my father wrote his aunts they couldn’t give him a definitive answer either.  When they saw my mother they cried of feeling sorry. They wrote my father our address in the camp. He arrived few days later. He said that he was trying to find us, but he didn’t really have time for search. After he was released he was reduced to junior political officer in the rank of captain. When the war began my father went to the front. He was lucky and his life was merciful to him: he didn’t even have a scratch through the whole duration of war. When my father appeared in the doorway of our earth house my mother ran toward him, my sister  fell on his neck and I didn’t remember my father and took shelter in the forest from shyness.  My father found me, hugged me tight and carried back home. My mother and father stayed awake all through the night telling each other about the years that passed. However, even then we didn’t know that my father had been arrested. At the end of the war he was in the rank of major. He got back his awards from the Civil War and was awarded an Order of Lenin and Order of the Combat Red Banner [Order of Lenin - Established in 1930, the highest award in the USSR for both military and civilian people and collectives.  It is awarded for outstanding services to the revolutionary movement, labor activity, defense of the Homeland, and strengthening peace between peoples. Order of the Combat Red Banner  - Established in 1924, it was awarded for bravery and courage in defense of the Homeland.] He was a military. On the next day we left the camp. We dropped by my father’s aunts and stayed few hours with them. I don’t know what they discussed, but I never again saw my relatives on my father’s side: they never visited us.

My father got an assignment in Sambor, Lvov region, [600 km from Kiev]. About two months later my father was transferred to Lvov. We were in Lvov a little longer than six months. We were accommodated in suite in a hotel.  I went to the second grade of school in Lvov. My mother kept writing to Krivoy Rog trying to find out what happened to her father. She found her cousin sister Bertha Gribovskaya in Cheliabinsk and Bertha told her the terrible news that her father had perished. My grandfather Moisey and other Jews were thrown into a shaft alive shortly after the town was occupied. It was horrific news for my mother. She cried a lot when father was not at home, but when he came she wiped off her tears. He had a strong character and demanded that she showed her strength, too.

In February 1946 my father was appointed as deputy chief of political department of the regional military registry office in Ternopol in the West of Ukraine [450 km from Kiev]. It was a high position at that time and was promoted to the rank of colonel soon. When he received a one-bedroom apartment in early fall our family joined him in Ternopol. Shortly afterward he received a two-bedroom apartment with big rooms with much light and a kitchen. My father bought the first furniture in his life at the age of 46: a sofa, wardrobe, a table and coaches for my sister and me.  My sister and I went to school and my mother went to work as a nurse in the surgery department of  the railroad hospital.

My father worked a lot. He often went on business trips in Subcarpathia 15 that was annexed to the USSR in 1939. [Editors’ note: Subcarpathia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945.] There were remaining gangs in the woods in Western Ukraine. They had chauvinistic moods and were against the establishment of Soviet power. Young people refused to serve in the Soviet Army and joined partisans in the woods. Once the trophy ‘Willis’ where my father was traveling some partisans who were local residents opened fire on the car. There were many such groups in the woods. They struggled against Soviet power and its representatives. They killed the driver and wounded another officer sitting in the car. Nothing happened to my father. We heard about this accident from the officer that had a surgery in the hospital where my mother was working. My father omitted such ‘incidents’ despising the danger and performing his duty for his Motherland. 

My parents had many friends. They were usually my father’s co-officers and their families.  They got together in our home to celebrate Soviet holidays: 1 May, October revolution Day and the Soviet army Day 16. On weekends my father and mother went for a stroll. They went to the park where a symphonic orchestra was playing. It was a tradition.  My sister and I also joined them when we grew older. Nadezhda Smirnova, a former colleague of my father, also lived in Ternopol. She kept our photographs and family archives.  She often visited us and I think she talked with my mother about what had happened to my father, but we didn’t know anything about it. I don’t remember any Jews visiting us. Probably there were no Jews in this military and political group where my father was.  

Our family was an exemplary Soviet family. My father and mother supported any actions initiated by higher authorities. My father devotedly believed in Stalin and thought that arrests in the late 1930s happened due to Yezhov 17, Berya 18, whoever, but Stalin. However, when in the late 1940s-early 1950s the campaign of state anti-Semitism began – it was called struggle against rootless cosmopolites 19, even my father expressed his bewilderment. Especially it was true about the ‘doctors plot’ 20. My father that had finished only five grades at school and took so much effort to find his place in life didn’t believe that professors and doctors could be enemies of the people. He shared this opinion of his even with us.

At that period I also got to know what it felt like to be a Jew, even when only my mother was Jewish.  I was called ‘zhyd’ [kike] at school, even though my father had a high position and was known in the town and I had his Russian surname. I didn’t do well at school due to my loss of hearing. My teachers treated me nicely, but I never gave it a thought of whether their attitude was sincere or it was dictated to them by my father’s position. I liked literature, history and geography. I didn’t do that well with natural sciences.  I was a pioneer and a Komsomol member, but I didn’t actively participate in public activities. I didn’t have many friends, either. I spent most of my time with mother at home. 

My father grieved a lot when Stalin died in 1953 and so did all Soviet people.  I remember standing on the watch by the portrait of Stalin at school. There was a mourning meeting in the main square of the town: Stalin’s square. Many leaders, including my father, spoke at this meeting.  Even in 1956 when after the 20th Party Congress 21 official denunciation of the cult of Stalin began my father was faithful to him and believed these talks to be slander. 

In 1956 my father demobilized and became responsible for religion in Ternopol region at the Council of ministers of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. He dealt with religious cults and sects. This was hard work associated with disclosure of the sects forbidden by the state, identification of their status and their attitude to the state. My father retired from this work in 1965. The town party committee offered him to organize and head the commission working with letters from working people. This commission received many letters from people. They complained about their everyday problems looking for help and support. This commission also worked as an arbiter to resolve disputes or conflicts between people or organizations. He organized this commission and worked there for free until 1973. People knew and loved my father. He was awarded the title of honored citizen of Ternopol and he was proud of it as much as he was of his combat awards.

After finishing school in 1953 I entered the Faculty of Russian Philology in Rivne Pedagogical College. There was no such college in Ternopol and I left for Rivne in  200 km from Ternopol. There was a Jewish girl in my college and we got along well with her. My sister and I were registered as Russian in our documents, so I didn’t face any anti-Semitism since my co-students didn’t know my mother. Although I identified myself as a Jew I didn’t disclose my identity.  I lived in a hostel and shared a room with three other students.  We supported each other, had meals together and missed lectures together.  In summer we had practical training in a school in Rivne and then I went to Ternopol on vacations. We often spent vacations together. My father obtained free trips to the Crimea and Caucasus. Sometimes my father and mother went on vacation together. He never spent time away from her, he was probably trying to make up for the years when they were apart.

After finishing college in 1958 a group of 16 volunteers volunteered to Tashkent [Uzbekistan, 3000 km to the South-East] to teach Uzbek children Russian.  I went with this group.  This was a Komsomol call. We traveled via Moscow where we were solemnly greeted. We stayed in a hostel three days and went on city tours. In Tashkent we met at the railway station and I was sent to a school in a small district center. I don’t remember the name of this town. I taught Russian literature and language and since there were other teachers missing I also taught history, geography and German. We were treated with respect, but life was difficult there. I rented an apartment with another teachers, the Uzbek Bulat and the Mordvinian Nikolay. They also came to work there and it was less expensive for us to share an apartment. Bulat taught me to speak fluent Uzbek. I worked in Uzbekistan two years.  My mother had an heart attack and I obtained a permit to quit work before my 3-year assignment was over [Mandatory Job Assignment in the USSR] 22.

My sister Ludmila finished Pedagogical College in Lvov and married Alexandr Borisenko, her former schoolmate. He was Ukrainian. He was at the military and had an assignment in the Caucasus.  They often moved from one location to another: Tbilisi, Kutaisi, Poti [in Georgia] and other towns where her husband was on service. Ludmila had a small child and she couldn’t leave her family to come to look after our mother.

I returned to Ternopol in 1960 and lived here ever since. At first I couldn’t find a job for a long time. At that time society was opposing young fops wearing  stylish clothing and I was one of them. This became a motive for them to refuse to employ me. It didn’t occur to me at that time that this was another demonstration of disguised anti-Semitism. Then finally, after a long period of suspension, I was sent to work at a school. Later I became chief of studies and I think that I chose my profession rightly. I like children and find working with them interesting.

Before 1967 I lived with my parents. In 1967 I met my future wife Ludmila Pristupa, Ukrainian, born in a village in Volyn. She was 6 years younger than me. By the time we met Ludmila had finished a Polytechnic College and became a communication engineer. One month later Ludmila met my parents and then we went to her home village. I was amazed that her parents, pain farmers, met us with bread and salt [traditional Russia welcoming]. They knew that I had a Jewish mother, but they didn’t care. We got married in 1967. We had a wedding party in our apartment in Ternopol. We invited our rinds to the wedding.  Shortly afterward my wife and I moved into the apartment that I received. 

In 1973 our son -named Pyotr after my father- was born. We had a good family. In summer I had long vacations and we went hiking on the bank of a river where I installed a tent or to the south. Once I obtained a cheap trip to a recreation center. A full-price stay was expensive and I couldn’t afford it. My salary was just enough to support our monthly living, but many Soviet people lived like that. We went to the cinema every week and attended first night performances in Ternopol Drama Theater. We went to pop concerts. We celebrated New Year, 7th November, 1st May at home with the family and relatives.  We had many friends; my wife’s colleagues and my colleagues.  We liked spending time with them. 

In 1973 my father fell ill with cancer. He died in 1974.  In 1977 my sister Ludmila died. She had taken tuberculosis treatment for few years: she went to health centers and stayed in hospitals, but it turned out she had tumor in her lungs. She died in Ternopol when she was visiting her mother. Her husband and his family were raising Ludmila’s daughter Natalia. She lives in Moscow Region with her family now. My mother’s cousin Bertha Gribovskaya came to my sister’s funeral. Aunt Bertha stayed with my mother. My mother fell ill after her daughter died. She died a month later. After my mother’s funeral aunt Bertha revealed our family secret to me about my father’s arrest. We were sitting in the kitchen through the night. Aunt Bertha told me what she knew from my mother: about his interrogation, beating оf my mother and her escape to the Ural with us. It was a blow for me: the fact that my mother and father went through such hardships and that they kept it a secret from their closest people - their children.  This showed how much scared people were, that they were afraid of sincerity even with their closest people. Even aunt Bertha told me to not disclose it to anybody. Though it was 1977 she was still afraid of something. Only after aunt bertha told her story I began to understand many things in our household: that my parents never discussed actions taken by the Party or government and if they did talk about it my father’s opinion was always similar to the baseline of the Party. Also, that my mother didn’t have Jewish friends and even her relative Bertha never visited us before my sister died. My father wasn’t anti-Semitic, but I don’t think he appreciated my mother’s relationships with her relatives, just in case. I feel very sorry for my mother. She must have had a steel heart to live this kind of life and  keep things in secret.

Back in the 1970s I developed interest toward Israel. I believe all decent people supported Israel in its struggle during the Six-Day War 23 and during other conflicts. Of course, I didn’t share my thoughts with my father, but my Ukrainian wife always shared my opinions and we even considered moving to Israel.  Then I began to have heart problems and I could not survive the climate of Israel.  Now I am trying to make up for what I didn’t have in my youth.  I am a member of the Jewish community of Ternopol. I try to celebrate Sabbath and we celebrate Jewish holidays in the community: Pesach, Rosh Hashanah and my wife is always with me. I fast on Judgment Day. [Yom Kippur] I study Yiddish and Jewish traditions in the community. I am interested in the history of Jewish people and Judaism. I think that it is the greatest, bit a single achievement of perestroika 24 and independent Ukraine that various nations residing in Ukraine got an opportunity to develop. As for the rest of it perestroika it turned out to be a hardship for our family and for many others. I retired in 1986, but I give private lessons and prepare applicants to colleges. Our pensions are low and my wife and I have to work to make ends meet.  Our son Pyotr quit his college after two years of studies. He works for a commercial company now.  Pyotr lives with us. His marriage failed.  He supports us. Pyotr identifies himself as Ukrainian. Hesed, Jewish charity center delivers food packages and medications to us and we participate in its cultural program. 

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