Anna Lanota and Mietek Rottenberg with friends on vacation

Anna Lanota and Mietek Rottenberg with friends on vacation

This photo was taken in Kolumna near Lodz, I don’t know by whom. My parents rented a house there during summer holidays.

We went there rarely. Almost every holidays we spent in Skryhiczyn, where lived my father’s family.

In this picture me and my brother Mietek are sitting in the middle. He was then maybe four years old, and I about nine. It is his only photo I have. These girls were my friends, but I don’t remember their names.

My second brother was called Mietek, but his Jewish name was Mordechaj. He was born in 1920. He graduated from elementary school and vocational school, but he didn't work before the war, didn't get the chance.

He was the only one of my brothers who was very religious. He didn't wear the traditional robes, but he was a very devout Jew. He had similar friends, too. He didn't advocate the Zionist ideology or any other.

He was very sensitive to music. I know nothing else about him, because I left home young to go to Warsaw to university, and I didn't live with my parents and my brothers after I was 16. I met him during the war.

I came to Warsaw from Lvov in 1941. I wanted to see my family, which was in the ghetto. I went there. They lived with several other families in one apartment at Leszno Street.

My parents and my middle brother Mietek were there; the elder Rysiu lived with his wife separately. My parents had a tiny room; in the corner there was a stove that they cooked on.

There was nothing to eat in the house. I took out my money and the Weigl vaccine to sell. Mietek went down and bought some food. Later Rysiu and Mietek worked for the brushmakers.

I left the ghetto on 14th August 1942. My brothers said to me then: 'When you get out, if you survive and have the chance, remember to get us out too.' But it failed. They both perished in the first deportation in August 1942.

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