Matylda Wyszynska with her colleagues

This picture was taken during some party at work.

After the war I terribly wanted to work and later, unbeknownst to Staszek, I went to work at a factory, in the machine room. And then I met my second husband.

In 1953 I started working for the labor inspection and worked there until my retirement in 1984.

Then I got a divorce (don't remember the exact year) and I married an actor called Wyszynski, he was an actor in Czestochowa, then in Opole, in the Thirteen Rows Theatre of Grotowski.

We weren't long together because he drank a lot, an artistic soul, essentially.

My first husband was such a calm, reliable, really loving man. And here I entered this milieu, I was bitten by the theatre bug, it was not Wyszynski I fell in love with but theatre.

I don't remember precisely when, but when I worked as a labor inspector, the manager of a large store in Gdynia had an accident.
she wrote us that her employer had refused to pay damages to her.

I took a colleague I worked with and we went to that store. I met the woman, we introduced ourselves to each other, her name was Ludwika Czechowicz, father's name Aaron. '

And where do you live?' '15 Warszawska Street.' Across the street from me. I got in touch with her afterwards and today she's a member of our Veterans Association.

I'm also a member of the Jewish Religious Community in Gdansk. I am the secretary, now also the president of the Gdansk branch of the Association of Jewish War Veterans and Victims of Persecutions During World War II.

I'm not a full member of the Children of the Holocaust, but I have honorary membership because I'm very active, I gave lectures at high schools for them, with various competitions and so on.

The Centropa Collection at USHMM

The Centropa archive has been acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. USHMM will soon offer a Special Collections page for Centropa.

Academics please note: USHMM can provide you with original language word-for-word transcripts and high resolution photographs. All publications should be credited: "From the Centropa Collection at the United States Memorial Museum in Washington, DC". 

Please contact collection [at] centropa.org (collection[at]centropa[dot]org).