Bluma Birencwajg's wedding
This picture was taken at the wedding of Bluma Birencwajg, my father's sister. She got married in 1939, to Poltorak.... but I don?t remember his first name. The wedding took place in Sosnowiec, so that's where the picture was taken. But I don?t know who took it.
My father, Dawid came from Sosnowiec. His father's name was Abram, his mother was Tema. There were six children in all. Four daughters and two sons. One daughter was called Rachela, the second one Sala, the third one Laja, and the fourth one was Bluma. And my father's brother was Judka.
When the war broke out, we were in Lodz. My father decided to go, with other men, to save Warsaw. He came back after two months. My mom told him: 'Listen, there's no point in you being here.' So he said: 'My two friends are crossing to the other side', that's how they'd say it, to the other side of the Bug. So my mom said: 'Go together with them.' She had arranged with my father that if, God willing, he'd be alive, she should look for him in Bialystok , where he could get registered in a waiters' union, or in Lwow. We couldn't get a message from him, because my father didn't know where we were. My mother found him in Lwow. My father rented an apartment, we slept on the floor, there were these huge cockroaches and it cost 5 zloty a night. We managed to get used to all this somehow, we weren't so scared anymore and we found out that the brothers-in-law were there, and also Bluma was in Lwow with her husband.
Meanwhile, they had started catching us for labor. That is - deportations! They deported us, but they said it was for work. My father said: 'We can sign up for work.' My mother said I didn't want to? Some plants in Russia were recruiting employees and my dad said: 'Well. How long can this war last? Winter, summer, it will be over soon, we will go home.' We went to this city and those in-laws also went with us. Entire transports went there from Lwow. The city was called Vyksa. We didn't move, but Bluma with her husband left when the German-Russian War broke out. And I think they died ? They disappeared without a trace.